Coordinated Verb Pairs in Texts

This dissertation discusses the relation between lexis, grammar and textual organisation. The major premise adopted here is that grammatical structures are motivated both by semantic potential of words and by text-pragmatic demands. In other words, it is argued that grammatical structures form the interface between lexis and textual organisation, and that linguistic analysis should not concentrate on analysing grammatical structures in isolation, independent of context. From this point of view, grammatical structures are said to be 'well-formed' only in relation to the context they occur in. This study is based on a corpus of three million words of recent Finnish fiction from which all the occurrences of the coordinated verb pairs ([V ja V] -pairs]) containing one of the intransitive motion verbs 'lähteä' (to go), 'mennä' (to go), 'päästä' (to get into), 'nousta' (to get up), and 'laskea' (to go down), were extracted. This set of verbs was established using methods described in earlier work by Lagus & Airola (2001, and 2005). The quantitative analysis of the [V ja V] -pairs was used to carry out a qualitative analysis of individual texts. In analysing the texts, an analogy was made between musical and textual structure. The results show among others that individual verbs specialise in different functions when occurring in coordinated verb pairs. One aspect was that those verb pairs including the verb 'nousta' tend to function as markers of textual boundaries and thus reflect the organisation of narrative substance. The verb 'mennä' has weakened literal meanings, but strengthened modal meanings when occurring in [V ja V] -pairs, and, in many cases, the verb 'lähteä' in [V ja V] -pairs function as an aspectual marker rather than a pure verb of motion. That there is a gradient from the concrete sense of motion into more differentiated senses of a verb in [V ja V] -pairs alongside the structure-creating potential of the [V ja V] -pairs themselves suggest an ongoing grammaticalisation process of the patterns discussed.

Space in Musical Semiosis : An Abductive Theory of the Musical Composition Process

Space in musical semiosis is a study of musical meaning, spatiality and composition. Earlier studies on musical composition have not adequately treated the problems of musical signification. Here, composition is considered an epitomic process of musical signification. Hence the core problems of composition theory are core problems of musical semiotics. The study employs a framework of naturalist pragmatism, based on C. S. Peirce’s philosophy. It operates on concepts such as subject, experience, mind and inquiry, and incorporates relevant ideas of Aristotle, Peirce and John Dewey into a synthetic view of esthetic, practic, and semiotic for the benefit of grasping musical signification process as a case of semiosis in general. Based on expert accounts, music is depicted as real, communicative, representational, useful, embodied and non-arbitrary. These describe how music and the musical composition process are mental processes. Peirce’s theories are combined with current morphological theories of cognition into a view of mind, in which space is central. This requires an analysis of space, and the acceptance of a relativist understanding of spatiality. This approach to signification suggests that mental processes are spatially embodied, by virtue of hard facts of the world, literal representations of objects, as well as primary and complex metaphors each sharing identities of spatial structures. Consequently, music and the musical composition process are spatially embodied. Composing music appears as a process of constructing metaphors—as a praxis of shaping and reshaping features of sound, representable from simple quality dimensions to complex domains. In principle, any conceptual space, metaphorical or literal, may set off and steer elaboration, depending on the practical bearings on the habits of feeling, thinking and action, induced in musical communication. In this sense, it is evident that music helps us to reorganize our habits of feeling, thinking, and action. These habits, in turn, constitute our existence. The combination of Peirce and morphological approaches to cognition serves well for understanding musical and general signification. It appears both possible and worthwhile to address a variety of issues central to musicological inquiry in the framework of naturalist pragmatism. The study may also contribute to the development of Peircean semiotics.

Aavan meren täällä puolen : Arkkityyppiset piirteet ja amerikkalaisvaikutteet suosituimmissa suomalaisissa molli-iskelmissä

