Semantic Fluency in Mild and Moderate Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by an impairment of the semantic memory responsible for processing meaning-related knowledge. This study was aimed at examining how Finnish-speaking healthy elderly subjects (n = 30) and mildly (n=20) and moderately (n = 20) demented AD patients utilize semantic knowledge to performa semantic fluency task, a method of studying semantic memory. In this task subjects are typically given 60 seconds to generate words belonging to the semantic category of animals. Successful task performance requires fast retrieval of subcategory exemplars in clusters (e.g., farm animals: 'cow', 'horse', 'sheep') and switching between subcategories (e.g., pets, water animals, birds, rodents). In this study, thescope of the task was extended to cover various noun and verb categories. The results indicated that, compared with normal controls, both mildly and moderately demented AD patients showed reduced word production, limited clustering and switching, narrowed semantic space, and an increase in errors, particularly perseverations. However, the size of the clusters, the proportion of clustered words, and the frequency and prototypicality of words remained relatively similar across the subject groups. Although the moderately demented patients showed a poor eroverall performance than the mildly demented patients in the individual categories, the error analysis appeared unaffected by the severity of AD. The results indicate a semantically rather coherent performance but less specific, effective, and flexible functioning of the semantic memory in mild and moderate AD patients. The findings are discussed in relation to recent theories of word production and semantic representation. Keywords: semantic fluency, clustering, switching, semantic category, nouns, verbs, Alzheimer's disease

School and choice : Anethnography of a primary school with bilingual classes

Based on a one-year ethnographic study of a primary school in Finland with specialised classes in Finnish and English (referred to as bilingual classes by research participants), this research traces patterns of how nationed, raced, classed and gendered differences are produced and gain meaning in school. I examine several aspects of these differences: the ways the teachers and parents make sense of school and of school choice; the repertoires of self put forward by teachers, parents and pupils of the bilingual classes; and the insitutional and classroom practices in Sunny Lane School (pseudonym). My purpose is to examine how the construction of differentness is related to the policy of school choice. I approach this questions from a knowledge problematic, and explore connections and disjunctions between the interpretations of teachers and those of parents, as well as between what teachers and parents expressed or said and the practices they engaged in. My data consists of fieldnotes generated through a one-year period of ethnographic study in Sunny Lane School, and of ethnographic interviews with teachers and parents primarily of the bilingual classes. This data focuses on the initial stages of the bilingual classes, which included the application and testing processes for these classes, and on Grades 1─3. In my analysis, I pursue poststructural feminist theorisations on questions of knowledge, power and subjectivity, which foreground an understanding of the constitutive force of discourse and the performative, partial, and relational nature of knowledge. I begin by situating my ethnographic field in relation to wider developments, namely, the emergence of school choice and the rhetoric of curricular reform and language education in Finland. I move on from there to ask how teachers discuss the introduction of these specialised classes, then trace pupils paths to these classes, their parents goals related to school choice, teachers constructions of the pupils and parents of bilingual classes, and how these shape the ways in which school and classroom practices unfold. School choice, I argue, functioned as a spatial practice, defining who belongs in school and demarcating the position of teachers, parents and pupils in school. Notions of classed and ethnicised differences entered the ways teachers and parents made sense of school choice. Teachers idealised school in terms of social cohesiveness and constructed social cohesion as a task for school to perform. The hopes parents iterated were connected to ensuring their children s futurity, to their perceptions of the advantages of fluency in English, but also to the differences they believed to exist between the social milieus of different schools. Ideals such as openmindedness and cosmopolitanism were also articulated by parents, and these ideals assumed different content for ethnic majority and minority parents. Teachers discussed the introduction of bilingual classes as being a means to ensure the school s future, and emphasised bilingual classes as fitting into the rubric of Finnish comprehensive schooling which, they maintained, is committed to equality. Parents were expected to accommodate their views and adopt the position of the responsible, supportive parent that was suggested to them by teachers. Teachers assumed a posture teachers of appreciating different cultures, while maintaining Finnishness as common ground in school. Discussion on pupils knowledge and experience of other countries took place often in bilingual classes, and various cultural theme events were organized on occasion. In school, pupils are taught to identify themselves in terms of cultural belonging. The rhetoric promoted by teachers was one of inclusiveness, which was also applied to describe the task of qualifying pupils for bilingual classes, qualifying which pupils can belong. Bilingual classes were idealised as taking a neutral, impartial posture toward difference by ethnic majority teachers and parents, and the relationship of school choice to classed advantage, for example, was something teachers, as well as parents, preferred not to discuss. Pupils were addressed by teachers during lessons in ways that assumed self responsibility and diligence, and they assumed the discursive category of being good, competent pupils made available to them. While this allowed them to position themselves favourably in school, their participation in a bilingual class was marked by the pressure to succeed well in school.

