I verbi con particella: svedese e danese a contrasto

In all Germanic languages verb semantics can be altered by means of particles, occurring both as a prefix and as a free form. This paper expands on the situation of Scandinavian, mainly comparing Swedish and Danish, so as to cast light both on the position of these languages as a whole within the Germanic linguistic landscape and on the mutual differences between themselves. Within the bounds of the descriptive aims of the paper, the main aspects of the interaction between the verb and its modifiers are dealt with, focusing on Swedish and Danish. Thus the major morphosyntactic, prosodic, semantic, lexical and derivational features linked to the prefixed and particle verbs are contrastively analysed and described, highlighting both the similarities and the differences between Swedish and Danish. The contrastive approach to the subject is supplied with historical-comparative considerations so as to improve the understanding of the observed phenomena and set them into a broader context.