In this paper we describe and evaluate a tool for paradigm induction and lexicon extraction that has been applied to Old Swedish. The tool is semi-supervised and uses a small seed lexicon and unannotated corpora to derive full inflection tables for input lemmata. In the work presented here, the tool has been modified to deal with the rich spelling variation found in Old Swedish texts. We also present some initial experiments, which are the first steps towards creating a large-scale morphology for Old Swedish.

Språkbanken, the Swedish Language Bank, is a language technology research unit at the Department of Swedish, University of Gothenburg. We develop language resources – such as corpora, lexical resources, and analytical tools – for all variants of Swedish, from Old Swedish laws to present-day social media. Historical texts offer exciting theoretical and methodological challenges for language technology because they often defy the assumption inherent in most automatic analysis tools that the texts contain a standardized written language. In this article, we describe our ongoing work on the development of annotated historical corpora, as well as our efforts on linking various resources (both corpora and lexical resources). This research advances the state of the art of language technology as well as enables new research for scholars in other disciplines.

In this chapter we present the diachronic dimension of Swedish FrameNet++. We describe the historical lexical resources currently available for Swedish, linked to the Contemporary Swedish lexicon Saldo. We present a case study of how interlinking the dictionaries simultaneously allows us to study lexical change. We also present a method of linking text words to lexicon entries, facilitating interactive exploration of historical texts. Diachronical language resources present both a high-variation challenge from a wider language technology perspective, and an interesting object of linguistic study. While a number of improvements of the parts of the diachronic lexical macroresource are still needed, this resource is invaluable for analysing and accessing historical texts, as well as for both synchronic historical and diachronic lexical studies.

This paper describes past, ongoing and planned work on the collection and transcription of spoken language samples for all the South African official languages and as part of this the training of researchers in corpus linguistic research skills. More specifically the work has involved (and still involves) establishing an international corpus linguistic network linked to a network hub at a UNISA website and the development of research tools, a corpus research guide and workbook for multimodal communication and spoken language corpus research. As an example of the work we are doing and hope to do more of in the future, we present a small pilot study of the influence of English and Afrikaans on the 100 most frequent words in spoken Xhosa as this is evidenced in the corpus of spoken interaction we have gathered so far. Other planned work, besides work on spoken language phenomena, involves comparison of spoken and written language and work on communicative body movements (gestures) and their relation to speech.

This paper concerns the different ways in which hesitation, and hesitation related phenomena like uncertainty, doubt and other phenomena where lack of knowledge is involved are expressed in different cultures. The paper focuses especially on shoulder shrugging as a signal of hesitation or uncertainty, and starts from the observation that shoulder shrugging has different interpretations depending on the interlocutor’s cultural background. It is not commonly used in Eastern cultures while in Western cultures it is a sign of uncertainty and ignorance. The paper reports a small study on the differences in interpretation of a particular video tape gesture, and draws some preliminary conclusions of how this affects intercultural communication between human interlocutors and between humans and conversational agents.

The development of grammatical markers has been described from several theoretical perspectives over the last decade: Grammaticalization Theory (Hopper & Traugott 2003, Heine, Claudi & Hunnemeyer (1991), the Minimalist Program (Roberts & Roussou 2003, van Gelderen 2004), and Lexical-Functional Grammar (Vincent 2001), see also the overview in (Borjars & Vincent 2010). It has recently been addressed in Construction Grammar, where it is argued that a shift towards a constructional perspective on change may yield new insights into the workings of grammaticalization (Bergs & Diewald 2008, Hoffmann & Trousdale 2013, Traugott & Trousdale 2013). This paper should be taken as a contribution to a constructional view on grammaticalization. It is about the rise of the concessive subordinator fast(än) in the history of Swedish occurring in a construction or clause type called UNIVERSAL CONCESSIVE CONDITIONAL (Haspelmath & Köning 1998), in Swedish GENERALISERANDE BISATS (SAG 1999). The Swedish fast , etymologically (and still productively) as an adjective in the meaning ‘steady’, ‘robust’ is used as an intensifier,‘very’, ‘much’, in early Modern Swedish, eventually established as a concessive marker ‘even if’, ‘although’ in the 18th century. The conventionalization of a concessive inference is highly interesting and may be traced back to specific constructions in the 16th and 17th centuries. On the basis of an extensive corpus study, I analyze the critical contexts and discuss the development as constructional change rather than lexical change, arguing that a remapping between form and function takes place in concessive conditional constructions due to processes of inferencing and mismatch.