Tannakian Formalism Applied to the Category of Mixed Hodge Structures

Many problems in analysis have been solved using the theory of Hodge structures. P. Deligne started to treat these structures in a categorical way. Following him, we introduce the categories of mixed real and complex Hodge structures. Category of mixed Hodge structures over the field of real or complex numbers is a rigid abelian tensor category, and in fact, a neutral Tannakian category. Therefore it is equivalent to the category of representations of an affine group scheme. The direct sums of pure Hodge structures of different weights over real or complex numbers can be realized as a representation of the torus group, whose complex points is the Cartesian product of two punctured complex planes. Mixed Hodge structures turn out to consist of information of a direct sum of pure Hodge structures of different weights and a nilpotent automorphism. Therefore mixed Hodge structures correspond to the representations of certain semidirect product of a nilpotent group and the torus group acting on it.

Changing Lived Worlds of Contemporary Amazonian Native Young People : Manchineri Youths in the Reserve and the City, Brazil-Acre

This thesis discusses the contemporary construction of the lived worlds of indigenous Amazonian youths. Today’s native peoples are considerably affected by the processes of globalization and urbanization, which have led to new ways of relating to their cultural traditions. This work presents a case study of Manchineri youngsters aged between 14 and 24 years old living in Acre state in Brazilian Amazonia. The Arawak-speaking Manchineri number some 1,000 people; their legally demarcated reserve is situated next to the River Yaco. The research is based on ethnographic material collected in the Mamoadate reserve and in the state capital, Rio Branco. By comparing the youth in different physical and social environments (the reserve and the city), my attempt has been to search for the most typical elements maintained, altered and created in the current lived worlds of Manchineri youths. Fieldwork methods included interviews, participant observation, photographs, video recordings, and drawings. The material was analyzed within the multidisciplinary framework of the social and cultural construction of knowledge. The study applies the concepts of social field, symbolic capital, and habitus as they have been used by Pierre Bourdieu; perspective as developed recently in Amazonian ethnology; the sacred as a cultural category as understood in the study of religion; and individual and person as concepts central to anthropology and sociology. Additionally, the study can be contextualized within youth studies, Latin American studies, and urban studies. The results of the study show that the everyday lives of young Amazonian native people are formed by a complex mixture of ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’, fragmentation, and transitions between different conceptual frameworks. Part II discusses the ethnographic material in depth and shows that indigenous adolescents act from a variety of social perspectives: the native youth’s own ethnic group, divided into sub-groups, especially into urban residents and those living in the reserve; ancestors, super-human agents and spirits; other indigenous groups and non-natives. Consequently, besides the traditional initiation ritual, we find various contemporary rites of passage to adulthood: state-education, learning traditional practices, shamanism, matrimony, and transitions between the reserve and urban areas. According to these results, new social roles, political organization, responsibilities, and in general the desire to be respected, require both ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ abilities. In Part III, the study shows that the current power relations constituted by new social contacts, ethnic recognition, and cooperation with different institutions have resulted in the formation of new social fields: youth cultures, the ethnic group, shamanic practices, the ethnopolitical movement, and indigenous students. The capacity of young Amazonian Indians to act in contemporary social fields produces them as full persons. The study also argues that the elements of the lived worlds can be divided into these social fields. When focusing on these fields, it became evident that these comprise the strategies adopted by young Indians to break through social and cultural barriers.

