Gudrun Rawoens

A corpus-based analysis of the Swedish passive alternation

This article presents a corpus-based investigation of the motivations behind the use of the s -passive and the bli -passive in contemporary written Swedish. Following a probabilistic approach to language variation and building on observations in the literature, we examine the simultaneous effects of semantic and syntactic factors by means of a multivariate statistical analysis. Our corpus sample includes 1,197 passive sentences of three Swedish verbs, which alternate in their use of the passive ( acceptera ‘accept’, behandla ‘treat’ and valja ‘choose’). The results suggest that the choice of passive form is significantly associated with five predictor variables: Subject Animacy, Subject Number, Modal Verb, Av -phrase (‘by’-phrase) and Aktionsart. Among these, Subject Animacy and Modal Verb appear to yield the strongest impact effect on the choice of passive form. The study adds to earlier research in that it allows for a more accurate analysis of the simultaneous effect and relative strength of each factor on the speakers choice of one of the passive forms.

Causality and causation: A functional approach to causative constructions in Modern Swedish

This study claims that analytical causative constructions in Modern Swedish realized by the causal predicates få ‘get’, komma ‘come’, ha ‘have’, förmå ‘induce’ and låta ‘let’ express different types of causation. The constructions are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively with respect to the central verbs (the causal and effected predicates) and their arguments (the Causer, Causee and Affectee). The quantitative analysis reveals that the verbs få and låta are the most frequent causal predicates, whereas the verbs komma, ha and förmå are relatively marginal. Constructions with låta are distinct from the other constructions, both syntactically and semantically. In the qualitative part of the study, the construction type is examined within the general theoretical framework of Functional Grammar (Dik, The theory of Functional Grammar. Vol. 1: The structure of the clause, Mouton de Gruyter, 1997a, The theory of Functional Grammar. Vol. 2: Complex and derived constructions, Mouton de Gruyter, 1997b), which is used to describe the semantic properties of the main participants and the aktionsart of the verbs involved. It transpires that a number of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic differences are responsible for the actual choice of one causal predicate over another in a particular context. The different causal predicates are also shown to express different types of causation, namely, direct causation, indirect causation, involuntary causation and causation according to the billiard ball model.

English amid(st) and among(st) : a contrastive approach based on Norwegian and Swedish translation data

This is the authors version of an article published in Language and Computors. The article has been peer-reviewed, but does not include the publisher’s layout. Publishers version is available here: http://www.brill.com/products/book/recent-advances-corpus-linguistics