Swedish grammar sketch for lab 2

This document is meant to give enough knowledge of Swedish grammar to understand the phenomena of the block world for lab 2-3. Only differences to English are pointed out. For a translation of the words, look in the tmw.* files, where all translations are given.

Verbs

In Swedish there is no verb agreement based on person. This means that in the current domain, the first and third person present have the same form:

The imperative form does not have the same form as the present tense in Swedish:

Noun phrases

Swedish nouns have grammatical gender. There are two genders: uter and neuter. The nouns in the lab have the following gender and forms: Uter is overall more common than neuter.

Articles agree with nouns for gender. The indefinite artcle is 'ett' for neuter and 'en' for uter. The definite artcle is 'det' in neuter and 'den' in uter.

Definiteness is more complex in Swedish than in English, though. For non-modified nouns (in the general case, it is enough for this lab to know that), there is no definite article, and instead there is a definite noun suffix. See the form of the suffix in the list above. In modified noun phrases both the definite article and the definite suffix is used. See an example in the table below.

Adjectives also agree with nouns for gender, and in addition there are what is traditionally called a strong and weak form. As regards the lab, the strong form is used after indefinite articles. It is only the strong form that agrees in gender with the noun. The weak form is used after definite articles and possesive pronouns. There is no further agreement for the weak form. The forms for the adjectives in the lab are (strong uter, strong neuter, weak):

Examples for correct noun phrases for a neuter and a uter noun are:
a block/circle a blue block/circle the block/circle the blue block/circle
ett block ett blått block blocket det blåa blocket
en cirkel en blå cirkel cirkeln den blåa cirkeln

Possesive pronouns

Possesive pronouns are used with the base form (non-definite) of the noun. In Swedish there are two possibilities for the pronouns his and hers, depending on if the possessed thing belongs to the person in question or two someone else: Note that the forms for someone own's is identical for men and women. English sentences like "She takes her block" are thus ambiguous, and can mean either her own, or some other woman's, but the standard, unmarked reading is that it is her own. We will mainly ignore this issue in the lab by assuming the standard reading when possible, and the someone else reading when that is the only possibility, as in "I take/he takes her block".

The possessive pronouns my--min/mitt and his/hers--sin/sitt agree with nouns in the same way as articles, with the forms ending with 'n' beeing the uter forms. There is no inflection for his/hers--hans/hennes. The examples above with a uter noun would thus be:

Examples of ungrammatical sentences

Below are some examples of ungrammatical constructions. Make sure that you understand what the problems are.

Some of these phrases might be grammatical in other readings than in the lab, for instance, "det blocket" which can mean "that block" in a demonstrative reading, with a marked intonation.