Filtyp
This study is concerned with how the reading process reacts to detection of errors in discourse, and how this differs from cases where an error is missed or if no error is present. It sets out to investigate these questions using eye-tracking methodology. In order to determine the influence of detection of errors during the reading process, native English speakers were asked to read short news ite
Face-to-face dialogue can be regarded as a direct and visible way to establish a close connection, between two people facing each other communicate proactively and without barriers. It also plays a key role in the study of verbal and nonverbal communication. A number of studies provide an overview of how gesture rates in face-to-face conditions have registered different rates compared with other s
Topicalisation (TOP) and clitic left-dislocation (CLLD) are syntactic strategies in which some constituent occurs sentence-initially rather than in canonical position further to the right. European Portuguese is exceptional among Romance languages, as both TOP and CLLD can be used to place verbal arguments in clause-initial position. The two forms are superficially similar, but most modern syntact
This study investigates the acoustic characteristics and cross-dialectal variation of the diphthongs /ai au oi ui/ in the Nuckö, Ormsö, and Rickul varieties of Estonian Swedish, which have previously only been described impressionistically (Lagman, 1979; Danell, 1905-34). Eight acoustic measures, reflecting the F1 and F2 frequency values at the first (InF1 and InF2) and second (FinF1 and FinF2) vo
In this study, I demonstrate that identity-building is an important discursive strategy for President Barack Obama in the seven-year long debate surrounding the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The data for the study comes from a 6-million word corpus of speeches that were held by Obama between January 2009 and January 2016, all published by the White House. The speeches are classified according to genr
The present study investigates how native speakers of British English (n=12) and advanced Russian learners of English (n=24) handle two types of tense-aspect mismatches: present perfect mismatches, where the present perfect form does not match the preceding adverbial (e.g. *Last year, Kate has studied French…), and past simple mismatches, where the past simple form does not match the preceding adv
This qualitative study explores whether antithesis, as a didactic rhetorical tool, may enhance the likelihood of understanding complex biology-related information. Research shows that students lack the ability of communicating expert knowledge to laymen since they do not understand subject matter well enough themselves due to scientific language. Hence, scientific language use should be studied in
This thesis investigates word order patterns in spoken Basque for two dialects, Navarrese-Lapurdian and Gipuzkoan. The data for the analysis was elicited with stimuli pictures in an experiment in dialogue form. The 26 participants were from Hazparne (Lapurdi), Donostia, and Andoain (both Gipuzkoa). The data consists of transitive main clauses, both questions and declaratives with nominal subject a
Continuation statements and polar questions in conversational French are typically both produced with final rising intonation. This study shows that several pitch, duration, and intensity cues can distinguish the two utterance types over chance level. Nevertheless, we see a lot of phonetic overlap between the two. Rather than assuming two distinct rising intonation contour types for French, we pro
It is a hotly debated issue whether second language (L2) learners can achieve target-like online syntactic processing of relations not instantiated in their first language (L1). The Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH) predicts that L2 learners will not process configurations with structural distance in a target-like online fashion (Clahsen & Felser, 2006 a,b,c), whereas some studies find that t
In this thesis, I investigate the relation between assessed speaking proficiency and measured complexity and accuracy in twenty test-takers’ performance in the oral part of the Swedish certificate test Swedex B2. Accuracy and complexity have been measured in seven different ways; both global and local measures from the CAF (Complexity–Accuracy–Fluency) triad have been used. Also, each test-taker’s
This paper discusses the urban writing on Athenian walls as an imaginative medium of intercommunication occurring during the socioeconomic and political crisis era in Greece, over the last seven years. The street art activity on the city’s walls as a linguistic and imagery phenomenon could be approached as the main symbolic mode of public expression generated by the crisis. To investigate it field
In this study, I demonstrate that social hierarchy and power are important aspects for understanding the use of epistemic and evidential stance verbs in computer-mediated communication. The data for the study come from an online bulletin board about rhythmic gymnastics, where the construction of social roles is believed to play a role in the expression of stance. The members of the community are d
Unagi-sentences are, as defined in this thesis, sentences where there is a mismatch between the literal interpretation of the sentence and its meaning in context, often accompanying an apparent violation of selection restrictions of the predicate. This thesis argues that the phenomenon of unagi-sentences shows more variation than previously thought, as well as provides a much needed comparison of
The Mandarin Chinese grammatical marker le has long been a major focus of grammatical research in Chinese linguistics, yet no definition of its semantics has been able to comprehensively account for the marker's full range of functions and uses. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to identify all major meanings expressed by each conventionally accepted le type in a sentence, and investi
