Coreference processing of Control constructions and their pronoun-containing counterparts can be studied experimentally using priming or interference paradigms. We replicate findings in a priming study on non-finite Control constructions in Norwegian (Larsen & Johansson, 2020) and contrast them with their finite counterparts using interference effects in a grammatical maze (G-maze) design. We asked participants to read sentences word-by-word and to select the grammatically correct continuation from two options. When the ungrammatical option was a potential antecedent from within the sentence, we predicted interference, i.e., longer reaction times compared to an unrelated baseline. We observed a trend towards significant interference effects when a participant was presented with either of the potential noun phrase (NP) antecedents of PRO in competition with the infinitive marker (test position zero) during the processing of a Control sentence. This indicates reactivation of potential antecedents at the infinitive marker, and a reactivation position (PRO) near or at the infinitive marker. We also observed significant differences between Control constructions and their pronoun counterparts. A significant interference effect was recorded for Subject Pronoun constructions when either potential NP antecedent of the pronoun was presented in competition with the pronoun itself. A similar trend was recorded for Object Pronoun sentences.

This article gives an overview of the use of non-local passives in mainland Scandinavian, i.e. passives where the subject of the first verb is a thematic argument of a second verb. Three factors are important: whether V1 is a control verb or a raising passive, whether V2 is a passive participle or an infinitive and whether the passive is morphological or periphrastic. Danish and Norwegian allow passive control verbs such as forsøge ‘try’ with passive participles whereas this pattern is only found with semi-control verbs like begära ‘request’ in Swedish. In Swedish there is an alternative strategy for strict control verbs, viz. active control verb plus passive infinitive. All three languages allow both passive infinitival complements and passive participles with raising passives such as påstås ‘is claimed’. These passive constructions need to be distinguished from so called long passives and double passives where a passive feature on either V1 or V2 can spread to the adjacent verb.

Ausbau processes increase differences between two close written language varieties. Finnish and Kven are considered two ausbau languages today, in contrast to an earlier view which considered Kven to be a dialect of Finnish. In this article, ausbau processes are illustrated by comparing the use of eera verbs, a group constituting international and Scandinavian loanwords in the two languages. Most eera verbs were purged from Modern Written Finnish and they are expressed via other means today. By contrast, Kven accepts eera verbs in the same way as Old Written Finnish. Purism – perceived as avoidance of certain linguistic elements – is the explanation behind ausbau processes in this case, and purist attitudes reflect the identities of language planners. Eera verbs represent a small corner of language, yet their use differentiates Kven from Modern Written Finnish, and underscores the independence of Kven as a separate language.

This study examines the use of and attitudes towards finlandisms and fennicisms in Finland Swedish. Finlandisms are words or structures typical of the Swedish variety spoken in Finland, while fennicisms are a category of finlandisms for which the source language is Finnish. Fennicisms are often discussed in context of Finnish influence and consequent Finland Swedish language loss, suggesting that the use of these features in Swedish is stigmatised. The study analyses survey responses from 126 Finland Swedish individuals in order to investigate the use of and perceptions regarding fennicisms. The responses indicate that although finlandisms and, in particular, fennicisms are often seen as erroneous, they can also be used to indicate a uniquely Finland Swedish linguistic identity. Additionally, responses regarding fennicisms provide examples of previously overlooked Finnish loanwords, while also indicating that loanwords with origins in other languages are often misidentified as stemming from Finnish. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The speech perception ability of people with hearing loss can be efficiently measured using phonemic-level scoring. We aimed to develop linguistic stimuli suitable for a closed-set phonemic discrimination test in the Swedish language called the Situated Phoneme (SiP) test. The SiP test stimuli that we developed consisted of real monosyllabic words with minimal phonemic contrast, realised by phonetically similar phones. The lexical and sublexical factors of word frequency, phonological neighbourhood density, phonotactic probability, and orthographic transparency were similar between all contrasting words. Each test word was recorded five times by two different speakers, including one male and one female. The accuracy of the test-word recordings was evaluated by 28 normal-hearing subjects in a listening experiment with a silent background using a closed-set design. With a few exceptions, all test words could be correctly discriminated. We discuss the results in terms of content- and construct-validity implications for the Swedish SiP test.

The Estonian indefinite pronouns keegi ‘someone’ and miski ‘something’ are distinguished by being able to refer to animate or inanimate entities, respectively. However, in certain Estonian dialects, keegi is used to refer to inanimate entities as well. The aim of this paper is to describe the functions and use of keegi based on the data in the Corpus of Estonian Dialects. We used statistical analyses to determine which dialects typically use keegi to refer to inanimate entities and which variables (polarity, function, position in the clause, case marking) contribute most to this variation. The results show that there are significant differences between the dialects: keegi is mostly used to refer to inanimate entities in the northern dialects (most frequently in the Western, Mid, and Eastern dialects), but this phenomenon is rare or non-existent in the southern dialects. All of the variables studied contribute to this variation: keegi is most likely to refer to an inanimate being when it is in the partitive case, functions as an object, a partitive subject, or a negative polarity item, and is positioned at the end of a negative clause.

In this paper, we show that Icelandic uses the phonetic parameters of speaking rate, duration and voice quality (VQ) to distinguish between information-seeking questions (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs). Specifically, durations are longer (speaking rate is slower) and nonmodal VQs are used more in RQs than in ISQs. Our findings for temporal parameters fit in with previous studies on the prosody of RQs in various languages. With respect to VQ, Icelandic differs, for example, from German and English in the location of breathy voice in the utterance (utterance-initial in German and English, utterance-final in Icelandic). We interpret the utterance-final position of breathiness in Icelandic RQs as a potential compensating strategy for the lack of phonological cues, i.e. boundary tones.

Focusing on the expression of manner and path in the ‘frog story’ narrations of Estonian native speakers, this study shows that Estonian – a morphologically rich satellite-framed Finno-Ugric language – is characterised by high manner and high path salience. Furthermore, when analysing one of the core qualities of manner – speed – we show that when the participants were asked to narrate a story as if the events developed slowly, they also spoke slowly and their stories tended to be long (both in time duration and word count) and include many details. When they were asked to tell the story as if the events developed fast, they also spoke faster and used more verbs of caused motion and verbs of vertical motion. Thus, the speed of motion in the physical world seems to be mimicked by speech rate, indicating mental simulation and iconic prosody. The exact nature of speed effects in linguistic choices for expressing motion remains to be studied in future works.

This contribution focuses on Stroh-Wollin’s (2020 in NJL) etymologies of the Nordic definite articles enn and hinn and contrastive hinn/hitt. While I do not contest her central claim that Old Icelandic enn and Mainland Scandinavian hinn have separate historical origins, I do argue that her etymologies should not be accepted over more conventional ones already present in the literature. First, the etymology of enn should, along traditional lines, be connected to Germanic cognates such as Gothic jain-, German jen-, and English yon (rather than derived from an ancient PIE *eno-).1 Furthermore, contrastive hinn/hitt and definite hinn/hit should be considered a doublet, both ultimately deriving from a distal/contrastive element (rather than the article having separate origins in an innovated Proto-Nordic proximal demonstrative).