stedforhold

Stedforhold, or locative relation, is a term used in linguistics to describe how sentences encode the location of one referent relative to another. It concerns how place, position, or orientation is expressed in language, typically through prepositional phrases or case markings. In Norwegian grammar, stedforhold is commonly realized by adpositional phrases such as på bordet, i huset, ved vinduet, til byen. These expressions can function as adverbial modifiers of place or as part of a noun phrase specifying location.

In linguistic analysis, stedforhold is a semantic and syntactic category. It is often distinguished from tidsforhold, which expresses time, and from other relation types such as cause or purpose. A common division distinguishes static location (where something is) from movement or direction (where something is going). Norwegian presents many examples: "Boka ligger på bordet" (static location); "Hun gikk til skolen" (direction toward a place). Prepositions capture these relations, sometimes with subtle differences in meaning depending on context or verb.

Stedforhold is taught in grammar descriptions of Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish as part of the study of adpositional phrases and sentence structure. It is also a focus in corpus linguistics and translation studies, where analysts examine how locative relations are encoded across texts and languages.