Mediala s-verb i svenska ordböcker

Abstract

The most common way of forming passive in Swedish is through the ending -s (huset byggdes ’the house was built’, huset hade byggts ’the house had been built’). There are, however, verbs ending in an -s without representing the s-passive. These are called deponens. Some of the deponens verbs always end in an -s and some of them have counterparts without an -s, e.g. utveckla ’develop’ [develop something] – utvecklas ’develop’ [something develops into something]. The latter group is called medial deponens and the verbs express a spontaneous process. For the lexicographer the medials are somewhat problematic, since it is hard to tell to what extent the s-forms can be considered independent. In this study I analyze how the type is handled in four Swedish monolingual dictionaries. My result is that there is quite a lot of inconsistency.