Disabled Revolutionary War Veterans and the Construction of Disability in the Early United States, c. 1776-1840

This thesis addresses the following broad research question: what did it mean to be a disabled Revolutionary War veteran in the early United States during the period from 1776 to roughly 1840? The study approaches the question from two angles: a state-centred one and an experiential one. In both cases, the theoretical framework employed comes from disability studies. Consequently, disability is regarded as a sociocultural phenomenon rather than a medical condition. The state-centred dimension of the study explores the meaning of disability and disabled veterans to the early American state through an examination of the major military pension laws of the period. An analysis of this legislation, particularly the invalid pension acts of 1793 and 1806, indicates that the early United States represents a key period in the development of the modern disability category. The experiential approach, in contrast, shifts the focus of attention away from the state towards the lived experiences of disabled veterans. It seeks to address the issue of whether or not the disabilities of disabled veterans had any significant material impact on their everyday lives. It does this through a comparison of the situation of 153 disabled veterans with that of an equivalent number of nondisabled veterans. The former group received invalid pensions while the latter did not. In comparing the material conditions of disabled and nondisabled veterans, a wide range of primary sources from military records to memoirs and letters are used. The most important sources in this regard are the pension application papers submitted by veterans in the early nineteenth century. These provide us with a unique insight into the everyday lives of veterans. Looking at the issue of experience through the window of the pension files reveals that there was not much difference in the broad contours of disabled and nondisabled veteran life. This finding has implications for the theorisation of disability that are highlighted and discussed in the thesis. The main themes covered in this study are: the wartime experiences of injured American soldiers, the military pension establishment of the early United States and the legal construction of disability, and the post-war working and family lives of disabled veterans. Keywords: disability, early America, veterans, military pensions, disabled people, Revolutionary War, United States, disability theory.

Ufologia ja ufokokemukset uskonnollisina ilmiönä : Teoreettinen tutkimus

The main question of my doctoral thesis is whether ufology and UFO experiences are or can be explained as religious phenomena. My research is theoretical in the sense that I combine and systematise cultural scientific knowledge concerning the religiosity of ufology and UFO experiences and complete this theoretical effort with empirical subject matter. The research material for my study consists of theoretical literature and empirical texts written by ufologists and those who have had UFO experiences. I defined the material in a way that it became full and extensive with regard to ufology, stories about UFO experiences and the cultural scientific literature concerning them. In addition, I present a source criticism for the literature because it is in part informal. The method is analysing and synthesising the material in the context of spiral of hermeneutic inferential process. Definitions of religion, ufology and UFO experience, developed by myself, serve as guide lines for the process. The conclusions of my research are as follows. For the most part, ufology and UFO experiences belong to the category of religion and only a fraction of these instances can be explained as something else, for example psychiatric phenomena. From the religious viewpoint I explain ufology and UFO experiences on four different but interlinked levels: historical, comparative, sociological and psychological. Historically ufology and UFO experiences include esoteristic, Christian and folk religious elements. In addition UFO experiences have significant similarities with folk religious stories and shamanistic experiences. From the perspective of the sociology, of religion ufology and UFO experiences can be analysed as products of our scientific and technological Western culture. Social crisis and social psychological group mechanisms affect the appearance of ufological ideas and UFO experiences. Psychologically, in the background of religious UFO experiences there can be found several factors, such as wishful thinking. Concerning UFO sightings these are misinterpretations of certain ordinary and some rare or exotic natural and technical phenomena. Intense UFO experiences, such as UFO abductions, are stimulated for the most part by hallucinations, sleep paralysis disorders, lively fantasies (in case of fantasy prone personalities) and false memories. In group cases social pressure, small group delusion and the guilt of exposing the true nature of a story come into play. A UFO experience can be traumatising because of certain inferential mechanisms and cognitive dissonance involved in the process of conversion as a UFO experiencer. UFO religiosity is a cross cultural, widespread and a significant field of phenomena, which can offer insight about religious developments in the future. However, UFO religiosity has not been studied extensively. This research is one effort to address this lack of documentation. The motivation behind my thesis was to make ufology and UFO experiences more understandable.

