Verbbøyning: Hva skjer når hjernen får en skade? Eksperimentell evidens fra afasirammede og Alzheimer-pasienter

En test utviklet for å undersøke tilegnelse av preteritumsformer hos barn er gitt til en gruppe afasirammede, det vil si voksne med språkvansker etter fokal hjerneskade. Testen består av bilder av 60 verb representative for de tre store verbklassene i bokmål. De afasirammedes responser sammenlignes med resultatene fra normalspråklige voksne og Alzheimer-pasienter. Som gruppe skårer de afasirammede langt dårligere enn de to andre gruppene. En analyse av hva slags feil informantene gjør, avslører ulike feilmønstre i de tre informantgruppene. Resultatene diskuteres i forhold til hva de forteller om underliggende årsaker til vanskene, leksikonstruktur og bøyningssystem hos informantene, og vi diskuterer mulige konsekvenser for differensialdiagnostisering. Det er store individuelle forskjeller blant de afasirammede, og artikkelen gir også et innblikk i fire individuelle kasus

Osjlo! En undersøkelse av uttalen av sl-sekvenser i NoTa-korpuset

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Cross-linguistic variation in word-initial cluster production in adult and child language: evidence from English and Norwegian.

Young children simplify word initial consonant clusters by omitting or substituting one (or both) of the elements. Vocalic insertion, coalescence and metathesis are said to be used more seldom (McLeod, van Doorn & Reed, 2001). Data from Norwegian children, however, have shown vocalic insertion to be more frequently used (Simonsen, 1990; Simonsen, Garmann & Kristoffersen, 2019). To investigate the extent to which children use this strategy to differing degrees depending on the ambient language, we analysed word initial cluster production acoustically in nine Norwegian and nine English speaking children aged 2;6-6 years, and eight adults, four from each language. The results showed that Norwegian-speaking children produce significantly more instances of vocalic insertions than English-speaking children do. The same pattern is found in Norwegian- versus English-speaking adults. We argue that this cross-linguistic difference is an example of the influence of prosodic-phonetic biases in language-specific developmental paths in the acquisition of speech.British Academy Small Research Grant SG122210 ‘The acquisition of consonant timing: a study in cross-linguistic micro-variation’, MultiLing, A Centre of Excellence funded by the Research Council of Norway (project number 223265), and from the Faculty of Education and International Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University

Multilingualism and verbal short-term/working memory: Evidence from academics.

To date, the evidence regarding the effect of bilingualism/multilingualism on short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) capacity is inconclusive. This study investigates whether multilingualism has a positive effect on the verbal STM and WM capacity of neuro typical middle-aged and older individuals. Eighty-two L1-Norwegian sequential bilingual/ multilingual academics were tested with tasks measuring verbal STM/WM capacity. Degree of bilingualism/multilingualism for each participant was estimated based on a comprehensive questionnaire. Different measures of bilingualism/multilingualism were used. Data on potentially influencing non-linguistic factors were also collected. Correlation and regression analyses showed that multilingualism impacts both verbal STM and verbal WM. All analyses showed that number of known foreign languages was the strongest predictor of verbal STM and WM capacity. The results are discussed considering recent studies on the impact of bilingualism on STM/WM and on recent proposals regarding the mechanism underlying so-called bilingual advantage.publishedVersio

The Phonology of Children's Early Words: Trends, Individual Variation, and Parents' Accommodation in Child-Directed Speech

The mental lexicon is dynamic and changes throughout the lifespan, but how does it begin? Previous research has established that children's first words depend on their communicative needs, but also on their phonetic repertoire and phonological preferences. In this paper, we focus on the phonological characteristics of children's first words, primarily looking at word-initial labials and word length in Norwegian children's first words, as well as at how parents accommodate to child patterns in their speech. Comparing the Norwegian child data with data from children speaking five different languages, we examine how the child's emergent lexicon is on the one hand shaped by the input of the ambient language, but on the other hand limited by more common phonological characteristics of child speech. Based on data from parental reports (CDI), we compared the 50 first words in Norwegian to those in Danish, Swedish, English, and Italian, analyzing two phonological aspects: word initial bilabials and word length in syllables. We found that Norwegian-speaking children follow the children speaking these other languages in having an affinity for word initial bilabials, but that the proportions of mono-, di-, and polysyllables vary depending on the language acquired. Comparisons of the Norwegian child data with samples of adult directed speech (ADS) and child-directed speech (CDS) revealed more word-initial bilabials and shorter words among children than among adults. The CDS was more similar to children's speech than ADS concerning the two phonological aspects dealt with here, which suggests that parents accommodate to children in phonologically detailed ways

Vocalic Intrusions in Consonant Clusters in Child-Directed vs. Adult-Directed Speech.

