Carl "Calle" Börstell

PhD
Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University

My name is Carl "Calle" Börstell. I have a PhD in linguistics and I am currently working as a sign language researcher at the Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University.

My research interests include sign languages, morphology, grammaticalization, iconicity, cross-linguistic and cross-modal comparison, the sign–gesture interface, argument structure, and negation.

I'm also interested in programming, mainly using the Python language.

What's happening?

Some of the things going on right now.

Publications

The following is a list of my publications. They are listed in chronological order under each subsection: Papers and chapters, Conference presentations, Theses, and Software & resources.

Papers and chapters

  • Börstell, Carl. Forthcoming. Types and trends of name signs in the Swedish Sign Language community. To appear in SKY Journal of Linguistics, vol. 30:2017.
  • Börstell, Carl & Robert Östling. 2017. Iconic locations in Swedish Sign Language: Mapping form to meaning with lexical databases. In Jörg Tiedemann (ed.), Proceedings of the 21st Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics (NODALIDA 2017), NEALT Proceedings Series 29, 221–225. Gothenburg: Linköping University Electronic Press, Linköpings universitet (ACL Anthology). [ pdf | bib ]
  • Östling, Robert, Carl Börstell, Moa Gärdenfors & Mats Wirén. 2017. Universal Dependencies for Swedish Sign Language. In Jörg Tiedemann (ed.), Proceedings of the 21st Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics (NODALIDA 2017), NEALT Proceedings Series 29, 303–308. Gothenburg: Linköping University Electronic Press, Linköpings universitet (ACL Anthology). [ pdf | bib ]
  • Meir, Irit, Mark Aronoff, Carl Börstell, So-One Hwang, Deniz İlkbaşaran, Itamar Kastner, Ryan Lepic, Adi Lifshitz Ben Basat, Carol Padden & Wendy Sandler. 2017. The effect of being human and the basis of grammatical word order: Insights from novel communication systems and young sign languages. Cognition 158 (January 2017): 189–207. [ http | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl, Thomas Hörberg & Robert Östling. 2016. Distribution and duration of signs and parts of speech in Swedish Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics 19(2): 143–196. [ http | pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl, Ryan Lepic & Gal Belsitzman. 2016. Articulatory plurality is a property of lexical plurals in sign language. In Peter Lauwers & Marie Lammert (eds.), Lexical plurals and beyond: Special issue of Lingvisticæ Investigationes 39(2): 391–407. [ http | pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2016. Review of Pfau, Roland, Markus Steinbach & Annika Herrmann (eds.), "A matter of complexity: Subordination in sign languages." Nordic Journal of Linguistics 39(3): 311–317. [ http | bib ]
  • Bjerva, Johannes & Carl Börstell. 2016. Morphological complexity influences Verb–Object order in Swedish Sign Language. In Dominique Brunato, Felice Dell'Orletta, Giulia Venturi, Thomas François & Philippe Blache (eds.), Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity (CL4LC) [26th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2016)], 137–141. Osaka: Japan. [ pdf | bib ]
  • Lepic, Ryan, Carl Börstell, Gal Belsitzman & Wendy Sandler. 2016. Taking meaning in hand: Iconic motivations for two-handed signs. Sign Language & Linguistics 19(1): 37–81. [ http | pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl & Robert Östling. 2016. Visualizing lects in a sign language corpus: Mining lexical variation data in lects of Swedish Sign Language. In Eleni Efthimiou, Stavroula-Evita Fotinea, Thomas Hanke, Julie Hochgesang, Jette Kristoffersen & Johanna Mesch (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpus Mining [Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC)], 13–18. Paris: European Language Resources Association (ELRA). [ pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl, Mats Wirén, Johanna Mesch & Moa Gärdenfors. 2016. Towards an annotation of syntactic structure in Swedish Sign Language. In Eleni Efthimiou, Stavroula-Evita Fotinea, Thomas Hanke, Julie Hochgesang, Jette Kristoffersen & Johanna Mesch (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpus Mining [Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC)], 19–24. Paris: European Language Resources Association (ELRA). [ pdf | bib ]
  • Östling, Robert, Carl Börstell & Lars Wallin. 2015. Enriching the Swedish Sign Language Corpus with part of speech tags using joint Bayesian word alignment and annotation transfer. In Beáta Megyesi (ed.), Proceedings of the 20th Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics (NODALIDA 2015), NEALT Proceedings Series 23, 263–268. Vilnius: Linköping University Electronic Press, Linköpings universitet (ACL Anthology). [ pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl & Ryan Lepic. 2014. Commentary on Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst (1998). Sign Language & Linguistics 17(2): 241–250. [ http | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl, Johanna Mesch & Lars Wallin. 2014. Segmenting the Swedish Sign Language Corpus: On the possibilities of using visual cues as a basis for syntactic segmentation. In Onno Crasborn, Eleni Efthimiou, Evita Fotinea, Thomas Hanke, Jette Kristoffersen & Johanna Mesch (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Beyond the Manual Channel [Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC)], 7–10. Paris: European Language Resources Association (ELRA). [ pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl, Wendy Sandler & Mark Aronoff. 2014. Sign Language Linguistics. In Mark Aronoff (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online: Linguistics. Oxford University Press. [ http | bib ]

