Kan man tacka för senast eller för sig? Prepositionsfrasens struktur med utvalda svenska och polska tackformler som exempel

Abstract

Abstract The present paper focuses on some frequent Swedish thank formulas that do not seem to fit the pattern of thanking - either syntactically or semantically. One example of the syntactic irregularities is tack för senast, ‘thanks for last time’ (lit. ‘thanks for lastADV’), where the prepositional phrase consists of an adverbial (not a nominal) component relating to time. On the other hand, the Swedish tack för mig, ‘thanks for me / myself’, does not conform to the semantics of thanking, as it seems to suggest that the speaker himself is the only proper reason for thanking, not - as usually expected - ‘something good’ for the speaker, i.e. an action brought about for him or her by the addressee. Some similarities with the Polish phrases for thanking (which also include adverbs but are fewer and less frequent in comparison Swedish), e.g. dziękuję za dziś, ‘thanks for today’, have also been taken into consideration. Such constructions can be analysed and explained in terms of metonymy. Furthermore, the thank formulas including the temporal adverbs seem to reflect the significance of time as a special value in the Swedish culture.