I och med det enorma användningsområdet av datorsystem i dagens samhälle finns många typer av användare och uppgifter att designa för. Genom designriktlinjer kan utvecklare få referenser och guidning för att skapa användbara applikationer från början. På så vis kan tid sparas i utvecklingsprocessen. Från och med puberteten då människan kan anses vara vuxen ändras förmåga till andraspråksinlärning, trots detta finns det människor som lär sig andraspråk i vuxen ålder. Kunskap kring vad dessa skillnader beror på måste användas i designen av en andraspråksinlärningsapplikation för att tillgodose människans kognitiva förmågor. De två huvudsakliga kognitiva aspekterna vid språkproduktion är grammatisk kodning och fonetisk kodning. De 10 framtagna designriktlinjerna syftar till att stödja dessa processer. Ett av de största problemen i all form av undervisning är motivation, seriösa datorspel är ett forskningsområde som syftar till att ta till vara på traditionella datorspels motiverande egenskaper. Denna studie leder fram till designriktlinjer kring hur seriösa datorspel kan designas för att utbilda i kinesiska som andraspråk via smarta mobiltelefoner.

This thesis examines the presentation of palatalisation in four descriptions of Russian phonetics from the 19th century. It presents the modern phonetic and phonological view on palatalisation in Russian, with which the view presented in the examined 19th century works is compared. The thesis comes to the conclusion that the examined works provide a relatively modern phonetic description of palatalisation in Russian and, through their inability to properly analyse the role of palatalisation in the sound system, demonstrate the need for phonology as a study. / Эта работа рассматривает презентацию палатализации в четырёх описаниях русской фонетики с XIX века. Она представляет современный фонетический и фонологический взгляд на палатализацию в русском языке, с чем сравнивается взгляд, представленный в рассмотренных работах XIX века. Автор работы приходит к выводу, что рассмотренные работы предлагают сравнительно современное фонетическое описание палатализации в русском языке, и что они своей неспособностью должным образом анализировать роль палатализации в звуковой системе демонстрируют потребность фонологии как науки.

Studiens syfte är att studera om språkliga anpassningar i en samtalspartners utflöde kan påverka andraspråkstalares vokaluttal. Detta gjordes genom en kvantitativ studie där vuxna andraspråkstalare intervjuades två gånger, en gång av en samtalspartner som talade med ett barnriktat språk och en gång med ett vuxenriktat. Studiens hypotes var att andraspråkstalarna skulle ha ett uttal mer likt målspråket vid samtalet med det barnriktade språket på grund av att det görs fonetiska anpassningar för att optimera språkinlärning. Analysen bestod av en mätning av andra och tredje formanten (F2 och F3) för vokalerna /y/ och /i/. Vokalerna analyserades sedan i förhållande till varandra. Resultaten för en av talarna tyder på att det går att påverka sin samtalspartners uttal i ett samtal. Uttalet blev mer stabilt och uttalet av /y/ liknade mer en rundad vokal än att uttalas likt [i] i det barnriktade samtalet. Den andra deltagaren som analyserades förändrade inte sitt uttal mellan de två samtalen vilket kan förklaras med att personen hade en högre språklig kompetens än den andra deltagaren, detta är en kvalitativ bedömning och har alltså inte undersökts. Den här studien öppnar därför upp för vidare studier inom området som eventuellt kan leda till att optimera andraspråksinlärningen. / LiLa

<p>Learning a second language is different from learning our first one. A lot of rules from the first language, concerning e.g. grammar, intonation and phonology, are so firmly rooted within learners that they will transfer them to the new language regardless of whether they are correct or not. Studies show that the way we are tuned in to the sounds of our first language can make it difficult for us to perceive the phonemes of a new language correctly. In order to study the relationship between Swedish speakers’ faulty production of English vowels and their perception of them, ten subjects participated in a perception test to find out how well they could distinguish between minimal pairs containing phonemes that Swedes often have problems pronouncing correctly. They were also recorded while reading sentences containing the same minimal pairs. The results from the perception test were compared to graphs showing how consistent the subjects were in their pronunciation of these phonemes. The study shows that although some phonemes proved to be more difficult for the subjects to perceive a difference between, a faulty production of these sounds cannot be explained by misperception alone.</p>