In this paper, we investigate a prosodic-phonetic feature in child-directed speech within a dynamic, complex, interactive theoretical framework. We focus on vocalic intrusions, commonly occurring in Norwegian word initial consonant clusters. We analysed child-directed speech from nine Norwegian-speaking mothers to their children, aged 2;6, 4, and 6 years, and compared the incidence and duration of vocalic intrusions in initial consonant clusters in these data with those in adult-directed speech and child speech. When viewed overall, vocalic intrusion was found to be similar in incidence in child- and adult-directed speech. However, closer examination revealed differential behaviour in child-directed speech for certain conditions. Firstly, a difference emerged for one particular phonetic context: While vocalic intrusions in /Cr/ clusters are frequent in adult-directed speech, their presence is near-categorical in child-directed speech. Secondly, we found that the duration of vocalic intrusions was longer in child- than in adult-directed speech, but only when directed to 2;6-year-olds. We argue that vocalic intrusions in child-directed speech may have both a bonding as well as a didactic function, and that these may vary according to the age of the child being addressed

Utvikling og variasjon i kommunikative ferdigheter hos barn som lærer norsk en CDI-basert studie.

Denne artikkelen presenterer funn fra en studie av tidlig kommunikativ utvikling hos ca. 6500 norske, enspråklige barn mellom 8 og 36 måneder. Studien gjorde bruk av en tilpasning til norsk av foreldrerapporteringsinstrumentet MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI). Data ble samlet inn via Internett. Resultatene blir presentert både i form av generelle utviklingstrender og normer for variasjon innenfor kommunikative gester, produktivt og reseptivt ordforråd og grammatikk, og bekrefter funn fra andre språk der det samme instrumentet har vært brukt. I tillegg fant vi visse klare forskjeller mellom gutter og jenter

Cross-linguistic adaptations of The Comprehensive Aphasia Test: Challenges and solutions

Comparative research on aphasia and aphasia rehabilitation is challenged by the lack of comparable assessment tools across different languages. In English, a large array of tools is available, while in most other languages, the selection is more limited. Importantly, assessment tools are often simple translations and do not take into consideration specific linguistic and psycholinguistic parameters of the target languages. As a first step in meeting the needs for comparable assessment tools, the Comprehensive Aphasia Test is currently being adapted into a number of languages spoken in Europe. In this article, some key challenges encountered in the adaptation process and the solutions to ensure that the resulting assessment tools are linguistically and culturally equivalent, are proposed. Specifically, we focus on challenges and solutions related to the use of imageability, frequency, word length, spelling-to-sound regularity and sentence length and complexity as underlying properties in the selection of the testing material

Imageability ratings across languages

Imageability is a psycholinguistic variable that indicates how well a word gives rise to a mental image or sensory experience. Imageability ratings are used extensively in psycholinguistic, neuropsychological, and aphasiological studies. However, little formal knowledge exists about whether and how these ratings are associated between and within languages. Fifteen imageability databases were cross-correlated using nonparametric statistics. Some of these corresponded to unpublished data collected within a European research network-the Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists (COST IS1208). All but four of the correlations were significant. The average strength of the correlations (rho = .68) and the variance explained (R (2) = 46%) were moderate. This implies that factors other than imageability may explain 54% of the results. Imageability ratings often correlate across languages. Different possibly interacting factors may explain the moderate strength and variance explained in the correlations: (1) linguistic and cultural factors; (2) intrinsic differences between the databases; (3) range effects; (4) small numbers of words in each database, equivalent words, and participants; and (5) mean age of the participants. The results suggest that imageability ratings may be used cross-linguistically. However, further understanding of the factors explaining the variance in the correlations will be needed before research and practical recommendations can be made

Noun and verb knowledge in monolingual preschool children across 17 languages: Data from cross-linguistic lexical tasks (LITMUS-CLT)

This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0-6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations