Metaphorical uses of verbs of animal sounds in Swedish

Sammanfattning: Animals often act as source domain is metaphorical shifts. In European languages, there are often several lexicalised verbs for specific sounds with a prototypical animal as subject. These verbs of animal sounds and their metaphorical meanings have been studied cross-linguistically, which have made it possible to create a classification of situations that tend to be expressed by animal metaphors. There are many verbs of animal sounds in Swedish, but their metaphorical uses are not investigated. The present study investigates the metaphorical use of verbs of animal sounds in Swedish blog text and news text. The classification is used as a starting point for analysing occurrences of 13 Swedish verbs. The study seeks to answer which situations can be expressed by the Swedish verbs, which different situations can one and the same verb express metaphorically, and how did the typological classification suit the Swedish data? The results showed that the verbs often have human subjects, and different verbs varies in the range of metaphorical uses they possess. Three types of changes were made to the classification to suit the Swedish data: situations were moved, situations were added, and situations were removed.