Comparison between the English and Swedish Nouns

At first sight, the English–Swedish noun pairs seem to behave in a similar manner. However, after taking a closer look at the dictionaries and corpus concordances, there are clear

differences. The nouns differ from each other in various ways when we compare the two languages with each other, but, more significantly, the definitions found in the dictionaries and the behavior of the nouns in the corpora reveal even greater discrepancies.

It has been interesting to notice that the senses of miljö are divided in the corpora so that there are more or less equal amounts of examples of the senses ‘nature’ and ‘concrete surroundings’, while environment in English is used much more often in the sense ‘nature’, the other senses clearly distinguishing from it. One reason for this could be that environment is used more often in official contexts, for example in the names of public offices or titles. On the basis of the corpus evidence, this does not seem to be as common in Swedish. Another

environment”, but there are no examples of miljö in this sense. The Swedish noun miljö also occurs in contexts where English would probably prefer milieu or setting, which is most likely the reason for environment not occurring in phrases similar to the Swedish phrase en

gammaldags, romantisk film i exotisk miljö (an old-fashioned, romantic film in an exotic setting). The expression arv och miljö is also something that is not characteristic of the English language. In Swedish, arv och miljö is a fixed expression used to refer to a person’s biological heredity in terms of character or physical features.

When it comes to circumstances and omständigheter, the sense ‘situation’ is the most frequent, although there are differences in how the word is used in sentence level. The

constructions under/in… circumstances and under/i… omständigheter occur in different proportions, according to the corpora I studied. In Swedish it seems that it is very exceptional to use the expression i…omständigheter, while the construction under…omständigheter is used quite abundantly. In English, in…circumstances occurs much more often than under…

circumstances, which proves to be the opposite to the results in Swedish.

The fact that English and Swedish are related languages becomes clear, for example, when fixed expressions are studied. The similar usage of the expressions victim of

circumstances and offer för omständigheter(na), and the reference to material welfare with both circumstances and omständigheter are examples of this. Another example could be the following, although nowadays old-fashioned, usage:

- Snickaren Per Andersson fördes till den sista vilan, utan större omständigheter och utan gravöl. (Bonniersromaner II)

- pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war (MWD)

The only dictionaries in which this sense is mentioned are SAOB (definition 6), OED (7a) and MWD (3). There are also 15 examples of the Swedish noun omständighet in the sense ‘the situations or events surrounding an accident or a crime’ which is not mentioned in the

dictionaries. The English dictionaries do give this kind of definition, which possibly means that the usage is more established in English, such as “investigation into the exact

circumstances of the shooting”. Also the use of circumstance and omständighet either in the singular or plural occurs in both languages carrying the meaning ‘event’, ‘situation’ etc., for example “certain building permissions granted by the Department of Planning have been associated with inexplicable circumstances” and “det beror enbart på olyckliga

omständigheter” (it depends only on unlucky circumstances).

The clearest difference is found between omgivning and surroundings. Omgivning occurs often in the sense ‘people surrounding a person’ while surroundings in the concrete sense referring to nature, buildings or objects surrounding a person. The English dictionaries have recognized both senses whereas the Swedish ones mostly referred to a concrete place even though the corpus evidence clearly shows that the abstract sense is more common.

When it comes to the theoretical part, my goal has been to investigate the possibility of interchangeability between the words environment, circumstances and surroundings, and miljö, omständigheter and omgivning. The results show that they behave quite differently depending on the context. Environment and surroundings could be mutually substitutable in some cases, especially with the reference to nature. Environment can be used in official contexts while surroundings can not. This may also affect the translation from English to Swedish, as the Swedish miljö occurs much less frequently in official texts. Considering this, it is vague whether the word pairs environment—surroundings and miljö—omgivning can be regarded as synonyms or equivalent in English and Swedish. Circumstances and

omständigheter have proved to be quite similar with each other, and, therefore, could be seen to represent equivalence between each other. However, according to my findings, they are rather different from the other word pairs, which is why circumstances and omständigheter cannot be viewed as synonymous.

Are these results reliable, then? Based on the fact that I have used the largest English language corpus and one of the largest Swedish corpora available, it could be said that the results can be relied on. However, in Section 3.3, I have quoted Kennedy (1998) who says that it is still difficult to decide how large corpora should be in order to yield reliable results, while, according to Meyer (2002), also smaller corpora can be reliable when studying common words. According to Tognini-Bonelli, although corpora are normally trusted as sources of evidence, “[i]ntuition will still be considered an essential input; it will play a big part, for instance, in selecting the phenomenon that the linguist will choose to investigate, and ultimately it will have an important role when it comes to evaluating the evidence in the corpus” (2001, 91). She also says that corpora give researchers “a privileged viewpoint on the evidence” because the contexts of individual instances can be expanded in the concordance lines and because there is “the social practice retrievable in the repeated patterns of co-selection on the vertical axis of the concordance” (2001, 3-4). She also states that “the frequency of occurrence is indicative of frequency of the use and this gives a good basis for evaluating the profile of a specific word, structure of expression in relation to a norm” (2001, 3-4). This is to say that corpora can give valuable information when the sense or usage of a word is studied, because the dictionaries only represent the norm, not the authentic evidence of how language is actually used.