Die Eigenschaften der Benennungen und ihr Einfluss auf deren Verwendung am Beispiel der Euro-Währung : Eine quantitative und kontrastive Analyse der Terminologie im Finnischen und im Deutschen

This dissertation deals with the terminology of the Euro currency. Its aims are to determine the characteristics of the designations in a certain LSP and to discover whether the recommendations and rules that have been given to the formation of designations and 'ideal' designations have any influence on the usage of the designations. The characteristics analysed include length of the designation, part of speech, form, formation method, constancy, monosemy, suitability to a concept system and degree of specialty. The study analyses the actual usage of the designations in texts and the implementation of the designations. The study is an adaptation of a terminometric survey and uses concept analysis and quantitative analysis as its basic methods. The frequency of each characteristic is measured in terms of statistics. It is assumed that the 'ideality' of a designation influences its usage, for example that if a designation is short, it is used more than its longer rivals (synonyms). The results are analysed in a corpus consisting of a compilation of different texts concerning the Euro. The corpus is divided according to three features: year (1998-2003), genre (judicial texts, annual reports and brochures) and language (Finnish and German). Each analysis is performed according to each of these features and compared with the others. The results indicate that some of the characteristics of the designations indeed seem to have an influence on the usage of the designations. For example, monosemy and suitability to the concept system often lead to the implementation of the designation having the ideal or certain value in these characteristics in the analysed Finnish material. In German material, an 'ideal' value in the characteristics leads to the implementation of the designations more often than in Finnish. The contrastive study indicates that, for example, suitability to a concept system leads to implementation of a designation in judicial texts more often than in other genres. The recommendations given to an 'ideal' designation are thus often acceptable, but they cannot be generalized for all languages in the same extent.

Spontaanin puheen prosodinen jaksottelu

The common focus of the studies brought together in this work is the prosodic segmentation of spontaneous speech. The theoretically most central aspect is the introduction and further development of the IJ-model of intonational chunking. The study consists of a general introduction and five detailed studies that approach prosodic chunking from different perspectives. The data consist of recordings of face-to-face interaction in several spoken varieties of Finnish and Finland Swedish; the methodology is usage-based and qualitative. The term “speech prosody” refers primarily to the melodic and rhythmic characteristics of speech. Both speaking and understanding speech require the ability to segment the flow of speech into suitably sized prosodic chunks. In order to be usage-based, a study of spontaneous speech consequently needs to be based on material that is segmented into prosodic chunks of various sizes. The segmentation is seen to form a hierarchy of chunking. The prosodic models that have so far been developed and employed in Finland have been based on sentences read aloud, which has made it difficult to apply these models in the analysis of spontaneous speech. The prosodic segmentation of spontaneous speech has not previously been studied in detail in Finland. This research focuses mainly on the following three questions: (1) What are the factors that need to be considered when developing a model of prosodic segmentation of speech, so that the model can be employed regardless of the language or dialect under analysis? (2) What are the characteristics of a prosodic chunk, and what are the similarities in the ways chunks of different languages and varieties manifest themselves that will make it possible to analyze different data according to the same criteria? (3) How does the IJ-model of intonational chunking introduced as a solution to question (1) function in practice in the study of different varieties of Finnish and Finland Swedish? The boundaries of the prosodic chunks were manually marked in the material according to context-specific acoustic and auditory criteria. On the basis of the data analyzed, the IJ-model was further elaborated and implemented, thus allowing comparisons between different language varieties. On the basis of the empirical comparisons, a prosodic typology is presented for the dialects of Swedish in Finland. The general contention is that the principles of the IJ-model can readily be used as a methodological tool for prosodic analysis irrespective of language varieties.

