Re: Danish enigma

Danish has exactly the same, but as a parallel construction:
Han står og sover.
Han sidder og sover.
Han ligger og sover.
I believe they are acceptable, but used less in Swedish and
Norwegian.


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Norwegian verbs usually have an implicit aspect. Most verbs are
implisitly perfective. Verbs of motion and process verbs are usually
implicitly imperfective/progressive.

If you want another aspect than what is implicite, you must add
something to the total sentence construction.

One way of doing this, is adding an imperfective verb to a
perfective one to make an overall imperfective construction:

ex: Sitter og leser - litterarly: "sits and reads" - the real
purpose is usually just to signal aspect, and the English
translation should usually only be: "is reading".

However, when the physical position of the person is important, then
the translation should be something like: is sitting ....reading

If you combine two imperfective verbs in this manner (ex: sitter og
sover), the porpose is nearly allways to signal physical position,
and not aspect.

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It is true, as allready pointed that Norwegian favour the perfective
aspect of most verbs, which simply is the verb without any
extentions. Therefore Norwegians are very little fond of the
progressive construction you find in English.

For verbs of motion and process verbs, the imperfective aspect is
favoured, and here the pure verb usually marks imperfective aspect.