Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T20:22:48.848Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Style-dependent rules for reduction: Mixed-model multiple linear regression analysis of reduction phenomena in Danish news readings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2014

Jan Heegård  and
Jacob Thøgersen
Jan Heegård
Affiliation:
Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 120, DK-2300, Copenhagen S, Denmark. [email protected]
Jacob Thøgersen
Affiliation:
Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 120, DK-2300, Copenhagen S, Denmark. [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

It has been suggested that Danish is a language particularly prone to spoken language reductions in spontaneous speech. Previous studies have shown that reduction phenomena, in Danish and other languages, are rule-governed by e.g. phonological context, word frequency and stress patterns. This paper analyses two reduction phenomena, those occurring in the endings -ede and -te in a genre of spoken Danish which is particularly resistant to reductions, viz. radio news readings. Its first aim is to establish the reduction rules of formal spoken Danish and compare these with the rules of more informal spoken Danish, e.g. sociolinguistic interviews. Reduction of -te is found to follow the same general rules as in spontaneous speech, although reductions are far less frequent in news readings. Reduction of -ede is found to follow rules different from those of spontaneous speech. The second aim is to investigate whether the reduction rules have changed over the 70 years which the data span. It is found that the rules, and thus the style, have indeed changed. The modern rules appear to be simpler and include less complex interaction effects.

Keywords

Danishlanguage change in real timemixed-model multiple linear regression analysisradio news readingsspoken language reductions
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , December 2014 , pp. 325 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Baayen, R. Harald. 2008. Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Maechler, Martin, Bolker, Ben & Walker, Steven. 2014. lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. R package version 1.1-6. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4.Google Scholar
Bell, Allan, Brenier, Jason M., Gregory, Michelle, Girand, Cynthia & Jurafsky, Dan. 2009. Predictability effects on durations of content and function words in conversational English. Journal of Memory and Language 60 (1), 92–111.Google Scholar
Bleses, Dorthe & Basbøll, Hans. 2004. The Danish sound structure-implications for language acquisition in normal and hearing impaired populations. In Schmidt, Erik, Mikkelsen, Ulla, Post, Inge, Simonsen, Jørn Borcher & Fruensgaard, Kirsten (eds.), 20th Danavox 2003 Symposium on Brain, Hearing and Learning, 165–190. Tåstrup: Danavox Jubilee Foundation.Google Scholar
Bleses, Dorthe, Basbøll, Hans & Vach, Werner. 2011. Is Danish difficult to acquire? Evidence from Nordic past tense studies. Language and Cognitive Processes 26 (8), 1193–1231.Google Scholar
Bleses, Dorthe, Vach, Werner, Slott, Malene, Wehberg, Sonja, Thomsen, Pia, Madsen, Thomas O. & Basbøll, Hans. 2008. Early vocabulary development in Danish and other languages: A CDI-based comparison. Journal of Child Language 35, 619–650.Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2014. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program], Version 5.3.39. http://www.praat.org/ (retrieved 7 January 2014).Google Scholar
Bø, Inge. 1978. Ungdom og naboland. En undersøkelse av skolens og fjernsynets betydning for nabospråksforståelsen [Youth and neighbouring country: An investigation of the influence of school and TV on inter-Scandinavian comprehension]. Stavanger: Rogalandsforskning.Google Scholar
Börestam, Ulla. 1987. Dansk–svensk språkgemenskap på undantag. Nordisk språkförståelse i nutidshistoriskt och regionalt perspektiv belyst av svenska gymnasieungdomars förståelse av äldre och nutida talad danska [Danish–Swedish language communion as an exception: Nordic inter-communication in contemporary historical and regional perspective as investigated through Swedish secondary school students’ comprehension of older and contemporary spoken Danish] (FUMS-rapport 137). Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, Institutionen för Nordiska Språk.Google Scholar
Brink, Lars & Lund, Jørn. 1975. Dansk Rigsmål [Danish standard language]. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2007. Style: Language, Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2012. Sociolinguistic change, vernacularisation and British media. Presented at Mediatisation and Sociolinguistic Change, FRIAS, Freiburg, Germany, July 2012.Google Scholar
Crawley, Michael J. 2007. The R Book. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Danske Talesprog [Danish spoken Languages] 12. 2012.Google Scholar