Grammar and disciplinary culture : a corpus-based study

The present study provides a usage-based account of how three grammatical structures, declarative content clauses, interrogative content clause and as-predicative constructions, are used in academic research articles. These structures may be used in both knowledge claims and citations, and they often express evaluative meanings. Using the methodology of quantitative corpus linguistics, I investigate how the culture of the academic discipline influences the way in which these constructions are used in research articles. The study compares the rates of occurrence of these grammatical structures and investigates their co-occurrence patterns in articles representing four different disciplines (medicine, physics, law, and literary criticism). The analysis is based on a purpose-built 2-million-word corpus, which has been part-of-speech tagged. The analysis demonstrates that the use of these grammatical structures varies between disciplines, and further shows that the differences observed in the corpus data are linked with differences in the nature of knowledge and the patterns of enquiry. The constructions in focus tend to be more frequently used in the soft disciplines, law and literary criticism, where their co-occurrence patterns are also more varied. This reflects both the greater variety of topics discussed in these disciplines, and the higher frequency of references to statements made by other researchers. Knowledge-building in the soft fields normally requires a careful contextualisation of the arguments, giving rise to statements reporting earlier research employing the constructions in focus. In contrast, knowledgebuilding in the hard fields is typically a cumulative process, based on agreed-upon methods of analysis. This characteristic is reflected in the structure and contents of research reports, which offer fewer opportunities for using these constructions.

Vapaata mielenjuoksua : Suomenkielisen freestyle-rapin ilmenemismuodot, estetiikka ja kompositio

The thesis is about Finnish freestyle-rap, a modern form of oral poetry producing improvised rap lyrics at the moment of performance. The research material consists of interviews with seven freestyle experts and a DVD from Finnish Rap Championships 2005 containing freestyle-rap. The thesis has three goals: describing the different variations or subgenres of freestyle, outlining the esthetics and register of freestyle, and examining the composition of freestyle. The research material acts a central role in the thesis but the theoretical framework is also wide: cornerstones are John Miles Foley's register analysis, oral formulaic theory and William Levelt's psycholinguistic theory on planning of speech. Freestyle is divided into three partially overlapping genres with slight variation in conventions. The genres are freestyle battle, cypher, and live freestyle. Freestyle's esthetics are composed of certain qualities and preferences: the rhyme is a syllabically repeating vocal rhyme. The rapping must be synchronised with the background rhythm and the rhyme comes in the end of the line. The lyrics must be somehow anchored to the surroundings and the moment of performance. The style of rapping, ie. flow, has to be personal one way or the other. Individual formulas are used to some extent in freestyle compostition. When planning the lines, all other content is subordinate to the rhyme, whose phonetic processing is the primary act in the planning of freestyle. This discovery sets Levelt's theory open to doubt.

"Ei vittu, mennään röökille" : tutkimus sitaattien tehtävistä ja tekemisestä kaunokirjallis-journalistisissa lehtijutuissa