<p>This study investigates the realisation of phonological quantity in the dialects of Modern Swedish, based on a corpus containing recordings from 86 locations in Sweden and the Swedishspeaking parts of Finland. The corpus was recorded as part of the national SweDia project.</p><p>The study is explorative in character. Quantity structures in Swedish dialects and their geographical distribution, as described in the dialectological literature, are compared to the results of a data-driven categorisation (cluster analysis). The results reveal an overall good correspondence of the data driven and the traditional categorisation, although with some deviations in the detail.</p><p>The study is divided into two parts. The first part lays the foundation for the data-driven categorisation, which is then described in the second part. First, the phonology and phonetics of quantity in Swedish are described in terms of durational distinctions and vocalic quality differences that typically accompany the durational differences. Preaspiration, which appears to be a normative feature in some dialects, is covered as well. An overview of the historical development of the Swedish quantity system is provided, with special emphasis on a phonological interpretation of quantity changes. Thereafter, dialectological evidence is combined with phonological and typological considerations to develop a categorisation of Swedish dialects.</p><p>The second part explains the methodology of cluster analysis and applies this method to vowel and consonant durations from one contrastive word pair, in order to obtain an alternative dialect categorisation. Analyses of vowel quality and preaspiration are performed in addition to the durational analyses. Hypotheses derived from the cluster analysis are then tested on one additional word pair recorded in 75 locations and on three additional word pairs recorded in four locations.</p><p>The general pattern emerging from the cluster analysis is a categorisation of the dialects into three main types, a Finland-Swedish, a Northern and a Southern type. This categorisation shows a good geographical agreement with the categorisation that is derived from the analysis of the dialectological literature. Therefore, the durational patterns of the three types are interpreted as reflections of three different phonological systems: 4-way systems with vocalic and consonantal quantity, 3-way systems with vocalic quantity and with consonantal quantity only after short vowels, and 2-way systems with complementary quantity. From the historical perspective, the 4-way system constitutes the most conservative and the 2-way system the most recently developed system.</p><p>Finally, it is argued that the historical development is one of the factors behind occasional mismatches between the data-driven and the dialectological categorisation. Data from one of the dialects, which has recently abandoned a 4-way system but has obviously retained the durational properties of the older system, is used as an example to illustrate this historical hypothesis.</p>

This study investigates the realisation of phonological quantity in the dialects of Modern Swedish, based on a corpus containing recordings from 86 locations in Sweden and the Swedishspeaking parts of Finland. The corpus was recorded as part of the national SweDia project. The study is explorative in character. Quantity structures in Swedish dialects and their geographical distribution, as described in the dialectological literature, are compared to the results of a data-driven categorisation (cluster analysis). The results reveal an overall good correspondence of the data driven and the traditional categorisation, although with some deviations in the detail. The study is divided into two parts. The first part lays the foundation for the data-driven categorisation, which is then described in the second part. First, the phonology and phonetics of quantity in Swedish are described in terms of durational distinctions and vocalic quality differences that typically accompany the durational differences. Preaspiration, which appears to be a normative feature in some dialects, is covered as well. An overview of the historical development of the Swedish quantity system is provided, with special emphasis on a phonological interpretation of quantity changes. Thereafter, dialectological evidence is combined with phonological and typological considerations to develop a categorisation of Swedish dialects. The second part explains the methodology of cluster analysis and applies this method to vowel and consonant durations from one contrastive word pair, in order to obtain an alternative dialect categorisation. Analyses of vowel quality and preaspiration are performed in addition to the durational analyses. Hypotheses derived from the cluster analysis are then tested on one additional word pair recorded in 75 locations and on three additional word pairs recorded in four locations. The general pattern emerging from the cluster analysis is a categorisation of the dialects into three main types, a Finland-Swedish, a Northern and a Southern type. This categorisation shows a good geographical agreement with the categorisation that is derived from the analysis of the dialectological literature. Therefore, the durational patterns of the three types are interpreted as reflections of three different phonological systems: 4-way systems with vocalic and consonantal quantity, 3-way systems with vocalic quantity and with consonantal quantity only after short vowels, and 2-way systems with complementary quantity. From the historical perspective, the 4-way system constitutes the most conservative and the 2-way system the most recently developed system. Finally, it is argued that the historical development is one of the factors behind occasional mismatches between the data-driven and the dialectological categorisation. Data from one of the dialects, which has recently abandoned a 4-way system but has obviously retained the durational properties of the older system, is used as an example to illustrate this historical hypothesis.

The phenomenon of an ongoing sound change leads in some cases to the pronunciation of short ö becoming more like that of short u. This thesis examines the relationship between short ö and u in Uppland Swedish. The localities included in the investigation were Uppsala, Norrtälje, Östervåla and Gräsö. In particular, the thesis examines the effects of age, gender and social status on the acquisition of a pronunciation where the phonemes are produced in a similar way, and whether the change occurs earlier in some words than others. The informants on Gräsö appear to have the highest occurrence of the merger, while those in Norrtälje are best at keeping ö and u apart. In general, men have a smaller difference between ö and u than women. Three different age groups were analysed and the results show that the oldest informants have the largest difference between ö and u and the youngest informants have the smallest difference. There are no significant differences between the three social status groups, but there is a tendency for those with the lowest social status to be better at keeping the phonemes apart than those with the highest social status. 13 minimal (or near-minimal) pairs were analysed to investigate whether the phonetic context has an effect on the degree to which ö and u are becoming more similar. The study shows that the smallest phonetic difference is found for word pairs with r occurring in the preceding or following context. The largest phonetic distance was found in word pairs beginning with a vowel. The study also examined whether there is a relationship between production, perception and attitude to u-sounding ö in Uppsala. By combining the production test results with the informants’ categorisation of u and ö in the perception test, the study shows that the informants with a small phonetic distance in their own speech were better at categorising stimuli correctly than the speakers who had a larger phonetic distance between ö and u in their own speech.