What are the musical features that turn a song into a hit? The aim of this research is to explore the musical features of hit tunes by studying the 224 most popular Finnish evergreens from the 1930s to the 1990s. It is remarkable, that 80-90% of Finnish oldies are in a minor key, though parallel major keys have also been widely employed within single pieces through, for example, modulations. Furthermore, melodies are usually diatonic, staying mostly in the same key. Consequently, chromatically altered tones in the melody and short modulations in the bridge sections become more prominent. I have concentrated in particular on the melodic lines in order to find the most typical melodic formulas from the data. These analyzed melodic formulas play an important role, because they serve as leading phrases and punchlines in songs. Analysis has revealed three major melodic formulas, which most often appear in the melodic lines of hit tunes. All of these formulas share common thematic ground, because they originate from the triadic tonic chord. Because the tonic chord is the most conventional opening chord in the verse parts, it is logical that these formulas occur most often in verses. The strong dominance of these formulas is very much a result of the rhythmic flexibility they possess; for instance, they can be found in every musical style from waltz to foxtrot. Alongside the major formulas lies a miscellaneous group of other tonic-related melodic formulas. One group of melodic formulas consists of melodic quotations. These quotations appear in a different musical context, for instance in a harmonically altered form, and are therefore often difficult to recognize as such. Yet despite the contextual manipulation, the distinctive character of the cited melody usually remains the same. Composers have also made use of certain popular chord-progressions in order to create new but familiar-sounding melodies. The most important individual progression in this case is what is known as a "circle of fifths" and its shortened, prolonged and altered versions. Because that progression is harmonically strong, it is also a contrastive tool used especially in chorus parts and middle sections (AABA). I have also paid attention to ragtime and jazz influences, which can be found in harmony parts and certain melody notes, which extend, suspend or alter the accompaning chords. Other influences from jazz and ragtime in the Finnish evergreen are evident in the use of typical Tin Pan Alley popular song forms. The most important is the AABA form, which dominates over the data along with the verse/chorus-type popular song form. To briefly illustrate the main results, the basic concept of the hit tune can be traced back to Tin Pan Alley songs, whereas the major stylistic aspects, such as minor keys and musical styles, bear influences from Russian, Western European, and Finnish traditions.

Kaukainen rakkaus : Saavuttamattomuuden semantiikka Kaija Saariahon oopperassa

L Amour de loin: The semantics of the unattainable in Kaija Saariaho s opera Kaija Saariaho (born 1952) is one of the most internationally successful Finnish composers there has ever been. Her first opera L Amour de loin (Love from afar, 1999-2000) has been staged all over the world and has won a number of important prizes. The libretto written for L Amour de loin by Amin Malouf (born 1949) sets the work firmly in the culture of courtly love and the troubadours, which flourished in Occitania in the South of France during the Middle Ages. The male lead in the opera is the troubadour Jaufré Rudel, who lived in the twelfth century and is known to have taken part in the Second Crusade in 1147-1148. This doctoral thesis L Amour de loin: The semantics of the unattainable in Kaija Saariaho s opera, which comes within the field of musicology and opera research, examines the dimensions of meaning contained in Kaija Saariaho s opera L Amour de loin. This hermeneutic-semiotic study is the first doctoral thesis dealing with Saariaho to be completed at the University of Helsinki. It is also the first thesis-level study of Saariaho s opera to be completed anywhere in the world. The study focuses on the libretto and music of the opera, that is to say the dramatic text (L Amour de loin 1980), and examines on the one hand the dimensions of meaning produced by the dramatic text and on the other, the way in which they fix the dramatic text in a historical and cultural context. Thus the study helps to answer questions about the dimensions of meaning contained in the dramatic text of the opera and how they can be interpreted. The most important procedural viewpoint is Lawrence Kramer s hermeneutic window (1990), supplemented by Raymond Monelle s semiotic theory of musical topics (2000, 2006) and the philosophical concept of Emmanuel Levinas (1996, 2002) in which the latter acts as an instrument for semantic interpretation to build up an analysis. The analytical section of the study is built around the three characters in the opera, Jaufré Rudel, Clémence the Countess of Tripoli, and the Pilgrim. The study shows that the music of Saariaho, who belongs to the third generation of Finnish modernists, has become distanced from the post-serial aesthetic towards a more diatonic form of expression. There is diatonicity, for instance, in the sonorous individuality of the male lead, which is based on the actual melodies of the historical Jaufré Rudel. The use of outside material in this context is exceptional in the work of Saariaho. At the same time, Saariaho s opera contains a wealth of expressive devices she has used in her earlier work. It became apparent during the study that, as a piece of music, L Amour de loin is a many layered and multi-dimensional work that does not unambiguously represent any single stylistic trend or aesthetic. Despite the composer s post-serial background and its abrasive relationship with opera, L Amour de loin is firmly attached to the tradition of western opera. The analysis based on the theory of musical topics that was carried out in the study, shows that topics referring to death and resurrection, used in opera since the seventeenth century, appear in L Amour de loin. The troubadour topic, mainly identified with the harp, also emerges in the work. The study also shows that the work is firmly attached to the tradition of western opera in other aspects, too, such as the travesti or trouser role played by the Pilgrim, and the idea of deus ex machina derived from Ancient Greek theatre. The study shows that the concept of love based on the medieval practices of courtly love, and the associated longing for another defined by almost 1,000 years of western culture, are both manifested in the semantics of Kaija Saariaho s opera which takes its place in the contemporary music genre.

