1. Germanic prosody. The early Germanic languages are characterized by fixed initial stress, free quantity, and a preference for moraic trochees, left-headed bimoraic feet consisting either of two light syllables (LL) or of one heavy syllable (H).1 The two-mora foot template places indirect constraints on syllable structure, by making it hard to accommodate three-mora syllables, as well as one-mora syllables in contexts where they cannot join another one-mora syllable to form a two-mora trochee. Syllable structure is also constrained more directly (...) by a preference for simple onsets, which entails an avoidance both of hiatus and of syllable-initial consonant clusters. Processes of syllabification, deletion, shortening and lengthening in the Germanic languages favor those quantitative and syllabic patterns that fit these prosodic conditions, and repair those that do not.2 It is not always possible to satisfy all of the preferences at the same time, however, and so the morphophonology must adjudicate between their conflicting demands. While the preferences themselves are invariant, the languages diverge in how they resolve contradictions between them. Some stretch the prosodic limits by allowing excess segments to be accommodated by overlength or resolution, others delete segments (e.g. glide deletion, high vowel deletion), adjust vowel length to fit the template, or tolerate hiatus. For example, a long ja-stem such as /herdi-/ with a vocalic ending, say /herdi-a/,3 presents a prosodic quandary to which the languages respond with three different compromises: (1) a. Proto-Germanic: *hir. i.a (hiatus) b. Gothic: herd.ja (a three-mora syllable) c. Old Icelandic: hir. a (deletion of j). (shrink)

Contrary to many contemporary readings of Plato and Aristotle, Hans-Georg Gadamer sees harmony in their thought. A challenge to this reading is that Aristotle criticizes Plato’s forms and the good. Aware of these criticisms, Gadamer understands these two thinkers as having significant commonalities and pursuing related goals. Gadamer’s interpretation is less a historical approach than an attempt to explain and justify aspects of his own philosophical views, in particular those regarding the relation between metaphysics and practical thought. We critically examine (...) Gadamer’s interpretation and consider tensions between its more radical conclusions and a more conventional Platonism. (shrink)

The sociological literature on race operates under the progressive ideological assumption that systemic racism is the predominant cause of racial disparities. This assumption has become “paradigmatic,” shaping the selection of research questions and the interpretation of research results. Consequently, the literature offers a rather narrow “Overton window” concerning what we, as sociologists, know about: (1) the causes of racial disparities, (2) the accuracy and motivation behind the public’s views on race-related issues, and (3) race-related policy preferences. A paradigm shift is (...) needed to improve our understanding of racial disparities and devise more effective ways to address them. To achieve this end, sociologists should broaden their perspectives beyond attributing all racial disparities to systemic racism and consider additional hypotheses. From a policy perspective, to reduce racial disparities we should reconsider addressing social class and related factors early in life. (shrink)

Vowel phonemes are a part of any acoustic speech signal. Vowel sounds occur in speech more frequently and with higher energy. Therefore, vowel phoneme can be used to extract different amounts of speaker discriminative information in situations where acoustic information is noise corrupted. This article presents an approach to identify a speaker using the vowel sound segmented out from words spoken by the speaker. The work uses a combined self-organizing map - and probabilistic neural network -based approach to segment the (...) vowel phoneme. The segmented vowel is later used to identify the speaker of the word by matching the patterns with a learning vector quantization -based code book. The LVQ code book is prepared by taking features of clean vowel phonemes uttered by the male and female speakers to be identified. The proposed work formulates a framework for the design of a speaker-recognition model of the Assamese language, which is spoken by ∼3 million people in the Northeast Indian state of Assam. The experimental results show that the segmentation success rates obtained using a SOM-based technique provides an increase of at least 7% compared with the discrete wavelet transform-based technique. This increase contributes to the improvement in overall performance of speaker identification by ∼3% compared with earlier related works. (shrink)

This book addresses universal tendencies of human vowel systems from the point of view of self-organisation. It uses computer simulations to show that the same universal tendencies found in human languages can be reproduced in a population of artificial agents. These agents learn and use vowels with human-like perception and production, using a learning algorithm that is cognitively plausible. The implications of these results for the evolution of language are then explored.