This article studies the pseudo-coordination [gå ‘go/walk’ och ‘and’ V]. The construction has several meanings and it also has subordination counterparts in Modern Swedish, unlike most Swedish pseudo-coordinations. Our diachronic study shows that [gå och V] cannot readily be reduced to the verbs in isolation and that synchronic lexicocentric perspectives based on syntactic (re)configurations cannot capture the constructional meaning such as the assumed inference of ‘surprise’ or ’unexpectedness’. We argue that a detailed analysis of the historical development makes the picture clearer.

In the development of [gå och V], item-based analogy continuously facilitates new verbs in the V slot. At a certain stage, there is a mismatch between the agentivity of the construction and the non-agentivity of events denoted by the second verb. This mismatch is resolved by the override principle that forces non-agentive verbs to be interpreted agentively and promote a more abstract and lexicalized version of the construction. The exemplar-based view to constructions proposed by Bybee (2010, 2013) seems favorable, since frequent exemplars of [gå och V] allow for redundant or marginal features to serve as the model for novel expansions of the construction.

This article studies the pseudo-coordination [ga 'go/walk och 'and' V]. The construction has several meanings and it also has subordination counterparts in Modern Swedish, unlike most Swedish pseudo-coordinations. Our diachronic study shows that [ga och V] cannot readily be reduced to the verbs in isolation and that synchronic lexicocentric perspectives based on syntactic (re)configurations cannot capture the constructional meaning such as the assumed inference of 'surprise' or 'unexpectedness. We argue that a detailed analysis of the historical development makes the picture clearer. In the development of [ga och V], item-based analogy continuously facilitates new verbs in the V slot. At a certain stage, there is a mismatch between the agentivity of the construction and the non-agentivity of events denoted by the second verb. This mismatch is resolved by the override principle that forces non-agentive verbs to be interpreted agentively and promote a more abstract and lexicalized version of the construction. The exemplar-based view to constructions proposed by Bybee (2010, 2013) seems favorable, since frequent exemplars of [ga och V] allow for redundant or marginal features to serve as the model for novel expansions of the construction.

Digitala verktyg och skrivarenor är av stort intresse för läs- och skrivforskning idag, särskilt inom den gren som kommit att benämnas New Literacies. Nya arenor för läsning och skrivande medför ett nytt sätt att tänka, handla och skapa mening, vilket innebär att bloggar, nätgemenskaper och wikis öppnar vägen till en omdefiniering av undervisning och lärande. Många studier visar dock att klassrumsarbete präglas av traditionella skrivuppgifter där lärare snarast försöker att dressera in digitala verktyg i en gammal diskurs. I denna artikel ges en översikt över teoretiska perspektiv på läsning och skrivande i relation till vår tids textvärldar. Jag argumenterar för att det är hög tid för nytänkande både inom undervisning och forskning; barn och ungas skriftspråkliga vanor och erfarenheter bör studeras närmare och integreras i skolans dominerande skriftspråkliga aktiviteter. 

This article studies a special type of verbal coordination in Swedish, pseudocoordination, which involves two verbs or verb phrases typically combined with och ‘and’. Although it consists of two verbs with a conjunction between them, pseudocoordination in many ways behaves like a subordinating complex-predicate construction. In the literature, pseudocoordination is treated more or less explicitly as a unitary phenomenon, but previous diachronic studies of some types of pseudocoordination point in slightly different directions regarding the origin of pseudocoordinations with different first verbs. It has been claimed that they originate in (canonical) verbal coordinations, but it has also been claimed that they are originally hypotactic structures in which the conjunction is a covert infinitival marker (both are typically pronounced in the same way today). To the best of our knowledge, the gå och V ‘walk/go and V’ construction has not previously been studied both diachronically and corpus-based. By examining gå och V in historical corpora, we therefore add to the historical knowledge of pseudocoordination with gå in Swedish. The gå och V construction is particularly interesting since it has multiple meanings and since it, unlike the bulk of Swedish pseudocoordinations, also has subordination counterparts in Modern Swedish.