Primestoimenno-otnositel'nye konstrukcii v sovremennom russkom jazyke

Relative Constructions with Pronominal Heads in Contemporary Russian Chapter 1 introduces the distinctive syntactic and semantic properties of Russian relative constructions (RCs), which are then divided into two main classes according to the type of the head phrase. The study concentrates on RCs with pronominal heads, which are systematically compared with noun-headed RCs. Chapter 2 clarifies the categorization of pronouns in Russian. The conclusion is that Russian pronouns include only personal, reflexive and wh-pronouns. The remaining words that are traditionally seen as pronouns are actually functional equivalents of determiners. This idea leads to the suggestion that RCs with these determiner-like words as the only constituent of the head phrase are actually headed by zero pronouns. In the other type of RCs with pronominal heads, the head position is occupied by wh-pronouns with clitics expressing different types of indefiniteness and quantification. Comparison of the two types of pronoun-headed RCs shows that the wh-heads and zero-heads share a number of common properties with respect to the grammatical gender, number and person as well as to the semantic distinction between animates and inanimates. The rest of Chapter 2 gives an overview of various uses of wh-pronouns in Russian and an experimental analysis of RCs headed by pronominal adverbs. Chapter 3 discusses fundamental differences between RCs with noun and pronominal heads. One of the main findings is that the choice of the relative pronoun (kto 'who' and chto 'what' versus kotoryj 'which') is motivated by a tendency to reproduce maximally the essential grammatical and semantic properties of the antecedent. Chapter 4 gives a detailed description of the determiner-like words and wh-based heads used in the two types of RCs with pronominal heads. In addition, several issues related to the syntax and semantics of free relatives are discussed. The conclusion is that there is no need to establish a separate category of free relatives in Russian. Chapter 5 discusses the syntax and semantics of correlative and free concessive constructions. They share a number of properties with pronoun-headed RCs and the two are often confused in Russian linguistics. However, a detailed analysis shows that these constructions must be distinguished from RCs. The study combines the methods of functionally-oriented Russian structuralism with some insights from generative syntax.

Abductive translation studies : The art of marshalling signs

This dissertation contributes to the fields of theoretical translation studies, semiotic translation theory, and the semiotics of translation. The aim of this work is to explore the alternative and potential which the semiotic approaches to translation entail from the viewpoint of contemporary translation studies. The overall objective is thus to show that a general semiotic translation theory, and in particular, a Peircean translation theory, are possible and indispensable. Furthermore, this study contributes to the semiotranslational approach and to its theory-building by developing the concept of abductive translation (studies). The specific theoretical frame of reference adopted in this study is provided by the semiotranslation introduced by Dinda L. Gorlée. This approach is primarily based on the semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 1914), and aims at a fusion of semiotics and translation studies. A more general framework is provided by the threefold background and material: the published and unpublished writings of Peirce, Peirce scholarship and Peircean-semiotic publications, as well as the translation-theoretical literature. Part One of this study concentrates on the justification, existence, and nature of the semiotic approaches to translation. This part provides a historical survey, a status report, and a discussion of this area of research, by employing the findings in a boundary-clearing that is multilayered both conceptually and terminologically. Part Two deals with Peircean semiotranslation. Here Gorlée s semiotranslational research is examined by focusing on the starting points, features, and development of semiotranslation. Attention is also paid to the state-of-the-art of semiotranslation theory and to the possibilities for future elaborations. Part Three focuses on the semiotranslational claim that translation is an abductive activity. The concept of abductive translation is based on abduction, one of Peirce s three modes of reasoning; at the same time Firstness, the category of abduction, becomes foregrounded. So abductive translation as a form of possibilistic translation receives here an extensive theoretical discussion by citing examples in which abduction manifests itself as (scientific) reasoning and as everyday contemplation. During this treatise, translation is first equated with sign action, then with interpretation and finally with reasoning. All these approaches appear to embody different facets of the same phenomenon Peirce s ubiquitous semiosis, and they all suggest that translation is inherently an intersemiotic activity in which a sign is inferred from another sign. Translation is therefore semiosis, semiosis is translation and interpretation, interpretation is reasoning, and so on ad infinitum all being manifestations of the art of marshalling signs. The three parts of this study are linked by the overall goal of abductive translation studies: investigation into abductive translation develops the theory of semiotranslation, and this enrichment of semiotranslation in turn constructs a semiotic paradigm within translation studies.