Focus on Form : J. J. Tikkanen, Giotto and Art Research in the 19th Century

My doctoral dissertation is on Johan Jakob Tikkanen (1857 1930), the first professor of art history in Finland, and his significance and methods in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century European art history. Tikkanen was one of the pioneering scholars in the field of medieval art research, and, along with Anton Springer, Heinrich Wölfflin, Aloïs Riegl, Adolfo Venturi, Franz Wickhoff, Julius von Schlosser, Aby Warburg, Emile Mâle and others, one of the scholars who defined art history as an independent academic discipline. Tikkanen s scholarly interests and his methods resemble those of many formalistically oriented German and Austrian art historians of his time. He became well known throughout Europe, mainly for his studies on illustrated medieval manuscripts. Tikkanen s dissertation, Der Malerische Styl Giotto s Versuch zu einer Characteristik Desselben, from 1884 was regarded in its day as the best form-analytical study on the painter. It has a central position in the present thesis, as it already included nearly all the methods that Tikkanen used and elaborated upon throughout his career. Giotto also gives a good perspective for comparing Tikkanen s ideas with a long art-historical tradition. Tikkanen was profoundly interested in artistic creativity. In his own words, he wanted to study das künstlerische Können , artistic ability, instead of das künstlerische Wollen or artistic will, which was an important theoretical issue in art history in the late 19th century. This starting point led him to the history of style and iconographical research. Along with the Danish art historian, Julius Lange, he was one of the first scholars who began to study the meaning of gestures and postures in art. In my dissertation I have emphasized the importance of Tikkanen s personal art education. I regard it as having influenced both his scholarly argumentation and his working methods. I have also written a short overview of the situation of art history in Finland and in Northern Countries before Tikkanen s time in order to give an idea of his scientific background. My thesis is a critical and historiographical study on J. J. Tikkanen s role in the development of art history and its methodology.

My Fair Lady på skandinaviska : En studie i funktionell sångöversättning

The dissertation presents a functional model for analysis of song translation. The model is developed on the basis of an examination of theatrical songs and a comparison of three translations: the songs of the Broadway musical My Fair Lady (Lerner and Loewe, 1956), made for the premiere productions (1959–1960) in Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. The analysis explores the three challenges of a song translator: the fitting of a text to existing music, the consideration of a prospective sung performance, and the verbal approximation of the content of the source lyric. The theoretical foundation is based on a functional approach to translation studies (Christiane Nord) and a structuralist/semiotic analysis of a theatrical message (Ivo Osolsobě, building on Roman Jakobson). Thus, three functional levels in the fitting of a text to music are explored: first, a prosodic/phonetic format; secondly, a poetic/rhetoric format; and thirdly, semantic/reflexive values (verbalizing musical expression). Similarly, three functional levels in the textual connections to a prospective performance are explored: first, a presentational goal; secondly, the theatrical potential; and thirdly, dramaturgic values (for example dramatic information and linguistic register). The functionality of Broadway musical theatre songs is analyzed, and the song score of My Fair Lady, source and target lyrics, is studied, with an in-depth analysis of seven of the songs. The three translations were all considered very well-made and are used in productions of the musical to this day. The study finds that the song translators appear to have worked from an understanding of the presentational goal, designed their target texts on the prosodic and poetic shape of the music, and pursued the theatrical functionality of the song, not by copying, but by recreating connections to relevant contexts, partly independently of the source lyrics, using the resources of the target languages. Besides metaphrases (closest possible transfer), paraphrases and additions seem normally to be expected in song translation, but song translators may also follow highly individual strategies – for example, the Norwegian translator is consistently more verbally faithful than the Danish and Swedish translators. As a conclusion, it is suggested that although linguistic and cultural difference play a significant role, a translator’s solution must nevertheless be arrived at, and assessed, in relation to the song as a multimedial piece of material. As far as a song can be considered a theatrical message – singers representing the voice, person, and situation of the song – the descriptive model presented in the study is also applicable to the translation of other types of song.

