Norwegian verbal caritive constructions

The article proposes a detailed description of the verbal caritive constructions in Norwegian and an analysis of their formal and semantic features. The description proceeds from the semantic core of caritive constructions to their periphery and up to the very border of the Norwegian caritive zone. For the purposes of this work, the caritive itself is understood broadly as a semantic category conveying the meaning of loss/absence of either an anticipated participant in a situation or of an item in possession by the situation’s main participant.

The caritive markers for this analysis were selected based on both semantic and formal criteria; they are understood here as semantically grouped constructions representing different linguistic levels. The term construction is interpreted here in a sense close to that of the Construction Grammar, i.e. as a partially idiomatic form-meaning pairing.

The paper divides the Norwegian caritive zone into two major subzones — that of loss and that of concession. The latter demonstrates somewhat stronger semantic complexity where the core elements of respective caritive situations, i.e. the loss/absence of an anticipated item, are additionally treated as a successfully negotiated impediment. Though quite different, the components included into each of the two subzones can contain the most basic caritive marker in Norwegian, the preposition uten ‘without’. Notably, Norwegian constructions expressing concession also can convey the idea of avoidance thus expanding into (and across) the farthest periphery of the caritive zone where the very absence of an unwanted situation is understood as anticipated and achieved. Given that the semantics of avoidance also can be expressed with the help of the abovementioned preposition uten ‘without’, this subsidiary zone is analyzed in the paper as well.