Norwegian Speakers Research Articles

Effects of English L2 on Norwegian L1

English outweighs other languages as a source for linguistic borrowing in present-day Norwegian. Most of the research on this topic has considered direct lexical loans, yet observations indicate that English is increasingly burrowing its way below the lexical surface of Norwegian – evident in the rising number of calques. This study investigates how a selection of recently observed multiword calques from English are evaluated by native Norwegian speakers. This is examined through acceptability judgements among young bilingual Norwegians (n= 83, mean age 18), and among two control groups comprising 10 bilingual adults (mean age 55) and 16 minimally bilingual seniors (mean age 75), respectively. A translation test was included to compare the judgements against production data. Based on our overall findings, we suggest that increased calquing is a sign of heightened proficiency in and exposure to the English language.

Speaking about the past from different perspectives: the acquisition of Italian L2 by Norwegian and Russian learners

This study investigates the influence of L1 language-specific patterns on the acquisition of L2 structures. The lack of certain grammatical categories is often compensated for at another level of linguistic structure. This study analyses how Italian past tenses (connected with the category of aspect) are acquired by Russian and Norwegian learners. In Norwegian, in contrast to Russian and Italian, there is no grammatical aspect.
 The data analyzed contain a written narration of a short story presented through four pictures and were collected from several groups of informants: Russian and Norwegian native speakers, learners of Italian (levels B1 and C1), and Italian native speakers (the control group).
 The results obtained show that Norwegian learners, independently of their level, use more temporal connectors in their narratives. However, verbal semantics or temporal connectors (usually considered to be triggers of Italian past tenses) do not help them use the correct form. Russian learners performed better on the test. Their errors show that the textual function of the verb is more important for them than its semantics. However, they overuse coordinative connectors (e ‘and’ and ma ‘but’) at the beginning of sentences. These results lead to further discussion of textual features in the three languages and the role of the tense-aspect category in text structure.

Effect of voicing on perceptual auditory laterality in Estonian and Norwegian native speakers

ABSTRACTAs a reliable and valid measures of perceptual auditory laterality, dichotic listening has been successfully applied in studies in many countries and languages. However, languages differ in the linguistic relevance of change in initial phoneme of words (e.g., for word identification). In the present cross-language study, we examine the effect of these differences on dichotic-listening task performance to establish how characteristics of one's native language affect the perception of nonnative phonological features. We compared 33 native speakers of Norwegian, a language characterized by a clear distinction between voiced and unvoiced initial plosive consonants, with 30 native speakers of Estonian, a language that has exclusively unvoiced initial phonemes. Using a free-report dichotic-listening paradigm utilizing pairs of voiced (/ba/, /da/, /ga/) and unvoiced (/pa/, /ta/, /ka/) stop-consonant vowels as stimulus material, the Norwegian native speakers were found to be more sensitive to the voicing of the initial plosive than the Estonian group. “Voicing” explained 69% and 18% of the variance in the perceptual auditory laterality in the Norwegian and the Estonian sample, respectively. This indicates that experiential differences, likely during acquisition of the mother tongue in early development, permanently shape the sensitivity to the voicing contrast.

Heritage Norwegian Vowel Phonology and English Dialect Formation

I present an acoustic analysis of the English and Norwegian spoken by contemporary heritage Norwegian-English bilinguals from northwestern Minnesota to evaluate claims of Norwegian substrate influence on the development of Upper Midwestern American English dialects. Specifically, this paper focuses on the English /o/ vowel, as in ‘goat’ or ‘boat,’ with a flat or falling trajectory (i.e., monophthongal /o/), that is a regional feature of the English of Minnesota and North Dakota (Allen, 1973–1976, vol. 3, pp. 22–23; Moen, 1988; Purnell, Raimy, & Salmons, in press; Thomas, 2001). Thomas (2001, p. 72) points to transfer from the Scandinavian languages’ (primarily Norwegian and Swedish) long [oː] vowels, which in many varieties of Norwegian are typically monophthongal (cf. Endresen, 1988, p. 84), as the source for monophthongal English /o/ in the region. Thomas (2001) relies on the relatively large settlements of Scandinavian immigrants in the Upper Midwest to support the Scandinavian source of this feature, yet so far we lack tests of this hypothesis. This paper seeks to fill this gap by providing both acoustic and phonological data from heritage Norwegian speakers. These data are situated in a discussion of how vowel productions reflect dialect differences within Norwegian-American communities, which enriches analyses of the adoption of substrate features into this regional variety of American English.

