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Five European countries take part in this comprehensive psycholinguistic project, administered by the European Science Foundation (ESF). In Sweden the project is represented by a research group from the department for linguistics. The aim of the project is to describe how adults learn a new language without formal instruction. The Gothenburg group is focusing on the language development of Finnish and Latin-American immigrants. Within the project several new linguistic methods have been elaborated.
Contact: Jens Allwood, Sven Strömqvist, Kaarlo Voinomaa.
The aim of the project is to look for a general opinion in different linguistic matters. One main purpose is to find what different patterns of opinion the public holds. For instance is there a widely spread opinion that the Swedish language is starting to deteriorate? Another aim is to investigate, whether there are differences of opinions between different groups of people (e.g. young versus old, women versus men).
Contact: Lars-Gunnar Andersson, Richard Hirsch.
The project South Africas Languages extends over several different sub-projects. Minority Languages in Botswana (sponsored by Sarek) is a sub-project which aims at delineating minority languages as to number of speakers as well as basic structure. The main purpose is to contribute to the knowledge of the languages and the language situation of southern Africa. Questions regarding the interrelation of these languages, the grammar of separate languages and peoples multilingual capacity are issues covered in a larger project.
Contact: Lars-Gunnar Andersson and Tore Janson
The Göteborg dialect is studied in this project from structural, historical, and sociolinguistic perspectives. the project is part of a larger research program dealing with western Sweden and is supported by the Faculty of the Humanities, Göteborg University.
Contact: Lars-Gunnar Andersson
In this project linguistic ways of depicting nature and natural resources are being investigated. Studies of opinions about nature in differenet conversational settings as well as of semantic fields, compounds, metaphors, sayings and phrases are also included in this project.
Contact: Jens Allwood, Anders Eriksson, Richard Hirsch.
The aim of this project is to show and explain the meaning of the different auxiliary verbs in English from a diachronical perspective. The investigation is an attempt to apply some fundamental ideas in psychology and pragmatics in order to explain differences in meaning.
Contact: Karin Aijmer
At the request of the Workers Welfare Foundation (Arbetarskyddsfonden) this project is a survey of the understanding and attitudes of workers concerning safety as well as of reasons for misunderstanding and problems in this area. Misunderstanding often arises due to different cultural backgrounds, attitudes, and different ways of looking upon life. At workplaces certain types of misunderstanding may have serious consequences regarding safety and environmental questions. The investigation tries to list relevant comprehension and attitude dissimilarities in different immigrant groups.
Contact: Dora Kós-Dienes, Lars Bergman, Eva Hedencrona
Specialization in health-care makes it difficult for patients to demand their legal right for integrity, autonomy and intelligible information. The aim of this pilot investigation is to prepare and develop a project about communication problems between patients and health-care personnel especially with regard to ordination. The investigation starts with a communicative activity analysis at two nursing institutions and a delineation of communication problems. Selected interaction sequences are being analysed and recorded in a number of case-studies. Problems during the contact process are analyzed in the recorded material especially with a view to aspects of coherence and relevance. The adaptation of the patient is analysed through personal interviews.
Contact: Jens Allwood, Elisabeth Ahlsén, Dora Kós-Dienes, Eva Hedencrona
In cooperation with historians, anthropologists and peace- and conflict-researchers cultural patterns of conflict and conflict resolution are being investigated. The research focuses on Sweden and Malaysia.
Contact: Jens Allwood, Dennis Day
The Department of Linguistics is participating in this project with two studies: Communicative Work Analysis and Information Flow at a Swedish Multinational and Communication, Information, Innovation in a Swedish Multinational. The first study analyzes how and what kind of information is being circulated between the head-office and its foreign branch-organisations/ affiliated companies and between the company and the public both at home and abroad. The second study investigates internal communication within the parent company.
Contact: Dennis Day, Jens Allwood
In collaboration with Prof. Sten Jönsson at the Department for Business Economics communication processes are being studied which serve to establish and maintain trust in business communications. The project is financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Centenary Foundation).
Contact: Jens Allwood
Semantics and spoken language is a research program at the Department of Linguistics which contains separate studies of the semantics and pragmatics of spoken language. Up till now studies within the framework of this program have been conducted concerning linguistic feedback and speech management. Since the Fall of 1991 the program has been sponsored by HSFR.
Contact: Jens Allwood, Elisabeth Ahlsén, Joakim Nivre
This project aims at studying a workplace comprising a large percentage of immigrants. The purpose is to study the role language, communication, and culture play as regards collaboration difficulties and conflicts as well as improvement of cooperation and conflict resolution.
