This thesis explores the relationship between inhalation amplitude and turn-taking in spontaneous multiparty conversations held in Estonian. Respiratory activity is recorded with Respiratory Inductance Plethysmography. The main focus is on how inhalation amplitude varies between the inhalations produced directly before turn onset compared to the following inhalations within the same speaking turn. The results indicate a significant difference in amplitude, realised mainly by an increase in inhalation end lung volume values. One of the possible functions of this pattern is to signal an intention of taking the conversational turn. Another could be a phrasing or grouping function connected to lower inhalation amplitudes within turns.

Creakiness is a well-known turn-taking cue and has been observed to systematically accompany phrase and turn ends in several languages. In Estonian, creaky voice is frequently used by all speakers without any obvious evidence for its systematic use as a turn-taking cue. Rather, it signals a lack of prominence and is favored by lengthening and later timing in phrases. In this paper, we analyze the occurrence of creak with respect to properties of the respiratory cycle. We show that creak is more likely to accompany longer exhalations. Furthermore, the results suggest there is little difference in lung volume values regardless of the presence of creak, indicating that creaky voice might be employed to preserve air over the course of longer utterances. We discuss the results in connection to processes of speech planning in spontaneous speech.

The present study investigated the timing of backchannel onsets within speaker’s own and dialogue partner’s breathing cycle in two spontaneous conversations in Estonian. Results indicate that backchannels are mainly produced near the beginning, but also in the second half of the speaker’s exhalation phase. A similar tendency was observed in short non-backchannel utterances, indicating that timing of backchannels might be determined by their duration rather than their pragmatic function. By contrast, longer non-backchannel utterances were initiated almost exclusively right at the beginning of the exhalation. As expected, backchannels in the conversation partner’s breathing cycle occurred predominantly towards the end of the exhalation or at the beginning of the inhalation. 

This article provides a first quantitative overview of the timing and volume-related properties of breath holds in spontaneous conversations. Firstly, we investigate breath holds based on their position within the coinciding respiratory interval amplitude. Secondly, we investigate breath holds based on their timing within the respiratory intervals and in relation to communicative activity following breath holds. We hypothesise that breath holds occur in different regions of the lung capacity range and at different times during the respiratory phase, depending on the conversational and physiological activity following breath holds. The results suggest there is not only considerable variation in both the time and lung capacity scales, but detectable differences are also present in breath holding characteristics involving laughter and speech preparation, while breath holds coinciding with swallowing are difficult to separate from the rest of the data based on temporal and volume information alone.

This study explores the relationship between inhalation amplitude and turn management in four approximately 20 minute long spontaneous multiparty conversations in Estonian. The main focus of interest is whether inhalation amplitude is greater before turn onset than in the following inhalations within the same speaking turn. The results show that inhalations directly before turn onset are greater in amplitude than those later in the turn. The difference seems to be realized by ending the inhalation at a greater lung volume value, whereas the initial lung volume before inhalation onset remains roughly the same across a single turn. The findings suggest that the increased inhalation amplitude could function as a cue for claiming the conversational floor.

I denna doktorsavhandling utforskas skapandet av parallella trädbanker. Dessa är språkliga data som består av texter och deras översättningar, som har märkts upp med syntaktisk information samt länkar mellan ord, fraser och meningar som motsvarar varandra i översättningarna. Vi beskriver den delvis manuella uppmärkningen av den parallella trädbanken SMULTRON, med 1.000 engelska, tyska och svenska meningar. Denna beskrivning är utgångspunkt för att besvara den första av två frågor i avhandlingen.

• Vilka frågor måste beaktas för att skapa en högkvalitativ parallell trädbank?

De enheter som märks upp samt valet av uppmärkningssystemet är viktiga för kvaliteten, och en viss andel automatisk bearbetning är nödvändig för att utöka storleken. Automatiska kvalitetskontroller och automatisk utvärdering är av vikt, men viss manuell granskning är nödvändig för att uppnå hög kvalitet.

Vidare utforskar vi att använda information som finns i uppmärkningen, för att förbättra den automatiskt skapade uppmärkningen för ett annat språk. Detta leder oss till den andra av de två frågorna i avhandlingen.

• Kan vi förbättra automatisk uppmärkning genom att överföra information som finns i de andra språken?

Experimenten visar att automatisk länkning som överförs från två språkpar, L1–L2 och L1–L3, till det tredje språkparet, L2–L3, får förbättrad precision, framför allt för skärningspunkten mellan den överförda länkningen och den automatiska länkningen. Vi skapar även en testsamling för experiment med överföring av uppmärkning för att lösa upp strukturella flertydigheter hos prepositionsfraser. Överföring enligt majoritetsprincipen förbättrar uppmärkningen, jämfört med den grundläggande automatiska uppmärkningen, men att använda språkliga ledtrådar för att korrigera uppmärkningen innan majoritetsöverföring är ännu bättre, om än mer arbetskrävande. Vissa felaktiga strukturer kan dock inte korrigeras med hjälp av överföring, eftersom de olika språken använder olika formuleringar, och därmed har olika strukturer.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka de kännetecken som kan betraktas ingå i akademiskt svenskt teckenspråk och som i sin tur kan bidra till att studenter kan författa sina uppsatser på akademiskt svenskt teckenspråk. Inspelat material från föreläsningar, gjorda av fyra döva akademiker och från teckenspråkskorpus, där två av de döva akademikerna även medverkande och några slumpmässigt valda informanter, undersöktes. Resultatet från akademiskt svenskt teckenspråk jämfördes med kännetecken som identifierats för amerikanskt akademiskt teckenspråk. Det behövs mer kunskap och forskning om ämnet.

Studien belyser och diskuterar hur undervisning i engelska inom grundskola och gymnasium samt antagningsregler till högskola kan påverka möjligheten att utbilda sig i tekniska ämnen för personer med dyslexi. Studien belyser att det finns en hel del som tyder på att undervisningen i engelska i grundskola och gymnasium ofta inte är anpassad till de elever som har fonologiska svårigheter, och att detta kan få avgörande betydelse för deras framtid.

