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Article published In: Languages in Contrast
Vol. 25:2 (2025) ► pp.185–208

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A contrastive analysis of (-)ish in English and Swedish blogs

 | University of Gothenburg, Sweden
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Gothenburg.

Published online: 14 May 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.00040.aij
Abstract
The aim is to investigate whether (-)ish is employed in the same structures and functions in English and Swedish blog data and to describe the adaptations and changes resulting from borrowing. (-)ish is exceptional because it looks like a suffix but can be taken out of its original context with adjectives and nouns and used as a clitic or an independent word. Based on samples from the two languages it is shown that there are quantitative differences with respect to the uses of (-)ish with different base forms and as a freestanding sentence-final item in the two data sets. The qualitative findings reveal that (-)ish has been borrowed in Swedish as a suffix, a clitic, as a qualifier with hedging function and as a sentence-final pragmatic marker. The change in the position of (-)ish is influenced by the existence of a domestic variant typ (‘sort of’, ‘kind of’) which can be placed more freely in the sentence than the English (-)ish.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous work
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.The frequency of (-)ish with different base forms and as a qualifier in English and Swedish comparative blog corpora
    • 4.1(-)ish in combination with adjectives
    • 4.2(-)ish in combination with adverbs
    • 4.3(-)ish in combination with numeral bases and time expressions
    • 4.4(-)ish in combination with nominal base forms
      • 4.4.1(-)ish in combination with common nouns
      • 4.4.2(-)ish in combination with compound nouns
      • 4.4.3(-)ish as a qualifier of nouns
      • 4.4.4(-)ish in combination with proper nouns as bases
    • 4.5(-)ish in combination with phrases
    • 4.6(-)ish in combination with quantifiers
    • 4.7(-)ish in combination with prefixes and pronouns
    • 4.8Summing up
  • 5.Changes and adaptations taking place after the borrowing of (-)ish
    • 5.1(-)ish in combinations with verbs
    • 5.2The clause-final (-)ish
    • 5.3(-)ish and ‘typ’
    • 5.4Position of (-)ish in relation to the base form
    • 5.5Co-occurrent combinations of typ and (-)ish
  • 6.Summary and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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