The Grammar of Giants: Late-stage debonding of kæmpe ‘giant’ in Danish

It is a common process of language change for free morphemes to become bound morphemes, but the inverse process (termed ‘debonding’ by Norde 2009) is much rarer. Previous studies have found that lexemes with the original meaning ‘giant’ (German Riesen, Dutch reuze) have historically grammaticalized as prefixes, and subsequently debonded into free morphemes with the same bleached meaning as the prefixes (Van Goethem & Hiligsmann 2014; Norde & Van Goethem 2014). Using a synchronic corpus of written Danish (KorpusDK), this paper shows that the Danish word kæmpe, originally ‘giant’, is in the late stages of a similar process of debonding. By investigating the morphological and syntactic patterning of kæmpe, the paper shows that kæmpe has indeed debonded, and occurs as a free-standing semantically bleached adjective, but that it does not yet exhibit fully prototypical adjectival behavior. All three functions of kæmpe remain in use: a noun with the specific meaning ‘giant’, a semantically bleached prefix, and a corresponding semantically bleached adjective. This would argue against an account relying on abrupt category change, and it is proposed that kæmpe has reached its current status through gradual analogy-driven change

God tilgængelighed – fælles interesse – fælles ansvar

Opsamling fra workshop på Trafikdage 2016 Special session: God tilgængelighed – fælles interesse – fælles ansvar

Analyzing time-varying spectral characteristics of speech with function-on-scalar regression

The acoustic characteristics of noise from fricatives and stop releases are difficult to analyze. The spectral characteristics of such noise are multi-dimensional, and popular methods for analyzing them typically rely on reducing this complex information to one or a few discrete numbers, such as spectral moments or coefficients of discrete cosine transformations. In this paper, I propose using function-on-scalar regression models as a method for analyzing and mass-comparing spectra with minimal reduction of the complexity in the signal. The method is further useful for analyzing how spectra change as a function of time. The usefulness of this method is demonstrated with a corpus analysis of Danish aspirated stop releases, using the DanPASS corpus. The analysis finds that /t/ releases are invariably affricated; /k/ releases are highly affected by coarticulatory context; and /p/ releases are almost always dominated by aspiration in the latter half of the release, but are affricated in the first half in certain contexts.Theoretical and Experimental LinguisticsDescriptive and Comparative Linguistic

The grammar of giants: late-stage debonding of kæmpe 'giant' in Danish

It is a common process of language change for free morphemes to become bound morphemes, but the inverse process (termed ‘debonding’ by Norde 2009) is much rarer. Previous studies have found that lexemes with the original meaning ‘giant’ (German Riesen, Dutch reuze) have historically grammaticalized as prefixes, and subsequently debonded into free morphemes with the same bleached meaning as the prefixes (Van Goethem & Hiligsmann 2014; Norde & Van Goethem 2014). Using a synchronic corpus of written Danish (KorpusDK), this paper shows that the Danish word kæmpe, originally ‘giant’, is in the late stages of a similar process of debonding. By investigating the morphological and syntactic patterning of kæmpe, the paper shows that kæmpe has indeed debonded, and occurs as a free-standing semantically bleached adjective, but that it does not yet exhibit fully prototypical adjectival behavior. All three functions of kæmpe remain in use: a noun with the specific meaning ‘giant’, a semantically bleached prefix, and a corresponding semantically bleached adjective. This would argue against an account relying on abrupt category change, and it is proposed that kæmpe has reached its current status through gradual analogy-driven change.Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic

Stop! Hey, what's that sound?: the representation and realization of Danish stops

This dissertation investigates the phonetic and phonological characteristics of Danish stop consonants, with particular focus on their diachronic origin and synchronic variation. Using data-oriented and statistical methods, it fills empirical gaps in phonetic research on Danish stops and in doing so contributes to our understanding of the overall sound system of the language.The dissertation reports the results of a number of studies which combine spontaneous speech corpora with state-of-the-art techniques in statistical modeling. Topics considered include intervocalic voicing, which is shown to be rare in all stops and in almost all phonetic contexts, and affrication of aspirated stop releases, which is shown to be strongly dependent on place of articulation. The dissertation also investigates a range of phonetic parameters in a legacy corpus of traditional varieties of Jutland Danish, with the results showing systematic regional variation even in minute acoustic details.Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Succesfulde tiltag på arbejdspladserne: Rådhuse og hospitaler har sparet 8-10% CO2