I en första delstudie görs en enkätundersökning bland engelsklärare i grundskola och gymnasium för att se om de har goda möjligheter att undervisa elever med dyslexi. Undersökningen visar bland annat att det har funnits brister på lärarhögskolor när det gäller utbildningen om läs- och skrivsvårigheter/dyslexi.

81 % av de 33 lärare som har engelska i sin utbildning svarar att de inte har fått kunskap om läs- och skrivsvårigheter/dyslexi som hjälper dem i undervisningen i engelska. Undersökningen visar också att flera kommuner inte ger lärarna den fortbildning de behöver och att många lärare upplever en vardag med tidsbrist, för få alternativa verktyg och för stora undervisningsgrupper.

I en andra delstudie belyses framgångsfaktorer i engelska för elever med dyslexi. Fyra högskolestudenter som har dyslexi djupintervjuas, samtliga går fjärde året på utbildningen till civilingenjör. Två av studenterna har MVG i engelska B från gymnasiet och två har inte läst engelska B.

I en tredje studie görs en jämförelse mellan gymnasiebetygen i engelska för 30 studenter med dyslexi på civilingenjörsprogrammet och en kontrollgrupp. Studien visar bland annat att det är 10 % av dyslektikerna som inte skulle ha kommit in på utbildningen på grundval av sina betyg om de hade sökt hösten 2010 när det är nya antagningsregler med högre språkkrav.

SPRINT is a language intervention project aimed to study the outcome of a parental home training program on children’s language development and future reading and writing skills. This study, which derives data from the SPRINT project, intended to examine the possible effects of a parental-based film intervention. It was conducted on toddlers aged 18-21 months from the Stockholm area with at least one parent who has Swedish as a first language. Parents of 78 children participated in the study and filled in 3 SECDI-w&s questionnaires rating their children's productive vocabulary. Children were randomized to either the intervention or the control group. Results indicated that the interventiongroup demonstrated significantly higher scores over time, F (2,78) = 5,192, p < .007. In the light of previous research it is concluded that this intervention contributes to an increase in productive vocabulary. However, the scores of the intervention group did not exceed the average range for Swedish children in the same age span. Furthermore the possible impact of parental education and thepresence of siblings on productive vocabulary was discussed.

Neuronal aktivitet av en- och tvåspråkiga till miljöljud och ord som är semantiskt relaterade till dem studerades med hjälp av Mismatch Negativity (MMN) komponent av event-relaterade potentialer. MMN förväntades spegla språkvalsprocessen i tvåspråkiga baserad på semantik och fonologi. I detta avseende presenterades interlingual-homofoner ’car’ (bil) och ’kar’ (snö) som lexikala stimuli tillsammans med semantiskt besläktade miljöljud i ett passivt auditivt oddball paradigm. De lexikala stimuli spelades in av en modersmålstalare av engelska. Tre turkiska-engelska sena tvåspråkiga och en modersmålstalare av engelska deltog i studien. En tidig MMN framkallades i båda grupperna med en fördelning över de främre central- och centrala områdena över skalp med amplitud vid -2,5 med 113 ms latens. Detta indikerar att deltagarna var sensitiva till de akustiska förändringarna mellan de två olika typerna av stimuli. Den vidare undersökningen av samspelet mellan miljöljud och semantik visade inget avgörande resultat. Dessutom, var det också ett inkonklusivt resultat som handlade om att huruvida tvåspråkiga deltagarna använde subfonemiska signalerna i de presenterade auditiva lexikala stimuli eller inte.

This thesis is a description of some aspects of the grammar of Sɛlɛɛ, a Ghana-Togo-Mountain (GTM) language, based on my own fieldwork. The thesis consists of an introduction and five papers.

Paper (I), Noun classes in Sεlεε, describes the noun class system of Sɛlɛɛ. It consists of eight noun class prefixes, four marking singular and four plural. They are paired in irregular ways to form eight genders (singular-plural pairs). Nouns agree with determiners, numerals and interrogative qualifiers within the noun phrase and can be indexed on the predicate. Nouns are allocated to classes/genders based partly on semantic notions.

Paper (II), Sεlεε (with Francesca Di Garbo), details the morphological encoding of diminution in Sɛlɛɛ either by the suffixes -bi, -bii, -mii, -e or -nyi alone or in combination with noun class shift. Augmentation is not expressed morphologically.

Paper (III), The tense and aspect system of Sεlεε: A preliminary analysis, shows that Sɛlɛɛ, unlike most Kwa languages, has a rather elaborate tense system encompassing present, hodiernal, pre-hodiernal and future tenses. The aspectual categories are progressive, habitual and perfect. Both categories often amalgamate with first person singular subject clitics.

Paper (IV), Standard negation in Sεlεε, deals with the negation of declarative verbal main clauses. This is primarily encoded by a high tone, sometimes combined with segmental morphemes, portmanteau negative tense-aspect morphemes and vowel lengthening. Each tense-aspect category has at least one particular negation strategy.

Paper (V), Unravelling temperature terms in Sεlεε (with Francesca Di Garbo), investigates the grammatical constructions employed for temperature evaluations. Personal feeling is only encoded via subjects, while ambient and tactile evaluations are construed attributively and predicatively.

A comparison of Selee and other GTM languages revealed similar noun morphologies but very different verbal morphologies.

This paper describes the noun class system of Sl, a Na-Togo, Kwa (Niger-Congo) language spoken in the Volta Region of Ghana. As shown in this paper, Sl hasa noun class system with an equal number of singular and plural classes that are paired inirregular ways. The singular-plural pairs are referred to as genders. Nouns normally agreewith certain modifiers within the noun phrase. The agreement targets are determiners,numerals, interrogative pronouns and some adjectives. Outside the noun phrase, nounclasses may be indexed on the verb to signal long distance anaphora, a strategy thatspeakers rarely use. The paper provides a detailed account of possible semantic andcultural motivations for the assignment of nouns to a particular gender and/or class.