Speaking like “us”: self- and other-categorization as Norwegian speakers in student interactions

AbstractThis article investigates the manner in which students in Norwegian upper secondary schools negotiate “legitimate speaker” category membership in spoken interactions. It is concerned with adolescents’ linguistic identity as Norwegian speakers, and the language ideologies that inform categorization practices. Three collaborative features are distinguished to identify membership categorization practices: the pragmatic notion of scales of time and place; pronouns, in particular the personal pronouns “we”, “us”, and “they”; and the socio-epistemic notion of object-side assessments. The article asks whether the students’ categories correspond to those of education policy and research, and finds that students operate with more complex membership categorizations than the binary Norwegian/non-Norwegian division found in applied linguistic research and policy documents. It also finds that status as “expert” speaker of Norwegian is negotiable in student interactions, where social factors such as interpersonal relations, perceived social differences and performance of category-bound activities are as important as linguistic factors. The article shows how both non-native and native speakers of Norwegian can discursively construct themselves and others as more or less expert speakers of the language. As such, it contributes with insights on how institutionally defined linguistic markets, linguistic capital and legitimate speakers can be contested at the local level of student interactions.

Excuse me, but can you tell me where the Nordic House is located? Linguistic strategies in inter-Nordic communication in Iceland illustrated through participant observation

AbstractIn Iceland, Danish is taught as a foreign language parallel to English. One purpose for this is to promote inter-Nordic communication, since Danish is generally held to be intercomprehensible for both Norwegian and Swedish speakers. Assuming the role of tourists, field workers who were native speakers of Danish, Norwegian or Swedish approached Icelandic adolescents (aged 15–20), asking in their native language for directions to the Nordic House in Reykjavík. The investigation was conducted at three different time periods (1983, 1999/2004 and 2006) and showed that the proportion of young people understanding the question thus posed to them decreased from two thirds (1983) to a little less than 40% (2006). At the same time, the number switching to English while answering the question increased. In 2006, a large majority (80%) was inclined to do so, while only one third did so in 1983, roughly 25 years earlier.

Static spatial descriptions in five Germanic languages

The paper presents qualitative and quantitative analyses of expressions describing static topological relations in Frisian, Icelandic, and Norwegian (Bokmål), Swiss German, and Standard German. According to the literature, speakers of Germanic languages typically express more than just the bare minimum of spatial relational information when describing spatial scenes. As an example, they can add postural or other manner information as an unmarked choice in their spatial descriptions (the cup stands on the table vs. the cup is on the table). The main focus lies on a detailed description of the modalities and proportions of this additional expression of information on the spatial scene in the five languages. Distributed expression of spatial relational semantics, posture verb usage and resultative constructions are analyzed. Descriptive and inferential methods are used to show the similarities and differences across the five languages, on the level of group tendencies (means), of individual speakers, and of individual stimulus items. The analyses show considerable differences across the languages. Speakers of Standard German and Frisian are most prone to integrate additional manner information into the descriptions, whereas speakers of Icelandic, Norwegian or Swiss German only rarely integrate this kind of information into their spatial descriptions.

