French is a typical verb-framed language, in which manner verbs cannot freely combine with result-denoting constituents in a single VP. Drawing on experimentally elicited production data on Hexagonal French, this study examines how the syntactic (in)flexibility of manner-of-creation verbs influences the lexicalization of the event result. As for result lexicalization within the VP headed by the manner verb, the study explores the occurrence of effected objects and resultative PPs. Thus, it addresses the availability of the material/product alternation (sculpter une poupée à partir du bois/sculpter le bois en (une) poupée) as a type of argument alternation, whose existence has been questioned for the Romance languages. Furthermore, it is explored how the verbs’ syntactic flexibility influences whether manner and result are lexicalized within a single VP at all or distributed onto different VPs. The results show that the material/product alternation does occur, but that only a limited set of verbs has the syntactic flexibility required for it. Additionally, it is shown that syntactic flexibility favors a denser packaging of conceptual components, since with verbs that admit an effected object, the result is realized more often in the VP than with verbs that do not.

This study investigates the referential forms children use to introduce characters in Swedish, in a cross-sectional sample of oral narratives by 100 Turkish/Swedish bilinguals aged 4 to 7 and in a longitudinal sample from age 4 to 6 (N = 10). We analysed development with age and how language proficiency (expressive vocabulary) and exposure affect children’s use of referring expressions, with a focus on referential appropriateness. In addition, a qualitative analysis of the characteristics of high- and low-performing children was carried out. The results show significant effects of age and language proficiency, but not of language exposure on appropriate use of referring expressions. At age 7, 69% of the characters were introduced with an indefinite NP. The Turkish/Swedish bilinguals were found to lag behind in their use of indefinite NPs in comparison to Swedish-speaking children investigated in previous studies, with little crosslinguistic influence from L1 Turkish.

Intensifiers are known for their dynamic nature, due in part to the expressive function they serve. However, while the quantitative patterning of English intensifiers has been studied extensively, the intensifier system of French has yet to be well documented. This study therefore examines intensifier use from a variationist sociolinguistic perspective in the ESLO corpus of spoken Hexagonal French. The quantitative distributions of adjective intensifiers are compared across two corpora collected in 1970 and 2010. Results show a significant decrease in intensification rate over time. Analysis of individual intensifiers show some to have decreased in use over time (e.g. très, tellement), others to have increased (e.g. vraiment, tout), and others to appear only in the later sample (e.g. super, hyper). Longitudinal change is also found in the adjectival function (predicative vs. attributive) and collocational width of intensifiers. Relating to social factors, no significant gender difference is found between female and male speakers’ intensification rate over time. Furthermore, très dominates as the preferred intensifier among older generations, while younger speakers favour more varied intensifiers. Analyzing such changes in the use of intensifiers over the past half century contributes to a better understanding of the structure and development of the French intensifier system.

Rhythm typology seeks to classify languages according to the units on which they base their rhythm. The most used categories are stress-timing, syllable-timing, and mora-timing. Traditional rhythm typology has been questioned by instrumental research, because the claimed isochronous units have not been found. Speech cycling is a method that endeavours to find regular rhythmic units by utilising repeated speech that the speaker produces by accommodating to regularly paced stimuli. This is intended to eliminate the irregularities that would otherwise hide the linguistic rhythm. The present study is a speech cycling experiment on Finnish. The subjects read sentences that were varied in the mora and syllable count. The locations of the stressed syllables were analysed on a relative scale to see if they appear at regular phases. The results show that in Finnish the mora, the syllable, and the quantity pattern all affect the phases.

The status of the phoneme /s/ as the only sibilant of Finnish makes its pronunciation relatively free. This enables /s/ variants to gain social meaning, a tendency typical in many societies. In Finnish society, studies so far have documented how variation in /s/ pronunciation has faced concerns, originating from late-nineteenth-century nation building and Finnish language norm construction processes. Against the norm of the voiceless alveolar /s/, fronted variants first represented Swedish influence and a threat to norms of ‘good Finnish’, later meeting more global indexes. The historical development of the /s/ ideology is still echoed in the contemporary social meaning potentials of /s/ variation. By focusing on learning materials used in the Finnish education system during the period from the 1900s to the 1970s, this article investigates how formal education has contributed to the ideology of the (im)proper Finnish /s/, manifested in the ideological construct of ‘Helsinki s’.