Ifølge observationer af Grønnum og Basbøll er der sket en ekspansion af stødets forekomst, hvor ord som ikke tidligere har haft stød er begyndt at få det. Disse nye stød forekommer både under kendte betingelser og nye betingelser. Formålet med denne opgave er at undersøge om stødforekomsten i københavnsk rigsmål er blevet forandret i retning mod flere stød. Dette undersøges gennem at analysere forekomsten af nye stød i et materiale bestående af indspil- ninger fra otte forskellige talere, hentede fra radioprogrammer og podcasts udgivet mellem 2018 og 2020. Konklusionen er at der ses en tendens til en forandring i stødets forekomst i retning mod flere stød, men ud fra dette materiale er denne forandring stadig i et tidligt stadie. Der ses en forandring mod flere stød i forhold til at ord som ikke tidligere havde stød fore- kommer med stød, men i forhold til andelen ord med stød generelt kan der ikke drages nogle konklusioner. Mængden materiale i denne undersøgelse er for begrænset til at der kan gives et ordentligt billede af forandringen.

This thesis presents four experimental studies, carried out at the Phonetic laboratory, Stockholm University, on infants’ ability to establish auditory-visual sound-meaning associations as a precursor of early word acquisition. Study I reports on the effect of linguistic variance on infants’ ability (3- to 20-months) to establish sound-meaning associations. The target-words embedded in phrases, based on an artificial language, were presented along with visually displayed puppets. Study II investigates the role of attribute type on infants’ ability (3- to 6-months) to establish sound-meaning associations. Two-word phrases, based on the same artificial language as in Study I, were presented along with visually displayed geometrical objects. The words implicitly referred to the color and shape of the objects. Study III examines infants’ ability (12- to 16-months) to predict phonetic information. The subjects were tested on their ability to associate Swedish whole words and disrupted words to familiar objects. Study IV investigates infants’ ability (6- to 8-months) to detect concurrence and synchrony in speech and non-speech. The infants were exposed to Swedish speech sounds presented with corresponding articulatory events, the sound of hand-clapping presented with synchronized hand-clapping movements, and the sound of hand-clapping presented with synchronized articulatory events. The results picture the subject as sensitive to distributional properties of auditory and visual information (Study I and II) but still unable to predict phonetic information, in the beginning of the second year of life (Study III). The infants’ conceptual behavior is outlined as a general-purpose perceptual process influenced by perceptual salience (Study IV). These results are related to a working hypothesis based on the Ecological theory of language acquisition (Lacerda &amp; Sundberg, 2006), and Lindblom (Lindblom, 1990; Lindblom &amp; Lacerda, 2006). / <p>För att köpa boken skicka en beställning till exp@ling.su.se/ To order the book send an e-mail to exp@ling.su.se</p>

This thesis studies the characteristics of the acoustic signal in speech, especially in speech directed to infants and in infant vocal development, to gain insight on essential aspects of speech processing, speech production and communicative interaction in early language acquisition. Three sets of experimental studies are presented in this thesis. From a phonetic point of view they investigate the fundamental processes involved in first language acquisition. The first set (study 1.1 and study 1.2) investigated how linguistic structure in the speech signal can be derived and which strategy infants and adults use to process information depending on its presentation. The second set (study 2.1 and study 2.2) studied acoustic consequences of the anatomical geometry of the infant vocal tract and the development of sensory-motor control for articulatory strategies. The third set of studies (study 3.1 and study 3.2) explored the infant's interaction with the linguistic environment, specifically how vocal imitation and reinforcement may assist infants to converge towards adult-like speech. The first set of studies suggests that structure and quality of simultaneous sensory input impact on the establishment of initial linguistic representations. The second set indicates that the anatomy of the infant vocal tract does not constrain the production of adult-like speech sounds and that some degree of articulatory motor control is present from six months of age. The third set of studies suggests that the adult interprets and reinforces vocalizations produced by the infant in a developmentally-adjusted fashion that can guide the infant towards the sounds of the ambient language. The results are discussed in terms of essential aspects of early speech processing and speech production that can be accounted for by biological general purpose mechanisms in the language learning infant. / För att köpa boken skicka en beställning till exp@ling.su.se/ To order the book send an e-mail to exp@ling.su.se