Iceland differs from the other Nordic countries in very significant ways, and broader comparative perspectives may be useful. Contrasts and parallels with other ‘new societies’ – overseas offshoots of European civilization – should be explored further. In the Icelandic case, the foundations of the ‘new society’ were laid during the High Middle Ages. The medieval heritage is crucial to Icelandic national identity, but it is not a sufficient explanation of later nation-forming processes. The nationalist turn in the early (...) 19th century began as a response to changes at the centre of the Danish composite monarchy but led to demands for separate statehood. In the course of the process that culminated in separation from Denmark, Icelandic intellectuals in Copenhagen and political leaders of the peasantry in Iceland represented different versions of nationalism. But the shared political culture that crystallized during this period continued to shape the course of events after independence. (shrink)

In many communities around the world, speech to infants and small children has increased mean pitch, increased pitch range, increased vowel duration, and vowel hyper-articulation when compared to speech directed to adults. Some of these IDS and CDS features are also attested in foreigner-directed speech, which has been studied for a smaller range of languages, generally major national languages, spoken by millions of people. We examined vowel acoustics in CDS, conversational ADS, and monologues directed to a foreigner in the Towet (...) dialect of the Papuan language Nungon, spoken by 300 people in a remote region in northeastern Papua New Guinea. Previous work established that Nungon CDS entails optional use of consonant alteration, special nursery vocabulary, and special morphosyntax. This study shows that Nungon CDS to children aged 2;2–3;10 lacks vowel hyper-articulation, but still displays other common prosodic traits of CDS styles around the world: increased mean pitch and pitch range. A developmental effect was also attested, in that speech to 2-year-olds contained vowels that were significantly longer than those in speech to 3-year-olds, which in turn had vowels of similar duration to those in Nungon ADS. We also found that Nungon FDS vowel triangles, measured from monologues primarily directed to a non-native speaker, were significantly larger than those of either CDS or conversational ADS, indicating vowel hyper-articulation. The Nungon pattern may align with the patterns of vowels in Norwegian IDS, CDS, and FDS, where hyper-articulation is found in FDS, but not CDS or IDS. The languages of the New Guinea area constitute 20% of the world's languages, but neither an acoustic comparison of vowels in CDS and ADS, nor an acoustic study of FDS, has previously been completed for any language of New Guinea. The function of an FDS style in a small, closed community like those of much of New Guinea may differ from that in larger societies, since there are very few non-native speakers of Nungon. Thus, this study uses monologues recorded with a foreign researcher as interlocutor to study Nungon FDS. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: W. G. COLLINGWOOD Letters from Iceland: introduced by Janet Gnosspelius -- GUIDO VANHEESWIJCK R. G. Collingwood, T. S. Elliot and the Romantic Tradition -- MARNIE HUGHES- History, Education and the Conversation of Mankind -- WARRINGTON --K. B. McINTYRE Collingwood, Oakeshott and the Social Contract -- LIONEL RUBINOFF The Relation Between Philosophy and History in the Thought of R G. Collingwood -- COLLINGWOOD CORNER -- BENEDETTO CROCE In Commemoration of an English Friend, a Companion in Thought and (...) Faith, R. G. Collingwood (translated -- by Lionel Rubinoff and Alan Franklin) -- BENEDETTO CROCE Review of R. G. Collingwood, Speculum Mentis (translated by Lionel Rubinoff and Alan Franklin) -- R. G. COLLINGWOOD Aesthethic and the Mind, introduced by -- James Connelly -- GRACE SIMPSON Collingwood's Philosophy of History: Observations of an Archaeologist -- REVIEWS -- Cameron Wybrow (ed.), Creation, Nature, and Political Order in the Philosophy of Michael Foster, reviewed by -- James Connelly. (shrink)

The author analyzes the successful strategy of overcoming financial breakdown in the case study of Iceland. The aim of the article is to verify a hypothesis that the Icelandic model could become a panacea for future crises? A document analysis method is applied to present essential indicators such as GDP and trade balance. With the use of a source analysis method, the collapse of the financial sector is determined as the main cause of the slump. The systematization of crisis (...) events is introduced and deepened by the social and political situation. Changes in the state’s condition after the crash are provided and future forecasts about economic development are discussed. As a summing up, the author disapproves of the hypothesis that the Icelandic model of overcoming the financial breakdown as a panacea for future crises, pointing out that it is only applicable for specific cases and cannot be seen as a magical remedy for every kind of crisis. (shrink)

The paper aims to discuss the results of testing a neural network which classifies the vowels of the vocalic system with the [ATR] (Advanced Tongue Root) contrast based on the data of Akebu (Kwa family). The acoustic nature of the [ATR] feature is yet understudied. The only reliable acoustic correlate of [ATR] is the magnitude of the first formant (F1) which can be also modulated by tongue height, resulting in significant overlap between high [-ATR] vowels and mid [+ATR] (...) vowels. Other acoustic metrics which had been associated with the [ATR], such as F1 bandwidth (B1), relative intensity of F1 to F2 (A1-A2), etc., are typically inconsistent across vowel types and speakers. The values of four metrics – F1, F2, A1-A2, B1 – were used for training and testing the neural network. We tested four versions of the model differing in the presence of the fifth variable encoding the speaker and the number of hidden layers. The models which included the variable encoding the speaker achieved slightly higher accuracy, whereas the precision and recall metrics of the three-layer model were generally higher than those with two hidden layers. (shrink)