Delsing, Lars-Olof & Åkesson, Katarina Lundin. 2005. Håller språket ihop Norden? En forskningsrapport om ungdomars förståelse av danska, svenska och norska [Does the language hold the Nordic countries together? A research report of mutual comprehension between young Danes, Swedes and Norwegians]. Copenhagen: Nordiska Ministerrådet.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gooskens, Charlotte, van Heuven, Vincent J., van Bezooijen, Renée & Pacilly, Jos J. A.. 2010. Is spoken Danish less intelligible than Swedish? Speech Communication 52, 1022–1037.Google Scholar
Grønnum, Nina. 2003. Why are the Danes so hard to understand? In Jacobsen, Henrik Galberg, Bleses, Dorthe, Madsen, Thomas O. & Thomsen, Pia (eds.), Take Danish, for Instance: Linguistic Studies in Honour of Hans Basbøll Presented on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, 12 July 2003, 119–130. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark.Google Scholar
Grønnum, Nina. 2005. Fonetik og fonologi [Phonetics and phonology]. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.Google Scholar
Grønnum, Nina. 2009. A Danish phonetically annotated speech corpus (DanPASS). Speech Communication 51 (7), 594–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanique, Iris & Ernestus, Mirjam. 2011. Final /t/ reduction in Dutch past-participles: The role of word predictability and morphological decomposability. Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy, 2849–2852. Florence: International Speech Communication Association.Google Scholar
Hawkins, Sarah & Warren, Paul. 1994. Phonetic influences on the intelligibility of conversational speech. Journal of Phonetics 22, 493–511.Google Scholar
Heegård, Jan. 2012. Funktionelt sjusk. Endelserne -te og -ede i dansk [Functional sloppiness: The endings -te and -ede in Danish]. Danske Talesprog 12, 34–61.Google Scholar
Heegård, Jan. 2013a. Functional phonetic reduction? The case of the Danish adverb faktisk (‘actually’). In Heegård & Juel Henrichsen (eds.), 59–78.Google Scholar
Heegård, Jan. 2013b. Morphologization or reduction by context? The -te ending in adjectives and preterite verb forms in standard Copenhagen Danish. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia: International Journal of Linguistics 45.1, 99–124.Google Scholar
Heegård, Jan & Henrichsen, Peter Juel (eds.). 2012. Speech in Action: Proceedings of the 1st SJUSK Conference on Contemporary Speech Habits (Copenhagen Studies in Language 42). Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur Press.Google Scholar
Heegård, Jan & Henrichsen, Peter Juel (eds.). 2013. New Perspectives on Speech in Action: Proceedings of the 2nd SJUSK Conference on Contemporary Speech Habits (Copenhagen Studies in Language 43). Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur Press.Google Scholar
Heegård, Jan & Mortensen, Janus. To appear. Fonetisk reduktion og kommunikative kontraster: Tilfældet faktisk [Phonetic reduction and communicative contrasts: The case of faktisk ‘actually’]. In Birkelund, Merete, Fernandez, Susana S., Jørgensen, Henrik, Kratschmer, Alexandra & Nølke, Henning (eds.), Ny forskning i grammatik 21 [New research in grammar 21]. Odense: Odense University of Southern Denmark, Department of Language and Communication.Google Scholar
Heegård, Jan & Thøgersen, Jacob. 2012. ‘Her er pressens radioavis’ [‘Here is the news [of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation]’]. Danske Talesprog 12, 62–95.Google Scholar
Hilton, Nanna Haug, Schüppert, Anja & Gooskens, Charlotte. 2011. Syllable reduction and articulation rates in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 34 (2), 215–237.Google Scholar
Jensen, Christian & Tøndering, John. 2005. Choosing a scale for measuring perceived prominence. In Trancoso, Isabel (ed.), Proceedings of Interspeech — Eurospeech 2005: 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, September 4–8, 2005, Lisbon, 2385–2388. Lisbon: International Speech Communication Association.Google Scholar
Jensen, Torben Juel & Maegaard, Marie. 2012. Past participles of strong verbs in Jutland Danish: A real-time study of regionalization and standardization. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 35 (2), 169–195.Google Scholar
Johnson, Keith. 2009. Quantitative Methods in Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Katlev, Jan. 1989. En drøftelse af ‘sjuskefonologi’ i moderne københavnsk rigsmål [A discussion of ‘sloppy phonology’ in modern Copenhagen Standard Danish]. In Kunøe, Mette & Larsen, Erik Vive (eds.), 2. Møde om Udforskning af Dansk Sprog [The second meeting on research on the Danish language], 190–198. Århus: Århus University.Google Scholar
Maurud, Øivind. 1976. Nabospråksforståelse i Skandinavia. En undersøkelse om gjensidig forståelse av tale- og skriftspråk i Danmark, Norge og Sverige [Neighbouring language comprehension in Scandinavia: An investigation of mutual comprehension of written and spoken language in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden]. Stockholm: Nordiska rådet.Google Scholar