This research deals with direct speech quotations in magazine articles through two questions: As my major research question, I study the functions of speech quotations based on a data consisting of six literary-journalistic magazine articles. My minor research question builds on the fact that there is no absolute relation between the sound waves of the spoken language and the graphemes of the written one. Hence, I study the general thoughts on how utterances should be arranged in the written form based on a large review of literature and textbooks on journalistic writing as well as interviews I have made with magazine writers and editors, and the Council of Mass Media in Finland. To support my main research questions, I also examine the reference system of the Finnish language, define the aspects of the literary-journalistic article and study vernacular cues in written speech quotations. FUNCTIONS OF QUOTATIONS. I demonstrate the results of my analysis with a six-pointed apparatus. It is a continuum which extends from the structural level of text, all the way through the explicit functions, to the implicit functions of the quotation. The explicit functions deal with the question of what is the content, whereas the implicit ones base mainly on the question how the content is presented. 1. The speech quotation is an distinctive element in the structure of the magazine article. Thereby it creates a rhythm for the text, such as episodes, paragraphs and clauses. 2. All stories are told through a plot, and in magazine articles, the speech quotations are one of the narrative elements that propel the plot forward. 3. The speech quotations create and intensify the location written in the story. This location can be a physical one but also a social one, in which case it describes the atmosphere and mood in the physical environment and of the story characters. 4. The quotations enhance the plausibility of the facts and assumptions presented in the article, and moreover, when a text is placed between quotation marks, the reader can be assured that the text has been reproduced in the authentic verbatim way. 5. Speech quotations tell about the speaker's unique way of using language and the first-hand experiences of the person quoted. 6. The sixth function of speech quotations is probably the most essential one: the quotations characterize the quoted speaker. In other words, in addition to the propositional content of the utterance, the way in which it has been said transmits a lot of the speaker's character (e.g. nature, generation, behaviour, education, attitudes etc.). It is important to notice, that these six functions of my speech quotation apparatus do not exlude one another. It means that every speech quotation basically includes all of the functions discussed above. However, in practice one or more of them have a principal role, while the others play a subsidiary role. HOW TO MAKE QUOTATIONS? It is not suprising that the field of journalism (textbooks, literature and interviews) holds heterogeneous and unestablished thoughts on how the spoken language should be arranged in written quotations, which is my minor research question. However, the most frequent and distinctive aspects can be depicted in a couple of words: serve the reader and respect the target person. Very common advice on how to arrange the quotations is − firstly, to delete such vernacular cues (e.g. repetitions and ”expletives”) that are common in spoken communication, but purposeless in the written language. − secondly, to complete the phonetic word forms of the spoken language into a more reader-friendly form (esim. punanen → punainen, 'red'), and − thirdly, to enhance the independence of clauses from the (authentic) context and to toughen reciprocal links between them. According to the knowledge of the journalistic field, utterances recorded in different points in time of an interview or a data-collecting session can be transferred as consecutive quotations or even merged together. However, if there is any temporal-spatial location written in the story, the dialogue of the story characters should also be situated in an authentic context – chronologically in the right place in the continuum of the events. To summarize, the way in which the utterances should be arranged into written speech quotations is always situationally-specific − and it is strongly based on the author's discretion.

Vuorovaikutus ääniterapiassa : Keskustelunanalyyttinen tutkimus harjoittelun rakenteesta, terapeutin antamasta palautteesta ja oppimisesta

This conversation analytical study analyses the interactional practices adopted by speech therapists and their clients during their training in voice therapy. This study also describes how learning takes place during the therapy process. In contrast to traditional voice therapy studies, change is examined here by using qualitative research methodology, namely conversation analysis. This study describes the structures of interaction in voice therapy, shows how the shortcomings in the client s performance are evaluated and corrected and finally, how the voice training sequence and the participation changes during therapy. The database consists of 51 videotaped voice therapy sessions from six clients with voice disorders. The analytic focus is on the practices in one voice training exercise of the trilled /r/. All the sequences of this exercise (in total 36) and all adjacency pairs within (N = 627) were transcribed and analysed in detail. This study shows that voice training consists of successive model imitation adjacency pairs. This adjacency pair works as a resource in voice training. Furthermore, the use of this particular adjacency pair is an institutional practice in all therapies in this study. The structure of interaction in voice training sequences resembles the practices found in aphasia therapy and in speech therapy of children, as well as the practices of educational and counselling interaction and physiotherapy. More than half of the adjacency pairs were expanded to three (or more) part structures as client s responses were typically followed by therapist s feedback. With their feedback turns, therapists: 1) maintain training practice, 2) evaluate the problem of client s performance, 3) deliver information, 4) activate the client to observe the performance and 5) assist her in correcting the performance. This study describes the four different ways that therapists help their clients to improve the performance after encountering a problem. The longitudinal data shows that learning in therapy is manifested in the changing participation. As clients learn to identify their voice features, they can participate in evaluating or correcting their performances by themselves. This study describes the recurrent professional practices of voice therapists and shows how the institutional commitments of voice therapy are managed in and through talk and interaction. The study also provides detailed description of the management of help in voice training. By describing the interaction in training sequences, this study expands the conception of voice rehabilitation and how it can be researched. The results demonstrate that the learning process and therapy outcomes can be assessed by analysing interaction in therapy. Moreover, this analysis lays the foundation for a novel understanding of the practices in speech therapy and for the development of speech therapy theory. By revealing the activities of interaction, it also makes it possible to discuss them explicitly with speech therapy students. Key words: voice therapy, conversation analysis, institutional interaction, learning, change in participation, feedback, evaluation, error correction, self-repair