Contact: Dennis Day, Jens Allwood
Related publications
Pragmatics in PLUS (PDF)
Communicative Activity Analysis of a
Wizard of Oz Experiment (PDF)
The project, which is linked to the EEC information technology program (ESPRIT), aims at developing computer systems where users may get information (e.g. from the yellow pages) by way of a dialogue in natural language. The main idea of the project is to apply knowledge from pragmatics, i.e. the theoretical discipline dealing with the use of language in different situations. This is meant to render the systems more robust, flexible and accessible to the user.
Contact: Jens Allwood, Joakim Nivre, Torbjörn Lager, Harriet Dahlgren
This project analyzes data on language development in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian children from a comparative perspective: e.g. which characteristic features in their process of acquisition seem to be universal and which features are due to characteristics in each specific language. Further the project serves to build up a Swedish, Danish and Norwegian database in a legible machine language according to the international exchange format CHILDES. Coordinators are Kim Plunkett, Aarhus University and Sven Strömqvist, Gothenburg University.
Contact: Sven Strömqvist
This project, which is financed by HSFR, is a follow-up of the Ecology of Adult Language Acquisition (EALA) project mentioned above which dealt with the spontaneous language acquisition in less educated immigrant adults. In the follow-up project some of the theoretical questions of the EALA-project are developed even further. Some of the problems in the follow-up project are studied in collaboration with the Dutch group of the earlier EALA-project.
Contact: Sven Strömqvist, Anders-Börje Andersson
The primary purpose of this project is to investigate patterns of language transmission within the family and the different ways in which the childs first language is used in various minority groups and in the Swedish majority group. Asecondary aim is to map out to what extent the familys patterns of communication and teaching strategies in the home match with those employed in Swedish municipal child care. this is expected to have import and consequences for the childs future language development and progress in school.
Contact: Sally Boyd, Paula Andersson
This project, financed by the Jubileumsfond of Riksbanken, researches semantic aspects of the acquisition of language in hearing impaired children, in particular nominal phrases. Three age groups of hearing impaired children and children with normal hearing (control-groups) are being studied in the same type of activities: i.e. the planning and performance of a video recording. An important question in the project is what the children add to the acquisition by way of their own cognitive ability and creative thinking and what may be mechanically explained by their disability.
Contact: Kerstin Nelfelt, Sven Strömqvist
This pilot project aims at developing a method to establish the production-process of writing on line and to build a database which may be used for reference material in comparative studies of the writing process.
Contact: Sven Strömqvist
The aim of the project is to set up a machine language database - The Nordic Language Acquisition Archive -so as to render already collected material more accessible to scientists within and outside the Nordic countries. The project concentrates on data from mother-tongue acquisition as well as from second language acquisition. The archive will contain data from the Scandinavian languages: Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish and Finno-Ugric languages like Finnish, Karelian and Vepsic. The project is run by Sven Strömqvist, Gothenburg University and Kim Plunkett, Aarhus University.
Contact: Sven Strömqvist
This project is financed by the Jubileumsfoundation of Riksbanken and studies similarities and dissimilarities between linguistic production processes - rather than final linguistic products - in speech and writing in children and youth at different educational levels. The project is expected to be relevant for linguistic psycholinguistic and didactic theory, and their Implementation.
Contact: Sven Strömqvist, Åke Hellstrand, Anders-Börje Andersson, Beatriz Dorriots
The project is sponsored by HSFR and aims data collection in CHILDES-format from a longitudinal case study material of two Swedish children. Further the project aims at performing two studies of development of the newly established data base: one comparative study of the development of genders and stress and a study of speech planning.
Contact: Sven Strömqvist, Ander-Börje Andersson, Ulla Richthoff
The project is sponsored by HSFR. It investigates the ways different mechanisms of conversation are influenced by aphasia.
Contact: Elisabeth Ahlsén, Jens Allwood
The project aims at elaborating a technically useful means for measuring the ability of aphatic individual to communicate in different situations based on scientific methods and results from the research on aphasia at the department. The project is sponsored by SFR.
Contact: Elisabeth Ahlsén
In this international research project disturbances in grammatical structures in the speech of the aphatic is being investigated in a great number of languages.
Contact: Elisabeth Ahlsén
Through psycholinguistic methods this project attempts to how different forms of representation of linguistic information interact. An editing device for the construction of interactive computer media will be produced and tested. These facilities are meant to be of help to aphasics and other dyslectics, and in the multimedial presentation of information. This project is sponsored by FRN, SFR, and NUTEK.
