TELLING in English, Norwegian and French: A three-way contrast

Authors

  • Thomas Egan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15845/bells.v11i1.3438

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study of double object constructions containing the cognate verbs English tell and Norwegian fortelle, based on data from the English–Norwegian Parallel Corpus. The results show that there is a certain degree of correspondence between the two verbs in constructions with nominal direct objects, with less mutual correspondence in constructions with finite clausal objects, very little correspondence in constructions with objects in the form of direct speech, and none whatsoever in the case of non-finite clausal objects, which only occur with tell. The paper then expands the topic to include tell predications in French. The data were retrieved from the Oslo Multilingual Corpus. It transpires that the form of French translations of Norwegian expressions are more similar, at least for some constructions, to the Norwegian originals than are their English counterparts.

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Published

2021-09-15

How to Cite

Egan, Thomas. 2021. “TELLING in English, Norwegian and French: A Three-Way Contrast”. Bergen Language and Linguistics Studies 11 (1):47-68. https://doi.org/10.15845/bells.v11i1.3438.