When reading about this guy who is selling his life, I feel really happy that I don’t have any urge to do the same! My first term as a doctoral student is almost over, and I’m already looking forward to next term.

Soon I’m going away on vacation. My husband and I are going to two weddings, and then we’re off to Ireland for a week!

I added a photo blog today - I’ve been uploading some photos to Flickr and I thought I’d link them to my blog.

I’m still working on my first essay, and I’ve got two more to write this summer. I’ve had some other things on my mind as well - I got married three weeks ago! I had a hard time concentrating on my essay the weeks before the wedding, but now I’m almost back on track.

I was asked a few months ago if I would like to teach next term, which I would. So I will be teaching parts of two courses, and that will be fun (I hope!).

In Språktidningen (”The language magazine”) there is an article about the Swedish chef in The Muppet Show. Tomas Riad, a professor at Stockholm University, has taken a closer look at the tonal accents in the chef’s “Swedish”. The intonation reveals that the Swedish chef is neither from southern Sweden nor from Dalecarlia, but that he might be from Stockholm or Gothenburg. What may come as a surpise, is that the intonation contour in his speech suggests that he might as well be from Norway. See for example Tomas Riad’s “Remarks on the Swedish tone accent typology”(pdf) for more about tone accents in Swedish.

For more fake Swedish, check out the Bergman parody De Düva. The language consists of English words, -en verb endings (as in German) and some Russian influences. But Swedish - I’m not sure…

The central part of my life right now seems to be train rides… Since the university where I study is 2,5-3 hours by train from here, and I go there at least twice a week, I spend 10 hours or more per week on the train. The key to successful studying on-board the train is quite simple: block out as much as possible of the environment by listening to music in earplugs.

SJ InterCity train, photo by Kasper Dudzik

I’ve got some new software on my computer: Papers, Skim and LyX. I’m using LyX to write my course paper and so far I quite like it. I haven’t used LaTeX before so I’ve got a lot to learn. I don’t know if LyX is the best text editor to use, but I’m trying it out.

…or spring cleaning, call it what you like. I was in the mood for a new theme

I’m once again amazed by the fact that other people are interested in the same linguistic details I’m interested in. Sometimes they’re so interested they write a book about it! Michael Erard has written the book “Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean” which I bought and started reading yesterday.

So far I’ve only read the first chapter and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the book.

I really really tried to go to the seminar today. I did! But - listen to this - I got lost! The seminar was in another building, about 1km away, and I didn’t find it… I had looked at the map, but when I was on my way I saw some stairs going up to another street and thought it was a shortcut. Well, it wasn’t. It was a wrongcut.

When the clock was 5 minutes past the seminar’s starting time, and I still had no idea where to go, I wen’t back to my room. Feeling, on a scale from 1 to 10, 11 stupid.

Lucky for me that the lecture this afternoon is in my building - I might stumble upon it if I try not to look for it, haha

…starting tomorrow. “Pragmatics” and “The History of Linguistics”. Unfortunately they overlap tomorrow: pragmatics from 1PM to 4PM and history of linguistics from 2PM to 4PM.

Before that I’m going to a seminar on  “rehabilitating communicative ability in children and adolescents with acquired brain injury”. It’s a presentation of a PhD project by an SLP. It’ll be very interesting to hear some more about it.

On Thursday my first essay synopsis is due. The course is “Phonology and Morphology”, and right now I’m trying to figure out how to connect my research interest (production and perception of pauses) to the course.

One idea is to look at realizations of filled pauses in speech, i.e. allophones of filled pauses. I’m not sure yet, I will have to keep thinking. By the way: when I googled “filled pause” I got 6360 hits - I guess I’m not the only language nerd on the net…