A Semantic Study of the Preposition “På” in Norwegian
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Life of på A semantic study of the preposition “på” in Norwegian Vilde Reichelt MA thesis in Linguistics LING4190 Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies University of Oslo November 2018 II Life of på A semantic study of the preposition “på” in Norwegian III © Vilde Reichelt 2017/18 Life of på Vilde Reichelt http://www.duo.uio.no/ Print: Reprosentralen, University of Oslo IV Abstract In this thesis I examine the lexical semantics of the Norwegian word på (eng. on) using a written translation corpus from Norwegian to English. My empirical data was collected from the written corpus OMC and an excerpt of the novel Sophie’s World in The English- Norwegian Parallel Corpus. The analysis comprised of two substudies. To test for my hypotheses, I studied noun phrases of the type ‘fur of the rabbit’ in translation from Norwegian, and the Norwegian prepositions av ‘of’, i ‘in’ and til ‘to’ in relation to på and the English translation of constructions that originally have på ‘on’ in Norwegian. The other substudy consists of both particle verbs of the type ‘believe in’ and verbs with preposition phrases ‘was on her way’. I explored nominalization of verbs and whether it give rise to a requirement for på, and what patterns there are for the semantic selection of prepositional elements. Occasionally the lexeme på functions as a complement to the verb, making it more specific, or else it appears in particle verbs as a grammatical function. Focusing on translation data from both Norwegian and English, the thesis investigates the different combinations of på and of, and the interchangeability within the Norwegian prepositions. I present prepositions in order to study semantic shades of meaning. I searched for patterns in på’s functional role and how the different structures are affected by connective meaning på has. I ask if it covers more and a wider use of meanings than the other prepositions and if the most flexible preposition is the most productive one. If not, what are the semantic differences between the three most frequent prepositions? I have hypothesized that of i and på, the most productive in terms of grammatical function and flexible meaning in Norwegian, is på. The goal is not to create a complete taxonomy of uses, but to explore whether på is an elsewhere case of the Norwegian prepositions. The project adopts theories from different syntactic- semantic frameworks in order to provide predictions on how language structures meaning at different levels. Throughout the thesis, different phrases from the corpus data is presented and compared. I propose semantic features for the four Norwegian prepositions and describe the verb- and noun phrase structures in which they belong. The substudies have shown that a preposition can be interpreted as both a lexical word and a functional particle depending on the construction it is in. I have observed the behavior of på in four environments as constituent to noun phrase, and the difference between verb phrases with på as adjunct and argument. I found that på is polysemous and can mean placed ‘on’, ‘in’, ‘at’ an activity or process, parts are connected by på via verbs and it can extend the time span of an action. V VI Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors Pritty Patel-Grosz and Andreas Sveen, whose guidance and feedback has meant a great deal to me as a student and a person. I have learned much more than I ever hoped for. My sincerest thanks to Piotr Garbacz for all of his time and wise words, for motivating and helping me believe in myself throughout this project. I am so grateful to Anne Helene for letting me share my thoughts and concerns, for reading my drafts when it meant the most. I will never forget. To Frida, Andrea, Ida and Maren for the good conversations at the study hall, it helped a lot. I was lucky to have Kai and Danielle as my proofreaders. Great thanks to my colleagues at Google, especially Linn Iren, André and Per Erik. I appreciate every advising conversation and patient attention you have given me when it was at its worst. Thanks for the summer swims at Tjuvholmen, Svein! To the people at the Text Laboratory, for the supportive company, to Rolf Theil, Helge Lødrup and Patrick Grosz for valuable lessons and inspiration, I am thankful. I wish to express my sincere recognition to Leiv Inge Aa for all his work on “på”, and a nice email correspondence in autumn 2017. To all my friends and family, I am so glad you’ve waited for me. Thank you mamma, for making sure I enjoy the summer, the food and wine, and every part of my 25th year as a human being. And last but not least, dearest Sigbjørn, for all the encouragement and love, for making all the days feel worth it. Thank you! VII Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 The preposition på ....................................................................................................... 2 1.2 The particle på ............................................................................................................. 4 1.3 The adverbial på .......................................................................................................... 6 2 Background ........................................................................................................................ 7 2.1 Etymology and change ................................................................................................ 7 2.2 Lexicography and use .................................................................................................. 9 3 Lexical semantics ............................................................................................................. 13 3.1 Neo-constructionism .................................................................................................. 14 3.2 Main hypotheses ........................................................................................................ 17 3.3 Terminology .............................................................................................................. 19 3.3.1 Figure and Ground ............................................................................................. 20 3.3.2 AxPart ................................................................................................................. 22 3.3.3 KP ....................................................................................................................... 23 3.3.4 Aktionsart ........................................................................................................... 24 3.3.5 Compositionality ................................................................................................ 25 4 Methodology .................................................................................................................... 26 4.1 The Oslo Multilingual Corpus ................................................................................... 27 4.2 Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder ........................................................................... 28 4.3 Description models and annotation guidelines .......................................................... 29 4.4 Searching the corpus .................................................................................................. 33 4.5 Sorting the data .......................................................................................................... 36 4.5.1 N+P+N ............................................................................................................... 38 4.5.2 V+P+N ............................................................................................................... 41 5 Empirical analysis ............................................................................................................ 43 5.1 Noun Phrases ............................................................................................................. 46 5.1.1 Av vs. på ............................................................................................................. 48 5.1.2 I vs. på ................................................................................................................ 56 5.1.3 Til vs. på ............................................................................................................. 61 5.2 Verb Phrases .............................................................................................................. 66 5.2.1 Particle verb ........................................................................................................ 70 5.2.2 Verb with a PP argument ................................................................................... 81 6 Interpretation of findings .................................................................................................. 85 VIII 6.1.1 (H1) på is synchronically an “elsewhere case” .................................................. 86 6.1.2 (H2) a lexical semantic component to the P distribution ................................... 88 6.1.3 (H3) på is the most productive P ........................................................................ 90 7 Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 92 7.1 Restrictions on the corpus material ........................................................................... 92 7.2 Further Research .......................................................................................................