This is the first issue of volume 28 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. The NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Nordic Journal of Linguistics by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of the NJL, <http://uk.cambridge.org/journals/njl/>, as well as on the NAL web site, <http://cc.joensuu.fi/linguistics/nal>.

The second issue of Volume 29 (2006) of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics will be a special issue on grammaticalization.

Comparison of languages and linguistic data is essential if progress in our understanding of the nature of spoken languages is to be made. We understand phenomena better through comparison and contrast. This paper discusses problems that arise in trying to transfer a spoken language corpus transcribed and formatted according to one standard into the standard and format of another corpus. The problems that arise are related both to the differences that exist between the standards of the corpora and to human errors leading to lack of reliability in creating the transcriptions. Although the discussion is based on transfer and transliteration between two specific corpora (the Danish BySoc, BySociolingvistisk Korpus, and the Swedish GSLC, Göteborg Spoken Language Corpus), we believe that the discussion in the article documents and highlights problems of a general kind which have to be faced whenever spoken language corpora of different formats are to be compared.

The aim of the present study is twofold. First, it addresses the question of how well Norwegians are able to identify Norwegian dialects. Second, it investigates the role which intonation plays in the identification of Norwegian dialects. In a number of listening experiments, 15 groups of young Norwegians from different parts of Norway were asked to identify 15 different dialects. The dialects were presented in the original form as well as in a version that was manipulated by computer in such a way that the intonation was removed. In this way it was possible to see how important intonation is for the identification of the dialects. The results are put into perspective by comparing them to results of similar experiments with Dutch dialects. Norwegians turned out to be less good at recognizing Norwegian dialects than Dutchmen. Linguistic and extra-linguistic explanations are given. Furthermore the results show that intonation is more important for the identification of Norwegian dialects than for the identification of Dutch dialects.

Accent 1 is very much accepted in the literature as the default tonal marker in Scandinavian languages. Consequently, stems and affixes are almost always specified for accent 2. Only rarely in some analyses is accent 1 specified for affixes, but never for stems. We believe that under these conditions, the resulting morphology/phonology interaction is rather complex, having to include special rules of accent marking, floating tones, deaccenting together with inexplicable exceptions. In our analysis of the tonal systems of Swedish and Norwegian, accent 1 is the lexically specified accent and accent 2 is postlexically assigned. Words and affixes may be lexically specified for accent 1, which inevitably dominates. Consequently, if a morphologically complex word includes a lexically specified affix or stem, the entire word will bear accent 1, giving us patterns of alternations like beskriva1, skriva2. This analysis enables us to account for all the facts almost exceptionlessly, with no special tonal rules, constraints or templates.

This paper explores different syntactic variations and functional properties of clausal units that are initiated by the finite verb in Swedish. We focus on V1 constructions that are basically declarative in function, thus excluding interrogative, conditional and directive uses. Because V1 constructions, and particularly certain variants of them, are typical of spoken Swedish, our examples and analyses focus primarily on the usage in speaking. The V1 constructions studied include whole-utterance constructions in conversational sequences, utterance-internal extensions, and utterance-internal reshapings, such as syntactic blends. We will offer an analysis of (declarative) V1 constructions, which in some respects differs from analyses proposed by generative syntacticians or traditional grammarians. Our analysis of the constructional resource is discourse oriented. In this perspective, V1 constructions are analyzable as sequentially dependent, second, or ‘subsequent’ moves, viz. units that can scarcely initiate a communicative project but which instead continue, extend or comment on an already initiated project. Thus, rather than analyzing V1 constructions as one type of ellipsis they could be seen as full-fledged clausal units whose existence is conditioned by their position in a discourse or utterance context. From a theoretical perspective, this paper is a contribution to an emerging dialogical or interactional model of (Swedish) grammar.