Grammaticalization research has increasingly highlighted the notion of constructions in the last decade. In the wake of this heightened interest, efforts have been made in grammaticalization research to more precisely articulate the largely pretheoretical notion of construction in the theoretical framework of construction grammar. As such, grammaticalization research increasingly interacts and converges with the emerging field of diachronic construction grammar. This volume brings together articles that are situated at the intersection of grammaticalization research and diachronic construction grammar. All articles share an interest in integrating insights from grammaticalization research and construction grammar in order to advance our understanding of empirical cases of grammaticalization. Constructions at various levels of abstractness are investigated, both in well-documented languages, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Spanish, German, Norwegian and English, and in less-described languages, such as Manchu and Mongolian.

Grammaticalization research has increasingly highlighted the notion of constructions in the last decade. In the wake of this heightened interest, efforts have been made in grammaticalization research to more precisely articulate the largely pretheoretical notion of construction in the theoretical framework of construction grammar. As such, grammaticalization research increasingly interacts and converges with the emerging field of diachronic construction grammar. This volume brings together articles that are situated at the intersection of grammaticalization research and diachronic construction grammar. All articles share an interest in integrating insights from grammaticalization research and construction grammar in order to advance our understanding of empirical cases of grammaticalization. Constructions at various levels of abstractness are investigated, both in well-documented languages, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Spanish, German, Norwegian and English, and in less-described languages, such as Manchu and Mongolian.

Based on real world user demands, we demonstrate how animated visualisation of evolving text corpora displays the underlying dynamics of semantic content. To interpret the results, one needs a dynamic theory of word meaning. We suggest that conceptual dynamics as the interaction between kinds of intellectual, emotional etc. content, and language, is key for such a theory. We demonstrate our methodology by two-way seriation which is a popular technique to analyse groups of similar instances and their features, as well as the connections between the groups themselves. The two-way seriated data may be visualised as a two-dimensional heat map or as a three-dimensional landscape where colour codes or height correspond to the values in the matrix. In this paper we focus on two-way seriation of sparse data in the Reuters-21568 test collection. To achieve a meaningful visualisation thereof we introduce a compactly supported convolution kernel similar to filter kernels used in image reconstruction and geostatistics. This filter populates the high-dimensional sparse space with values that interpolate nearby elements, and provides insight into the clustering structure. We also extend two-way seriation to deal with online updates of both the row and column spaces, and, combined with the convolution kernel, demonstrate a three-dimensional visualisation of dynamics.

We offer a few general considerations, with theoretical overtones, working toward the definition and generation of a geometric language for practical purposes, prominently for information retrieval. This chapter is a non-mathematical introduction to the mathematical modelling of meaning of both words and sentences, outlining already existing components of such an endeavour, and hinting at directions of synthesis.

As is the case with so many first drafts, some of Beckett's manuscripts still contain gaps: zones in the text that are either left completely blank, or are otherwise indicated to be filled in at a later stage in the writing process. Such gaps are interesting milestones for any genetic critic, because they may indicate a hesitation on the author’s part during the writing process: a name not yet decided on, a word or phrase that needs fine-tuning, etc. In Beckett’s case, these gaps are especially significant, because they feature so prominently in his published works as well: from the startling “(Hiatus in MS.)” in his early novel Watt to the phrase “and here a word he could not catch” in his last prose text Stirrings Still, narrative pauses, interruptions, and false starts have undoubtedly become a leitmotif throughout Beckett’s oeuvre. Encoding Beckett’s own hiatuses for a digital edition of his manuscripts, however, poses a problem. While the TEI’s <gap> element may intuitively seem like the perfect match, the description of the <space> element is in fact more closely related to the textual feature we wish to encode. And although these gaps/spaces will invariably differ in appearance (a blank space; an indented string of characters; a symbol of some kind; etc.) and motivation (inadequacy; indecisiveness; etc.), the TEI does not yet allow either of these elements to be classified further through the @type attribute. Using the manuscripts of Beckett’s Malone meurt as a case study, this paper makes a case for the TEI’s <space> element to be added to the att.typed class (a feature request for which was approved while writing this paper), and makes a first attempt at a typology of Beckett's use of hiatuses in his manuscripts.

