# Swedish: Läser boken gjörde han.



## brian

Hello Nordic forum,

I don't know very much Swedish, but on a recent assignment for a course in morphology, I was asked to analyze some data from Swedish and compare it with English (based on certain theories of morphology). In particular, the assignment dealt with English vs. Swedish _V-fronting_, whereby a verb is 'fronted' to the beginning of the sentence.

To take an example from English: _John wanted to eat cookies, and [eat cookies] he did_. The verb phrase _eat cookies_ is 'fronted' before the subject _he_. However, in English, the verb (_eat_) is kept in the infinitive, as it is syntactically tied to _did_ --> _did eat_, not *_did ate_, so _*[ate cookies] he did_ is wrong.

However, according to my data, Swedish works differently (and we were asked to explain why). But a friend of mine who grew up speaking Swedish (from her mother), but who hardly ever writes it, said she thinks the data is wrong! But she's not 100% sure because she rarely _writes_ Swedish, and she said it's difficult to know, for example, whether she is pronouncing _-er_ or _-a_ at the end of a verb. So I've come to ask for your help.

Here is my data, along with the English gloss and English translation:

*[Läser boken] gjörde han.
read.PAST book.DEF do.PAST he
'Read the book, he did.'*

NB: Here, 'read.PAST' refers to the past tense of _read_ as in /rɛd/, not /ri:d/; that is, _läser_ is in the past tense(!). And 'DEF' means 'definite', so 'the book', not 'a book'.

The difference between English & Swedish here is pretty clear - English uses the infinitive in V-fronting, while Swedish does not (it uses the inflected past-tense form, according to the data) - but my friend said that actually _läser_ is not past, but in fact present - 'he reads'. (Also, _gjörde_ should be _gjorde_ with no umlaut.)

Is she correct? Is the data correct? Or is there a better way to explain what's going on here, perhaps using a better gloss?

Thanks!

Brian


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## blackspire

Hmm...

Well first, "läser" (reading) is the verb "läsa" (to read) in present tense. So your friend is correct about that part.

I would however write,

Läste boken, det gjorde han.

Which is translated to:

Read the book, that he did.

Note: "Läste" is the verb "läsa" (to read) in it's past tense.
I don't think you can say:

"Läser boken, gjorde han."


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## brian

Ah, so then the English gloss is correct - it's the Swedish sentence that's wrong! Thank you so much. It all makes sense now.


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## hanne

So how about
"Läsa boken, det gjorde han"
would that be incorrect, or is that correct too?
(trying to compare to Danish, and I think we can say it both ways)


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## brian

According to my data (which, as we saw, could be faulty), *_Läsa boken, (det) gjorde han_ is impossible in Swedish, hence the point of the exercise: to show that Swedish verb-fronting does not work like English (which does use the infinitive).

But let's wait for confirmation.

P.S. Interesting that Danish can do both!


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## blackspire

hanne said:


> So how about
> "Läsa boken, det gjorde han"
> would that be incorrect, or is that correct too?
> (trying to compare to Danish, and I think we can say it both ways)



Hmm, I'm unsure. You can for example say:

"Att vara eller inte vara, det är frågan."

("To be or not to be, that is the question.") So you can start with infintive ("att vara"). Not sure if you can apply that to the above sentence. Anyhow it's not idiomatic, unless you are Yoda


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## brian

I would say that that is a bit different. It's not a case of "verb-fronting" because the infinitive is actually more substantive (like a noun) than verbal. For example, when you rearrange it (and remove _det/that_), you get: _The question is [to be or not to be]._ Here, you are equating _question_ with a noun-ish thing, _to be or not to be_. It is similar to _The purpose is to help relieve stress. = To help relieve stress is the purpose._

_Read the book, he did_ is different because when you rearrange it, you get _He did read the book_ (= _He read the book_), where _read the book_ is then tied to an auxiliary _did_. So it's clearly a verb.

So basically, if you tried to equate those two types of sentences, you would get something like: _To read the book, that he did. = He did [to read the book]._  You can't _do to <verb>_ anything in English, just like I imagine you can't _gör <verb>_ anything in Swedish. Or better, you can't say _Han gjorde läsa boken._


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## Södertjej

On  a side note I think the problem is "read", as infinitive and past look the same in English. Why didn't they take a different verb where you can clearly see the differences?


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## brian

Because 1) when considering the English translation, an English speaker already knows that the _read_ in _Read the book, he did_ is the infinitive /ri:d/ and not the past tense /rεd/, and 2) when considering the Swedish sentence and its English gloss, an observer of the data knows that _read_ is the past tense and not the infinitive because it is labeled 'read.PAST' instead of 'read.INF'.

In other words, when analyzing data like this, the gloss is a literal, word-by-word translation that tries to capture everything in the foreign language sentence, while the actual translation is in standard, idiomatic English - and thus often hides certain features of the original language sentence.

The translation is only there so that you understand the _meaning_ of the original sentence; the gloss is there so that you can actually analyze the _structure_ of the original sentence.

In any case, you're right that it would've been clearer if they had used a word like _eat_ instead of _read_, but I can't argue with the prof!


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## lindsten

The Swedish translation of _"Read the book, he did."_ would be _"Läste boken, det gjorde han."_ (as suggested by blackspire).

You can also say _"Läste boken, gjorde han."_ (which looks like a direct translation of the English sentence), but that would have a slightly different meaning, as in _"Read the book, that's what he did."_.


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## Lugubert

lindsten said:


> The Swedish translation of _"Read the book, he did."_ would be _"Läste boken, det gjorde han."_ (as suggested by blackspire).


Agree.



> You can also say _"Läste boken, gjorde han."_ (which looks like a direct translation of the English sentence), but that would have a slightly different meaning, as in _"Read the book, that's what he did."_.


As in emphasizing for example that he _read _the book, and didn't throw it away.


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## lindsten

Lugubert said:


> As in emphasizing for example that he _read _the book, and didn't throw it away.



Yes, or as in expressing that one just remembered what it was he actually did.


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## brian

Thank you, everyone.


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## lindsten

lindsten said:


> You can also say _"Läste boken, gjorde han."_ (which looks like a direct translation of the English sentence), but that would have a slightly different meaning, as in _"Read the book, that's what he did."_.



Actually, giving it another thought, it _can_ have the same meaning as the direct English translation, at least if put in a dependent clause (and without the comma):

_"De sa till honom att läsa boken, och läste boken gjorde han."_
_"They told him to read the book, and read the book he did."_


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## brian

lindsten said:


> Actually, giving it another thought, it _can_ have the same meaning as the direct English translation, at least if put in a dependent clause (and without the comma):
> 
> _"De sa till honom att läsa boken, och läste boken gjorde han."_
> _"They told him to read the book, and read the book he did."_



So then something like _He wanted to read the book, and read the book he did_ would also be _...och läste boken gjorde han_?


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## lindsten

brian said:


> So then something like _He wanted to read the book, and read the book he did_ would also be _...och läste boken gjorde han_?



Yes. However, these constructs are not very common in Swedish, neither written nor spoken. I think you'll mostly find them in verse and prose.


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