Imazhinist Mariengof : Dendi. Montazh. Ciniki.

The study is dedicated to the Russian poet and prose writer Anatolii Borisovich Mariengof (1897–1962). Mariengof – “the last dandy of the Republic” – was one of the leaders and main theoreticians in the poetic group of the Russian Imaginists. For his contemporaries, he was an Imaginist par excellence. His Imaginist principles – in theory and practice – are applied to the study of his first fictional novel, Cynics (1928), which served as an epilogue for his Imaginist period (1918–1928). The novel was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988. The method used in the study is a conceptual and literary historical reading, making use of the contemporary semiotic understanding of cultural mechanisms and of intertextual analysis. There are three main concepts used throughout the study: dandy, montage and catachresis. In the first chapter, the history, practice and theory of the Russian Imaginism are analyzed from the point of view of dandyism. The Imaginist theatricalisation of life is juxtaposed with the thematic analysis of their poetry, and Imaginist dandyism appears as a catachrestic category in culture. The second chapter examines the Imaginist poetic theory. It is discussed in the context of the montage principle, defining the post-revolutionary culture in Soviet Russia. The Imaginist montage can be divided into three main theoretical paradigms: S. Yesenin’s “technical montage” (reminiscent of Dadaist collage), V. Shershenevich’s “nominative montage” (catalogues of images) and Anatolii Mariengof’s “catachrestic montage”. The final chapter deals with Mariengof’s first fictional novel, Cynics. The study begins with the complex history of publication of the novel, as well as its relation to the Imaginist poetic principles and to the history of the poetic movement. Cynics is, essentially, an Imaginist montage novel. The fragmentary play of the fictional and the documentary material follows the Imaginist montage principle. The chapter concludes in a thematic analysis of the novel, concentrating on the description of the October Revolution in Cynics.

Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate methods in corpus-based lexicography : A study of synonymy

In this dissertation, I present an overall methodological framework for studying linguistic alternations, focusing specifically on lexical variation in denoting a single meaning, that is, synonymy. As the practical example, I employ the synonymous set of the four most common Finnish verbs denoting THINK, namely ajatella, miettiä, pohtia and harkita ‘think, reflect, ponder, consider’. As a continuation to previous work, I describe in considerable detail the extension of statistical methods from dichotomous linguistic settings (e.g., Gries 2003; Bresnan et al. 2007) to polytomous ones, that is, concerning more than two possible alternative outcomes. The applied statistical methods are arranged into a succession of stages with increasing complexity, proceeding from univariate via bivariate to multivariate techniques in the end. As the central multivariate method, I argue for the use of polytomous logistic regression and demonstrate its practical implementation to the studied phenomenon, thus extending the work by Bresnan et al. (2007), who applied simple (binary) logistic regression to a dichotomous structural alternation in English. The results of the various statistical analyses confirm that a wide range of contextual features across different categories are indeed associated with the use and selection of the selected think lexemes; however, a substantial part of these features are not exemplified in current Finnish lexicographical descriptions. The multivariate analysis results indicate that the semantic classifications of syntactic argument types are on the average the most distinctive feature category, followed by overall semantic characterizations of the verb chains, and then syntactic argument types alone, with morphological features pertaining to the verb chain and extra-linguistic features relegated to the last position. In terms of overall performance of the multivariate analysis and modeling, the prediction accuracy seems to reach a ceiling at a Recall rate of roughly two-thirds of the sentences in the research corpus. The analysis of these results suggests a limit to what can be explained and determined within the immediate sentential context and applying the conventional descriptive and analytical apparatus based on currently available linguistic theories and models. The results also support Bresnan’s (2007) and others’ (e.g., Bod et al. 2003) probabilistic view of the relationship between linguistic usage and the underlying linguistic system, in which only a minority of linguistic choices are categorical, given the known context – represented as a feature cluster – that can be analytically grasped and identified. Instead, most contexts exhibit degrees of variation as to their outcomes, resulting in proportionate choices over longer stretches of usage in texts or speech.