Tidigare forskning framhåller behovet av att utveckla samverkan mellan studiehandledare och lärare, eftersom samverkan avgör studiehandledningens kvalitet. Denna studie syftar till att genom studiehandledares utsagor bidra med kunskap om hur deras fungerande samverkan med lärare konkret kommer till uttryck. Studien baseras på semistrukturerade intervjuer med åtta studiehandledare. Med hjälp av kvalitativ innehållsanalys undersöks vad studiehandledarna säger att de och deras lärarkollegor återkommande gör när de samverkar. För att fördjupa analysen av det handlingsutrymme som studiehandledare möter i sin samverkan med lärare används begreppen agency (Ahearn, 2001) och ontologisk trygghet (Giddens, 1979). I resultatet framkommer att samskapande rutiner förekommer i praktikerna planering, utförande i interaktion med elever, dokumentation och uppföljning och samtal om elevens mående. Dessutom framgår hur studiehandledarna hanterar situationer när lärarna inte gör vad de förväntas göra. Resultaten visar att fungerande samverkan möjliggörs genom rutinisering som i sin tur ger plats för studiehandledares agency, såväl som deras tillgång till en arbetslivsgemenskap.

Many parsers use a part-of-speech tagger as a first step in parsing. The accuracy of the tagger naturally affects the performance of the parser. In this experiment, we revise 1500+ proposed errors in SUC 2.0 that were mainly found during work with schema parsing, and evaluate tagger instances trained on the revised corpus. The revisions turned out to be beneficial also for the taggers.

This article is a corpus-based study of the semantics of pseudocoordination with posture verbs meaning ‘lie’, ‘sit’, and ‘stand’ in the Mainland Scandinavian languages (i.e. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish). An example is Danish Jeg sidder og læser ‘I am reading’, literally ‘I sit and read’. While many previous studies of posture verb pseudocoordination have focused on the semantic bleaching and grammaticalization of posture verbs, recent research has shown that such developments have so far been very limited and have argued that a proper understanding of posture verb pseudocoordination needs to be sought in the context of pseudocoordination in general, taking into account the role of location. Drawing on frame semantics, the present study shows how the notion of ‘facilitation’ can be applied to shed light on the role of posture: stability of posture at a location for a certain duration facilitates the activity referred to with the last part of the coordination. Based on large data sets, distinctive collexemes are found for posture verbs, i.e. verb collocations showing how each posture facilitates a distinct set of activities. Further, a few collexemes revealing posture verb bleaching are discovered, showing how aspectual grammaticalization may develop.

Reading, even when silent and individual, is a social phenomenon and has often been studied as such. Complementary to this view, research has begun to explore how reading is embodied beyond simply being ‘wired’ in the brain. This article brings the social and embodied perspectives together in a very literal sense. Reporting a qualitative study of reading practices across student focus groups from six European countries, it identifies an underexplored factor in reading behaviour and experience. This factor is the sheer physical presence, and concurrent activity, of other people in the environment where one engages in individual silent reading. The primary goal of the study was to explore the role and possible associations of a number of variables (text type, purpose, device) in selecting generic (e.g. indoors vs outdoors) as well as specific (e.g. home vs library) reading environments. Across all six samples included in the study, participants spontaneously attested to varied, and partly surprising, forms of sensitivity to company and social space in their daily efforts to align body with mind for reading. The article reports these emergent trends and discusses their potential implications for research and practice.

This thesis presents a cognitive questionnaire-based study on the interpretation of compounds. The analysis is based on the interpretations from 190 Swedish-speaking students in upper secondary schools. The overall aim is to test the assumption of usage-based approaches that linguistic phenomena become entrenched in the mind of the speaker as a result of repetition. To be able to analyse such entrenchment effects both established compounds and novel compounds with many potential meanings are included, and interpretations from speakers with various exposure time to Swedish (L1 and L2 speakers) are analysed. The result of this study indicates that the meaning potentials of compounds are evaluated only when necessary. If the compound is entrenched as a unit, no analysis is needed. If the compound is unfamiliar to the language user, he/she makes use of an entrenched linguistic template, i.e. a specific (similar) compound or a low-level or higher-level schema, as an analogy base in the interpretation. This study confirms that the frequency of the compound and the user’s exposure time to Swedish are factors of great impact: frequent compounds result in more concordant interpretations than less frequent ones, and L1 speakers are more concordant in their interpretations than L2 speakers. The discrepancy between the speaker groups (L1 and L2) concerning established compounds is a result of entrenchment differences of these specific compounds (due to various exposure time to Swedish), whereas the discrepancy concerning the interpretation of novel compounds reflects various degrees of entrenchment of linguistic templates that can serve as analogy bases. This study further indicates that the right-headedness pattern is not as established for Swedish compounds as previously assumed. This is especially true for adjectival compounds.

