Blog post based on an article in Nordic Journal of Linguistics written by Mikael Roll
Did you know that Swedish and Norwegian have word melodies similar to Chinese? The article ‘A neurolinguistic study of South Swedish word accents: Electrical brain potentials in nouns and verbs‘ reports on previously unexplored brain responses to word tones in South Swedish.
The study adds strong support to the hypothesis that listeners use Swedish word stem tones to preactivate upcoming suffixes. Previous research had consistently found an increase in electrical brain response for one of the Swedish stem tones – accent 1 – as compared to the other tone – accent 2.
This increase in electrical brain response is thought to index preactivation of upcoming language, such as a suffix. Accent 1 stems are associated with fewer possible outcomes, and are therefore thought to increase the certainty of how a word might end. However, previously only the Central Swedish dialect had been investigated, and therefore it was uncertain whether the effect found was really due to the difference in possibilities associated with accent 1 and 2, or rather the acoustic difference between the tones.
In South Swedish, accent tones 1 and 2 are acoustically the mirror image of those in Central Swedish. Still, accent 1 produced a reaction indicating that the electrical brain response seems to reflect preactivation of upcoming suffixes, rather than a difference in acoustic processing.
Dear NJL,
How can I access the article? I cannot seem to find it.
Thank you!
Kind regards,
Sara
Hi Sara,
Apologies for not putting the link into the blog entry. It should be there now, so feel free to access and enjoy!
Jesse
Interesting topic. Norwegian (Bokmål & Nynorsk) have a diversity of dialects. Except for a circle around Bergen the dialects have both Tone 1 & 2. The accents and vocabulary are also of great variety. I don’t know how many different words there are for the English word “I.” In the phonetic script, there are at least 7 – 8 different words, maybe as many as 10. I am not sure, but I hardly think any other European languages boast such a variety of interesting dialects.
Best wishes
– Henrik Kolden –
Norway