Leiden University Student Repository

Strandberg, Janine 2018

An Acoustic Analysis of Generational Change of the Open-Mid Front Rounded Vowel [œ] in Finland-Swedish

Master thesis | Linguistics (MA)

closed access

This apparent-time study examines generational phonetic change in the Finland-Swedish community, occurring as a result of increased contact with the Finnish majority language. Finland-Swedish is a...Show moreThis apparent-time study examines generational phonetic change in the Finland-Swedish community, occurring as a result of increased contact with the Finnish majority language. Finland-Swedish is a variety of Swedish that is spoken as a first language by approximately 300,000 people in Finland, while also retaining a status as an official national language alongside Finnish (Hult & Pietikäinen 2014: 4). In the past Finnish and Swedish were largely spoken in different regions and culturally distinct communities. However, lately the Finnish society has become more linguistically mixed, causing the Finnish language to have a larger impact on the lives and language of Finland-Swedish speakers. Using acoustic analysis of formants, the study explores whether Finland-Swedish vowel production in young highly proficient bilingual speakers is undergoing change due to influence from Finnish. The project focuses on the Swedish open-mid front rounded vowel [œ], a more open allophone of [ø] that only occurs before /r/ (Riad 2014: 38; Leinonen 2011: 78). Sample tokens for [ø] and [œ] in different phonological contexts were collected through recordings of photo-elicited interviews from several consecutive generations of bilingual Finland-Swedish speakers. Measuring the first and second formants of the samples, the study examines the phonological differences between the older and younger generations of speakers. The measurements showed that while older-generation late bilingual speakers produced distinct formant values for both allophones, younger native and early bilingual speakers demonstrated more variation in their abilities to differentiate between the allophones in production. Additionally, a survey investigating the perception of [œ] and [ø] in Finland-Swedish suggested that native bilingual Finnish and Finland-Swedish participants were less accurate in matching allophones to target words than monolingual Finland-Swedish participants. The results of both the acoustic analysis and the survey suggest that input from Finnish may affect the perception and production of allophones [œ] and [ø] in the spoken Swedish of native and early bilingual Finland-Swedish speakers.Show less

Lo, Roger Yu-Hsiang 2016

Dutch and Swedish Again: On Interaction between Object Movement and Again-Ambiguities

Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)

open access

This study attempts to devise a unified account for three linguistic phenomena -- object type, object movement, and again-ambiguities -- that can be observed in Dutch and Swedish. Specifically,...Show moreThis study attempts to devise a unified account for three linguistic phenomena -- object type, object movement, and again-ambiguities -- that can be observed in Dutch and Swedish. Specifically, this study tries to untangle the interaction between theses three phenomena, as illustrated in the following Dutch sentences (in their literal reading): (1) a. Jan heeft weer de deur geopend. (repetitive/*restitutive) John has again the door opened `John opened the door again.' b. Jan heeft de deur weer geopend. (rep/res) John has the door again opened (2) a. *Jan heeft weer hem geopend. John has again it opened b. Jan heeft hem weer geopend. (rep/res) John has it again opened `John opened it again.' (3) a. Jan heeft weer een deur geopend. (rep/*res) John has again a door opened `John opened a door again.' b. *Jan heeft een deur weer geopend. John has a door again opened Comparing these three sets of sentences, it seems that the availability of the repetitive/restitutive ambiguity associated with the adverb weer `again' lies in both the type of the object and its position relative to the adverb. The unified account developed in this study has as its backbones the Mapping Hypothesis proposed by Diesing and Jelinek (1995) and a structural theory on again-ambiguities advocated by von Stechow (1995, 1996). The Mapping Hypothesis partitions a syntactic tree into the Nuclear Scope and the Restriction Clause and handles the interpretation of different object types by the object's syntactic position at LF. When the object is moved to the Restriction Clause by some object movement rule, it receives a specific reading, whereas when the object remains in the Nuclear Scope, it gets a non-specific reading. The structural theory on again-ambiguities claims that the repetitive/restitutive opposition has a syntactic origin. This theory relies heavily on a semantico-syntactic decomposition of verbs into an action and a state component, with the repetitive reading resulting from again modifying a syntactic constituent that represent an action and the restitutive reading from again a constituent that denotes a state. The current study argues that either the Mapping Hypothesis or the structural theory alone can explain only part of the data, and that only by integrating the two can we have a unified account that justifies the whole data. This unified account allows the position of the object (i.e., whether object movement applies or not) and the dual readings of again to be govern by two different mechanisms, but it also permits the two mechanisms to interact with each other so that ungrammatical constructions can be successfully ruled out. To explain the Dutch data above, we first move the objects that have a specific reading, as is often the case for definite descriptions like de deur `the door' and definite pronouns like hem `it', to the Restriction Clause and leave the objects with a non-specific reading, such as the indefinite een deur `a door' in the Nuclear Scope. Then we let weer `again' adjoin to different constituents that map onto either an action (which leads to the repetitive reading) or a state (the restitutive reading). The whole derivation just described can be represented as follows (NS stands for Nuclear Scope): (4) a. Jan heeft weer [NS de deur geopend ]. (rep/*res) John has again the door opened b. Jan heeft de deur_o [NS weer t_o geopend ]. (rep/res) John has the door again opened (5) a. *Jan heeft weer [NS hem geopend ]. John has again it opened b. Jan heeft hem_o [NS weer t_o geopend ]. (rep/res) John has it again opened (6) a. Jan heeft weer [NS een deur geopend ]. (rep/*res) John has again a door opened b. *Jan heeft een deur_o [NS weer t_o geopend ]. John has a door again opened (5a) and (6b) are rejected because the objects in them are in the wrong domain. Although (4a) is grammatical, this sentence does receive a slightly different interpretation than (4b) due to the position of the definite de deur in the Nuclear Scope. The same principles can be applied to Swedish as well, albeit only at LF instead of at S-structure as in Dutch. In future research, it will be useful if more data, especially from Icelandic, can be brought in and if we consider verbs beyond a simple open.Show less