Denna uppsats handlar om hur bliva successivt i forn- och nysvenskan tränger tillbaka varda, i takt med att bliva får nya användningsområden. Utöver ursprungsbetydelsen, ’stanna kvar, förbli’, finns redan i fornsvenskan exempel på en användning där bliva i konstruktion med predikativ (t.ex. bliva frisk) anger förändring och betyder ’övergå till att vara, varda’. Från fornsvenskans sista decennier påträffas belägg på bliva i en ny funktion: som passivbildande hjälpverb, vid sidan av varda. I uppsatsen ifrågasätts den traditionella förklaringsmodellen, enligt vilken bliva i de nya funktionerna är att betrakta som ett betydelselån från medellågtyska bliven med motsvarande funktioner. Resultatet av min granskning visar att bliven i betydelsen ’övergå till att vara, varda’ inte tycks ha varit fullt produktivt i den medeltida lågtyskan, utan i huvudsak använts i en lexikaliserad verbfras: dot bliven – och att bliven som passivbildande hjälpverb tycks ha varit en ytterst marginell företeelse i medellågtyskan, vid sidan av hjälpverbet werden. Som en alternativ förklaring anför jag att den nya betydelsen ’varda’ hos bliva kan ha uppkommit genom tvetydiga exempel, t.ex. de många fornsvenska beläggen på bliva död, där det är semantiskt rimligt att tolka in en förändring: ’övergå till att vara död’, i stället för ’stanna kvar, varande död’ – och jag framför hypotesen att det är denna verbfras som lånats in från lågtyskan, jfr dot bliven. När verbfrasen bliva död väl fått betydelsen ’övergå till att vara död’, kan man tänka sig en semantisk generalisering, genom vilken bliva allmänt ges tolkningsmöjligheten ’övergå till att vara’ i konstruktion med predikativ. Varda och bliva blir då i många fall utbytbara som huvudverb. I nästa steg, för att upprätthålla symmetrin i systemet, kan man tänka sig ytterligare en generalisering, genom vilken bliva blir ett fullgott alternativ till varda också i funktionen som hjälpverb.

Framtidens Lexin – forskningsöversikt sammanställer forskningsrön inom lexikografi och flerspråkighet med inriktning mot inlärningsordböcker. Utifrån forskningsöversikten ges rekommendationer om hur en framtida lexikografisk resurs bör utformas för den som är nybörjare och lär sig svenska som ett andraspråk. Rapporten är skriven på uppdrag av Språkrådet, Institutet för språk och folkminnen (Isof), och ingår i en större rapport, Framtidens Lexin – målgruppsanpassning och utveckling av framtidens flerspråkiga lexikon. Syftet med denna forskningsöversikt är att undersöka hur väl anpassade för sin målgrupp Lexin (lexikon för invandrare) är i dag, nästan fyrtio år efter att det första lexikonet i serien gavs ut, och att ge rekommendationer om hur Lexin bör utvecklas i framtiden.

This chapter addresses the need for better coverage of semi-general linguistic patterns in (second) language pedagogy, which is currently biased towards general rules on the one hand and concrete expressions on the other. Arguably, this reflects the descriptive resources available: grammars and dictionaries.Hence, we propose that L2 education should benefit from a constructionist approach, which is less restricted to distinct linguistic levels and therefore better suited to handle, in particular, patterns combining lexical and grammatical properties. We review some of the leading Swedish L2 textbooks and study aid materials, and illustrate how they tend to neglect semi-general patterns and fail to capture the productivity and variability of constructions. For future L2 education to achieve better coverage in this regard, access to constructionist descriptive resources should be helpful. As an example of such a resource, we present the Swedish constructicon (SweCcn), an electronic database of Swedish construction descriptions, and discuss its usefulness for developing construction-based teaching materials, as a complement to the grammar and dictionary approach.

