One way of expressing a particular point of view depends on deixis; the sender ‘lends’ his means of expressing his own point of view to another referent. In Danish Sign Language there are three such basically deictic means of expressing a particular point of view, namely shifted reference, shifted attribution of expressive elements, and shifted locus. Eveathough especially the last two phenomena may seem special to sign languages, they have clear functional parallels in spoken languages.

This article is a review of Thorstein Fretheim (ed.), Sentrale problemer i norsk syntaks, Universitetsforlaget 1997. The review groups together the papers by Even Hovdhaugen, Jan Engh and Thorstein Fretheim. It argues that these three papers largely fail to support the authors' claims because post-Aspects developments in transformational, generrative grammer are ignored. Also, specific analyses based on TG are proposed as alternatives to some analyses based on analogy. Finally, lars Hellan's contribution is examined in a rather detailed manner, and some counterproposals are sketched.

Finnish word order is relatively free, making room for all mathematically possible word orders in many constructions. Because there is no evidence in this language for radical nonconfigurationality, explanations must be sought from syntax. It is argued in this article that morphosyntax and word order represent syntactic structure at the PF-interface. Rich morphosyntax frees word order, poor morphosyntax freezes it. The hypothesis is formalized within the context of a parsing-oriented theory of the human language faculty (UG) combining left-to-right minimalism with the dynamic syntax approach. The analysis was implemented as an algorithm and successfully tested with a corpus of 119,800 unique Finnish word orders.

This paper proposes a treatment of optional prepositional phrases with a status intermediate between adjuncts and complements. The essential idea is simply that such PPs are semantically but not syntactically selected. It is argued that prepositions often assign an external theta role to a complement of the governing verb, subject to the heretofore unnoticed syntactic condition that such external arguments must be direct rather than oblique. This explains certain binding opacity effects and also greatly simplifies the subcategorization frames of verbs. The analysis is formulated in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard & Sag 1994).

Non-finite complementation strategies found in American Norwegian (AmNo) (made available by the Corpus of American Nordic Speech (CANS)) reveal unique and diverging patterns when compared to both standard and dialectal Norwegian and English. We argue in this paper that the majority of these divergent structures are the result of overextension (Rinke & Flores, 2014; Rinke et al., 2018; Putnam & Hoffman, 2021; Kupisch, 2014), where heritage language speakers produce structures that differ from both grammars in an attempt to generate forms that are distinct from the more dominant language. Our treatment of these nuanced structures in AmNo shows that this heritage grammar significantly restricts bare (or naked) TPs (Situations) serving as non-finite complements. To avoid bare TP-complements, AmNo has developed two distinct, yet related strategies, (1) reducing non-finite complements to vPs (Events), or (2) incorporating an additional element, a preposition, to ensure that the non-finite complement functions as the object of a preposition. We analyze this latter strategy as an instance of the emergence of structural salience (Polinsky, 2018) in the syntax of AmNo and suggest that this variation is best understood as a syntax–semantics interface phenomenon.

In the Scandinavian languages, sentential negation must be licensed in Spec–head relation in the IP-domain, necessitating leftward movement of negative objects, Negative Shift (NegS). While string-vacuous NegS is possible in all Scandinavian varieties, there is a fair amount of cross-linguistic variation in non-string-vacuous NegS. In particular, the varieties contrast in which constituents can be crossed by NegS and whether or not crossing of a certain constituent requires the presence of an intervening verb. The paper presents the complex variation as to the distribution of negative objects in Scandinavian, using data from different sources, and outlines an analysis within Fox & Pesetsky's (2003, 2005a, b) cyclic linearization model, which accounts for this variation by differences in the availability of the intermediate positions non-string-vacuous movement is forced to proceed through.

Swedish noun-phrases of the form (Det) (Adj)* N are examined in the light of recent work in generalized phrase-structure grammar. It is argued that simple generalizations about the phrase-structure of these NPs are lost by trying to account for the precise morphological possibilities by using phrase-structure rules mentioning categories marked with morphological features. What could be accounted for by two rules must be broken down into subcases which need seven rules, thereby obscuring the overall syntactic structure of the NPs. An alternative is suggested which maintains the simple syntax which generates morphologically ill-formed NPs but only allows morphologically well-formed ones to be interpreted. It is suggested that this system can be constrained so as to generate only context-free languages.

