A corpus-based contrastive study of impersonal passives in Swedish and Dutch
This paper deals with impersonal passives in two Germanic languages, Swedish and Dutch. Impersonal passives constitute one type of
impersonal construction (denoting constructions with non-canonical subjects) as described in Siewierska (
2008a: 116). Formally, they consist of an overt expletive subject, such as
det ‘it’ in
Swedish and
er ‘there’ in Dutch, combined with a passive predicate. Semantically, such passive constructions
encode actions with a general reference, i.e. where no agent is specified (cf.
Siewierska
1984,
Engdahl 2006,
Viberg 2010).
The study is corpus-based and uses a bidirectional translation corpus of Swedish and Dutch to map out the specific morphosyntactic
and semantic profile of the impersonal passive in both Swedish and in Dutch. The similarities and differences make these languages
suitable to study from a contrastive perspective in that interesting aspects on impersonal passives are highlighted in the
translation data.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Remarks on Swedish and Dutch
- 3.Corpus and method
- 4.Analysis and results of the source data
- 4.1Transitivity
- 4.2Telicity
- 4.3Controllability
- 4.4Semantic fields
- 5.Analysis and results of the translation data
- 5.1The Swedish translations
- 5.2The Dutch translations
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
-
References
References (33)
References
Carnie, A. and Harley, H. 2005. Existential impersonals. Studia Linguistica 591: 46–65. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Comrie, B. 1977. In defense of spontaneous demotion: The impersonal passive. In Grammatical relations, P. Cole and J. Sadock (eds), 47–58. New York: Academic Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Engdahl, E. and Laanemets, A. 2015. Opersonlig passiv i danska, norska och svenska – en korpusstudie. Nordisk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift 331: 129–156.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Falk, C. 1993. Non-referential subjects in the history of Swedish. Lund: Department of Scandinavian Languages. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Frajzyngier, Z. 1982. Indefinite agent, passive and impersonal passive: a functional study. Lingua 581: 267–290. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Goldberg, A. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Grondelaers, S., Speelman, D. and Geeraerts, D. 2008. National variation in the use of er ‘there’. Regional and constraints on cognitive explanations. In Cognitive sociolinguistics: language variation, cultural models, social systems, G. Kristiansen and R. Dirven (eds), 153–204. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Haeseryn, W., Romijn, K., Geerts, G., De Rooij, J. and van den Toorn, M. C. 1997. Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst. Groningen/Deurne: Martinus Nijhoff uitgevers/Wolters Plantyn. (= ANS)![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Kirsner, R. 1976. On the subjectless “pseudo-passive” in standard Dutch and the semantics of background agents. In Subject and Topic, C. N. Li (ed.), 386–415. New York: Academic Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Kirsner, R. 1976–1977. De “onechte lijdende vorm”, Spektator 61: 1–18.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Klooster, W. 2001. Grammatica van het hedendaags Nederlands. Een volledig overzicht. Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lyngfelt, B. 2010. En akademiledamot pensioneras inte – om konstruktioner med s-verb i svenskan. In Bo65. Festskrift till Bo Ralph, K. Jóhannesson, I. Larsson, E. Magnusson Petzell, S. -G. Malmgren, L. Rogström and E. Sköldberg (eds), 178–192. Göteborg: Meijerbergs arkiv för svensk ordforskning![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Malchukov, A. and Siewierska, A. 2011. Introduction. In Impersonal constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective, A. Malchukov and A. Siewierska (eds), 1–15. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rawoens, G. 2010. Multilingual corpora in cross-linguistic research. Focus on the compilation of a Dutch-Swedish parallel corpus. In Statistical Analysis of Textual Data. Proceedings of 10th International Conference JADT2010, S. Bolasco, I. Chiari and L. Giuliano (eds), 1287–1294. Milano: LED Edizioni Universitarie.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rawoens, G., Johansson, A. and Boons, H. 2016. Het onpersoonlijk passief in het Nederlands en het Zweeds. Internationale Neerlandistiek 54/2: 99–116. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Shibatani, M. 1985. Passives and related constructions: A prototype analysis. Language 61/4: 821–848. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Siewierska, A. 1984. The passive: a comparative linguistic analysis. London: Croom Helm.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Siewierska, A. 2008a. Introduction: impersonalization from a subject-centered vs. agent-centered perspective. Transactions of the Philological Society. Special issue Impersonal Constructions in Grammatical Theory, 106/2: 115–137. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Teleman, U., Hellberg, S. and Andersson, E. 1999. Svenska Akademiens grammatik. Stockholm: Svenska Akademien & Norstedts Ordbok. (= SAG)![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Vendler, Z. 1967. Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca (N.Y.): Cornell University Press. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Verhagen, A. 1992. Praxis of linguistics: Passives in Dutch. Cognitive Linguistics 3/3: 301–342. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Viberg, Å. 2010. Swedish Impersonal Constructions from a Cross-linguistic Perspective. An Exploratory Corpus-based Study. Orientalia Suecana LIX1 : 122–158.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Zaenen, A. 1993. Unaccusativity in Dutch: Integrating syntax and lexical semantics. In Semantics and the lexicon, J. Pustejovsky (ed.), 129–161. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Taylor, Charlotte & Dario del Fante*
2020.
Comparing across languages in corpus and discourse analysis: some issues and approaches.
Meta 65:1
► pp. 29 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.