NTNU, LING1133 (2009) - Directionality in Norwegian
Direction or perhaps better Directionality is a relational concept which encodes at least two parameters - 'away from a reference object' and ' towards a reference object'. Linguists have distinguished 'projective direction' from 'absolute direction' where absolute directions is mostly in the vertical space (up and down; yet the latter is of course in reality also projective directions with a very, very large reference object (Earth).
As part of speech direction is usually encoded in one of three different ways in Norwegian: as a verb, as a preposition or as a combination of these. Here are some examples:
Towards referential object:
mot
komme
til
Away from referential object:
gå
dra/fare
fra
Up
opp
stige
Down
ned
synke
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