Recent research on vowel perception has seriously questioned the perceptual relevance of the formant concept and the conventional method of specifying vowel quality in terms of the lowest formants. The phonetic basis of the theory of palatal vowel harmony suggested by the author (Suomi 1983) was stated in this framework and, moreover, some of the central concepts were defined only qualitatively. The present paper is a restatement of the phonetic motivation of palatal vowel harmony against a body of perceptually more realistic and quantitative data on Finnish vowels.

This article presents a study of the variation found in the oral production of verbs in L2 French by adult beginners with Swedish as L1. The study deals with the production of the two main forms of regular verbs in spoken French, a short form /parl/ and a long form /parle/, in present-tense and infinitive contexts. Learners at beginner stages use these two forms invariantly in both finite and non-finite contexts. The aim of this study is to investigate the choice of the invariant forms made by the learners. This is done by testing the influence of lexical aspect and input frequency. The investigation is made with concrete data from input sources. The results from both a free production task and an imitation test suggest that input frequency contributes more significantly than lexical aspect, although both factors overlap for most of the studied verbs.

This article presents an explanation for the lack of some neuter gender forms in an otherwise productive paradigm for the formation of neuter gender adjectives. The explanation draws on a proper understanding of (exemplar-based) analogy under some conditions. One condition is that the problematic form resembles a free morpheme by the loss of a morpheme/syllable boundary in its derivation. The second condition is that the problematic forms tend to share some property (for example, referring to a nonverifiable property such as internal (mental) states). Problematic forms might thus mutually support other such forms by analogy and similarity, and thus create a paradigmatic gap. It is argued that exemplars (with context), and analogy between similar exemplars, necessarily restrict and licence the use of derived forms.

The characterization of agrammatic speech as telegram style is discussed in relation to an exemplifying comparison of linguistic structures and determining activity factors in a Swedish database of agrammatic speech and simulated telegrams. The strong claim that telegram style is a specific register that is also used by agrammatic aphasics does not find support in the data. Features of agrammatic speech that can be in line with a more vague and metaphorical use of the term telegram style are pointed out.

This article describes variation in the use of frames of reference (FoRs; object-centred, viewpoint-centred, and geocentric, as in Holistic Spatial Semantics) in Finnish descriptions of motion and connects questions of variation to a typological framework. Recent research has described the choice of FoRs as a process with multiple factors. This complexity and controlling for the main variables posited in the literature create the starting point for the current study that explores factors affecting the choice of FoRs in motion situations and within speakers of the same language. The data were elicited from 50 native speakers of Finnish by using video stimuli. The informants were (mostly) formally educated young adults living in urban surroundings. The analysis reveals considerable variation in individual coding strategies, especially in the inclusion of the speaker’s viewpoint. It also considers variation with respect to different types of trajectories and cross-linguistic differences in the resources of spatial reference.

The new forms of written online communication offer a great resource for researchers interested in language variation and use, but more large-scale systematic research into the nature of the data is needed. For instance, Swedish blog data is often described as more informal and spoken in nature than traditional edited written material but overall systematic comparisons are lacking. This short communication contributes systematic comparisons between blog data and spoken and written registers by comparing measures such as type/token ratios and word frequencies. Type/token ratios of blog texts are found to lie between those for interactive speech and formal edited writing, whereas the distribution of words from different frequency bands is closer to the written material. Comparison of the ten most frequent word forms indicates that blog data resembles formal edited writing from a structural perspective, but also suggests that further studies into features of personal involvement may provide additional insights.

A phonological process in Norwegian takes morpheme-initial alveolar /t d n s/ to retroflex [ʈ ɖ ɳ ʂ] after a morpheme ending in the tap /ɾ/, a process which earlier descriptions in the literature have classified as obligatory. This paper reports on production experiments with both existing and novel words, which show that Norwegian speakers treat retroflexion of morpheme-initial /s/ as optional, and that they are more likely to apply retroflexion to a morpheme in /s-/ when the /s/ is followed by a consonant (/sC-/) than when the /s/ is followed by a vowel (/sV-/).

