Abstract
My thesis is a contrastive analysis of delexical uses of two similar verbs, English make and Norwegian gjøre and it contributes to provide a thorough description of the two delexical verbs and to identify the way they are used. This task was obtained through accounting for the occurrences of these verbs and their translations in the English Norwegian Parallel Corpus, and through the comparison i.e, establishing the similarities and differences between them at a grammar and semantic level.
By comparing the two delexical verbs in their delexical uses I was able to estimate the degree to which they correspond. I also managed to investigate what other correspondences they have and see whether English originals and English translations differ, which also concerns the Norwegian construction.
Despite the fact that both delexical make and gjøre can be rendered into 4 main types of constructions (1. Congruent, delexical constructions, 2. Other verb + NP delexical constructions, 3. Single verb constructions, 4. Other constructions), there was a substantial variation between the registers. First of all, delexical make has a much stronger position in English than Norwegian gjøre has in Norwegian as it is twice as common. Secondly, there are significant differences in the distribution pattern with reference to original and translation texts as well. Delexical make is underused in translations while delexical gjøre is overused in translations compared to original texts in the same language. What is more, delexical make is most often rendered by a single verb construction while delexical gjøre is most often rendered by a congruent construction with make. Delexical gjøre displays a greater choice of alternative constructions than delexical make. The mutual correspondence (The MC) value of the constructions is not high as it is 30% for delexical make and 18% for delexical gjøre. Only as many as 3,3 % of the constructions have 100% MC which means that both delexical constructions have important competitors in each language and are often translated by an alternative construction. This may be caused by a better choice in the other language and by a lexical gap between the languages.
In addition, the fact that the proportion of delexical verb constructions is higher in non-fiction texts confirms the stylistic development that can be documented, in other ways, by “the narrowing of the gap between the norms of spoken and written language, the “colloquialisation” of English writing that has taken place over the past 30 years (Mair 1997: 215).
When it comes to the semantics, despite the fact that the two verbs are similar, delexical constructions have developed many language-specific differences, which makes them treacherous for foreign language learners. I have not only discussed the basic meaning of the two constructions in the research question but also the different meanings that can be assigned to those verbs under different circumstances. I have showed that the meaning of the delexical construction often depends on the context. I have also come across some divergent correspondences in my material, which were not numerous, but still some tendencies and irregularities could be observed