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Article published In: Languages in Contrast
Vol. 26:1 (2026) ► pp.109–136

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English go and Norwegian gå

Lexicogrammatical patterns and translation paradigms

 | University of Oslo, Norway
 | University of Oslo, Norway
Published online: 25 April 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.00054.ebe
Abstract
This article investigates the cognate verbs go and gå in an English-Norwegian contrastive perspective. On the basis of bidirectional translation data, the study contributes new insight regarding their relatively low cross-linguistic correspondence rate. Although the verbs share many of their lexicogrammatical features, some notable exceptions are uncovered. English go seems to be semantically more flexible than gå in some of its uses, while Norwegian gå is arguably syntactically more versatile. As a consequence, the cross-linguistic relationship between the verbs is far from straightforward, and translations are clearly influenced by diverging polysemies and lexicogrammatical preferences.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and aims
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Introduction: Motion verbs
    • 2.2Previous studies of go and gå
  • 3.Material and method
    • 3.1Corpus and data set
    • 3.2Classification of the material
  • 4.Translation paradigms of go and gå
  • 5.Contrastive analysis of the lexicogrammatical environment of go and gå and their correspondences
    • 5.1Intransitive uses
      • 5.1.1Place
      • 5.1.2Manner and Means
      • 5.1.3Purpose
    • 5.2Copular uses
    • 5.3Transitive and existential uses
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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