In some dialects of Old Norwegian unstressed non-low vowels have a distribution which has traditionally been defined as vowel harmony. However, such vowels after low stressed vowels have a distributional pattern which cannot be fully accounted for in terms of vowel harmony. On the basis of data from one vowel harmony dialect of Old Norwegian (Trøndelag) the present note suggests that the distribution of unstressed non-low vowels should be regarded as the result of four separate processes rather than one, including both vowel harmony and vowel reduction.

The article describes the process of creating a Finnish language FrameNet or FinnFN, based on the original English language FrameNet hosted at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California. We outline the goals and results relating to the FinnFN project and especially to the creation of the FinnFrame corpus. The main aim of the project was to test the universal applicability of frame semantics by annotating real Finnish using the same frames and annotation conventions as in the original Berkeley FrameNet project. From Finnish newspaper corpora, 40,721 sentences were automatically retrieved and manually annotated as example sentences evoking certain frames. This became the FinnFrame corpus. Applying the Berkeley FrameNet annotation conventions to the Finnish language required some modifications due to Finnish morphology, and a convention for annotating individual morphemes within words was introduced for phenomena such as compounding, comparatives and case endings. Various questions about cultural salience across the two languages arose during the project, but problematic situations occurred only in a few examples, which we also discuss in the article. The article shows that, barring a few minor instances, the universality hypothesis of frames is largely confirmed for languages as different as Finnish and English.

Keyword analysis has been used to investigate properties of style and genre, as a tool in discourse analysis, and as a method of identifying differences between the speech of distinct social groups. It has often been criticised as a blunt tool which can exaggerate what differences are present and fails to distinguish between quite distinct phenomena. However, it remains a very powerful tool for wide analysis of systematic differences between corpora when used with sufficient scepticism. This paper uses keyword analysis to examine differences between the speech of male and female characters in the Íslendingasögur, narrative prose texts composed in Iceland in the 13th and 14th centuries. This dataset is of particular interest because such representations of speech are the only window on the language of social groups who were not involved in text production in medieval societies. It aims to demonstrate a rigorous application of keyword analysis, exemplifying what it can and, crucially, what it cannot show.

In current linguistics, non-objective (i.e. perspectival or construed) facets of linguistic meaning are often explained as properties or correlates of cognitive phenomena. Such outlook, exemplified by Langacker's (1987, 2008) Cognitive Grammar, stands in contrast vis-à-vis the necessary social character of language in general and linguistic meaning in particular. Accordingly, a viable semantic theory should seek to explain non-objective facets of meaning as an intersubjectively valid semantic resource that is an integral part of linguistic meaning at large. In this paper, such theory is proposed based on the phenomenological notions of intentionality and intersubjectivity. I will argue that the non-objectivity of linguistic meaning is most realistically explained as conventionalized intentionality, i.e. object-directedness of conscious experience. The conventionalization of intentionality, in turn, suggests a complex manner in which non-objective meaning motivates the selection of a linguistic expression within an intersubjective context. Finally, this intimate relationship between non-objective meaning and context suggests the feasibility of extending Cognitive Grammar's notion of construal into analysis of non-objective meaning as an intersubjective, context-sensitive facet of interaction (see Etelämäki et al. 2009 for a similar argument).

Language for all is a method developed in the Netherlands for providing information in such a way that as many intended readers as possible both comprehend and accept this information. Readers include people with a large variety of reading abilities including people with low literacy skills. Language for all can be characterized as a more accessible variant of plain language with some characteristics of easy language.

In three studies the comprehension and acceptance of and preference for texts written in Language for all was evaluated, comparing original texts with a version in Language for all.

Information written in Language for all was significantly better understood and accepted, and was preferable to the original version.

In conclusion, Language for all is a promising effective, inclusive, and comprehensive method to provide information to people with and without low literacy skills. Further research is recommended.

In this paper we describe a multilevel model for natural language processing. The distinct computational strata are motivated by invariant linguistic properties which are progressively uncovered from utterances. We examine each level in detail. The processes are morphological analysis, dependency parsing, logico-semantic analysis and query adaptation. Both linguistic and computational aspects are discussed. In addition to theory, we consider certain engineering viewpoints important and discuss them briefly.