L’emploi du gérondif et de la construction V1 och V2 dans l’incise

The aim of this study is to compare the syntax of French and Swedish inserted (parenthetical) clauses appearing after a direct quotation. More specifically, the study explores the relationship between the French gérondif and the Swedish “V1 och V2” construction in contexts such as dit-elle en souriant / sa hon och log. The analysis is based on a translation corpus, comprising French and Swedish literary texts, and their translations into Swedish and French, respectively. It is argued that the function and use of these constructions are related to the typological profiles of the two languages, French being an exocentric language which considers the different aspects of a communicative situation according to their importance (hierarchic information structure), and Swedish being an endocentric language which divides the communicative situation into successive actions (linear information structure).