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

Continuous
Frequentative
lysa
tindra
flimra
flamma
skina
skimra
skillra
glöda
glänsa
glimra
glimma
glimta
stråla
glindra
glittra
blänka
gnistra
glinta
ulma
The frequentative verbs in Table 4 are sound symbolic or descriptive. 
The latter term, which takes the rather high degree of conventionali-
zation into account, is used by Snell-Hornby (1983) in her contrastive 
study of English and German, which, like Swedish, have many such 
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Åke Viberg
verbs, but there is little one-to-one correspondence. As in English, 
many of the sound-symbolic verbs begin with gl- in Swedish, but even 
if the verbs have a similar form, the degree of correspondence is low. 
Two or three of these verbs appear as translations of one of these verbs 
in the other language. The Swedish verb glittra is an example of this 
in (2) and (3). The contrasts between some of these verbs appear to be 
fuzzy even language-internally to native speakers.
2. Solen glittrade i den svagt krusade vattenytan. (ESPC: Fiction)
The sun was glistening on the rippling surface of the water.
3. Och när dimman lyfte glittrade det i fönstren där borta i New 
York. (ESPC: Fiction)
When the fog lifted the windows glittered over there in New York.
It appears that the translation relations between Germanic languages 
tend to be many-to-many. Judging from Tegelberg (2000: 95-112), the 
relation between Swedish and French to a greater extent tends to be 
many-to-one, even if French has a group of such verbs.