In vowel discrimination, commonly found discrimination patterns are directional asymmetries where discrimination is faster if differing vowels are presented in a certain sequence compared to the reversed sequence. Different models of speech sound processing try to account for these asymmetries based on either phonetic or phonological properties. In this study, we tested and compared two of those often-discussed models, namely the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon model and the Natural Referent Vowel framework. While most studies presented isolated vowels, we investigated (...) a large stimulus set of German vowels in a more naturalistic setting within minimal pairs. We conducted an mismatch negativity study in a passive and a reaction time study in an active oddball paradigm. In both data sets, we found directional asymmetries that can be explained by either phonological or phonetic theories. While behaviorally, the vowel discrimination was based on phonological properties, both tested models failed to explain the found neural patterns comprehensively. Therefore, we additionally examined the influence of a variety of articulatory, acoustical, and lexical factors but also the influence of factors beyond the well-known in depth via multiple regression analyses. The analyses revealed that the perceptual factor of perceived loudness has a greater impact than considered in the literature and should be taken stronger into consideration when analyzing preattentive natural vowel processing. (shrink)

In the fall of 2008, the three largest banks in Iceland collapsed, with severe and lasting consequences for the Icelandic economy. This article discusses the 'Icelandic banking crisis' in relation to the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR). It explores some conceptual arguments for the position that the Icelandic banking crisis illustrates the broad problem of the indeterminacy of the scope and content of the duties that CSR is supposed to address. In particular, it is suggested that (...) the way the banks in question conceived of CSR, i.e. largely in terms of strategic philanthropy, was gravely inadequate. It concludes by proposing that the case of the Icelandic banking crisis gives us a reason to rethink CSR. (shrink)

The authors of this article contend that traditional corruption, which was largely blamed for the current situation in the Icelandic economy, was perhaps not the most fundamental reason for the ensuing crisis. The weak business culture and a symbiosis of business and politics have actually allowed for the bulk of self-erving and unethical decisions made by the Icelandic business and political elite. In order to illustrate this point, 10 expert interviews have been conducted within the period of 6 (...) months in 2009 to support in-depth research carried out by the authors. The article also discloses questionable business practices that have recently come to the attention of the public both in Iceland and abroad and that ultimately facilitated the downfall of the Icelandic economy. While traditional corruption has probably played its role in this downfall, the measures currently employed to determine its level did not account for various peculiarities of Icelandic society. The article thus argues that there was a high level of corruption in Iceland, but it was outside of the traditional definition. This other corruption has ultimately prevented the government from acting appropriately upon the questionable business practices mentioned above. The article also offers some general recommendations which should be useful to both policy makers and business leaders wishing to engage in business activities in a transparent, ethical manner and learn from the tragic Icelandic experience. Among these recommendations are the necessity to recognize the limitations of current definitions of corruption, as well as a word of caution to commercial enterprises to pay a close attention not only to commonly accepted indices and mainstream reports but also to a country's history, culture, and political environment, prior to making any sort of investment decisions in that country. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian forms of character education often draw on literary sources as materials, although rarely poetry. This article offers retrospective reflections on a poetry-based character-education intervention, conducted in an Icelandic secondary-school setting. Having run into practical difficulties during the implementation phase, the challenges of implementation were reflected upon through consultation with ten subject experts who shared their views about the enablers and barriers encountered when running such an intervention. The interviews yielded a rich data set, which often took interviewees beyond (...) the boundaries of a poetry-based curricular context to focus on more general conditions for effective, character-inspiring school-work. Through thematic analysis, four themes were identified: freedom, time, creativity, and wonderment. Of these four, creativity had been identified in advance as an interview theme, meaning that the researchers expected to find it. The remaining three provide an insight into how, according to the interviewees, the ideal Icelandic school system should be designed. The theme of freedom addresses both negative and positive aspects of the current state of affairs, while the theme of time mostly reflects negative aspects of the Icelandic curriculum. The theme of wonderment has solely positive connotations in the minds of interviewees, and is the core of this analysis because it seems to hold the key to the question: what factors would enable an effective intervention of the sort under scrutiny here? This theme is analysed in detail, and some specific and general educational implications are elicited. (shrink)