This paper discusses standard negation in Sɛlɛɛ. Sɛlɛɛ is a Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) Language of the Kwa group of the Niger Congo family. Standard negation is the negation of declarative verbal clauses. Different strategies are used in Sɛlɛɛ to negate declarative verbal main clauses depending on the tense and aspect category of the verb. The basic negation strategy used in standard negation is tonal alternation, with or without other negation markers. The other strategies are the use of portmanteau morphemes, affixes and vowel lengthening. Interestingly, in one and the same tense paradigm, different persons can select different negation strategies. There is syncretism among the 1st person singular forms of the negative recent past, the negative habitual and the negative perfect.

This talk deals with the conceptualisation of temperature in some of the Ghanaian languages as reflected in their systems of central temperature terms, such as hot, cold, to freeze, etc. We will discuss these systems in the light of a large-scale cross-linguistic collaborative project, involving 35 researchers (including the present authors) and covering more than 50 genetically, areally and typologically diverse languages (Koptjevskaja-Tamm ed. 2015). The key questions addressed here are how the different languages carve up the temperature domain by means of their linguistic expressions, and how the temperature expressions are used outside of the temperature domain. Languages cut up the temperature domain among their expressions according to three main dimensions: TEMPERATURE VALUES (e.g., warming vs. cooling temperatures, or excessive heat vs. pleasant warmth), FRAMES OF TEMPERATURE EVALUATION (TACTILE, The stones are cold; AMBIENT, It is cold here; and PERSONAL-FEELING, I am cold), and ENTITIES whose “temperature” is evaluated.  Although the temperature systems are often internally heterogeneous, we may still talk about the main temperature value distinctions for the whole system. The Ghanaian languages favour the cross-linguistically preferred two-value systems, with water often described by a more elaborated system. An interesting issue concerns conventionalisation and frequency of expressions with a primary meaning outside of the temperature domain, for temperature uses. For instance, the conventionalised expressions for talking about ‘warm/hot’ in Ewe involve sources of heat (‘fire’) and bodily exuviae (‘sweat’). The Ghanaian languages often manifest numerous extended uses of their temperature terms. However, strikingly, none of them conforms to one of the most widely quoted conceptual metaphors, “affection is warmth” (Lakoff & Johnson 1999:50), which is also true for many other languages in (West) Africa and otherwise.

This paper investigates the encoding of temperature in Sɛlɛɛ, a Niger-Congo language of the Kwa group, spoken in Ghana. The lexicon of temperature in Sɛlɛɛ consists of six central and two non-central temperature terms, distributed among the word classes of nouns, adjectives and verbs. The grammatical constructions associated with temperature evaluation vary according to the word-class status of each temperature term and its contexts of use. The distribution of the different grammatical constructions according to different types of temperature evaluation is discussed in the paper. Metaphorical uses of temperature-related terms are also discussed in the context of neighbouring and highly related languages. Finally, special patterns of temperature evaluation in connection with water are surveyed.

Ideofoner används flitigt i japanska och är viktiga att lära sig men bjuder på stora svårigheter för andraspråkstalare. Den här studien undersöker vilka sammanhang japanska ideofoner används i, specifikt vilka verb som ofta modifieras av ideofoner och vilka dessa ideofoner är. En japansk bloggkorpus på 5,5 miljarder tokens delades upp i tokens, ordklasstaggades, dependensparsades och söktes igenom. Vid en signifikansnivå på 0,001 hittades 2398 verb som ofta modifieras av ideofoner och 52719 kollokationer av verb och ideofoner, medan antalet unika ideofoner var 756. Detta visar att ideofoner används i en stor mängd sammanhang där det finns en relation mellan ideofon och verb. De 20 högst rankade kollokationerna undersöktes mer ingående och innehöll till största delen skildringar av sinnesintryck som är ovanliga att uttrycka med ideofoner i många språk, och som därmed kan vara svåra för många andraspråkstalare.

Ett ord kan ha flera betydelser, vilket innebär att betydelsen är beroende av kontexten där ordet används. I denna korpusbaserade studie undersöks adjektiven svår, komplicerad, hård och tung som, antingen i sin grundläggande eller metaforiska betydelse, relaterar till den semantiska domänen SVÅRIGHETER. I enlighet med Rakhilina och Reznikovas (2016) frame-metod ämnas adjektivens kontexter, och således även betydelser, beskrivas genom att identifiera vilka substantiv som respektive adjektiv vanligen kombineras med i svensk bloggtext. De kombinatoriska möjligheterna (och begränsningarna) ställs både i relation till varandra, samt i ett bredare perspektiv till tidigare forskning om motsvarande lexem på andra språk. Adjektiven svår och komplicerad tenderar att samförekomma med en relativt bred variation av substantiv, medan adjektiven hård och tung ofta används med arbetsrelaterade eller tidsrelaterade substantiv. Flest likheter hittades å ena sidan mellan svår och komplicerad, å andra sidan mellan hård och tung. Skillnaderna var annars mer påfallande, trots många gemensamma kollokat, eftersom adjektiven även kunde associeras till olika bibegrepp. Studiens upptäckter ger särskilt stöd för att det mellan skilda språk finns olika associationer mellan SVÅRIGHETER och de lexem som relaterar till domänen, och därmed ges ytterligare anledning för framtida studier att undersöka kontexterna där lexemen används.

Several studies have shown slight differences in language skills between genders, favouring females. In order to investigate gender differences in speech production for Swedish children, the productive vocabulary size of 295 children, aged 18-24 months, was measured by the validated instrument SECDI-2. The size of the productive vocabulary was found to grow rapidly during this age. Significant gender differences were found at 21 and 24 months, but not at 18 months. The girls’ mean scores were higher.

This paper investigates the semantic prosody of three causal connectives: due to, owing to and because of in seven varieties of the English language. While research in the domain of English causality exists, we are not aware of studies that would cover the domain of causal connectives in English. Our claim is that connectives such as because of link two arguments, (at least) one of which will include a phrase that contributes to the interpretation of the relation as positive or negative, and hence define the prosody of the connective used. As our results demonstrate, the majority of the prosodies identified are negative for all three connectives; the proportions are stable across the varieties of English studied, and contrary to our expectations, we find no significant differences between the functions of the connectives and discourse preferences. Further, we investigate whether automatizing the sentiment annotation procedure via a simple language-model based classifier is possible. The initial results highlights the complexity of the task and the need for complicated systems, probably aided with other related datasets to achieve reasonable performance.

