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Article published In: Comparing Crosslinguistic Complexity
Edited by Jenny Ström Herold and Magnus Levin
[Languages in Contrast 24:1] 2024
► pp. 109–132

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Concessive subordination in English and Norwegian

ORCiD logo with link | University of Oslo, Norway
Published online: 16 February 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.00037.has
Abstract
This paper investigates concessive markers, primarily subordinators, in the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus. The initial question is how English and Norwegian concessive markers compare with regard to their frequencies and syntactic functions, both intra- and cross-linguistically. Overall, the languages are relatively similar. However, individual concessive markers differ in frequency, syntactic flexibility and possibly formality in original texts in both languages. The second research question concerns the placement of concessive clauses. Again the languages are rather similar, but there is variation within both languages, with subordinators having individual positional preferences. Finally, the translations of the subordinators are examined. Concessive markers are overrepresented in Norwegian translations and underrepresented in English translations compared to originals. While translation correspondences are often congruent, the mutual correspondence between pairs of subordinators is low. Changes made in translation suggest that Norwegian chooses coordination more often than English, thus displaying less syntactic complexity.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous studies
  • 3.Material and method
    • 3.1Corpus information and search procedures
    • 3.2Classification of the material
  • 4.Contrastive analysis
    • 4.1Overall frequencies and dispersion of concessive markers
    • 4.2Syntactic functions of the concessives markers
    • 4.3The placement of concessive clauses
    • 4.4Intra-register variation: Narrative versus dialogic sections
  • 5.Translation study
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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