This paper addresses the development of epistemic verb–argument constructions in L2 Norwegian in four learners from a usage-based perspective. Usage-based theories hold that language learning is a gradual process of schematization. Recent research has pointed out that adult L2 learning may start out from both lexically specific and productive patterns, but also that formulaic language and semi-fixed patterns can persist for a long time in an L2. The aim of the present study is to trace how the schematization process unfolds in dense longitudinal data collected from learners in their second semester of intense Norwegian language studies, and to explore the interaction between formulaic and productive patterns in this period of language learning. The analyses show that the learners in general employ a limited repertoire of epistemic verbs, mainly tro ‘think’ and vite ‘know’. The level of productivity of tro and vite constructions varies across the learners: while one learner shows increasingly productive use of constructions with both verbs, other learners rely on semi-fixed construction patterns. A general conclusion is thus that formulaic and semi-fixed patterns are not restricted to initial phases of L2 learning and should be an object of attention at all levels of L2 competence.

The paper studies the use of the passive voice in academic texts written in Mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) by their native speakers and by adult Polish learners of those languages. The corpus consists of 37 MA theses written in Scandinavia and in Poland. A number of referring verbs were chosen for the purpose of the analysis. The results show that while there are discrepancies in the use of the passive voice in texts written by Polish and Scandinavian students, they cannot be unequivocally diagnosed as resulting from the grammatical and stylistic influence of the mother tongue.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this paper is to investigate how second language speakers of Norwegian (henceforth Norwegian L2 speakers) differ in their use of modality expressions from native speakers (L1 speakers). As modality is a very broad subject, the main focus of the study is limited to one-word modal adverbs, such as kanskje 'maybe', and modal particles such as jo. The study compares the frequency of using different types of modal adverbials by L1 and L2 speakers, and their syntactic position. The implications of the study are two-fold. First of all, it is to contribute to the studies of the field of modality in Norwegian. The second implication is didactic, as describing the use of modal adverbials in Norwegian conversation can help devise right teaching materials to allow second language users achieve a more native-like competence in this respect.

In this paper, we discuss the possible composition, functions and aims of a parallel Scandinavian-Polish and Polish-Scandinavian text corpus. We begin by showing how different fields such as translation studies and contrastive grammar have used translations as study material to gather and interpret data, and what one can learn from those studies. Afterwards, we focus on the linguistic topics that so far have been studied based on literary translations in the language pairs Polish-Swedish and Polish-Norwegian. Our main resource here are bachelor and master theses written at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan between 2010 and 2016. We discuss both the composition of the corpora used, noting the asymmetries in the genres and source languages (narrative vs. documentary prose; Swedish texts in Polish translations and Polish texts in Norwegian translations) and examples of the use of corpora. The case studies chosen here include one oriented towards strictly grammatical phenomena (conjunctions in Swedish and their Polish counterparts), one oriented towards the semantics of the source language (discourse particles in Norwegian) and one focusing on stylistics of a given author (typical features of Czesław Miłosz' prose). All case studies have been prepared by manual search of accessible texts, rendering them more modest than they could otherwise have been, had the students had access to digital corpora. In the final part of the paper, we analyse the important features of a parallel Scandinavian-Polish text corpus, including choice of texts, minimal size of the corpus and types of functions necessary. We argue that such a corpus would prove valuable for linguists, translation researchers and interpreters.