Visual imagery has been suggested to recruit occipital cortex via feedback projections from fronto-parietal regions, suggesting that these feedback projections might be exploited to boost recruitment of occipital cortex by means of real-time neurofeedback. To WA this prediction, we instructed a group of healthy participants to perform peripheral visual imagery while they received real-time auditory feedback based on the BOLD signal from either early visual cortex or the medial superior parietal lobe. We examined the amplitude and temporal aspects of the BOLD response in the two regions. Moreover, we compared the impact of self-rated mental focus and vividness of visual imagery on the BOLD responses in these two areas. We found that both early visual cortex and the medial superior parietal cortex are susceptible to auditory neurofeedback within a single feedback session per region. However, the signal in parietal cortex was sustained for a longer time compared to the signal in occipital cortex. Moreover, the BOLD signal in the medial superior parietal lobe was more affected by focus and vividness of the visual imagery than early visual cortex. Our results thus demonstrate that (a) participants can learn to self-regulate the BOLD signal in early visual and parietal cortex within a single session, (b) that different nodes in the visual imagery network respond differently to neurofeedback, and that (c) responses in parietal, but not in occipital cortex are susceptible to self-rated vividness of mental imagery. Together, these results suggest that medial superior parietal cortex might be a suitable candidate to provide real-time feedback to patients suffering from visual field defects.

En hög andel repetitioner är ett av de utmärkande dragen i barnriktat tal. Tidigare forskning har visat att andelen repetitioner i barnriktat tal varierar beroende på barnets ålder. Dessutom tyder forskningen på att repetitioner i barnriktat tal kan vara främjande för språkutvecklingen. Syftet med studien var att undersöka eventuella variationer över tid i andelen repetitioner i barnriktat tal under det första levnadsåret, samt försöka hitta ett samband mellan detta och barnens språkliga utveckling. Repetitionerna i föräldrarnas tal hos tio förälder-barn-dyader då barnet var 3, 6, 9 och 12 månader undersöktes kvantitativt. Exakta och varierade självrepetitioner samt exakta och varierade repetitioner av barnens yttranden undersöktes och jämfördes med samma barns språkliga nivå vid 18 månader. Resultatet visade att andelen exakta självrepetitioner var cirka en tredjedel lägre vid 12 månaders ålder än vid de tre tidigare inspelningstillfällena. Den totala andelen repetitioner av barnens yttranden mer än fyrdubblades från 3 till 12 månader. Ett samband kunde påvisas mellan repetitionerna under det första levnadsåret och barnens språkutveckling, där en låg andel exakta självrepetitioner vid 6 till 9 månader korrelerade med en hög språklig nivå vid 18 månader. Som en tolkning av resultatet föreslogs kopplingar mellan barnens aktiva språkbruk och repetitionerna i föräldrarnas tal.

Turfinal blick på motparten i ett samtal har föreslagits fylla olika funktioner: övervakande, styrande eller responssökande. 16 svenska småbarns användning av turfinal blick i dyadisk interaktion med sina föräldrar studerades vid åldrarna 1;0, 1;6, 2;0, 2;6 och 3;0. Turfinalt blickbeteende undersöktes angående potentiella korrelationer till barnens ålder och språknivå. Dessutom granskades barnens turfinala blickanvändning i turfinala frågor, i turer längre än 5 sekunder och i olika sorters interaktionskontext.Resultaten visade att användandet av turfinal blick ökade mellan åldrarna 1;0 och 2;0. Inga korrelationer mellan barnens användning av turfinal blick och deras språkliga nivå kunde hittas. I turfinala frågor var 93% av den turfinala blicken aktiv, dvs inte närvarande vid turens start. Turfinal blick förekom både i konversation och objektsorienterad interaktion vid alla åldrar.En övervakande/responssökande funktion hos turfinal blick föreslogs användas av småbarn som ett sätt att få förälderns uppmuntran och bekräftelse på barnets interaktiva språkanvändning. Dessutom poängterades vikten av att välja ett relevant sätt att mäta turfinal blick vid studier av små barns blickbeteende.

Repetitioner i barnriktat tal (BRT) har visat sig variera över tid, och har föreslagits påverka förstaspåksinlärning. Även ett samband mellan det verbala innehållet i repetitioner i BRT och barns språkutveckling har föreslagits. Det verbala innehållet i repetitioner i svenskt BRT har inte undersökts tidigare.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka det verbala innehållet i repetitioner i svenskt BRT under barnets två första år och möjliga förändringar gällande andelen repetitioner under samma tidsperiod. Det verbala innehållet i repetitioner i föräldrars tal hos tio förälder-barn-dyader då barnen var 3, 6, 9, 12 och 24 månader gamla undersöktes med fokus på ordklasser, satstyper och förändringar gällande konstituenter. Resultaten jämfördes med barnens produktiva ordförråd vid 30 månaders ålder. Även den möjliga förekomsten av typbaserade konstruktioner (item-based constructions) och frekventa ramar (frequent frames) undersöktes.

De övergripande resultaten uppvisade mönster gällande förändringar inom det verbala innehållet i repetitioner över tid samt ett samband mellan det verbala innehållet i repetitioner och barns språkutveckling. Två antaganden gjordes: föräldrar justerar komplexiteten i sitt tal efter språkliga utvecklingsfaser hos sina barn, och den språkliga variationen i inputen ökar med barnets ålder.

Stimulus degradation adds to working memory load during speech processing. We investigated whether this applies to sign processing and, if so, whether the mechanism implicates secondary auditory cortex. We conducted an fMRI experiment where 16 deaf early signers (DES) and 22 hearing non-signers performed a sign-based n-back task with three load levels and stimuli presented at high and low resolution. We found decreased behavioral performance with increasing load and decreasing visual resolution, but the neurobiological mechanisms involved differed between the two manipulations and did so for both groups. Importantly, while the load manipulation was, as predicted, accompanied by activation in the frontoparietal working memory network, the resolution manipulation resulted in temporal and occipital activation. Furthermore, we found evidence of cross-modal reorganization in the secondary auditory cortex: DES had stronger activation and stronger connectivity between this and several other regions. We conclude that load and stimulus resolution have different neural underpinnings in the visual–verbal domain, which has consequences for current working memory models, and that for DES the secondary auditory cortex is involved in the binding of representations when task demands are low.