Elicitation methods are known to influence second language speech production. For teachers and language assessors, awareness of such effects is essential to accurate interpretations of testing outcomes. For speech researchers, understanding why one method gives better performance than another may yield insights into how second-language phonological knowledge is acquired, stored, and retrieved. Given these concerns, this investigation compared L2 vowel intelligibility on two elicitation tasks and determined the degree to which differences generalized across vowels, vowels in context, lexical (...) items, and individual speakers. The dependent variable was the intelligibility of Cantonese speakers' productions of English /i I u ℧/ in varying phonetic environments. In a picture-naming task, the speakers produced responses without an auditory prompt. In a second task–interrupted repetition–they heard exemplars of the same targets without pictures, and repeated each one after counting aloud to 10, a step intended to disrupt their short-term auditory store and therefore prevent simple mimicry. For target words with scores below 80% on picture naming, mean intelligibility was more than 10 points higher on interrupted repetition. However, that difference did not generalize across conditions or across speakers. Thus, although it is technically accurate to say that, on average, interrupted repetition yielded better vowel intelligibility than did picture naming, that observation requires a great deal of qualification, particularly because of individual speaker differences. The outcomes are interpreted in terms of their relevance to language assessment and phonetic learning. (shrink)

Recent bioethics discussion and research in Iceland has been greatly affected by the fact that one of the world’s largest genetics research companies is based there and has been in the forefront of creating a population database resource for its research projects. Consequently, a large part of this article is centered around the bioethical discussion engendered by these projects, but other recent bioethical developments related to issues at the beginning and the end of life will also be discussed.

This paper argues how boards of directors of three Icelandic oil companies were kept in the dark while the companies were collaborating in illegal competitive behaviour. The paper offers a unique view into a situation where information or lack thereof has played a key part in corporate governance, exploring the relationship between management and the board of directors and how information filtering can go wrong to the extent that vital information does not reach the board. The paper is based (...) on a case study of the illegal collaboration of the oil companies. It furthermore surveys the literature on information flow and information asymmetry for explanations of what happened in the case of the Icelandic oil companies. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to give both a sustained interpretation of Wittgenstein’s obscure remarks on the experience of meaning of language, synthaesthesia and secondary use and to apply his insights to recent philosophical discussions about synthaesthesia. I argue that synthaesthesia and experience of meaning are conceptually related to aspect-seeing. The concept of aspect-seeing is not reducible to either seeing or imaging but involves a modified notion of experience. Likewise, synthaesthesia involves a modified notion of experience. In particular, the (...) concept of synthaesthesia involves a secondary use of ‘experience’ and hence is intrinsically dependent on the primary use of language. Recent discussions tend to overlook this distinction between the primary and secondary use of language. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to give both a sustained interpretation of Wittgenstein’s obscure remarks on the experience of meaning of language, synthaesthesia and secondary use and to apply his insights to recent philosophical discussions about synthaesthesia. I argue that synthaesthesia and experience of meaning are conceptually related to aspect-seeing. The concept of aspect-seeing is not reducible to either seeing or imaging but involves a modified notion of experience. Likewise, synthaesthesia involves a modified notion of experience. In particular, the (...) concept of synthaesthesia involves a secondary use of ‘experience’ and hence is intrinsically dependent on the primary use of language. Recent discussions tend to overlook this distinction between the primary and secondary use of language. (shrink)

What every medievalist knows about medieval Iceland is that it had no king, at least not until 1262 when it passed under the control of the Norwegian crown. In the rapidly growing discussion of early Iceland in the last forty years there has, however, been relatively little comment on what it may have meant for Iceland to have no king, specifically what it may have meant for the unique flowering of Icelandic letters beginning in the late twelfth century and (...) persisting in full vigor into the early fourteenth century. In what follows I will argue that the absence of a king and the increasingly palpable presence of the Norwegian king were significant factors in the shaping of Icelandic literature, not least of all that peculiar triumph of medieval narrative, the Icelandic saga. (shrink)

Glaciers in Iceland are disappearing, and this article investigates how such glacier change might be transmitted into Icelandic culture, specifically, in art oriented around Icelandic glaciers. Utilizing cultural climatology as an approach, this article analyzes changes in spatial properties of glaciers as represented in older and newer artworks. Three central spatial characteristics of glaciers emerge and provide insights into how glacier loss can be represented and understood: 1) the compression of traditional distance; 2) the use of multiple perspectives; (...) and 3) the structural representation of the glacier body. Analysis suggests a re-positioning of glaciers in the cultural imaginary and the fluctuating nature of how individuals and societies understand themselves and their place within the glaciated landscapes. (shrink)

The remote and inhospitable landscape of Iceland made it a perfect breeding-ground for heroes. The first Norsemen to colonize it in 860 found that the fight for survival demanded high courage and tough self reliance; it also nurtured a stern sense of duty and an uncompromising view of destiny. The Icelandic sagas relate the adventurous lives of individuals and families between 930 and 1030, which began as oral tales but were skilfully documented in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and (...) are now regarded as written literature. (shrink)