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

Language in Acquisition : Early Lexical Development and Associations between Lexicon and Grammar Findings from Full-Term and Very-Low-Birth-Weight Finnish Children

The aim was to analyse the growth and compositional development of the receptive and expressive lexicons between the ages 0,9 and 2;0 in the full-term (FT) and the very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) children who are acquiring Finnish. The associations between the expressive lexicon and grammar at 1;6 and 2;0 in the FT children were also studied. In addition, the language skills of the VLBW children at 2;0 were analysed, as well as the predictive value of early lexicon to the later language performance. Four groups took part in the studies: the longitudinal (N = 35) and cross-sectional (N = 146) samples of the FT children, and the longitudinal (N = 32) and cross-sectional (N = 66) samples of VLBW children. The data was gathered by applying of the structured parental rating method (the Finnish version of the Communicative Development Inventory), through analysis of the children´s spontaneous speech and by administering a a formal test (Reynell Developmental Language Scales). The FT children acquired their receptive lexicons earlier, at a faster rate and with larger individual variation than their expressive lexicons. The acquisition rate of the expressive lexicon increased from slow to faster in most children (91%). Highly parallel developmental paths for lexical semantic categories were detected in the receptive and expressive lexicons of the Finnish children when they were analysed in relation to the growth of the lexicon size, as described in the literature for children acquiring other languages. The emergence of grammar was closely associated with expressive lexical growth. The VLBW children acquired their receptive lexicons at a slower rate and had weaker language skills at 2;0 than the full-term children. The compositional development of both lexicons happened at a slower rate in the VLBW children when compared to the FT controls. However, when the compositional development was analysed in relation to the growth of lexicon size, this development occurred qualitatively in a nearly parallel manner in the VLBW children as in the FT children. Early receptive and expressive lexicon sizes were significantly associated with later language skills in both groups. The effect of the background variables (gender, length of the mother s basic education, birth weight) on the language development in the FT and the VLBW children differed. The results provide new information of early language acquisition by the Finnish FT and VLBW children. The results support the view that the early acquisition of the semantic lexical categories is related to lexicon growth. The current findings also propose that the early grammatical acquisition is closely related to the growth of expressive vocabulary size. The language development of the VLBW children should be followed in clinical work.

Tarkkaavaisuuden vaikutus puheen merkityssisällön käsittelyyn: Aivojen herätevastetutkimus

Semantic processing can be studied with semantic priming. Target words that are preceded by semantically related prime words are recognized faster and more accurately than targets preceded by unrelated prime words. Semantic priming also affects the magnitude of the N400 event-related potential. The response is smaller to a target word when it is preceded by a related than an unrelated prime word. The effect is called the N400 effect. It is not yet clear, however, how attention modulates semantic priming and the N400 effect. This study investigated how the direction of attention affects the semantic processing of speech. The N400 effect was studied in experimental conditions in which the subjects attention was directed 1) away from the speech stimuli, 2) to phonological features of the speech stimuli, and 3) to semantic features of the speech stimuli. The first aim of the study was to investigate whether the N400 effect for spoken words is dependent on attention to the auditory information. The second aim was to study the differences in the N400 effect when attention is directed to the semantic or other features of speech stimuli. The results showed an N400 effect even when attention was directed away from the speech stimuli. The N400 effect was, however, stronger in conditions during which the speech stimuli were attended. The magnitude of the behavioral semantic priming and the N400 effect did not differ between the conditions during which attention was directed to the semantic or phonological features of the words. The findings indicate that the semantic processing of spoken words is not dependent on attention to auditory information. Furthermore, the results suggest that whether or not semantic processing is relevant for the task performance does not affect the semantic processing of attended spoken words.

