Phenomenon-Based Perception Verbs in Swedish from a Typological and Contrastive Perspective

2. Sensory light and sound verbs
The MPC corpus is not large enough to allow a systematic contrastive 
study of the light and sound verbs. This section will primarily serve 
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Phenomenon-Based Perception Verbs in Swedish…
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to identify the major semantic parameters that distinguish such verbs 
from sensory copulas and perceptibility verbs as a background to the 
more systematic study of these verbs in Sections 3 and 4.
2.1. Sensory light verbs
Both English and Swedish have a number of sensory light verbs that 
describe the emission or reflection of light. The subject can appear in a 
Source-based construction and refer to the source which produces the 
light as in Swedish Solen skiner “The sun is shining”, Lampan lyser “The 
lamp is shining” or Kolet glöder fortfarande “The coal is still glowing”. 
In Swedish, the sensory light verbs – like other sensory verbs – charac-
teristically appear in an impersonal construction that will be referred to 
as the Environmental construction as in Det lyser (i garaget) “The light is 
on (in the garage)”, literally: “It shines (in the garage)”. This construction 
obligatorily consists of an impersonal subject det “it” in combination 
with a sensory verb. Table 4 presents an overview of the sensory light 
verbs in Swedish. Timing is a major semantic parameter. The most 
general verbs lysa and skina refer to continuous light, whereas most of 
the other verbs refer to unsteady, frequentative light. (It is difficult to 
draw a sharp line, except for lysa and skina.) Often the frequentative 
verbs refer to reflected light as in (1).
1. Över kullerstenarna gnistrade det av gult och av rosa, trappan till 
stadshotellet skimrade av silver. (ESPC: Fiction)
The cobblestones sparkled yellow and pink and the steps up to the 
town hotel gleamed like silver.
Table 4. Sensory light verbs in Swedish