A Cognitively Grounded Measure of Pronunciation Distance

In this study we develop pronunciation distances based on naive discriminative learning (NDL). Measures of pronunciation distance are used in several subfields of linguistics, including psycholinguistics, dialectology and typology. In contrast to the commonly used Levenshtein algorithm, NDL is grounded in cognitive theory of competitive reinforcement learning and is able to generate asymmetrical pronunciation distances. In a first study, we validated the NDL-based pronunciation distances by comparing them to a large set of native-likeness ratings given by native American English speakers when presented with accented English speech. In a second study, the NDL-based pronunciation distances were validated on the basis of perceptual dialect distances of Norwegian speakers. Results indicated that the NDL-based pronunciation distances matched perceptual distances reasonably well with correlations ranging between 0.7 and 0.8. While the correlations were comparable to those obtained using the Levenshtein distance, the NDL-based approach is more flexible as it is also able to incorporate acoustic information other than sound segments.

Hva Er Et Adjektiv? Et Forsøk På En Prototypedefinisjon

ABSTRACT The article reviews various definitions of adjectival category in Norwegian, and shows that although they define it in different ways, the core of the definitions is always the same. However, there are some classes of adjectives, which are treated diversely by the Norwegian linguists because of the unlike set of criteria they use in their classifications. In my Ph.D. project, I analyze acquisition of Norwegian adjective agreement by Polish L1 speakers of L2 Norwegian. The aim of the present paper is to propose my own definition of adjective, which is based on prototypical and peripheral meanings. The definition shows a Norwegian prototype adjective (that is not unlike the adjectives presented by the Norwegian grammarians) and discusses the more peripheral cases. The definition focuses on the Norwegian adjectives, but also the Polish are mentioned.

No Evidence of L1 Path Encoding Strategies in the L2 in Advanced Bulgarian Speakers of Norwegian

This article has two aims: we first test the applicability of Talmy's typology for describing the cross-linguistic encoding of directed motion with Norwegian and Bulgarian. Theoretically, these languages belong to the same group of satellite-framed languages. However, we show that they differ in their preferred strategies. Norwegian prefers an elaborate prepositional inventory and Bulgarian employs a rich verbal lexicon. We also test whether Bulgarian L2 speakers of Norwegian follow the L1 strategy in describing directed motion. We find no evidence of transfer in L2 speaker responses, which suggests target language thinking-for-speaking patterns.

Variation in Norwegian retroflexion

A phonological process in Norwegian takes morpheme-initial alveolar /t d n s/ to retroflex [ʈ ɖ ɳ ʂ] after a morpheme ending in the tap /ɾ/, a process which earlier descriptions in the literature have classified as obligatory. This paper reports on production experiments with both existing and novel words, which show that Norwegian speakers treat retroflexion of morpheme-initial /s/ as optional, and that they are more likely to apply retroflexion to a morpheme in /s-/ when the /s/ is followed by a consonant (/sC-/) than when the /s/ is followed by a vowel (/sV-/).

Perception evidence for the proportional increase theory of weight

Lunden 2006 gave evidence from a production study with Norwegian speakers that shows there is a proportional relationship between V, the canonical light rhyme, and heavy syllable rhymes. The average proportional increase of a heavy rhyme over a light V rhyme was notably consistent across all positions. Crucially, a final VC rhyme did not reach the same proportional increase in a duration that a non-final VC or VXC did, as final lengthening disproportionally affected V-final rhymes. This poster presents an MFC experiment with Norwegian speakers that finds evidence from the perceptual side for the proportional increase theory of weight.

Norms and situational rules of address in English and Norwegian speakers

The proposed universal relationship between status and solidarity in address exchange is revisited and a novel methodology applied. Forms of address were investigated in Norwegian and English usage based on Brown's (1965) theory of the invariant norm of address. Address exchanges and politeness measures were elicited in Norway and England. The degree of reciprocity, solidarity, and inequality in dyadic address exchange were analyzed and using a statistical approach allowed to directly compare the linguistic patterns of expected and observed values in two languages. The address exchange showed no consistency with expected theoretical values for certain categories of Brown's (1965) theory. Differences in politeness were found between the two countries. Effects of cultural differences and social change governing the pragmatics of communication are suggested to explain the findings. A cognitive concept of politeness to explain forms of address usage is emphasized.

