Swedish Sign Language Dictionary, first published in 2008, was updated to a new version in May 2022. This version has improved search functions and user interface. The lexical database has over 24,000 unique signs and 6,600 example sentences and is being continuously updated with new signs and examples. Each entry contains rich information in the form of video and photos demonstrating the sign, as well as in text and sign transcription describing the execution of the sign. For many signs, there is additional information, for instance, on the use of the sign in context or on the sign’s origin. The different search paths that have been developed are based on the structure of the signs and on different subject areas. Swedish Sign Language Dictionary is connected to the Swedish Sign Language Corpus, which currently contains approximately 190,000 occurrences of signs. This collaboration takes place via the STS-korpus, a web-based tool for the  presentation of signs in natural language use. The collaboration between these two language resources is also concerned with lexicographic issues.

Distributional learning is a perceptual process hypothesized to underlie the phenomena of phonetic recalibration and selective adaptation, as well as infant speech sound category learning. However, in order to be conclusively tied to the earliest stages of speech sound category development, that is, the formation of novel perceptual categories, distributional learning must be shown to operate on stimuli for which there are no pre-existing categories. We investigated this in a previous study, finding no evidence of distributional learning in adults from unattended listening to non-speech. Since attention to stimuli impacts distributional learning, the present study focused on distributional learning from attended listening to non-speech. The same paradigm was used as in the previous study, except that participants’ attention was directed towards stimuli by means of a cover task. Non-speech stimuli were spectrally rotated vowels and the mismatch negativity was used to measure perceptual categorization. No distributional learning was found, that is, no effect of attention on distributional learning was demonstrated. This could mean that the distributional learning process does not operate on stimuli where perceptual categories do not already exist, or that the mismatch negativity measure does not capture the earliest stages of perceptual category development.

Articulatory features from two datasets, Slovak and Swedish, were compared to see whether different methods of eliciting loud speech (ambient noise vs. visually presented loudness target) result in different articulatory behavior. The features studied were temporal and kinematic characteristics of lip separation within the closing and opening gestures of bilabial consonants, and of the tongue body movement from /i/ to /a/ through a bilabial consonant. The results indicate larger hyper - articulation in the speech elicited with visually presented target. While individual articulatory strategies are evident, t he speaker groups agree on increasing the kinematic features consistently within each gesture in response to the increased vocal effort. Another concerted strategy is keeping the tongue response considerably smaller than that of the lips, presumably to preserve acoustic prerequisites necessary for the adequate vowel identity. While the method of visually presented loudness target elicits larger span of vocal effort, the two elicitation methods achieve comparable consistency per loudness conditions.

The aim of the present study is to further the understanding of the relationship between perceptual categorization and exposure to different frequency distributions of sounds. Previous studies have shown that speech sound discrimination proficiency is in- fluenced by exposure to different distributions of speech sound continua varying along one or several acoustic dimensions, both in adults and in infants. In the current study, adults were presented with either a bimodal or a unimodal frequency distri- bution of spectrally rotated sounds along a continuum (a vowel continuum before rotation). Categorization of the sounds, quantified as amplitude of the event-related potential (ERP) component mismatch negativity (MMN) in response to two of the sounds, was measured before and after exposure. It was expected that the bimodal group would have a larger MMN amplitude after exposure whereas the unimodal group would have a smaller MMN amplitude after exposure. Contrary to expectations, the MMN amplitude was smaller overall after exposure, and no difference was found between groups. This suggests that either the previously reported sensitivity to frequency distributions of speech sounds is not present for non-speech sounds, or the MMN amplitude is not a sensitive enough measure of categorization to detect an influence from passive exposure, or both.

One of the characteristics of child-directed speech is its high degree of repetitiousness. Sequences of repetitious utterances with a constant intention, variation sets, have been shown to be correlated with children’s language acquisition. To obtain a baseline for the occurrences of variation sets in Swedish, we annotate 18 parent–child dyads using a generalised definition according to which the varying form may pertain not just to the wording but also to prosody and/or non-verbal cues. To facilitate further empirical investigation, we introduce a surface algorithm for automatic extraction of variation sets which is easily replicable and language-independent. We evaluate the algorithm on the Swedish gold standard, and use it for extracting variation sets in Croatian, English and Russian. We show that the proportion of variation sets in child-directed speech decreases consistently as a function of children's age across Swedish, Croatian, English and Russian.

WILD 2015 is the second Workshop on Infant Language Development, held June 10-12 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden. WILD 2015 was organized by Stockholm Babylab and the Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University. About 150 delegates met over three conference days, convening on infant speech perception, social factors of language acquisition, bilingual language development in infancy, early language comprehension and lexical development, neurodevelopmental aspects of language acquisition, methodological issues in infant language research, modeling infant language development, early speech production, and infant-directed speech. Keynote speakers were Alejandrina Cristia, Linda Polka, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, Angela D. Friederici and Paula Fikkert.

Organizing this conference would of course not have been possible without our funding agencies Vetenskapsrådet and Riksbankens Jubiléumsfond. We would like to thank Francisco Lacerda, Head of the Department of Linguistics, and the Departmental Board for agreeing to host WILD this year. We would also like to thank the administrative staff for their help and support in this undertaking, especially Ann Lorentz-Baarman and Linda Habermann.

The WILD 2015 Organizing Committee: Ellen Marklund, Iris-Corinna Schwarz, Elísabet Eir Cortes, Johan Sjons, Ulrika Marklund, Tove Gerholm, Kristina Nilsson Björkenstam and Monika Molnar.

This paper reports an attempt to map the time variations of selected articulatory parameters (from X-ray profiles) directly on the F1, F2 and F3 formant tracks using multiple regression analysis (MRA). The results indicate that MRA can indeed be useful for predicting formant frequencies. Since the results reported here are limited to preliminary observations of F1 only, further studies including F2 and F3 are needed to evaluate the method more definitively.

This study assessed the acoustic coarticulatory effects of phrasal accent on [V1.CV2] sequences, when separately applied to V1 or V2, surrounding the voiced stops [b], [d], and [g]. Three adult speakers each produced 360 tokens (six V1 contexts x ten V2 contexts x three stops x two emphasis conditions). Realizing that anticipatory coarticulation of V2 onto the intervocalic C can be influenced by prosodic effects, as well as by vowel context effects, a modified locus equation regression metric was used to isolate the effect of phrasal accent on consonantal F2 onsets,independently of prosodically induced vowel expansion effects. The analyses revealed two main emphasis-dependent effects: systematic differences in F2 onset values and the expected expansion of vowel space. By accounting for the confounding variable of stress-induced vowel space expansion, a small but consistent coarticulatory effect of emphatic stress on the consonant was uncovered in lingually produced stops, but absent in labial stops. Formant calculations based on tube models indicated similarly increased F2 onsets when stressed /d/ and /g/ were simulated with deeper occlusions resulting from more forceful closure movements during phrasal accented speech.