Encounters with the Virtual : The Experience of Art In Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy

My thesis concerns the notion of existence as an encounter, as developed in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (1925 1995). What this denotes is a critical stance towards a major current in Western philosophical tradition which Deleuze nominates as representational thinking. Such thinking strives to provide a stable ground for identities by appealing to transcendent structures behind the apparent reality and explaining the manifest diversity of the given by such notions as essence, idea, God, or totality of the world. In contrast to this, Deleuze states that abstractions such as these do not explain anything, but rather that they need to be explained. Yet, Deleuze does not appeal merely to the given. He sees that one must posit a genetic element that accounts for experience, and this element must not be naïvely traced from the empirical. Deleuze nominates his philosophy as transcendental empiricism and he seeks to bring together the approaches of both empiricism and transcendental philosophy. In chapter one I look into the motivations of Deleuze s transcendental empiricism and analyse it as an encounter between Deleuze s readings of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. This encounter regards, first of all, the question of subjectivity and results in a conception of identity as non-essential process. A pre-given concept of identity does not explain the nature of things, but the concept itself must be explained. From this point of view, the process of individualisation must become the central concern. In chapter two I discuss Deleuze s concept of the affect as the basis of identity and his affiliation with the theories of Gilbert Simondon and Jakob von Uexküll. From this basis develops a morphogenetic theory of individuation-as-process. In analysing such a process of individuation, the modal category of the virtual becomes of great value, being an open, indeterminate charge of potentiality. As the virtual concerns becoming or the continuous process of actualisation, then time, rather than space, will be the privileged field of consideration. Chapter three is devoted to the discussion of the temporal aspect of the virtual and difference-without-identity. The essentially temporal process of subjectification results in a conception of the subject as composition: an assemblage of heterogeneous elements. Therefore art and aesthetic experience is valued by Deleuze because they disclose the construct-like nature of subjectivity in the sensations they produce. Through the domain of the aesthetic the subject is immersed in the network of affectivity that is the material diversity of the world. Chapter four addresses a phenomenon displaying this diversified indentity: the simulacrum an identity that is not grounded in an essence. Developed on the basis of the simulacrum, a theory of identity as assemblage emerges in chapter five. As the problematic of simulacra concerns perhaps foremost the artistic presentation, I shall look into the identity of a work of art as assemblage. To take an example of a concrete artistic practice and to remain within the problematic of the simulacrum, I shall finally address the question of reproduction particularly in the case recorded music and its identity regarding the work of art. In conclusion, I propose that by overturning its initial representational schema, phonographic music addresses its own medium and turns it into an inscription of difference, exposing the listener to an encounter with the virtual.

Suomen rautakautiset kulkuset, kellot ja kelloriipukset : äänimaiseman arkeologiaa

