Drygt hundra kronor. Är det lite mer än, lite mindre än eller ungefär hundra kronor?

Abstract

The Swedish adverb drygt is often used as an approximator in expressions like drygt 1 meter, where it means ‘a bit more than’ according to dictionaries and most speakers. Here, we show that drygt is undergoing semantic change and being reinterpreted as meaning ‘around’, ‘about’ or even ‘a bit less than’. To study this ongoing semantic reinterpretation, a questionnaire was circulated, reaching some 2 700 participants. The participants were asked about their linguistic intuitions about drygt: does drygt 100 kronor best correspond to 97 kronor, 97–102 kronor or 102 kronor? The results show that younger speakers are more likely than older to prefer the reinterpretations. The change has gone farthest in the south of Sweden, where half of the young speakers interpret drygt as ‘around’ or ‘a bit less than’. The comments to the questionnaire show that most participants are unaware that interpretations other than their own exist. The study also reveals that in translations of Swedish novels made available as parallel corpora, drygt is often translated into equivalents of ‘around’ or ‘a bit less than’. Furthermore, the Danish and Norwegian equivalents of drygt – godt og vel and drøyt – are undergoing a semantic change similar to that of drygt. We discuss how these findings relate to semantic change in general and argue that the change we observe is due to ambiguous contexts and possibly to speakers having different underlying cognitive representations.