"Det utspridda kärret; överallt och växande form" : Eva Wichmans novell "Kärret" som en prosamodernistisk berättelse om kvinnligt skapande

I min avhandling diskuterar jag om och hur man kan läsa Eva Wichmans novell "Kärret" (ur Molnet såg mig, 1942) som en prosamodernistisk berättelse om ett kvinnligt subjekt, och om kvinnligtskapande. Jag vill mot en prosamodernistisk bakgrund visa min tolkning med en stilistisk och entematisk analys. I min inledning markerar jag att forskare har haft svårt att avgöra vad Eva Wichman egentligen vill säga med "Kärret". De flesta definierar "Kärret" som en fabel, en moralisk berättelse. I min tolkning betonar jag att novellen kan läsas som en prosamodernistisk fabel om det kvinnliga skapandet. Eva Wichman har i många av sina verk beskrivit en kvinnlig konstnärs svårigheter i massamhället och den manliga världen. Jag anser därför att denna tolkning inte är långsökt då det gäller en naturallegori som "Kärret". Jag redovisar kort för bakgrunden till prosamodernismen; definierar stilistiska grundbegrepp i lyrikoch prosa samt diskuterar med hjälp av Peter Luthersson och Gunilla Domellöf hur den modernistiska individualiteten konstituerar sig i förhållande till samhället ochmoderniseringsprocessen. Jag tar fasta på den kvinnliga författarens skapandeprocess och poängterar, med hjälp av bl.a. Dominique Head och Domellöf, att det kvinnliga skapandet ofta är svårt att erhålla i ett traditionellt manligt samhälle. Head, Domellöf och Rachel Blau DuPlessis menar att det modernistiska skapandet hos kvinnor i stor grad sker med hjälp av stilistiska brott och luckor. I synnerhet förhållandet mellan metafor och metonymi utgör en viktig metod för den kvinnliga modernisten. I mitt tredje kapitel analyserar jag "Kärret" stilistiskt. Modernismen i "Kärret" går ut sammanställa motsatser och sinnesanalogier. Jag tar upp det lyriska och metaforiska i "Kärret"; upprepningar,parallellismer, rytm och dynamik, samt förhållandet mellan metaforer och metonymier utgående från en artikel av David Lodge. Jag demonstrerar i stilanalysen hur Eva Wichman bygger upp ett cykliskt mytiskt berättande. Detta cirkelberättande kan, enligt Domellöf, ses som en kvinnlig utmaning mot det traditionella manliga berättandet. Förhållandet mellan metaforer och metonymier spelar en stor roll också i min tematiska analys. Jag läser kärret i novellen som en symbol för ett kvinnlig subjekt. Kärret är uppbyggt av motsatser. Dessamotsatser kan ses som metaforer i min tolkning av kärret som kvinnligt subjekt. Motsatsparen yta/djup läser jag som den medvetna respektive undermedvetna nivån i det kvinnliga subjektet. Djupet, den undermedvetna nivån, analyserar jag delvis med hjälp av Julia Kristevas begrepp abjektet. Metaforerna spegel/öga ser jag som subjekt/objekt och manligt/kvinnligt i förhållande till det kvinnliga subjektet. Med hjälp av abjektet, omnipotens/känslighet, rörelse/statis samt liv/död visar jag hur Eva Wichman beskriver det konstnärliga skapandet, och den konstnärliga alieneringen i kontrast till det förtryckandet massamhället. Här baserar jag mig på Lutherssons resonemang om den modernistiska individualiteten. På så sätt drar jag slutsatsen att kärret som kvinnligt subjekt kan läsas som ett kvinnligt författarjag. "Kärret" är en berättelse om kvinnlig skaparkraft, om ett kvinnligt subjekt som skapar och verkar isamhället. Eva Wichman gestaltar det kvinnliga berättandet både tematiskt och språkligt. Därför är "Kärret" enligt mig inte en pessimistisk berättelse om ett "säkert nederlag" som många påstår, utan en storslagen fabel om ett modernistiskt subjekt i process. Nyckelord: Eva Wichman, Molnet såg mig, prosamodernism, kvinnligt subjekt, abjekt, metafor, metonymi

Sensory auditory processing and intuitive sound detection : an investigation of musical experts and nonexperts

The auditory system can detect occasional changes (deviants) in acoustic regularities without the need for subjects to focus their attention on the sound material. Deviant detection is reflected in the elicitation of the mismatch negativity component (MMN) of the event-related potentials. In the studies presented in this thesis, the MMN is used to investigate the auditory abilities for detecting similarities and regularities in sound streams. To investigate the limits of these processes, professional musicians have been tested in some of the studies. The results show that auditory grouping is already more advanced in musicians than in nonmusicians and that the auditory system of musicians can, unlike that of nonmusicians, detect a numerical regularity of always four tones in a series. These results suggest that sensory auditory processing in musicians is not only a fine tuning of universal abilities, but is also qualitatively more advanced than in nonmusicians. In addition, the relationship between the auditory change-detection function and perception is examined. It is shown that, contrary to the generally accepted view, MMN elicitation does not necessarily correlate with perception. The outcome of the auditory change-detection function can be implicit and the implicit knowledge of the sound structure can, after training, be utilized for behaviorally correct intuitive sound detection. These results illustrate the automatic character of the sensory change detection function.