This thesis investigates the interrelationship between segmental phonology, prosody and gesture, as well as important factors for language development in individuals with autism spectrum condition (ASC), i.e. precursors. Furthermore, the thesis investigates the effects of an intervention given to two Swedish children (boys) with ASC, who were followed longitudinally over a period of 1-1 1⁄2 years. An intervention, where stimuli (minimal pairs) were gradually introduced, was constructed in order to increase awareness of phonemic contrasts and symbolic representations. The hypothesis, which was based on theories of overlapping networks for language and cognition, was that listening to sounds and watching production of sounds, in minimal pairs could lead to development of sound production, in general, and also to more advanced syllable constructions and use of new words. The idea was that cortical areas, including Broca’s area and areas for speech perception would be stimulated, which possibly could lead to secondary effects on prosodic and gestural development. The results of the thesis are in support of the existence of a cortical mechanism, for example, mirror neurons, which bridge between perception and production of speech. The studies were performed during three periods, which laid the ground for three corpora with video recorded materials. The training sessions took place at a special school for children with ASC, where teachers or a speech and language therapist conducted the sessions. Interviews were performed with the school staff and parents. According to the temporal order of language acquisition, phonological contrastive features were gradually introduced. Pairing the sounds with specific objects allowed for opportunity to train to distinguish meaning, which is a part of first-word-acquisition. All the sessions were video recorded, the corpora gathered and annotated.The first study focused on phonological development, general speech sound production in segments and syllables, phonological contrastive features, feature accuracy and auditory perceptual skills in one of the boys. Results of the study showed both a quantitative and qualitative development of speech sound production regarding the use of new phonological feature types, new syllable constructions and use of new words during the year. The results were significant, when comparing two periods, which suggests that phonological training can stimulate children with ASC to develop language and speech at 5 to 6 years of age. Thus, perception (and production) of phonological processing may not be rejected as a precursor for language development from this study. In this child with ASC, not only was there a delayed speech development but also a deviant one, both concerning segments and syllables, which is in line with previous studies that describe deviant phonological development in ASC. The second study investigated pitch, pitch range and duration in two boys, over duration of a year. Acoustic data were annotated and analysed. Autistic symptoms, such as increased pitch and increased pitch range decreased for the two boys. It was concluded that prosody developed, despite not being trained. Acoustic analyses of prosody may be useful indicators of language development and tools for diagnosis in ASC. In addition, analysis of threshold range is suggested in future studies in analysing prosody in ASC. The third study investigated deictic (declarative and imperative), general accompanying, ritualistic, iconic interactional and silent mouth gestures in one boy with ASC (the same boy as in Study I). The results showed a development of gestures, both deictic and general accompanying. The deictic gestures were contrary to expectations, more often declarative than imperative. Declarative gestures increased during the period, while imperative ones decreased. This study also shows how gestures may accompany speech in a very specific manner by the use of various hand shapes, which accompany syllables. Furthermore, results suggest that speech and gestures are interrelated. In summary, the three studies showed that segmental phonology, prosody and gestures are interrelated. Auditory (visual) perception is suggested to be an important precursor for language development in ASC from this study. Phonological processing is also related to prosody on the word and sentence level, and it may be suggested that training phonology in interaction may improve prosodic development. A finding was that F0 (Fundamental frequency) decreased more than expected in the two children, in relation to the literature on typical F0 development. Another finding was that the gestural development in one of the children showed a very close interrelationship between speech, gestures and the development of indexical functions. Use of both prosody and gestures increased despite not being trained. Furthermore, the two children developed in a similar way during the period of study, and positive development in general suggests that listening to and training with minimal pairs in triadic interaction may be useful for interventions in ASC. 

We investigated prosody in two Swedish boys with autism spectrum condition (ASC) and subjected them individually to a year-long segmental intervention which was analysed using a single-subject experimental design. Acoustic measures were taken for F0 levels, F0 range and duration. The data were evaluated for syllable structure, phrase length and accent 2. Results showed a decrease in augmented F0 levels and an increase in the proportion of utterances within intermediate F0 ranges. The boys developed prosodic patterns more similar to that of typically developing children. In addition, the use of the important Swedish accent 2 increased.

In this single case study with a multiple baseline approach, a five year-old Swedish boy, diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition, and having a bilingual background, was followed weekly for one year. In order to facilitate the acquisition of phonological contrasts and knowledge of symbolic representations, a training package with minimal pairs was gradually introduced. A corpus of the utterances in interaction with teachers and a speech pathologist was collected, transcribed, and analyzed. The results of the study showed a quantitative and qualitative development of sound production involving the use of new phonological feature types, new syllable constructions, and new words during the year. The delayed and deviant speech development, both concerning segments, syllables, and word boundaries in this child, is in line with studies that describe a deviant phonological development in individuals with autism.