The current study investigates how locative clauses and existential constructions are realized and differentiated in the language of Khowar [ISO 693–3: khw] (Hindu Kush Indo-Aryan, HKIA). Khowar is one of several under-researched languages in the Hindu Kush, and as of yet there is no comprehensive description of its linguistic structure. The data for this study was provided by Afsar Ali Khan (local linguist and native speaker of Khowar), in the form of a collection of transcribed traditional Khowar stories, told by speakers in the community. Samples of locative clauses and existential constructions were collected from the corpus, mainly by use of the concordance tool of Toolbox, after which an analysis was carried out. The results show that word order is the main strategy for differentiating locational-existential constructions and locative clauses in Khowar, that semantically bleached posture verbs are not a present strategy for creating locative clauses nor existential constructions, and that there are certain story-opening sequences with existential constructions that are typical of the genre represented by the data. Future research is suggested to focus on negative existentials in Khowar, the full distributional pattern of the actual and inferential copula in other types of non-verbal predication, and the extended use of the 3rd person singular past tense form of the actual copula, ɔʃɔj, which is no longer sensitive to the animacy distinction otherwise present in the Khowar verbal system.

In this study, we outline a methodology to quantify the degree of similarity between pairs of f0 distributions based on the Anderson-Darling measure that underlies its namesake goodness-of-fit test. The procedure emphasizes differences due to more fine-grained f0 modulations rather than differences in measures of central tendency, such as the mean and median. In order to assess the procedure’s usefulness for speaker comparison, we applied it to a multilingual corpus in which participants contributed speech delivered in three speaking styles. The similarity measure was calculated separately as function of speaking style and speaker. Between-speaker variability (different speakers, same style) in distribution similarity varied significantly between styles — spontaneous interview shows greater variability than read sentences and word list in five languages (English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Swedish); in Estonian and German, read sentences yield more variability. Within-speaker variability (same speaker, different styles) levels are lower than between-speaker in the style that exhibit the greatest variability. The results point to the potential use of the proposed methodology as a way to identify possible idiosyncratic traits in f0 distributions. Also, they further demonstrate the effect of speaking styles on intonation patterns.

We investigated long-term mean, median and base value of F0 to estimate how long it takes their variability to stabilize. Change point analysis was used to locate stabilization points. In one experiment, stabilization points were calculated in recordings of the same text spoken in 26 languages. Average stabilization points are 5 seconds for base value and 10 seconds for mean and median. Variance after the stabilization point was reduced around 40 times for mean and median and more than 100 times for the base value. In another experiment, four speakers read two different texts each. Stabilization points for the same speaker across the texts do not exactly coincide as would be ideally expected. Average change point dislocation is 2.5 seconds for the base value, 3.4 for the median and 9.5 for the mean. After stabilization, individual differences in the three measures obtained from the two texts are 2% on average. Present results show that stabilization points in long-term measures of F0 occur earlier than suggested in the previous literature.

In this study, we compared three long-term fundamental frequency estimates — mean, median and base value — with respect to how fast they approach a stable value, as a function of language, speaking style and speaker. The base value concept was developed in search for an f0 value which should be invariant under prosodic variation. It has since also been tested in forensic phonetics as a possible speaker-specific f0 value. Data used in this study — recorded speech by male and female speakers in seven languages and three speaking styles, spontaneous, phrase reading and word list reading — had been recorded for a previous project. Average stabilisation times for the mean, median and base value are 9.76, 9.67 and 8.01 s. Base values stabilise significantly faster. Languages differ in both average and variability of the stabilisation times. Values range from 7.14 to 11.41 (mean), 7.5 to 11.33 (median) and 6.74 to 9.34 (base value). Spontaneous speech yields the most variable stabilisation times for the three estimators in Italian and Swedish, for the median in French and Portuguese and base value in German. Speakers within each language do not differ significantly in terms of stabilisation time variability for the three estimators.

In this study, we expand on previous experiments designed with the aim of determining the minimum length that an audio sample should have in order for the speaking rate derived from it to be representative of the sample as a whole. We compare two different approaches to establishing that the time series of the cumulative speaking rate calculated over the audio sample has reached stability. We also compare the effect on stabilization time of four other factors that may affect the way speaking rate is calculated. The results show that all factors tested have significant effects, although of limited practical concern. Overall, average stability time is 12.1 seconds, with the bulk of the distribution lying between 7.9 and 16.2 s.

Det här är en lexikal typologisk pilotstudie som undersöker begreppet LIV i elva olika språk. Huvudmaterialet består av texter från Bibeln, Nya testamentet. Studien utgår ifrån de koine-grekiska lexemen för liv, ζωή (zōḗ), ψυχή (psūkhḗ) och βῐ́ος (bíos). Uti- från huvudmaterial från parallelltexterna har probabilistiska semantiska kartor skapats genom multidimensionell skalering för varje språk och har analyserats med partitio- ning around medoids pam(). Resultatet visar på två intressanta fenomen. För det förs- ta har zōḗ översatts mest enhetligt. psūkhḗ och bíos översätts på ett mer varierande sätt i det flesta språken där fler olika lexem har använts och det här tyder på att deras be- tydelse är mer varierad. De koine-grekiska lexemen bildar en konceptuell struktur, vilket innebär att de olika koncepten för LIV inordnas efter en snävare och bredare be- tydelse. För det andra, visar resultatet även att språken anpassar sitt vokabulär för att efterliknar denna struktur. Det visar sig tydligast i språk med flera lexem för LIV samt hur de används för att översätta de tre koine-grekiska lexemen.