This article presents the results of a corpus study of clausal postpositioning, that is, the occurrence of a sentential constituent in the postfield of the matrix clause to which it is syntactically linked, in German regional language. Analysis of 11,027 clauses from 60 spoken regiolect and dialect texts reveals that clausal postpositionings occur most frequently as non-relative finite clauses, followed by relative clauses, and lastly, infinitival constructions. Notably, while non-relative finite clauses comprise a smaller proportion of postpositionings in regiolect compared to dialect, relative clauses and infinitival constructions show the opposite trend. Adjunct clauses occur most frequently, followed by complement clauses, in both regiolect and dialect. Furthermore, in both varieties, postpositioning is more prevalent in verb-first and verb-second clauses than in verb-final clauses. This finding is attributed to restrictions on syntactic subordination. Finally, non-relative finite clause and relative clause types that may be embedded in both the postfield and inner field are center-embedded at mean relative frequencies of 13.42% and 28.17%, respectively. These findings shed light on contradictory claims in the literature regarding the possibility and frequency of clausal embedding in the inner field.

Based on a linguistic ethnographic study of student–teacher classroom interactions, this article sheds light on language norms in a contemporary Danish STX school (upper secondary education, also known as gymnasiums). The analysis reveals that neither classrooms with the explicit teaching of an ‘academic register’ nor classrooms where teachers orient towards a youth norm constitute spaces where students have equal access to perform as good students. Even when students can decode and reproduce the language preferred by the teachers, they do not experience an equal opportunity to conform to this. It is argued that performing linguistically as good and competent students is more complex than just adapting to a specific school norm, as the students have to navigate different teacher’s norms as well as peer norms emphasising authenticity.

This article addresses the shift asymmetries of the High German Consonant Shift. In one part of this sound change, Pre-Old High German ⁺/p/, ⁺/t/, and ⁺/k/ shifted to the Old High German affricates [pf], [ts], and [kx], respectively. However, the voiceless stops did not shift in every dialect of Old High German. The uneven distribution of the shift is referred to in the literature as shift asymmetry. Much work by Iverson, Davis, and Salmons has attributed the asymmetry to markedness. While maintaining their overall analysis of the shift, this article shows that markedness can be dispensed with in accounting for the shift asymmetries. In accordance with Evolutionary Phonology, perceptual and phonetic data are presented which account for the asymmetries without making any reference to markedness. Since it rejects markedness in diachronic sound change, the present analysis also has broader implications for markedness diachronically and synchronically.

In Danish, the distribution of stød exhibits a pattern related to the position of the stressed syllable. Some phonological theories of stød, e.g. Basbøll (2005), consider stød on the antepenultimate or ultimate syllable, and non-stød on the penultimate syllable, to be the default. This article reports on a production study with nonce words, investigating the distributional pattern of stød in relation to the position of the stressed syllable in monomorphemic nonce words. Ten speakers were asked to pronounce 336 nonce words with stress on either the ultimate, penultimate, or antepenultimate syllable. The results showed that stød on ultimate stressed syllables and non-stød on penultimate stressed syllables replicates in nonce words, but stød on antepenultimate stressed syllables does not. This suggests that stød in antepenultimate stressed words is not the default, but lexical.

This study reports the outcomes of a speaker evaluation experiment conducted in a higher educational context in Flanders, in which we investigated the influence of language variety (Standard vs. Colloquial Dutch), accent (Flemish vs. Eastern European) and name (Flemish vs. Eastern European) on students’ perceptions of a female university instructor. The results suggest that participants exhibited a relatively high level of tolerance toward both non-conforming speech and non-conforming speakers. Whereas Colloquial Dutch scored lower than Standard Dutch on standardness, we observed no negative effects of Colloquial Dutch on the teacher’s didactic competence, status, or social attractiveness. We did not find any evidence of a negative bias triggered by an Eastern European name. Whereas the Eastern European accent did have a negative impact on the teacher’s social attractiveness, we did not find any evidence of an accent bias affecting judgements of the teacher’s didactic competence and status.

This paper discusses the social meaning of variation in adnominal gender marking in the Dutch dialect of North Brabant. Previous studies reveal that the masculine gender suffix gains social meaning at the expense of grammatical function. However, it remains unclear what kinds of meanings the suffix can have, and how it becomes part of a Brabantish speech style. Therefore, we present statements from ten focus group interviews featuring 50 younger and older speakers. In these sessions, participants were asked to reflect on hyperdialectal usages of the gender suffix. We argue that the indexicalization of the suffix does not yield one fixed social meaning but rather a range of potential meanings, i.e. indexical field, that can be called upon by individual speakers depending on the context. However, the ranges of potential meanings clearly differ between both age groups, unraveling the different norms associated with the suffix.