The PhonicStick Project

Syftet med detta arbete är att studera vilken inverkan musiken kan ha på språkutveckling hos barn i förskoleåldern och att belysa fördelar med att använda sig av musik som en del av de vardagliga aktiviteterna och undervisningen. Vidare undersöks också pedagogers kunskap och trygghet i att använda sig av musik som språkutvecklande verktyg i förskolan och i förskoleklass. Metoden som användes var enkäter som delades ut till verksam personal på 2 skolor och 6 förskolor. Resultatet visar att respondenterna i enlighet med studerad litteratur, framhöll att musik har en positiv inverkan på barns språkutveckling, samtidigt som de ser musiken som glädjeskapande uttrycksmedel. Musik används mer eller mindre på förskolor och i förskoleklasser. Däremot svarar fler respondenter att de inte tycker sig ha tillräckliga kunskaper i användandet av musik som språkutvecklande verktyg. De anser alltså att musiken är språkutvecklande men vet inte riktigt hur de ska använda musiken i språkutvecklande syfte. Pedagogernas bristande kunskaper tyder alltså på att utbildningen inte gett tillräckliga kunskaper för användande av musik i språkutvecklande syfte.

No description available.

Negation has fascinated thinkers and scholars for some 2,500 years.However, within linguistics, it is only in the recent years that negation has been given the attention it deserves. Within language typology, the main subject of investigation has been the notion of standard negation. This is well covered and data from several languages has been presented.When it comes to Japanese, it has proved hard to come across a detailed description of negation. There is a rich general literature covering many aspects of Japanese grammar, but there seems to be a lack of a work that investigates and collects all negation phenomena in one place. Furthermore, the general grammars do not take the typological perspective of negation into consideration. The aim of this thesis is to describe various negation strategies and related phenomena in the Japanese language and to put them in a typological perspective. To carry this out, a questionnaire for describing negation is used. Information and examples are extracted from grammars, articles, and a corpus. This is a descriptive text, and the analyses and conclusions presented can clearly contribute to the already existing literature on negation in Japanese, with the addition of a typological perspective.

No description available.

This essay studies how dialectal speech is reflected in written literature and how this phenomenon functions in translation. With this purpose in mind, Styron's Sophie's Choice and Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are analysed using samples of non-standard orthography which have been applied in order to reflect the dialect, or accent, of certain characters. In the same way, Lundgren's Swedish translation of Sophie's Choice and Ferres and Rolfe's Spanish version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are analysed. The method consists of linguistically analysing a few text samples from each novel, establishing how dialect is represented through non-standard orthography, and thereafter, comparing the same samples with their translation into another language in order to establish whether dialectal features are visible also in the translated novels. It is concluded that non-standard orthography is applied in the novels in order to represent each possible linguistic level, including pronunciation, morphosyntax, and vocabulary. Furthermore, it is concluded that while Lundgren's translation intends to orthographically represent dialectal speech on most occasions where the original does so, Ferres and Rolfe's translation pays no attention to dialectology. The discussion following the data analysis establishes some possible reasons for the exclusion of dialectal features in the Spanish translation considered here. Finally, the reason for which this study contributes to the study of dialectology is declared.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of manipulating target-word frequency rate and target-word phrase position on sound-meaning-connection in five to fifteen month old Swedish infants. Three different test conditions, each one of them a film showing objects and corresponding phrases made of randomly generated artificial words, were designed. The structure of the first, high variability test condition included context-dependent information and the structures of the second and the third, low variability test conditions were characterised by frequent nonsense target-word rate, target-words occurring in phrase final position. The aim of the artificial input language was to ensure the novelty of test material, and to simulate the type of learning situation - when the semantic content of words is arbitrary - facing young infants in the beginning of language learning. Analysis of informants looking behaviour, prior to, and after exposure to the objects and the corresponding audio input, were performed. Results showed that the structure of high variability test condition and the structure of low variability test conditions were associated with significant between-group differences. This finding indicates that the nonsense phrases in low variability test conditions managed to 'explain' the objects just like semantically meaningful phrases do. When compared with past research, these findings seem to suggest that experience-dependent mechanisms may support, besides word segmentation, even more complicated aspects of language learning, such as acquisition of syntax. / <p>Eeva Klintfors är född Koponen.</p>

This is a study about how one-year-old Swedish-learning infants presumably use probabilistic information, such as prosody and phonotactic regularity, in segmentation of speech. The variables studied were the Swedish tonal word accents I &amp; II and the distributional regularities of within-word and between-word consonant clusters in Swedish infant-directed speech. The results – which were not as clear-cut as the results obtained in earlier experiments on English-learning infants – suggest that 12-month old Swedish infants might be sensitive to prosodic cues to word boundaries: in experiment 1, altering the phonotactics of the stimuli reversed the infants’ preference for word accent types. However this was not confirmed in experiment 2, instead there was a general preference for listening at the accent II words. The results also suggest that 12-month old Swedish infants might not use phonotactic cues to word boundaries to the extent as expected: in experiment 1 and 2, altering the word accent types did not reverse the infants’ preference for phonotactics. Instead, both in experiment 1 and 2, there was a general preference for listening at the within-word stimuli. When compared with earlier research these findings indicate that infants, besides being able to integrate multiple statistical cues to word boundaries, might early in life be assisted by pattern-recognition in speech segmentation. / <p>Eeva Klintfors är född Koponen.</p>

Denna rapport är en del av en longitudinell studie av psykolingvistisk ålder och språklig medvetenhet hos elever i årskurs 1 på två olika skolor i Vallentuna kommun. I studien har material från de tre senaste projektåren bearbetats. Syftet med undersökningen var att undersöka huruvida fonologisk träning enligt den s.k. Bornholmsmodellen under elevernas tid i 6-årsklass återspeglar sig i ökad språklig medvetenhet och högre psykolingvistisk ålder i årskurs 1. Vidare undersöktes om den fonologiska träningen kan ha påverkat barnens arbetsminne. Två typer av test användes: UMESOL för kartläggning av fonologisk medvetenhet och ITPA, ett standardiserat test av psykolingvistiska färdigheter. Resultaten visar att det finns ett klart samband mellan fonologisk träning enligt Bornholmsmodellen i förskolan och elevernas språkliga medvetenhet i grundskolan. Vidare visar resultaten att även om minnesträningen i Bornholmsmodellen inte direkt påverkat resultaten vid ITPA, så finns det ett starkt samband mellan minnestestet i ITPA och elevernas prestation vid UMESOL.