Dear anyone,
Your duolingo forum registration isn't automaticaly transferred to duome forum so in order to join duome forums you need to register with your existing or any other username and email; in any case it's advised that you choose a new password for the forum.
~ Duome Team

[GRAMM] Verbs - deponent verbs

User avatar
Basler Biker
Switzerland

[GRAMM] Verbs - deponent verbs

Post by Basler Biker »

Deponent verbs

Here is the link to all deponent verbs on wikionary
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category ... nent_verbs

Arnauti: Everything I say above is based on SAG, Svenska akademiens grammatik, 2nd volume, pages 554–557. About träffas, they say: In many cases, the deponent verb has a form without s by its side, and is semantically related to it in different ways.
Their example:
Vi träffades i Berlin. Compare: Jag träffade henne i Berlin.

Deponent verbs are verbs that have the same form as passive verbs (ending with an -s) but are not passive. All the verbs taught in Lesson 8 of this skill are deponent verbs. You've already learned one before this lesson: finns, the verb used in the construction Det finns = There is/are.
Morphologically, deponent verbs work the same as other verbs, except that they have the ending -s in every form. Compare: Jag känner dig ('I know you') – Det känns bra ('It feels good').

This is all you really need to know about them, but if you want to know more, you can read below.

Deponent verbs (det finns, det känns, jag hoppas)

Some common verbs in Swedish like for example hoppas ('hope') and lyckas ('succeed') are called deponent verbs. But what does that mean?

The short answer:
Deponent verbs are verbs that have the same form as passive verbs (ending with an -s) but are not passive.

The longer answer:
Morphologically, deponent verbs work the same as other verbs, except that they have the ending -s in every form. (Well, and they can't have a passive form).

Deponent verbs can be either transitive (= able to take an object) or intransitive, but most of them are intransitive. Their meaning can be:

The subject of the verb can cause someone else to experience something: Rummet känns kallt – The room feels cold.
The room causes somebody else to experience the feeling of coldness.
The meaning can be reciprocal: Vi träffas – We meet.
The subject is several people who interact with each other.
The action of the verb affects the subject of the verb: Jag misslyckades – I failed, Jag trivs ≈ I am comfortable.
It can be difficult to distinguish deponent verbs from passive verbs, but with the deponent verbs, there can be no agent who performs the verb action and there isn't an underlying idea that the action of the verb was caused by some external agent.

For instance, in the sentence Rummet känns kallt (’The room feels cold’), it is not the room that experiences the feeling of coldness, but somebody else, either the speaker or generally anybody. It is impossible to say Rummet känns kallt av mig (’The room is felt cold by me’), and the sentence does not convey the idea that the feeling of coldness is brought on by some external agent (like, say, in a passive sentence like Rummet kyldes ned ’The room was cooled’, where you can easily get the idea that someone or some force made the room colder).

The following deponent verbs are taught in this course:

andas (’is breathing’)
Han andas inte! – He is not breathing!
finns (’exists’, ’is there’)
Hästar finns inte – Horses do not exist.
hoppas (’hope’)
Jag hoppas att hon är hemma. – I hope that she is at home.
misslyckas (’fail’)
Projektet misslyckas. – The project fails.
lyckas (’succeed’)
Hon lyckas alltid. – She always succeeds.
fattas (’is missing’)
Något fattas. – Something is missing.
trivs (’be comfortable’)
Han trivs i Stockholm. – He likes it (feels at home, feels comfortable… ) in Stockholm.
minns (’remember’)
Minns du sången? – Do you remember the song?
ses ('see' as in ’meet’)
Vi ses! – See you!
träffas (’meet’)
Vi träffas alltid på samma ställe. – We always meet in the same place.
känns (’feels’).
Allt känns bra. – Everything feels fine.
svettas (’sweats’).
Du svettas. – You're sweating.

Q: So, let me try to get this straight.
Swedish for "He breathes" is deponent. This means it appears passive, but can never be passive. It can be transitive, so "He breathes water" is probably OK, but "The water is breathed" would be the unallowable passive?
A: Yes. If this were a normal verb, its s-passive would be andas but that's already taken, so that vattnet andas would just mean 'the water is breathing', it can never be passive.

Q/A: I'm still trying to fully grasp these.
Maneten bränns, rör den inte. - (bränns is a deponent verb)
Maneten bränns. Stäng av spisen. - (bränns is passive)
Svatrskägg räds ingen. (räds is a deponent verb)
Svartskägg fruktas över det sju haven..(fruktas is passive)
Det vattnas i munnen. (vattnas is a deponent verb)
Blommorna vattnas. (vattnas is passive)

Q/A: I am a bit new to deponent verbs, so I have created some example sentences below. Can you please have a look at them and tell me if my understanding of the concept is correct?
Vi träffas av blixten. ("träffas" is passive of "träffa")
Vi träffas klockan sju. ("träffas" is a deponent verb)
Kyrkan känns igen på långt håll. ("känns" is passive of "känna")
Det känns bra att det äntligen är julafton ("känns" is a deponent verb)

Q: You mentioned that in deponent verbs, there can be no subject performing the verb action. But isn't the subject performing the verb action in examples like "She always succeeds" or "You're sweating" or "He is breathing"?
A: I said there can be no agent who performs the verb action. I.e. you cannot say hon lyckas av mig 'she succeeds by me', han svettas av dig 'he sweats by you' etc. The agent is the one who performs an action in a passive sentence, like huset byggdes av mig 'the house was built by me'. The fact that it's impossible to have an agent here is a key difference between deponent verbs and passive verbs.

The subject is the subject of the action, but the relationship between subject and action is a little more indirect than for 'normal' verbs, it's more like the subject is affected by the action, it's something that happens to them rather than something they do actively. Grammatically it's still the subject but semantically the subject has less control in hon lyckas 'she succeeds' than in e.g. hon sjunger 'she sings'.

Here is a link to deponent verbs in various languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deponent_verb#Swedish:


BB - Basler Biker - Positivity and constructiveness will prevail
Native :belgium: :netherlands: / fluent :fr: :de: :uk: / learning :sweden: / fan of :switzerland: (bs/bl)

Return to “Grammatik”