Asking and answering: A contrastive study of English and Swedish basic communication verbs
Åke Viberg
Uppsala University , SwedenAbstract
This article presents a contrastive study of the English verbs ask and answer and their Swedish correspondents based on data from the English Swedish Parallel Corpus (ESPC), which is bi-directional and contains Swedish and English original texts and their corresponding translations. As a background, a short overview is given of Verbal Communication Verbs (VCVs) in general with brief discussions of speech act theory (Searle), direct and reported speech and conceptual frames (FrameNet) and their syntactic realizations. The contrastive study is concerned with networks of polysemy and the relationships of various senses with differing syntactic realizations across languages. The senses of ask are primarily distributed between two verbs in Swedish: fråga ‘ask a question’ and be ‘request (politely)’ but even some verbs with more specific meanings are involved. The concept of answering forms a conceptual network which is similar in English and Swedish but contrasts with respect to the way meanings are divided up between various verbs. English has a number of verbs such as answer, reply, respond, correspond, retort and rejoin, whereas Swedish to a great extent relies on one verb (svara) and its morphological derivations: besvara, ansvara, motsvara, försvara. In the Conclusion, pedagogical applications of the study are briefly discussed.
Keywords:
corpus-based contrastive study, lexical semantics, FrameNet, English, Swedish, Verbal Communication verbsReferences
Altenberg, B., and K. Aijmer. 2000. The English-Swedish Parallel Corpus: A Resource for Contrastive Research and Translation Studies. In C. Mair, and Ma. Hundt (eds.), Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 15-23. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi.
Dirven, R., L. Goossens, Y. Putseys, and E. Vorlat. 1982. The Scene of Linguistic Action and its Perspectivization by Speak, Talk, Say and Tell. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Fillmore, C.J. 1982. Frame Semantics. In Linguistics in the Morning Calm, edited by The Linguistic Society of Korea, 111-138. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing.
Fillmore, C.J., C.R. Johnson, and M.R.L. Petruck. 2003. Background to FrameNet. In T. Fontenelle (ed.), FrameNet and Frame Semantics, Special issue of International Journal of Lexicography 16: 231-366.
Hammarberg, B., and Å. Viberg. 1976. Reported Speech in Swedish and Ten Immigrant Languages. SSM Report 5. Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University. Available at: http://www.ling.su.se/polopoly_fs/1.14093.1320939586!/SSM_05_1976.pdf.
Harras, G., E. Winkler, S. Erb, and K. Proost. 2004. Handbuch deutscher Kommunikationsverben. 1. Wörterbuch. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Harras, G., K. Proost, and E. Winkler. 2007. Handbuch deutscher Kommunikationsverben 2. Lexikalische Strukturen. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Johansson, S. 2007. Seeing through Multilingual Corpora. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Proost, K. 2007. Conceptual Structure in Lexical Items. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Rudzka-Ostyn, B. 1989. Prototypes, Schemas and Cross-Category Correspondences: The Case of ask. Linguistics 27: 613-661.
Rudzka-Ostyn, B. 1995. Metaphor, Schema, Invariance: The Case of Verbs of Answering. In L. Goossens, P. Pauwels, B. Rudzka-Ostyn, A.-M. Simon-Vandenbergen, and J. Vanparys (eds.), By Word of Mouth, 205-243. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Searle, J.R. 1976. A Classification of Illocutionary Acts. Language in Society 5: 1-23.
SUC 1.0. 1997. The Stockholm Umeå Corpus. Produced by Dept. of Linguistics, Umeå University and Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm University. CD ROM.
Viberg, Å. 2008. Swedish Verbs of Perception from a Typological and Contrastive Perspective. In M. de los Ángeles Gómez González, J. Lachlan Mackenzie, and E.M. González-Álvarez (eds.), Languages and Cultures in Contrast and Comparison. [Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 175], 123-172. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Viberg, Å. 2015a. Contrasts in Construction and Semantic Composition: The Verbs of Putting in English and Swedish in an Intra-Typological Perspective. In H. Hasselgård, and S. Oksefjell Ebeling (eds.), Cross-linguistic Perspectives on Verb Constructions [Studies in Language and Translation Series], 222-253. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Viberg, Å. 2015b. Motion Verb Typology and the Expression of the Endpoint of Motion in Swedish. In M. Bloch-Trojnar, A. Malicka-Kleparska, and K. Drabikowska (eds.), Concepts and Structures – Studies in Semantics and Morphology. Studies in Linguistics and Methodology (SLAM), 209-229. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.
Viberg, Å. 2016. SAYING, TALKING and TELLING. Basic Verbal Communication Verbs in Swedish and English. [Publication from ICAME 36. Trier 2015. To be specified.]