Although previous research has addressed the characteristics of debates and argumentation I argue there is a need to expand the framework for analysing the forms of such oral activities, particularly regarding expressions of differences in opinion. Commonly applied analytical tools generally recognize just two forms, antagonistic and deliberative. By operationalising a conceptual set of categories, I show that this is too narrow. A third form (agonistic) can be recognized based on Chantal Mouffe’s theory of democracy and politics, and another form that is oriented to relativism. Thus, I propose an analytical framework with a set of four forms to address the nature of differences of opinion. In addition I provide empirical examples from a variety of contexts to support each form.

his paper presents the multimodal corpora that are being collected and annotated in the Nordic NOMCO project. The corpora will be used to study communicative phenomena such as feedback, turn management and sequencing. They already include video material for Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Estonian, and several social activities are represented. The data will make it possible to verify empirically how gestures (head movements, facial displays, hand gestures and body postures) and speech interact in all the three mentioned aspects of communication. The data are being annotated following the MUMIN annotation scheme, which provides attributes concerning the shape and the communicative functions of head movements, face expressions, body posture and hand gestures. After having described the corpora, the paper discusses how they will be used to study the way feedback is expressed in speech and gestures, and reports results from two pilot studies where we investigated the function of head gestures ― both single and repeated ― in combination with feedback expressions. The annotated corpora will be valuable sources for research on intercultural communication as well as for interaction in the individual languages.

Our system for the CoNLL 2008 shared task uses a set of individual parsers, a set of stand-alone semantic role labellers, and a joint system for parsing and semantic role labelling, all blended together. The system achieved a macro averaged labelled F₁-score of 79.79 (WSJ 80.92, Brown 70.49) for the overall task. The labelled attachment score for syntactic dependencies was 86.63 (WSJ 87.36, Brown 80.77) and the labelled F₁-score for semantic dependencies was 72.94 (WSJ 74.47, Brown 60.18).

Recent decades have seen extensive research on multilingual lexical activity in third language acquisition in oral production and writing. However, much less research has been done regarding the underlying changes in representationover the course of learning and the acquisition of conscious rules as a compensatory mechanism. The interplay between the two represents changes not necessarily noticeable in production. The focus of the present study is on change over the course of learning, departing from the notion that language acquisition is characterised by fluctuating competence (Ecke, 2015).The particular phenomenon, representing a challenge for language learners, that is the main focus of interest in the present study is translation ambiguity (Eddington & Tokowicz, 2013). Translation ambiguity refers to a situation where the meanings of words are different in a speaker’s languages, which has been proposed to increase the learner’s reliance on explicit rules (Jiang, 2002). The present study examined the learning of such words in a third language. More specifically, the present study examined longitudinal data – beginner to advanced fluency in the L3 – from L1 German and L2 English naturalistic learners of L3 Swedish (N=8). All six directions of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) were explored, both in relation to the participants’ conceptualizations of similarity as well as the time it took to make the evaluations. Additionally, the effects of psychotypology and cognitive control were analysed. In the data, forward CLI in the L3 seemed unavoidable during the tested stages of learning and the results corroborate the hypothesis that the participants were dependent on explicit rules in resolving translation ambiguity in the L3. That is, time on task was a reliable predictor of the quantity of CLI. Reverse CLI from the L3 in the L2 and the L1 seemed to primarily manifest at the language level in global inhibition effects. That is, when the proficiency in the L3 increased, not only did the specific items with translation ambiguity take longer to respond to, but the participants became successively slower in all items in the L2 and the L1 in those blocks that contained L3-derived translation ambiguous items. An unexpected effect of avoidance (Schachter, 1974) was found in the L2. A higher perceived similarity (between L1 and L2, as well as L2 and L3) correlated with longer time on task when the L2 (English) was the target language.

It has previously been suggested that there is a need for a more language focused science instruction, especially in linguistically diverse classrooms, where many students are second language learners. But it has also been suggested that teachers may feel uncertainty about how to teach in ways that promote learning of both subject matter and lan- guage. Previous studies have revealed how the language of science, especially the written language of science, is used to create a certain meaning. Research on interventions shows how this knowledge, through a functional metalanguage, can be used successfully. However, few studies explore how teachers in science instruction themselves integrate a language focus in their linguistically diverse classrooms. This ethnographic case study investigates how a teacher, through her planned metalanguage activities, integrated language in her physics classrooms in Year 5. The results reveal that (1) the activities focused on the students’literacy development; (2) the activities sometimes had an integrated language and subject focus and sometimes an isolated lan- guage focus; and (3) the students put a great deal of effort into under- standing how they were to perform the various framed activities. The study has implications for how a language focus can be integrated in subject teaching.