Semi-spontaneous oral text production: Measurements in clinical practice

Functionally relevant assessment of the language production of speakers with aphasia should include assessment of connected speech production. Despite the ecological validity of everyday conversations, more controlled and monological types of texts may be easier to obtain and analyse in clinical practice. This article discusses some simple measurements for the analysis of semi-spontaneous oral text production by speakers with aphasia. Specifically, the measurements are related to the production of verbs and nouns, and the realization of different sentence types. The proposed measurements should be clinically relevant, easily applicable, and linguistically meaningful. The measurements have been applied to oral descriptions of the ‘Cookie Theft’ picture by eight monolingual Norwegian speakers, four with an anomic type of aphasia and four without any type of language impairment. Despite individual differences in both the clinical and the non-clinical group, most of the measurements seem to distinguish between speakers with and without aphasia.

The perception of Norwegian word tones by second language speakers.

The present study is concerned with the perception of Norwegian word tones by second language speakers. The phonological system of Norwegian involves two different tones that are used to distinguish a relatively large number of word pairs. Earlier studies have shown that native speakers of Norwegian are able to identify the word tones almost error‐free. The aim of the present study was to investigate word tone perception by speakers of a tonal language (Mandarin Chinese) and a non‐tonal language (German). These two groups as well as a control group of native listeners identified manipulated stimuli with tonal contours varying between tone 1 and tone 2. It appeared that the L2 users had less sharp transitions than the natives, the Chinese subjects performing somewhat better than the Germans. In addition, native speakers categorized tokens of tone 1 and tone 2 words produced by the L2 speakers and indicated on a five‐point scale how sure they were in their judgment. In an acoustical analysis the fundamental frequency contours of the L2 test words were analyzed and subsequently used for comparison with native categorization results. The implications of the found correlations between production and perception are discussed.

Sami speakers are less satisfied with general practitioners’ services

OBJECTIVES: The government’s Action Plan for Health and Social Services states as a goal that the Sami population’s encounter with health and social services should be just as good as what the rest of the population experiences. The goal of this study is to investigate patient satisfaction with the municipal GP service in areas with both a Sami and Norwegian population.STUDY DESIGN: A cross-sectional population study using questionnaires.METHODS: The data were taken from the population based study of health and living conditions in areas with both Sami and Norwegian populations (SAMINOR) in which respondents were asked about their satisfaction with GP services in their municipalities. This population survey was carried out in the period 2002–2004. The analyses include 15,612 men and women aged 36-79.RESULTS: The Sami-speaking patients were less satisfied with the municipal GP service as a whole than were the Norwegian speakers; RR 2.4 (95% CI 2.1–2.7). They were less satisfied with the physicians’ language skills; RR 5.8 (95% CI 4.8-7.0); and they felt that misunderstandings between physician and patient due to language problems were more frequent; RR 3.8 (95% CI 3.3-4.3). One-third expressed that they did not wish to use an interpreter.CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that it is necessary to place greater emphasis on the physicians’ language competency when hiring GPs in municipalities within the Administrative Area for the Sami Language. This could improve satisfaction with the physicians’ services.

Adult and child understanding of simple reciprocal sentences

According to a standard view, the reciprocal pronoun has a fixed semantic value that defines a relation of weak reciprocity, and any stronger readings it may appear to have are pragmatic or lexical interactive effects (Fiengo & Lasnik 1973, Langendoen 1978). Dalrymple et al. 1995 counterproposes that the reciprocal pronoun has a flexible semantic value defining a range of readings of varying logical strength and that a semantic principle determines the reading required for a given reciprocal sentence on the basis of the meaning of its predicate. This article presents psycholinguistic evidence from adult speakers of English, Norwegian, and Dutch, and from child speakers of Dutch and Norwegian, which supports Dalrymple et al.'s analysis of the lexical content of the reciprocal pronoun but which also strongly suggests that the interpretive principle they posit is pragmatic rather than semantic in nature.