I perioden fra 2011 til 2014 har 26 partnere samarbejdet i projektet Formel M om at udvikle, afprøve og forankre mobility management i dansk trafikplanlægning. Projektet var støttet af Trafikstyrelsen og Region Hovedstaden. Baggrunden for projektets idé og mission var, at kommunerne oplevede en stigende udfordring i at kunne arbejde målrettet med at opnå klimamålsætningerne på transportområdet. Hospitalerne oplevede udtalte udfordringer med lokal trængsel. Formel M var opbygget omkring en række demonstrationsprojekter, heraf seks på rådhusene og tre på hospitalerne. Deres udfordringer i forhold til at arbejde med mobility management var en usikkerhed i forhold til metode, holdning hos ledelse og medarbejdere, samt et højt krav om effektivitet. I projektet var mobilitetsindsatsen på rådhusene i gang længst og opnåede en CO2‐reduktion fra pendlingen blandt medarbejderne på 9,4 %. Rådhusene opnåede en nedgang i antal ture med bil fra 54 % til 52%, samt en fremgang af ture med bus og tog. De deltagende hospitaler opnåede på kun 12 måneder en CO2‐reduktion på 7,8 % og en nedgang i antallet af bilture fra 50 % til 46 %. Hospitalerne oplevede også en fremgang i antallet af cykel/gang‐ture. Rådhuse og hospitaler har grebet opgave forskelligt an, idet rådhusene har fokuseret på kørslen i arbejdstiden, mens hospitalerne har fokuseret på pendlingen. De mobilitetstiltag, som partnerne har taget i brug, er derfor også forskellige. Rådhusene har kortlagt og optimeret vognparken og implementeret retningslinjer for tjenesterejser. Hospitalerne har tilbudt deres medarbejdere en palette af forskellige mobilitetsformer – cykling, kollektiv transport og samkørsel. Alle partnerne har været enige om at højne opmærksomheden på transport med kampagner, øget information og synlige tiltag. Nogle af de udslagsgivende elementer for successen på rådhusene og hospitalerne har været lokale projektledere, som fx mobilitetskoordinatorer, der har søgt og fået opbakning fra ledelse og kollegaer. Der har i organisationerne været en vilje til forandring, som er blevet udfordret af fællesskabet i Formel M. Et fællesskab faciliteret af Grønt Mobilitetskontor i Gate 21, der samler forskellige kompetencer, skaber synergi mellem aktiviteter, og udvikler værktøjer som transportvaneundersøgelser og guider til projektparterne

Transportplaner for virksomheder og erhvervsnetværk

Referat af Worksho

Exercise on Prescription: trial protocol and evaluation of outcomes

BACKGROUND: In many countries exercise prescriptions are used in an attempt to initiate a physically active lifestyle in sedentary populations. Previous studies have primarily evaluated low intensive exercise prescription interventions and found moderately positive effects on physical activity and aerobic fitness. In a highly intensive Danish exercise prescription scheme called 'Exercise on Prescription' (EoP) the general practitioners can prescribe EoP to sedentary patients with lifestyle diseases. The aim of this randomized trial is to assess the short- and long-term effects of the EoP scheme. Thus, the aim of this paper is to describe the randomized controlled trial designed for evaluating effectiveness of EoP, and to present results from validations of outcome measures. METHODS/DESIGN: EoP involves a 16-week supervised training intervention and five counselling sessions (health profiles). All patients referred to EoP were eligible for the trial and were offered participation during the baseline health profile. Comparisons between the EoP group and the control group were made at baseline, and after four and ten months. Physiological measures used were maximal oxygen uptake (VO(2)max), glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c), bodyweight, and BMI. Patient-reported measures used were physical activity, health-related quality of life, amount and intensity of exercise, compliance with national guidelines for physical activity, and physical fitness. The validation of the cycle ergometer test found a strong correlation between maximal work capacity and VO(2)max, and acceptable test-retest reliability at group level. Calibration of the HbA1c apparatus was stable over ten weeks with minimal use, and test-retest reliability was good. High agreement percents were found for test-retest reliability for the self-administered questionnaire. DISCUSSION: The trial is designed to provide information about the effectiveness of the EoP scheme. The trial is part of a health technology assessment of EoP, which besides the effectiveness covers the patient perspective, the organization, and the health economy. All three methods validated were found useful for the EoP trial

En alternativ, fonetisk baseret fonemanalyse af det danske konsonantsystem

Descriptive and Comparative LinguisticsTheoretical and Experimental Linguistic