Pseudo-cleft constructions in Swedish talk-in-interaction : Turn projection and discourse organization

In this study we present an interactional linguistic analysis of pseudoclefts in Swedish based on audio and video recordings of everyday and institutional conversations, resulting in a collection of 100 instances. There is variation in the degree to which pseudo-cleft constructions are syntactically integrated: from fully integrated biclausal constructions (cleft clause + copula verb + main clause) to non-copular variants and further to variants in which the cleft-clause is followed by an indeterminate stretch of discourse. The construction's functional properties have to do with projecting actions and generating discourse events, e.g. showing that the initial part has an important turn-projecting function by disclosing the speaker's stance towards the issue at hand. Pseudo-cleft constructions are recurrently employed for marking discourse shifts, e.g. from a positive to a negative stance. Prosodic organization brings unity to the overall construction of clefts and visual cues can be used to convey significant processing activity by the speaker during the production of a pseudocleft. Our data from institutional interaction shows that pseudoclefts are heavily used by the expert rather than lay participant, thus contributing to the creation of institutional roles and social order. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

Introduction to volume 4

This is an introduction to the edited volume 'Språk och interaktion 4'. It maps the profile of the volume based on the articles included in it, lifting up classical topics in studies of language and interaction, and especially in conversation analysis, and points to the key topic of the volume, interactional asymmetries in a societal context.Non peer reviewe

The phrase pseudoscissa in spoken Swedish and its interactional characteristcs

In this study we present an interactional linguistic analysis of pseudo-clefts in Swedish based on audio and video recordings of everyday and institutional conversations, resulting in a collection of 80 instances. The ‘free relative’ initiating the construction can have an English-style wh-word as an opener ("va" ‘what), but in the majority of cases there is a fused item consisting of a demonstrative and a relativizer ("det som"), in resemblance of "ce que" in French. Our collection shows that there is variation in the degree to which pseudo-cleft constructions are syntactically integrated: from fully integrated biclausal constructions (cleft clause + copula verb + main clause) to non-copular variants and further to variants in which the latter clause stands in a loose relation to the cleft clause or is aborted or even missing. The analysis shows that the initial part (cleft clause, or A-part) has an important turn-projecting function: it alerts the recipient about the pragmatic course of the speaker’s unfolding turn. This projected content is very much coded in the predicate verb of the A-part, which often refers to the speaker’s stance towards the issue at hand. Moreover, the construction constitutes a shift in the speaker’s ongoing reasoning or a narrative, signalling a transition from a positive to a critical stance or from the background of a telling to its peak or point. Half of our instances come from everyday interactions, the other half from institutional settings with asymmetric participant roles of the expert–non-expert kind. One feature that stands out in the institutional contexts is that pseudo-cleft constructions are typically produced by the expert part. Our findings shed new light on structural and functional properties of pseudo-clefts not only in the Swedish language but also more generally in mundane and institutional spoken interaction.Peer reviewe

Introduktion

Non peer reviewe

"What I don't like is her nasal voice' : Focus final clefts in talk-in-interaction