"Valehtelu ei auta, mutta kaikkea ei kannata kertoa." : Kertomatta jättäminen parisuhteen vuorovaikutuskontekstissa

Topic avoidance in romantic relationships has not been researched before in Finnish speech communication research, and this study was expected to increase the understanding of a phenomenon that acquires relatively dramatic attributes in everyday conversation. The aim of this study was to describe topic avoidance based on what was told in the interviews, and to describe the beliefs concerning functional or dysfunctional relational communication that can be interpreted from the interviewees' speech when they talk about topic avoidance. The theoretical reference frame of this study consists of the Communication Privacy Management Theory, relational dialectics, and earlier, mostly American research on topic avoidance. Ten Finnish people aged 22-31, who all had previous experience on one or more marital or common-law relationships were interviewed for this study. Additional material for the study was gathered from the interviewees by using the role playing method to describe interactional events where something essential is left unsaid in the context of romantic relationship. The following values were attributed to functional communication in romantic relationships: openness, equality, honesty, trust and positivity. The dialectical nature of the phenomenon being researched is evident in the way that along with openness, the interviewees talked about excessive openness that should occasionally be avoided in the context of relational communication by leaving things unsaid. Topic avoidance was seen both as a conscious strategic communication for managing privacy, and as an uncontrollable force of nature that at its worst destroys the relationship. When topic avoidance is seen as strategic communication, the choice concerning what is left unsaid is made by weighing the following dimensions asgainst each other: risks/ benefits (for self, relationship), protects/ does not protect (self, partner, relationship), burdens/ does not burden (self, partner, relationship), honesty/ dishonesty, responsibility lies with self/ responsibility does not lie with self. Topic avoidance was acceptable if it was used in order to preserve the relationship, as opposed to gaining power in the relationship or causing insecurity for the partner. The acceptability of topic avoidance varied according to whether it differed from lying or not. When the interviewees talk about topic avoidance, their speech can be interpreted to mean that in spite of uncontrollability, communicative choices can be made in relational communication and that skills concerning communication in romantic relationships can be learned.

Lähi-itä - mielikuvat, media ja konflikti : Tutkimuskohteena opettajaopiskelijat

This study examines Finnish student teachers' images of The Middle East conflict and its parties and medias' influence on these images. The research problems are 1) how student teachers understand the Middle East as a geographical and a cultural area 2) what kind of conceptions they have of the Middle East conflict and its parties; Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs and societies and religions closely connected to them and 3) how the media has influenced on these conceptions. Theoretical background of this study concerns with different mental images, their construction and meaning, stereotypes, intercultural competence, media and its influence as well as media literacy. The methods used in this study were survey and theme interview. Also headlines of the news were analysed. The survey was directed at student teachers of the University of Helsinki (n = 75). Six of them were interviewed. The survey was conducted in February and interviews were made in the turn of May and June 2003. The headlines analysed dealt with the Middle East conflict in the newspaper "Helsingin Sanomat" in January, April and July 2003. Main results: Images of the Middle East area differed largely from respondent to another. Student teachers didn't know much about the Middle East conflict. Stereotypes occurred in the conceptions connected to the parties of the conflict. Stereotypes appeared especially in the negative conceptions of islam and muslims and one-sided conceptions of Arabs. The influence of the conflict was noticeable in conceptions related to Israelis, Israel and Palestinians. Palestinians were sympathized. Attitudes towards Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs were negative to some extend and their societies were not valued very equal, open or modern. On the basis of the research, student teachers' intercultural competence was not good enough. Media had influence on the conceptions. Also skills in critical use of media varied largely. Some trusted strongly in the objectivity of a picture and the news. It can be argued, on the grounds of the results, that teacher education should concentrate more on themes of intercultural competence and media literacy. These two are interrelated and are both needed in understanding and conceptualising the world.