Mugglestone, Lynda. 2007. Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pharao, Nicolai. 2010a. Consonant Reduction in Copenhagen Danish. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Pharao, Nicolai. 2010b. Ordbrug og udtaleforandringer [Word usage and pronunciation change]. NyS (Nydanske Sprogstudier) 39, 137–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pharao, Nicolai. 2012. Lukkelydsreduktioner i dansk [Stop reductions in Danish]. Danske Talesprog 12, 110–125.Google Scholar
R Core Team (2014). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL http://www.R-project.org/.Google Scholar
Schachtenhaufen, Ruben. 2007. Realiseringen af schwa i spontan dansk tale [The realization of schwa in spontaneous Danish speech]. MA thesis, University of Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Schachtenhaufen, Ruben. 2010a. Looking for lost syllables in Danish spontaneous speech. In Henrichsen, Peter Juel (ed.), Linguistic Theory and Raw Sound (Copenhagen Studies in Language 40), 61–85. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur.Google Scholar
Schachtenhaufen, Ruben. 2010b. Schwa-assimilation og stavelsesgrænser [Schwa assimilation and syllable boundaries]. NyS (Nydanske Sprogstudier) 39, 64–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schachtenhaufen, Ruben. 2012a. Nulrealiseringer af verbalformer i dansk spontantale [Ø-realizations of verbal forms i Danish spontaneous speech]. Danske Talesprog 12, 126–150.Google Scholar
Schachtenhaufen, Ruben. 2012b. Reduction of word final schwa in Danish: Rhythmic and syntactic factors. In Heegård & Juel Henrichsen (eds.), 53–71.Google Scholar
Schachtenhaufen, Ruben. 2013. Fonetisk reduktion i dansk [Phonetic reduction in Danish]. Ph.D. dissertation, Copenhagen Business School.Google Scholar
Schüppert, Anja. 2011. Origin of Asymmetry: Mutual Intelligibility of Spoken Danish and Swedish [Groningen Dissertations in Linguistics 94]. Groningen: University of Groningen.Google Scholar
Schüppert, Anja & Gooskens, Charlotte. 2010. The influence of extra-linguistic factors on mutual intelligibility: Some preliminary results from Danish and Swedish preschoolers. In Heselwood, Barry & Upton, Clive (eds.), Proceedings of Methods XIII: Papers from the Thirteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Bamberg Studies in English Linguistics), 194–203. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Schüppert, Anja, Gooskens, Charlotte, Hilton, Nanna Haug & van Heuven, Vincent J.. 2012. Stavelsebortfall i modern danska [Syllable loss in modern Danish]. Danske Talesprog 12, 151–181.Google Scholar
Teleman, Ulf. 1987. Om grannspråksförståelse. Hinder och möjligheter [On understanding neigbouring languages: Problems and possibilities]. Språk i Norden 1987 (Nordisk språksekretariats skrifter 8), 70–82. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.Google Scholar
Thøgersen, Jacob. 2011. Talesprog i radioavisen: Det kanoniserede talesprogs anatomi [Spoken language in the radio news: Anatomy of the canonical spoken language]. Danske Talesprog 11, 185–214.Google Scholar
Thøgersen, Jacob. 2013a. Vil De prøve at sige A? “Fladt a” i Radioavisen 1950–2010 [Would you care to say A? ‘Flat a’ in the radio news 1950–2010]. NyS (Nydanske Sprogstudier) 43, 101–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thøgersen, Jacob. 2013b. Det flade a i prestige- og i hverdagssprog. Har “det flade a” sejret? [The ‘flat a’ in prestige and everyday language: Has the ‘flat a’ prevailed?]. In Hansen, Inger Schoonderbeek, Hougaard, Tina Thode & Widell, Peter (eds.), 14. Møde om Udforskning af Dansk Sprog [14th meeting on research on the Danish language], 423–438. Århus: Århus University.Google Scholar
Thøgersen, Jacob & Heegård, Jan. 2013. Inter-coder reliability and the effects of coder background and linguistic structure. Poster presented at ExAPP 2013, Copenhagen March 2013.Google Scholar
Thøgersen, Jacob & Kristiansen, Martin. 2013. Between ‘maintenance’ and ‘development’: Popular perceptions of the spoken language of the Danish National Broadcasting Corporation. In Heegård & Juel Henrichsen (eds.), 227–241.Google Scholar
Thøgersen, Jacob & Pharao, Nicolai. 2013. Changing pronunciation but stable social evaluation? University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 19 (2), Article 21. http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol19/iss2/21.Google Scholar
van Bergem, Dick R. 1993. Acoustic vowel reduction as a function of sentence accent, word stress, and word class. Speech Communication 12 (1), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vikør, Lars S. 1993. The Nordic Languages: Their Status and Interrelations. Oslo: Novus Press.Google Scholar
Warnes, Gregory R., Bolker, Ben, Bonebakker, Lodewijk, Gentleman, Robert, Huber, Wolfgang, Liaw, Andy, Lumley, Thomas, Maechler, Martin, Magnusson, Arni, Moeller, Steffen, Schwartz, Marc & Venables, Bill. 2014. gplots: Various R programming tools for plotting data. R package version 2.13.0. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gplots (retrieved 7 January 2014).Google Scholar