The thesis addresses the problem of Finnish Iron Age bells, pellet bells and bell pendants, previously unexplored musical artefacts from 400–1300 AD. The study, which contributes to the field of music archaeology, aims to provide a gateway to ancient soundworlds and ideas of music making. The research questions include: Where did these metal artefacts come from? How did they sound? How were they used? What did their sound mean to the people of the Iron Age? The data collected at the National Museum of Finland and at several provincial museums covers a total of 486 bells, pellet bells and bell pendants. By means of a cluster analysis, each category was divided into several subgroups. The subgroups, which all seem to have a different dating and geographical distribution, represent a spread of both local and international manufacturing traditions. According to an elemental analysis, the material varies from iron to copper-tin, copper-lead and copper-tin-lead alloys. Clappers, pellets and pebbles prove that the bells and pellet bells were indisputably instruments intended for sound production. Clusters of small bell pendants, however, probably produced sound by jingling against each other. Spectrogram plots reveal that the partials of the still audible sounds range from 1 000 to 19 850 Hz. On the basis of 129 inhumation graves, hoards, barrows and stray finds, it seems evident that the bells, pellet bells and bell pendants were fastened to dresses and horse harnesses or carried in pouches and boxes. The resulting acoustic spaces could have been employed in constructing social hierarchies, since the instruments usually appear in richly furnished graves. Furthermore, the instruments repeatedly occur with crosses, edge tools and zoomorphic pendants that in the later Finnish-Karelian culture were regarded as prophylactic amulets. In the Iron Age as well as in later folk culture, the bell sounds seem to have expressed territorial, social and cosmological boundaries.

Infinitiivi ja sen infiniittisyys : Tutkimus suomen kielen itsenäisistä A-infinitiivikonstruktioista

"Infinitive and its infinity" advocates an approach to infinitives that differs from most previous descriptions in several ways. Infinitives are generally considered to be an illustrative example of an inherently subordinated verb category. This is due to the fact that they are morphologically reduced and are allegedly not able to function as the only predicate of an independent clause. While former descriptions have thus treated infinitives as a linguistic category heavily dependent on the finite verb, my claim is that Finnish A-infinitives (e.g. juosta to run , olla to be ) can be used as independent grammatical units: they need not be either dependent or subordinated, but can have an equal status with finite constructions. In other words, they can be conceptually and interactionally non-dependent. Theoretically, the main objective of the thesis is to discover the nature of non-finite conceptualization and the ways in which it is utilized in everyday interactions. This is accomplished by contrasting finite and non-finite conceptualization with respect to the morphosyntactic marking of person, tense and modality. I argue that the morphologically reduced nature of infinitives can be used as an interactional resource. Independent A-infinitive constructions designate verbal processes that profile no participants, lack any connection with time, and present states of affairs as intensional, structural spaces. Consequently, they provide the interactants with a conceptual alternative in contrast to finite predications that are in Finnish always grammatically anchored to time, modality and person. The deictically unanchored character of A-infinitive constructions makes them highly affective and reflexive in nature. I discuss my findings primarily in the light of Cognitive Grammar. I have drawn insight from various other fields, too: among the theories that are touched upon are interactional linguistics, functional-typological linguistics, and studies on the poetic and metapragmatic use of language. The study is based on empirical data interpreted in qualitative terms. Analyses are based on 980 examples coming mainly from written language. Some 20 examples of spoken data are analyzed as well. In sum, the thesis presents a critical statement towards the finite-verb centred outlook on language and shows that analyzing non-finite elements as such reveals new aspects of grammar and interaction. This is to acknowledge the fact that infinitives, albeit prototypically participating in the coding of dependent events, can also be used outside of the context of the finite verb. Such a view poses several new research questions, as a linguistic category generally seen to code dependent, less prominent states of affairs , now is viewed on as possessing a full cognitive and pragmatic potential.