Cortical processing of musical pitch as reflected by behavioural and electrophysiological evidence

In a musical context, the pitch of sounds is encoded according to domain-general principles not confined to music or even to audition overall but common to other perceptual and cognitive processes (such as multiple pattern encoding and feature integration), and to domain-specific and culture-specific properties related to a particular musical system only (such as the pitch steps of the Western tonal system). The studies included in this thesis shed light on the processing stages during which pitch encoding occurs on the basis of both domain-general and music-specific properties, and elucidate the putative brain mechanisms underlying pitch-related music perception. Study I showed, in subjects without formal musical education, that the pitch and timbre of multiple sounds are integrated as unified object representations in sensory memory before attentional intervention. Similarly, multiple pattern pitches are simultaneously maintained in non-musicians' sensory memory (Study II). These findings demonstrate the degree of sophistication of pitch processing at the sensory memory stage, requiring neither attention nor any special expertise of the subjects. Furthermore, music- and culture-specific properties, such as the pitch steps of the equal-tempered musical scale, are automatically discriminated in sensory memory even by subjects without formal musical education (Studies III and IV). The cognitive processing of pitch according to culture-specific musical-scale schemata hence occurs as early as at the sensory-memory stage of pitch analysis. Exposure and cortical plasticity seem to be involved in musical pitch encoding. For instance, after only one hour of laboratory training, the neural representations of pitch in the auditory cortex are altered (Study V). However, faulty brain mechanisms for attentive processing of fine-grained pitch steps lead to inborn deficits in music perception and recognition such as those encountered in congenital amusia (Study VI). These findings suggest that predispositions for exact pitch-step discrimination together with long-term exposure to music govern the acquisition of the automatized schematic knowledge of the music of a particular culture that even non-musicians possess.

The Emerging Phenotype: Ecological Genetics of Color, Form and Sex in the Common Frog

One of the main aims of evolutionary biology is to explain why organisms vary phenotypically as they do. Proximately, this variation arises from genetic differences and from environmental influences, the latter of which is referred to as phenotypic plasticity. Phenotypic plasticity is thus a central concept in evolutionary biology, and understanding its relative importance in causing the phenotypic variation and differentiation is important, for instance in anticipating the consequences of human induced environmental changes. The aim of this thesis was to study geographic variation and local adaptation, as well as sex ratios and environmental sex reversal, in the common frog (Rana temporaria). These themes cover three different aspects of phenotypic plasticity, which emerges as the central concept for the thesis. The first two chapters address geographic variation and local adaptation in two potentially thermally adaptive traits, namely the degree of melanism and the relative leg length. The results show that although there is an increasing latitudinal trend in the degree of melanism in wild populations across Scandinavian Peninsula, this cline has no direct genetic basis and is thus environmentally induced. The second chapter demonstrates that although there is no linear, latitudinally ordered phenotypic trend in relative leg length that would be expected under Allen s rule an ecogeographical rule linking extremity length to climatic conditions there seems to be such a trend at the genetic level, hidden under environmental effects. The first two chapters thus view phenotypic plasticity through its ecological role and evolution, and demonstrate that it can both give rise to phenotypic variation and hide evolutionary patterns in studies that focus solely on phenotypes. The last three chapters relate to phenotypic plasticity through its ecological and evolutionary role in sex determination, and consequent effects on population sex ratio, genetic recombination and the evolution of sex chromosomes. The results show that while sex ratios are strongly female biased and there is evidence of environmental sex reversals, these reversals are unlikely to have caused the sex ratio skew, at least directly. The results demonstrate that environmental sex reversal can have an effect on the evolution of sex chromosomes, as the recombination patterns between them seem to be controlled by phenotypic, rather than genetic, sex. This potentially allows Y chromosomes to recombine, lending support for the recent hypothesis suggesting that sex-reversal may play an important role on the rejuvenation of Y chromosomes.