A contrastive analysis of Russian and Norwegian utterance-initial coordinating conjunctions

Abstract

In the study presented here, the three Russian basic additive and contrastive coordinating conjunctions i, a and no were compared to their two Norwegian counterparts og and men when used in utterance-initial position. By means of a direct comparison of sentences from Russian and Norwegian novels and their translations, both differences between the languages and language-internal boundaries between the conjunctions were made apparent. A core meaning was formulated for each of the five conjunctions. Their basic properties account not only for their use in general, but they can also explain certain specific qualities and conditions for pragmatic use in utterance-initial position.