In this paper, we present an interactional analysis of pseudo-cleft constructions in Swedish talk-in-interaction. The pseudo-cleft construction is an existing speakers’ resource in Swedish interaction, and it displays regular structural patterns and characteristic interactional functions. Swedish pseudo clefts, such as "va ja inte gillar e hennes nasala röst" ‘what I don’t like is her nasal voice’, are bipartite constructions where Part A of the construction, "va ja inte gillar" ‘what I don’t like’, is a nominal relative clause headed by the relative pronoun "vad" ‘what’ or the demonstrative "det" ‘that’, often combined with the relativizer "som". The copula verb, "e" ‘is’, links Part A with the subjective complement, Part B, "hennes nasala röst" ‘her nasal voice’, which is traditionally analysed as the focus-bearing cleft constituent. As our analysis show,s in conversational, online speaking there is some variation in the degree to which pseudo-cleft constructions are syntactically integrated: from fully integrated biclausal constructions to non-copular variants and further to variants in which the latter turn-part stands in a loose relation to the cleft clause or is aborted or even missing. Our analysis is based on a collection of ca. 80 pseudo-cleft constructions excerpted from audio- and video-recorded interactions. We will account for the construction’s functional properties that have to do with projecting actions and generating discourse events, e.g. showing that Part A has an important turn-projecting function in that it often discloses the speaker’s stance towards the issue at hand. The pseudo-cleft constructions are recurrently employed for marking discourse shifts, e.g. from a positive to a negative stance. These can be paralleled with previous studies on pseudo-cleft constructions e.g. in English, German, French, and Hebrew (e.g. Hopper & Thompson 2008; Günthner 2011; Pekarek Doehler 2011; Maschler & Fishman 2020). Our findings shed new light on structural and functional properties of pseudo-clefts in the Swedish language, but also more generally in spoken interaction.Peer reviewe

Platinum-group elements link the end-Triassic mass extinction and the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province

Elevated concentrations of iridium (Ir) and other platinum-group elements (PGE) have been reported in both terrestrial and marine sediments associated with the end-Triassic mass extinction (ETE) c. 201.5 million years ago. The source of the PGEs has been attributed to condensed vapor and melt from an extraterrestrial impactor or to volcanism. Here we report new PGE data for volcanic rocks of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) in Morocco and show that their Pd/Ir, Pt/Ir and Pt/Rh ratios are similar to marine and terrestrial sediments at the ETE, and very different from potential impactors. Hence, we propose the PGEs provide a new temporal correlation of CAMP volcanism to the ETE, corroborating the view that mass extinctions may be caused by volcanism

Föräldrastödets och den upplevda självförmågans inverkan på ungdomars skoltrivsel i Svenskfinland : En två veckor lång ESM-studie baserad på data från REBOOT-projektet

Bakgrund: Skoltrivseln är viktig för både individers utveckling och välbefinnande enligt Holzer m.fl. (2021). Vidare lyfter Virtanen m.fl. (2016) fram att det finns en stark koppling mellan skoltrivsel och engagemang. Dock har endast få studier undersökt studerandes subjektiva uppfattning om föräldrastöd (FSL), upplevd självförmåga (S-GSE) och skoltrivsel samt hur dessa variabler samverkar. Syftet med denna studie är därför att undersöka möjliga effekter av FSL och S- GSE på skoltrivsel. Metod: Samplet i denna studie bestod av 358 högstadie- och gymnasiestuderande från Österbotten och Nyland. Datainsamlingen pågick under hösten 2022 i två-veckors tid och som mätmetod användes ESM (Experience Sampling Method). Studien inkluderade såväl tvärsnittsdata som intensiv longitudinal data från REBOOT-projektet. Resultat: Av de studerande som deltog i studien rapporterade 57 % att de trivdes bra i skolan. De flesta ansåg även att de upplevde en relativt hög nivå av FSL och en medelmåttlig nivå av S-GSE. Både FSL och S-GSE hade signifikanta effekter på såväl skoltrivsel på tvärsnittsnivå som medelnivån på skoltrivsel i ESM-data och kunde bekräftas som relevanta prediktorer på skoltrivsel. FSL och S-GSE kunde förklara 10,8 % av variansen på skoltrivsel på tvärsnittsnivå, medan andelen variablerna kunde förklara från ESM-data var 18,2 %. ESM-data visade att skoltrivseln varierar mellan mättidpunkterna och att det fanns individuella skillnader som gjorde att känslan av skoltrivseln dröjde sig kvar. Den kvardröjande effekten av skoltrivsel skilde sig dock inte mellan elever baserat på FSL eller S-GSE. Konklusion: FSL och S-GSE inverkar båda på upplevelsen av skoltrivsel, såväl på tvärsnittsnivå som i ESM-data, men all variation av skoltrivsel kan inte förklaras med modellen i denna studie