Contact: Elisabeth Ahlsén, Rolf Borg Sandahl-Bäwer.
The project is a NOS-H-sponsored collaboration between Gothenburg and Joensuu-Åbo and aims at psycholinguistic comparison between off-line and on-line processes in normal mono and bilingual speakers (of Swedish and Finnish) and in aphasics. The research concerns the interaction between morpho-lexical and syntactic information.
Contact: Elisabeth Ahlsén
The project aimed to show the present patterns of linguistic variations and possible processes of change among adult speakers of Swedish and either Finnish or American English in Sweden. The patterns of variation in these minority language groups are related to corresponding patterns in the respective native countries.
Contact: Sally Boyd, Paula Andersson
The aim of the project, which is sponsored by NOS-H, is to register the present language situation of Scandinavian immigrants and to investigate the future possibilities for a continued usage and survival of these languages in Scandinavia. The project consists of two studies: a statistical and demographical investigation of immigrants divided into language groups, a study based on interviews as to language use in four immigrant groups in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.
Contact: Sally Boyd, Paula Andersson
This project is an attempt to produce a grammar which accounts for sociolinguistic variables such as age, profession, gender, education etc. and is empirical, i.e. data are collected through direct studies in the field.
Contact: Pierre Javanaud
This project studies the language acquisition of minority children, mainly in Swedish speaking nursery groups. The project is meant to establish whether there are differences of quality between simultaneous and successive bilingual development. An overlapping question is what influence the context of a Swedish speaking nursery has on the development of second language acquisition of these children.
Contact: Anders-Börje Andersson, Eva Eckerbrant Cantillo, Kerstin Nauclér
This project aims at defining common phonetical tendencies with regard to symmetry and asymmetry as well as hierarchies of implications between groups of consonants and separate consonant sounds based on typological and statistical data about a great number of consonant systems in languages of the world. The project is based on actual phonetical theories about linguistic production and perception, but also on experimental phonetical research including listening tests of synthetical fricatives.
Contact: Per Lindblad
This project aims at further broadening and improving a computer-based phonetical dictionary, which has already been published in two issues, the latest one in April, 1989. The dictionary is meant to be used for producing pronunciation, i.e. transcriptions, while reading all sorts of Swedish text material. An important fundamental principal is to make the dictionary accessible to users unfamiliar with the Swedish language. Further the dictionary will incorporate as many words in a text material as possible, i.e. even the names of people, places, companies, models, etc.
Contact: Per Lindblad, Per Hedelin
The aim of this project is to study the movements of the lower jaw and the lips during normal and pathological speech phrases. Movement registration is made by means of computer-based Selspot equipment Unlike other studies in this field, the material consists of phrases and not isolated syllables. Special attention is given to mandibular movements in relation to the syllabic structure. Results are related to current hypotheses about the motoric control of speech. An important goal is producing objective test methods for Parkinsons disease and other speech disturbances.
Contact: Per Lindlblad, Stig Karlsson, Per Svensson, Sven-Åke Almqvist
This production studies the production of normal Swedish /s/, /ÿ/, and /[[section]]/ in systematically varied vowel and stress contexts. Dynamic palatographic (EPG) registration with equipment of the Reading type is used, supplemented by acoustic analysis and optoelectronic registration (Selspot) of the lower jaw movements. The main aim is to analyze variations in the front tongue groove and to relate the data to mandibular movements and acoustic patterns within the framework of recently developed sibilantic articulatory models.
Contact: Per Lindblad, Sture Lindqvist
The aim of this project is to investigate the role of front upper and lower teeth and the aveolar ridge in [s] production. Persons with prostehese in this position very often have [s] problems. In mechanical models of the vocal tract, systematic variations will be made in the front dental and aveolar shape and size. The sound produced by an air jet hitting this region will be studied acoustically and perceptually. Also natural speech will be analyzed by dynamic palatography (EPG), Selspot (mandibular movements), and acoustically. An important goal is to give a scientific basis for prosthesis production.
Contact: Per Lindblad, Sture Lindqvist
This project deals with different aspects of co-articulation like anticipation, perseveration, assimilation and temporal coordination from a starting-point of seven accessible radiographic films with tests of real time speech from five languages (Swedish, English, Arabic, Greenlandic and Bulgarian). Results will be related to current hypotheses about the motoric control of speech. One aim is also to develop a computerized articulation model within the project by which the different movements of speech and their acoustic consequences may be simulated.
Contact: Per Lindblad, Sidney Wood