Inarinsaamen käsitemetaforat

This study discusses the conceptual metaphors of Inari Saami, an endangered, indigenous, Finno-Ugrian language spoken in northern Finland. The research focuses on systematical mappings between source and target domains in conventional Inari Saami metaphors and metonymies. The research material consists of the Inarinsaamen idiomisanakirja [Inari Saami idiom dictionary] which has been compiled by the author in collaboration with an Inari Saami co-author; the Inarilappisches Wörterbuch; Inarinsaamelaista kansantietoutta [Inari Saami folk knowledge]; and Aanaarkiela čájttuzeh [Inari Saami sample texts]. The metaphors and metonymies found in these literary sources are divided into categories on the basis of the target domains and according to the classic model of Lakoff ja Johnson (1980). This method reveals the systematical recurrence of source domains inside each category and thus discovers the systematical patterns of metaphoric mapping, the conceptual metaphors . As a result 44 conceptual metaphors and 16 conceptual metonymies are presented through approximately 500 glossed examples. These findings are discussed against the background of what is known about the cognitive and neural processing of metaphors on the one hand, and what is known about Inari Saami culture on the other. This theoretical framework highlights culture as the underlying force behind conceptual metaphors. The recurring metonymies seem to follow a culturally salient indexicality. For example, the Inari Saami conceptual metonymy TIME IS NATURE reflects the seasonal changes in the year s cycle, which was the salient index of time in traditional Inari Saami culture. The recurring metaphors, for their part, follow a culturally salient iconicity. The conceptual metaphor PRIDE IS ANTLERS is based on an iconicity which is experienced and interpreted by the Inari Saami. A proud person is associated with a reindeer who shows off his impressive antlers. The conceptual metaphor/metonymy seems to be a reflection of culture rather than a cognitive means of understanding an abstract domain in terms of a concrete domain, as hypothesized by certain theoreticians. Repeating this study with other languages may lead to the possibility of typologizing the metaphorical systems of the world s languages and understanding the diversity of metaphor systems in the endangered languages of the world.

Kehittävän kuntoutuksen mahdollisuudet. : Tutkimus Aslak -kuntoutuksen työkytkennän ja asiakkuuden rakentumisesta.

The possibilities of developmental rehabilitation. A study on the construction of work relatedness and the customer in Aslak rehabilitation The challenge of work-related rehabilitation is to anticipate the factors threatening work ability and to affect them. The purpose of this study was to analyze how work-related rehabilitation is constructed in practice and what are the challenges and, at the same time, the possibilities of an innovative transformation of rehabilitation when trying to achive this goal. The theoretical basis is cultural-historical activity theory and developmental work research. Based on a historical analysis, I studied rehabilitation activity empirically using the data gathered from one Aslak programme (Aslak = occupationally oriented medical rehabilitation) over two years. I described and analysed the construction of Aslak using ethnographic data and interviews. The data includes audio- and video-recordings of the Aslak course, fieldnotes, documents and other materials used in the course. The study aimed to reveal rehabilitation practices from different perspectives carried out by different stakeholders and participants in the Aslak course. It focused on the Aslak trajectory produced by a multiorganizational subject. I analyzed the rehabilitation activity using the method of ethnographic analysis of infrastructure. The method of analyzing the construction of the object of rehabilititation the customer was a membership categorization analysis (MCD) based on the ethnomethodological research tradition. I analyzed the meanings denoting customers given by different parties during one Aslak process and the relations between the meanings. Based on this analysis, I studied the disturbances, ruptures, and innovations in the rehabilitation activity. The results of the study show that the infrastructure of Aslak has different basic ideas. Aslak is constructed most explicitly on the infrastructure of medical rehabilitation. The second layer has been provided with some tools of identifying and preventing well-defined occupation-specific load factors. However, it has failed to perform a new structure, as Aslak has encountered, at the same time, rapid changes in working life. The study identified some promising markers representing new kinds of work-related rehabilitation ideas, but they proved to be incomplete and fragile. As a consequence of the multilayered infrastructure, the contents of the Aslak course were split into fragmented phases and disconnected themes, which were blocked in by the master idea of medical orientation. Its relationship to work remained weak and obscure. The categorizations of customers in Aslak were manifold and contradictory. According to the results, the possibilities for transforming work-related rehabilitation lie both in changing the orientation to the customer to be more relevant to changing working life and forging the infrastructural innovations related to this change. The results showed that a new work-relatedeness would be difficult but possible to construct. What is needed is the construction of an infrastructure that will support a coherent master idea of work-related rehabilitation over the entire trajectory of a process. A shared idea of a rehabilitation object must be constructed in close collaboration between different stakeholders, such as Kela (the Social Insurance Institution of Finland), occupational health services, work organizations, and rehabilitation institutes. Key words: Aslak rehabilitation, work-related rehabilitation, development of rehabilitation, customer of rehabilitation, developmental work research, analysis of infrastructure, membership category analysis