This article deals with the linguistic phenomenon usually referred to as verbersättning (“verbal substitution”) but which, in the present article, I prefer to call proverbalisering (“proverbalization”), a choice of term based on the analogy with pronominalisering, the corresponding term in the nominal sphere. However, while pronominalization has been the subject of many linguistic studies, proverbalization, despite its crucial importance to any language possessing the verb category, has received little attention in modern linguistic research.

The article analyses the use of proverbalization by means of the proverb göra in Swedish with the purpose of showing that this linguistic operation is not a specifically Swedish phenomenon but a phenomenon of great linguistic generality and that this is why a comparison with other languages will reveal that its general mechanisms are fundamentally the same in the languages compared as in Swedish.  In fact, it is argued that in Swedish, as well as in these languages, the proverb is a syntactic tool specifically designed for verb phrase representation and that, in this capacity, it satisfies an imperative need of linguistic expression. It follows that proverbalization is not subject to diachronic frequency fluctuation. Furthermore, the analysis does not support the common view that proverbalization is primarily a stylistic device for avoiding verb repetition, nor the conception of proverbalization as being a subdivision of ellipsis.

Är litterär översättning ett i grunden omöjligt företag och borde rentav sådan översättning undvikas med hänvisning till att en litterär text i översättning aldrig kanförväntas göra originaltexten full rättvisa? Frågan om den litterära översättningensmöjlighet eller omöjlighet har ställts i alla tider och har fått olika svar beroende påden aktuella epokens attityder till och normer för litterärt översättande (Mesterton1998). Generellt sett kan man konstatera att utvecklingen har gått mot allt strängarekrav på formell trogenhet mot originaltexten, detta på bekostnad av friheten att göra individuellt motiverade översättningsval inom ramen för vad målspråkets specifika karaktär tillåter. Denna trogenhetsprincip kan sägas ha satt sin prägel på de senastehundra årens litterära översättningsverksamhet. 

This is a study of grammaticalization within the prepositional system of Swedish. While in general terms av is undoubtedly the most grammatically defined preposition in Swedish, the preposition på has become a primarily grammatical tool in the specific case where it serves semantically to link a part or an organ of the human body to its possessor. It is argued that used in this way the preposition på, although spatial in its lexical meaning, conveys no meaning of location but fills the function of a possessive marker. It is shown that the grammatical status of the preposition på in this construction rests essentially on the following three factors: (1) loss of the original meaning of the preposition; (2) extension of its range of application; (3) its obligatory use even when speaking of internal organs of the body. Further, the article does not support the common view of the two nominal units of the noun phrase as standing in a part-whole relation to one another, the reason being that the "whole" in question is not the possessor of the body but the body itself, expressed in the word kropp ('body'). Evidence is given in favour of analysing the semantic connexion assigned to the preposition på not as partitive, but as strictly possessive. Finally, it is argued that the use of på in this construction applies not only to relations concerning the human body, but extends into the domain of inanimates.

This article is an investigation into the use of the present participle in Swedish and French, carried out within the theoretical framework of contrastive linguistics and based on a corpus consisting of texts of fictional prose in the original Swedish and in French translation. In two introductory sections preceding the analytic part of the article the development of contrastive linguistics in the 20th century is outlined and the relation in which this discipline stands to translation studies is briefly accounted for. This section also discusses at some length the methodological aspects of "translational contrastive analysis" as applied in the present study. The analysis shows that the French present participle, while being more frequent than the Swedish one in absolute terms, is functionally more restricted since it occurs almost exclusively as a predicate. The Swedish present participle, on the other hand, although rare in the predicative function, is characterized by its wide range of uses other than the "verbal" one: nominal, adnomi-nal, adverbal, adjectival, adverbial. The chief difference between the Swedish and the French present participle is thus fundamentally one of syntactic distribution.