The meaning and functions of the Swedish discourse marker alltså-Evidence from translation corpora

The topic of this paper is to study to what extent a contrastive analysis can contribute to the analysis of discourse markers. Another issue which is explored is whether the contrastive analysis can be enriched by considering the grammaticalization and pragmaticalization of discourse markers. I have chosen to study the Swedish discourse marker alltså and its German cognate also with inferential meaning. It is shown that alltså (and German also) develops either into a question marker or a reformulation marker. By distinguishing two types of reformulation markers we can explain that the consecutive adverb develops meanings such as that is or in other words. It is also shown that there are differences between Swedish and German which can be explained by grammaticalization.L'objectiu d'aquest article és estudiar la contribució que pot fer l'anàlisi contrastiva a l'anàlisi dels marcadors del discurs, així com explorar si l'anàlisi contrastiva es pot enriquir considerant la gramaticalització i la pragmaticalització dels marcadors del discurs. Hem triat l'estudi del marcador del discurs suec alltså i la seva correspondència alemanya also, amb significat inferencial. En l'article mostrem que alltså (i also en alemany) es converteix en un marcador de pregunta o de reformulació. Si diferenciem dos tipus de marcadors de reformulació, podem explicar que aquest adverbi consecutiu desenvolupi significats equivalents als dels connectors és a dir o en altres paraules. Igualment, posem de manifest que hi ha diferències entre el suec i l'alemany que poden ser explicades per mitjà de la gramaticalització

“Will you fuck off please”. The use of please by London teenagers

The paper investigates how the politeness marker please is used by young people to distinguish themselves from adults and create an identity of their own. The analysis of please is based on the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT). The distribution and uses of please in COLT are compared with similar data from the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB). We can recognize several functions of the “impolite” please in the COLT Corpus. To begin with, it is used strategically to establish or confirm harmonious relationships between the speakers (rapport-strengthening impoliteness). Secondly, “mock impoliteness” may be understood in a positive way because it is amusing or entertaining. In young people’s circles entertainment skills are for example highly valued (entertainment impoliteness). Finally, impoliteness is used creatively in interaction by the participants who use repetition, reformulation and escalation to construct ritualized sequences of apparent insults (creative impoliteness)

The Swedish modal auxiliary ska/skall seen through its English translations

The Swedish modal auxiliary ska/ll is interesting typologically because it is highly multifunctional with different functions in the systems of tense and modality. The aim of the paper is to investigate the translations of ska/ll into English as a methodology to throw light on its multifunctionality and the linguistic and extralinguistic factors determining its usage as a marker of obligation. The translations with must and the imperative point to the performative uses of ska/ll such as commands and orders. However, the translations also show that ska/ll is involved in offers, recommendations, suggestions, advice where the strength of imposition has been weakened. Other translations reveal more unexpected uses of ska/ll, for example to express negative evaluation if the context of the utterance could be interpreted as emotional or argumentative. The translations also draw attention to linguistic and non-linguistic factors aiding to distinguish functions of ska/ll (or choosing a particular translational correspondence)

Conversational routines in English: convention and creativity

It is surprising how much of everyday conversation consists of repetitive expressions such as 'thank you', 'sorry', would you mind?' and their many variants. However commonplace they may be, they do have important functions in communication.This thorough study draws upon original data from the London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English to provide a discoursal and pragmatic account of the more common expressions found in conversational routines, such as apologising, thanking, requesting and offering.The routines studied in this book range from conventionalized or idiomatized phrases

The meaning and functions of the Swedish discourse marker alltså-Evidence from translation corpora

The topic of this paper is to study to what extent a contrastive analysis can contribute to the analysis of discourse markers. Another issue which is explored is whether the contrastive analysis can be enriched by considering the grammaticalization and pragmaticalization of discourse markers. I have chosen to study the Swedish discourse marker alltså and its German cognate also with inferential meaning. It is shown that alltså (and German also) develops either into a question marker or a reformulation marker. By distinguishing two types of reformulation markers we can explain that the consecutive adverb develops meanings such as that is or in other words. It is also shown that there are differences between Swedish and German which can be explained by grammaticalization.L'objectiu d'aquest article és estudiar la contribució que pot fer l'anàlisi contrastiva a l'anàlisi dels marcadors del discurs, així com explorar si l'anàlisi contrastiva es pot enriquir considerant la gramaticalització i la pragmaticalització dels marcadors del discurs. Hem triat l'estudi del marcador del discurs suec alltså i la seva correspondència alemanya also, amb significat inferencial. En l'article mostrem que alltså (i also en alemany) es converteix en un marcador de pregunta o de reformulació. Si diferenciem dos tipus de marcadors de reformulació, podem explicar que aquest adverbi consecutiu desenvolupi significats equivalents als dels connectors és a dir o en altres paraules. Igualment, posem de manifest que hi ha diferències entre el suec i l'alemany que poden ser explicades per mitjà de la gramaticalització

Zero translations and cross-linguistic equivalence: evidence from the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus

This paper examines omission (zero translation) and related translation strategies in the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus and, in particular, how translators handle various discourse expressions (connectors, particles) that do not have a straightforward equivalent in the target language. It is demonstrated that, although connectors are sometimes omitted for other reasons than cross-linguistic non-equivalence, omission is especially common with language-specific connectors and particles which have no obvious target language counterpart, such as the Swedish explanatory connector nämligen and modal particle ju and the English transitional markers now and well. These expressions also give rise to various compensatoy translation strategies which only partly capture the meaning of the original. The paper also examines the cultural transfer effect caused by the translation of English terms of endearment (darling, love, etc) which have no natural counterparts in Swedish and therefore sound affected and 'foreign' when rendered in Swedish