Abstract
The cognates English TAKE and Norwegian TA are both frequently occurring verbs found to express several different meanings in a range of syntactic environments. The main aim of this thesis is to describe these multifunctional verbs in a contrastive perspective. This is pursued through accounting for the occurrences of the verbs and their translations in the 'English Norwegian Parallel Corpus' (fiction part).
The study shows that, to some extent, there is a systematic relationship between the verbs syntactic environment and their semantic content. However, to enable a more finely grained semantic categorization, Halliday s system of participant functions is applied. The Hallidayan framework of Systemic Functional Grammar thus plays an important part in the formulating of precise descriptions of the verbs.
Based on the contrastive analyses, similarities and differences between TAKE and TA are established. It is found that the verbs share many of the same uses, i.e. TAKE and TA have overlapping polysemies. This is reflected in a fairly high rate of intertranslatability; the corresponding cognate is clearly the most frequently used translation equivalent for both verbs. However, the results of the investigation also point to certain language-specific developments. For example, TAKE has wider applications as a motion verb than TA, in addition to being more often used with a subject with a receiving function. Moreover, the study shows that TA is more closely associated with the cognates original sense of physical contact, as the Norwegian verb is seen to express this meaning more frequently than TAKE, as well as in a wider range of syntactic environments.