Humans share sensory systems with a common anatomical blueprint, but individual sensory experience nevertheless varies. In olfaction, it is not known to what degree sensory perception, particularly the perception of odor pleasantness, is founded on universal principles dictated by culture or merely a matter of personal taste. To address this, we asked 225 individuals from 9 diverse nonwestern cultures—hunter-gatherer to urban dwelling—to rank the monomolecular odorants from most to least pleasant. Contrary to expectations, culture explained only 6% of the variance in pleasantness rankings, whereas individual variability or personal taste explained 54%. Importantly, there was substantial global consistency, with molecular identity explaining 41% of the variance in odor pleasantness rankings. Critically, these universal rankings were predicted by the physicochemical properties of out-of-sample molecules and out-of-sample pleasantness ratings given by a tenth group of western urban participants. Taken together, this shows human olfactory perception is strongly constrained by universal principles.

Förmågan att anpassa sina yttranden efter samtalspartnerns behov är mindre utvecklad hos barn än hos vuxna. Beteendet att ackommodera lyssnaren vid yttrandeformulering benämns ofta som mottargaranpassning. Mottagaranpassning i konversation har föreslagits vara avhängig exekutiva funktioner, såsom arbetsminne och kognitiv flexibilitet. Med tanke på att ungdomsåren är en viktig period för social och kognitiv mognad har anmärkningsvärt lite forskning genomförts på utvecklingen av mottagaranpassning under ungdomsåren. Målet med studien var att undersöka utvecklingen av mottagaranpassning i ungdomsåren och testa dess eventuella avhängighet av exekutiva funktioner. Deltagare (11–12 och 15–16 år) genomförde två tester som mätte (1) förmågan att anpassa referentiella yttranden till lyssnares förmodade omvärldskunskap och (2) exekutiva funktioner. Resultaten indikerar att förmågan att anpassa sina yttranden efter lyssnares förmodade omvärldskunskap utvecklas betydligt under ungdomsåren. Trots att den äldre åldersgruppen presterade bättre på testet som mätte exekutiva funktioner, predicerade inte exekutiva funktioner förmågan att mottagaranpassa referentiella yttranden. Framtida studier bör undersöka huruvida förmågan att tillskriva kunskapstillstånd till andra effektiviseras under ungdomsåren, och således främjar utvecklingen av mottagaranpassning.

Konversation är en central aspekt av språkanvändning. Något som kännetecknar konversation är turtagning, där samtalsdeltagare snabbt och utan ansträngning växlar mellan lyssnar- och talarroller. Eftersom tidigare neurolingvistiska studier huvudsakligen har undersökt språkförståelse i isolerade kontexter så är förståelsen för de underliggande neurokognitiva funktionerna som möjliggör mänsklig konversation fortfarande liten. Den här studien ämnade att undersöka vilka hjärnregioner som aktiveras under turtagning, språkproduktion och språkförståelse, genom att använda data från funktionell magnetresonanstomografi (fMRT), när deltagare (N = 23) ingick i samtal med en samtalspartner utanför skannern. Turinitieringar associerades med regioner (mediala prefrontala cortex och mellersta frontala gyrusen) utanför det klassiska språknätverket. Det här indikerar att koordinering av talarbyte involverar pragmatiska processer, vilka fått relativt lite uppmärksamhet i tidigare modeller för planering av språkproduktion. Produktion och förståelse aktiverade områden inom språknätverket, men aktivering i den inferiora frontala gyrusen var huvudsakligen associerad med produktion. En möjlig tolkning av det fyndet är att produktion och förståelse i konversation involverar distinkta processer på syntaktisk nivå. Aktivering i det fusiforma ansiktsområdet var huvudsakligen relaterad till förståelse, vilket indikerar att lyssnare använder information i deras samtalspartners ansiktsuttryck medan de tolkar ett yttrande.

INTRODUCTION: Conversation is the most ubiquitous form of language use. A hallmark of conversation is turn-taking, in which speakers rapidly alternate between speaker and listener roles without conscious effort, while simultaneously planning their upcoming turn. Since previous neurolinguistic studies have mainly investigated single or few linguistic processes in isolated environments that lack resemblance to real-world language use, the neurobiology of turntaking, production, and comprehension during real-time conversation is currently under-explored. In this fMRI investigation, we asked whether turn initiations would activate areas outside the classical perisylvian core language network and whether we would observe differences in activation during conversational production vs. conversational comprehension. METHODS: We utilized a publicly available fMRI dataset in which participants (N = 23) engaged in unscripted conversations via an audio-video link with a confederate outside the scanner. Each conversation (24 per participant) lasted for one minute. Conversational events were defined from the participant’s perspective. These events included turn initiations, defined as a 600 ms time window whose offset coincided with the onset of the participant’s turn. The duration of turn initiations was based on the reported minimum latency of speech preparation. The other events investigated in this study were production (defined as participant speech), and comprehension (defined as confederate speech). RESULTS: Turn initiations were associated with frontal regions outside of the classical perisylvian core language network. One cluster (2796 voxels, significant with FWE-correction used throughout) was observed in the medial prefrontal cortex bilaterally, spanning from the dorsal portion to the most ventral anterior cingulate cortex. Activation during turn initiations was also observed in the left middle frontal gyrus. Furthermore, both production and comprehension during conversation were associated with core language regions in the bilateral temporal lobes, but activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) was only present for production. Moreover, larger parts of the occipital cortex, and specifically the fusiform face area, were activated in comprehension than in production. DISCUSSION: We suggest that the observed frontal activation during turn initiations reflects sociopragmatic processes involved in intention processing and attentional control – processes that have not previously been localized outside the core perisylvian language network but have been hypothesized to play a crucial role in speech preparation during interaction. Furthermore, we interpret the fusiform face area activation during comprehension as an indication that listeners are aided by their interlocutor’s facial gestures specifically when comprehending speech input during real-time conversation. Finally, LIFG activation in conversational production but not comprehension may reflect the syntactic and semantic heuristics at play in conversational comprehension, minimizing the need for a full syntactic parse. The utilization of such heuristics may be a possible prerequisite for consistently meeting the expectations of timing in turn-taking.