Effects of speaking rate, focal stress, and distinctive vowel length on syllable-internal timing in Norwegian

The relative timing of consonants and vowels of a syllable can be affected by factors such as speaking rate, focal stress, and distinctive vowel length. Speaking rate and focal stress tend to have a global affect on syllable-internal timing, whereas the effect of distinctive vowel length in Norwegian is generally believed to be localized to the syllable rhyme. When these factors converge on a syllable, the syllable-internal timing simultaneously reflects their concurrent effects. The goal of the present study is to examine and characterize the concurrent effects of speaking rate, focal stress, and distinctive vowel length on syllable-internal timing of C1VC2 components. Conversations were developed in which 12 Norwegian CVCs containing /i, o, a, i:, o:, a:/ were either focused or nonfocused by the discourse. The set of conversations was produced at three speaking rates by native speakers of Norwegian. Results indicate that speaking rate and focal stress have an overall affect on the timing of components in the syllable. In addition, the effects of distinctive vowel length and focal stress on components of the syllable rhyme were found to be interdependent across speaking rates. These findings are discussed in terms of syllable- and rhyme-internal timing.

Syllable- and rhyme-internal timing: Combined effects of postvocalic voicing and distinctive vowel length in Norwegian

Syllable-internal timing can be affected by a variety of factors, including distinctive vowel length and postvocalic voicing. Distinctive vowel length, which occurs in Norwegian, and postvocalic voicing have typically been found to inversely affect vowel duration and the closure duration of a postvocalic consonant. When these factors converge on a syllable, syllable-internal timing simultaneously reflects the concurrent influence of distinctive vowel length and postvocalic voicing. Research on English [D. M. Behne and L. C. Nygaard, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 93, 2296(A) (1993)] has shown that when multiple factors concurrently influence syllable-internal timing, their effects occur independent of each other. The goal of the present study is to examine the effects of distinctive vowel length and postvocalic voicing on syllable- and rhyme-internal timing, and characterize the concurrent effect of these factors. A set of 12 Norwegian CVCs containing /i, o, a, i:, o:, a:/ before a final voiced and a final voiceless consonant were produced in context by 12 native speakers of Norwegian. Results indicate that syllable-internal timing is independently affected by distinctive vowel length and postvocalic voicing, however their effects on syllable-internal timing were found to differ. These findings will be discussed in terms of syllable- and rhyme-internal timing.

The Vowel System of a Norwegian Dialect in Wisconsin

1. Most speakers of Norwegian in the Middle West belong to the farming class.' Nearly all are bilingual, and many of them handle the English language better than the Norwegian. It is often easy to detect their Scandinavian background in listening to their English, even in the case of secondor third-generation Americans. They were usually educated in a grade school and a NorwegianLutheran parochial school. The parochial school, until relatively recent times, was conducted in Norwegian; the children were taught to read and write the language. As a result, only the youngest speakers of Norwegian are without any knowledge of its literary form. Literary Dano-Norwegian is still used in church services, and is the familiar form of the language to those of the city population who cultivate the idiom of their ancestors in the Sons of Norway lodges; but the country communities use dialects almost exclusively. As a rule, a community has only one main dialect. The pioneers preferred to settle with people from their own district in Norway; if people from two districts settled close together, the dialect that counted the larger number of speakers usually replaced the other. Dialect mixtures is seldom to be found except in individual speakers; only one case has been reported where a mixed dialect seems to be the language of a community. Only the largest settlements, for instance the Koshkonong settlement near Madison, have maintained several dialects with equal prestige. The dialects have been influenced by American English (chiefly in the form of loanwords) to a very large extent, so much in fact that newcomers from Norway often find it difficult to understand the speakers. This is true even if the newcomer knows English; for most English words, including a large part of those most commonly used in American Norwegian, do not sound English in a Norwegian context, and the speaker is often unaware that such-and-such a word is not pure Norwegian. It is this phonemic aspect of the loanwords that will be dealt with here.