All Scandinavian languages: Present participle

[涼宮]

Greetings!


In English there are a good bunch of usages for the -ing form and one which is very useful is the present participle. I would like to know if you have a structure used in general for that usage. The French equivalent is -ant (écrivant, disant, etc.) and sometimes in German -d with the infinitive or indem (by + ing).

For example:

1) She came jumping towards me.

2) I can smell something burning!

3) Don't waste time reading that!

4) Putting on his coat, he left the house.

5) You can reach the town by taking this road.

6) The barking dog is scary.

Perhaps you use the infinitive in some of them or the conditional like in sentence 5.

Thank you in advance

 

[Tjahzi]

Well, as you mention, the above forms are indeed different forms happening to be homonyms, and if your question is whether Swedish has a sets of verb forms, covering, with or without overlapping, the usages of the various -ing-forms of English, that also happen to be homonyms, the answer is "no".

 

[涼宮]

But, what about the -nde ending in Swedish? varande, springande, etc. Would you use it in any of those instances?

 

[raumar]

I can't answer for Swedish - but I'll try for the Norwegian case.

In Norwegian, we would use -ende in example 1):

1) Hun kom hoppende mot meg.

In examples 2) and 6), we might use -ende (brennende, bjeffende). But a better option would probably be "something that burns" and "the dog that barks", especially in example 2):

2) Jeg kan lukte noe som brenner! (eller ... "at noe brenner")
6) Hunden som bjeffer er skremmende.

In examples 3) and 5), we would use the infinitive:

3) Ikke kast bort tid på å lese det!
5) Du kan komme til byen ved å ta denne veien.

Example 4) would have to be rephrased. That can be done in different ways, for example:

4) Han tok på seg frakken og forlot huset. (He put on his coat and left the house)
or: Mens han tok på seg frakken, forlot han huset (While he put on his coat, he left the house)

 

[NorwegianNYC]

runar is correct, there are better and more common ways of expressing this in Norwegian:
1) She came jumping towards me = Hun hoppet mot meg OR hun kom hoppende mot meg
2) I can smell something burning! = Jeg lukter noe som brenner
3) Don't waste time reading that! = Kast ikke bort tiden på å lese det der!
4) Putting on his coat, he left the house. = Etter å ha tatt på seg jakka, gikk han ut.
5) You can reach the town by taking this road. = Hvis du tar denne veien, kommer du til byen
6) The barking dog is scary. = Den hunden som gjør er skummel.

In modern Norwegian, -ende is rare, and increasingly so. As Norwegian is moving towards being more analytic, this ending is only rarely productive anymore.

 

[涼宮]

5) Du kan komme til byen ved å ta denne veien.

Thank you, Raumar. Just a small question. Is the preposition 'ved' required for by -ing or could you omit it?

Thank you, too, NYC. So, is the -ende ending something you'd nowadays find mostly in literature or novels, for example?

 

[raumar]

Is the preposition 'ved' required for by -ing or could you omit it?

You need the preposition in "ved å ta denne veien".

-ende is not necessarily used more in literature/novels. I would rather say that -ende mostly is used to describe a few situations, such as "Hun kom løpende/gående/syklende". But as NorwegianNYC points out: in most situations we avoid -ende in Norwegian, and find other expressions.