A key question in neurolinguistics is whether language production and comprehension share neural infrastructure, but this question has not been addressed in the context of actual conversation. We utilized a public fMRI dataset where participants (N=24) engaged in unscripted conversations with a confederate outside the scanner via an audio-video link. We provide evidence indicating that production and comprehension, in a conversational setting, diverge with respect to how they modulate the recruitment of regions in the left-lateralized perisylvian language network. Activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus was stronger in production than in comprehension. Compared to production, comprehension showed stronger recruitment of the left anterior middle temporal gyrus and superior temporal sulcus, but this was not the case for the posterior aspect of these loci. Although our results are reminiscent of the classic Broca-Wernicke model, the anterior temporal activation is a notable difference from that model. This is one of the findings which may be a consequence of the conversational setting, another being that conversational production activated what we interpret as higher-level socio-pragmatic processes. In conclusion, we present evidence supporting that the above-mentioned frontal vs temporal regions in the language network are functionally segregated during conversation.

When participating in dialogue, speakers design their utterances to accommodate the individual needs of listeners (Bentz, et al., in prep). This feature is known as audience design (Clark & Murphy, 1982). Although audience design is central to conventional conversation, it is not known at which age speakers begin taking into account the world knowledge/frame of reference of their interlocutors. Indications from recent studies suggest that albeit preschool and first grade children engage in basic forms of perspective taking (Nadig & Sedivy, 2002), they fail to adapt their utterances in accordance with listener-specific needs in reference production (Pagmar, et al., in prep). Adult participants do however adapt their utterances, and individual differences in the adult population were not dependent on cognitive control function (Bentz, et al., in prep). The dependence on cognitive control function, e.g. switching, may be hypothesized to be greater in children. The current study aims to test the referential production of two age groups; early and mid adolescents (11;0-12;11 and 15;0-16;11), with the purpose of tracing the development of the ability to use information regarding listener-perspective during on-line referential production, and test its relation to cognitive control. The paradigm builds further on the well-established Director’s task but does not require the participants to take the visual perspective of the listener. Instead, participants are presented with a set of pictures portraying referents well-known to them, e.g. popular cartoon characters, hosts of children’s tv-shows, etc. Knowledge of the referents are controlled through post-test surveys. Furthermore, they are asked to direct listeners of two distinct groups, small children and elders, into choosing the target referent. Participants who take the frame of reference of addressees into consideration are expected to adopt different strategies when addressing the different groups, i.e., increase informativeness when denoting referents assumed to be unknown to the listener vs using less informative referential expressions (such as proper names) when denoting referents judged to be known to the listener. Cognitive control/executive function is assessed using the Wisconsin card sorting task. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive costs of switching strategies and the Gricean maxim of quantity.

The ability to adapt utterances to the world knowledge of one’s addressee is undeniably ubiquitous in human social cognition, but its development and association with other cognitive mechanisms during adolescence have not been studied. In an online production task, we measured the ability of children entering adolescence (ages 11–12, M= 11.8, 𝑁=29,17girlsN=29, 17 girls) and adolescents (ages 15–16, M = 15.9, 𝑁=29,17girlsN=29, 17 girls) to tailor referential expressions in accordance with the inferred world knowledge of their addressee—an ability we refer to as world knowledge-based audience design (AD). A post-test survey showed that both age groups held similar assumptions about the addressees’ knowledge of referents, but the younger age group did not consistently adapt their utterances in accordance with these assumptions during online production, resulting in a significantly improved AD behaviour across age groups. We also investigated the reliance of AD on executive functions (EF). Executive functioning (as reflected by performance on the Wisconsin card sorting task) increased significantly with age, but did not explain the age-related increase in AD performance. We thus provide evidence in support of an adolescent development of world knowledge-based AD over and above development of EF.

Interest is surging around the ”next-word-predictability” task that allowed large language models to reach their current capacity. It is sometimes claimed that prediction is enough to model language production. We set out to study predictability in an interactive setting. The current fMRI study used the information-theoretic measure of surprisal – the negative log-probability of a word occurring given the preceding linguistic context, estimated by a pre-trained language model (GPT-2). Surprisal has been shown to correlate with bottom-up processing located in the bilateral middle and superior temporal gyri (MTG/STG) during narrative comprehension (Willems et al., 2016). Still, surprisal has never been used to investigate conversational comprehension or any kind of language production. We hypothesized that previous results on surprisal in narrative comprehension would be replicated with conversational comprehension and that next-word- predictability would not encompass language production processes. We utilized a publicly available fMRI dataset in which participants (N=24) engaged in unscripted conversations (12 min/participant) via an audio- video link with a confederate outside the scanner. The conversational events Production, Comprehension, and Silence were modeled in a whole-brain analysis. Two parametric modulations of production and comprehension were added: (1) log-transformed context-independent word frequency (control regressor) and (2) surprisal. Production-surprisal and Comprehension-surprisal were respectively contrasted against the implicit baseline. These contrasts were compared with the contrasts Production and Comprehension vs implicit baseline. If surprisal merely indexed part of the activity in the latter, broader contrasts, this provides a handle on production and comprehension processes beyond next-word-predictability. For surprisal in conversational production, we observed statistically signi�cant clusters in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), the medial frontal gyrus, and the motor cortex. Importantly, Production vs implicit baseline showed bilateral STG activation while STG was not parametrically modulated by surprisal. Moreover, the bilateral MTG/STG were the only clusters active for Comprehension vs implicit baseline and they were also modulated by surprisal. For comprehension, we thus replicated the previous narrative comprehension study (Willems et al.,2016), showing that unpredictable words activate the bilateral MTG/STG also in conversational settings. Next- word-predictability is thus so far a good model for conversational comprehension. For production, however, the next-word-predictability task helped to hone in on what is sometimes considered core production machinery in LIFG. Several functional interpretations of the STG recruitment during production are possible (such as monitoring for speech errors), but the current results point in the direction of two important conclusions: (1) a functional division of the frontal and temporal cortices during production, where the frontal component is prediction-related, and (2) that language processing during production is more than prediction, at least at the word-level. We provide a functional handle on such extra-predictive processes.

A key question in research on the neurobiology of language is to which extent the language production and comprehension systems share neural infrastructure, but this question has not been addressed in the context of conversation. We utilized a public fMRI dataset where 24 participants engaged in unscripted conversations with a confederate outside the scanner, via an audio-video link. We provide evidence indicating that the two systems share neural infrastructure in the left-lateralized perisylvian language network, but diverge regarding the level of activation in regions within the network. Activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus was stronger in production compared to comprehension, while comprehension showed stronger recruitment of the left anterior middle temporal gyrus and superior temporal sulcus, compared to production. Although our results are reminiscent of the classical Broca–Wernicke model, the anterior (rather than posterior) temporal activation is a notable difference from that model. This is one of the findings that may be a consequence of the conversational setting, another being that conversational production activated what we interpret as higher-level socio-pragmatic processes. In conclusion, we present evidence for partial overlap and functional asymmetry of the neural infrastructure of production and comprehension, in the above-mentioned frontal vs temporal regions during conversation.

This thesis investigates the syntactic features, functions, and diachrony of a complex predicate called ‘the inceptive construction’ which is based on a grammaticalised use of the converbs ‘get up’, ‘pick up’, ‘grasp’, and ‘take’. The languages under investigation are Amharic, Argobba, Harari, Zay, and Selt’i. The data collection that was analized consists of elicitations, audio recordings, and written texts. The analysis shows that the converbs identify the initial phase of the event encoded by a following verb. The converbs are further associated with nuances like volition, surprise, and emphasis. The rise of such interpretations as surprise and emphasis appears to depend mainly on context, while volition is inherent to the construction. The languages generally do not show much variation. However, there is a notable difference in some co-occurrence restrictions. Moreover, there is a difference in the presence/absence of certain converbs mainly in Harari and Zay, which is clearly a matter of preference between individual consultants. Regarding the origin of the inceptive construction, collocation, frequency, and speakers’ conception of the action of the converbs are possible factors that lead the verbs to grammaticalize into markers of the inception phase. Only some traces of the construction are found in an old Amharic text from the 15^th century.

The converb is the main verb form used in the inceptive construction, although other verb forms are allowed which may take a coordinating conjunction (in the cases of Amharic and Argobba) and an iterative/simultaneity marker (‘while’). The Amharic conjunction =nna ‘and’ links the light verb with the reference verb in the inceptive construction, but is also used in causal(purposive) and conditional coordination. The criteria of tense iconicity and variable positions indicate that =nna is a coordinating conjunction in the former, but a subordinator in the latter. Lastly, the converb in Amharic is shown to become insubordinated, i.e. the main verb or auxiliary it depends on gets ellipsed over time and it comes to function as a main verb. An insubordinated converb is used in the expression of surprise/exclamation, interrogation, rhetorical questioning, wishing, and the resultative/perfective. The point is it is still possible to use the notion of ‘converb’ in the inceptive construction as this is a separate historical process. 

Den här studien utforskar de två japanska temporala konnektorerna mae ni och nai uchi ni som uttrycker begreppet ’innan.’ Det har hävdats att dessa skiljer sig i faktiskhet och säkerhet (Kuno, 1973) och på pragmatiska grunder i form av talarattityder (Hasegawa, 2015). Den här studien använder sig av korpusen The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese för att undersöka sannfärdigheten i tidigare fynd och ämnar att fördjupa förståelsen om vad som skiljer dessa temporala konnektorer. Studien finner att de inte skiljer sig inom varken faktiskhet eller säkerhet utan istället i tendenser i lexikal aspekt och predikatklasser, samt förmågan att uttrycka minimala skalor liknande negativa Horn-skalor i fallet av nai uchi ni. Eftersom dessa är mer informativa ju mindre de är förklarar detta även de pragmatiska aspekter som identifierats i tidigare forskning.

Språken som talas på norra Halmahera och omkringliggande småöar utgör en grupp av besläktade ’papuanska’ språk som kallas Nord-Halmahera-språk. De ingår också, ihop med andra papuanska och austronesiska språk, i ett antaget sprachbund som kallas för Östra Nusantara. Neutrum-genus ochnumeriska klassificerare har båda föreslagits karakterisera sprachbundet. Således kan en undersökning av substantivklassificering från ett historiskt och typologiskt perspektiv i Nord-Halmahera-språken, som är ämnet för den här studien, vara av intresse för karakteriseringen av sprachbundet. Metoden för undersökningen är att söka efter information för sju språk i existerande grammatiska beskrivningar, kompletterat med information som kan fås från publicerade texter på språken. Det förekommer huvudsakligen två klassificeringssystem i alla de undersökta språken: genus och numeriska klassificerare. Räkneorden innehåller ofta fossiliserade prefix. Bland de numeriska klassificerarna ärmännisko-klassificerarna speciella genom sitt ursprung i pronominella undergoer-prefix och den begränsade användnings-möjligheten i vissa språk. Utom i västmakianska, förekommer en allmän klassificerare och en klassificerare för träd, och sekundärt för hus, i alla språk. En klassificerare för två-dimensionella objekt är också ganska vanlig. Övriga klassificerare används oftast med ett mycket begränsat antal substantiv.

Rembong-Wangka är ett austronesiskt språk, som tillsammans med andra litet beskrivna språk, hör till den manggaraiiska undergruppen av austronesiska. Ett mål är att presentera information om dem, och andra språk i området, från ofta svåråtkomliga källor, bl a arkivmaterial, och information insamlat av författaren på Flores. En uppskattning av antalet talare av Rembong-Wangka, dialekter och en karta över boplatser där språket talas, ges. Det andra målet är att beskriva adnominala ägandekonstruktioner, och det tredje att diskutera etymologier till morfologiska element i dessa konstruktioner. Materialet för att besvara dessa frågor samlades under två korta fältstudier. Skrivna och glosserade texter i en Rembong-Wangka-korpus konstruerad av författaren användes, och analyserades i programmet FLEx.

I pronominellt ägande kan ägaren uttryckas med pronominella enklitikor eller med oblika personliga pronomen. Den andra av dessa två strategier är mer emfatisk. Icke-pronominellt ägande kan uttryckas med juxtaposition eller med en ägandekonstruktionsmarkör (PCM). Juxtaposition används mestadels för icke-prototypiskt ägande eller ägandeliknande relationer och PCM för huvudsakligen prototypiska ägarerelationer. De oblika pronominas etymologi diskuteras, och också möjliga etymologiska samband mellan den centralflorinesiska PCMer och olika ord i Rembong-Wangka.