Conference presentations

  • Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria, Matti Miestamo & Carl Börstell. 2017. Impossible but not difficult: A typological study of lexical vs. derived antonyms. 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2017). University of Zürich, Switzerland.
  • Jantunen, Tommi, Johanna Mesch & Carl Börstell. 2017. GIVE or TAKE – Transitivity prominence of FinSL and SSL verbs. Corpus-based approaches to sign language linguistics: Into the second decade. University of Birmingham, UK.
  • Börstell, Carl, Moa Gärdenfors, Robert Östling & Mats Wirén. 2017. Approaching language technology: Annotating the Swedish Sign Language Corpus with Universal Dependencies. Corpus-based approaches to sign language linguistics: Into the second decade. University of Birmingham, UK.
  • Börstell, Carl, Ryan Lepic & Gal Belsitzman. 2016. A show of hands: Plurality as a feature of two-handed forms in silent gesture. 7th Conference of the International Society for Gesture Studies (ISGS 7). Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Paris, France.
  • Börstell, Carl, Mats Wirén, Johanna Mesch & Moa Gärdenfors. 2016. Towards an annotation of syntactic structure in Swedish Sign Language. 7th workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpus Mining. Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 10). Portorož, Slovenia.
  • Börstell, Carl & Robert Östling. 2016. Visualizing lects in a sign language corpus: Mining lexical variation data in lects of Swedish Sign Language. 7th workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpus Mining. Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 10). Portorož, Slovenia. [pdf]
  • Börstell, Carl, Robert Östling, Johanna Mesch, Kristina Nilsson Björkenstam, Johan Sjons, Lars Wallin, Mats Wirén & Thomas Hörberg. 2016. Distribution and duration of signs and parts of speech in Swedish Sign Language. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 12 (TISLR 12). La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. [Awarded SLLS Best Student Presentation Prize]
  • Börstell, Carl, Ryan Lepic & Gal Belsitzman. 2016. Lexical plurality in sign language lexicons: It takes two! Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 12 (TISLR 12). La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. [pdf]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2016. Taking it PERSONally: The form and function of the case-marked pronoun OBJ-PRO in Swedish Sign Language. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 12 (TISLR 12). La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. [pdf]
  • Börstell, Carl, Gal Belsitzman & Ryan Lepic. 2014. Two-handedness in gesture and sign: Comparing the silent gestures of hearing non-signers with the signs of sign language. 6th Conference of the International Society for Gesture Studies (ISGS 6). University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA. [Awarded ISGS Best Student Poster Prize] [pdf]
  • Börstell, Carl, Johanna Mesch & Lars Wallin. 2014. Segmenting the Swedish Sign Language Corpus: On the possibilities of using visual cues as a basis for syntactic segmentation. 6th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Beyond the Manual Channel [at the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC)]. Harpa, Reykjavík, Iceland.
  • Börstell, Carl. 2013. Revisiting Reduplication: Toward a description of reduplication in predicative signs in Swedish Sign Language. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 11 (TISLR 11). University College of London, London, UK. [pdf]
  • Lepic, Ryan, Gal Belsitzman, Carl Börstell & Wendy Sandler. 2013. Motivation in two-handed signs: A cross-linguistic investigation of word forms. Poster presented at Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Linguistics 11 (TISLR 11). University College of London, London, UK. [Awarded SLLS Best Student Poster Prize] [pdf]
  • Lepic, Ryan, Gal Belsitzman, Carl Börstell & Wendy Sandler. 2013. Motivation in two-handed signs. Minerva-Gentner symposium: Emergent Languages and Cultural Evolution. Max Planck Gesellschaft/Minerva Foundation, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
  • Börstell, Carl. 2013. Aspects of Swedish Sign Language reduplication. Olomouc Linguistic Colloquium 2013 (Olinco 2013). Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic.
  • Börstell, Carl. 2012. Revisiting Reduplication: Toward a description of reduplication in predicative signs in Swedish Sign Language. 2nd International Graduate Student Conference on Diverse Approaches to Linguistics (IGDAL 2). Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
  • Börstell, Carl. 2011. Negation in Swedish Sign Language. Workshop on Negation in Uralic Languages. Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.

Theses

  • Börstell, Carl. 2017. Object marking in the signed modality: Verbal and nominal strategies in Swedish Sign Language and other sign languages. Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University (PhD dissertation). [ pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2011. Revisiting Reduplication: Toward a description of reduplication in predicative signs in Swedish Sign Language. Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University (MA thesis). [ pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2008. Grammatisk finithet i trumaí [Grammatical finiteness in Trumai]. Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University (BA thesis). [ pdf | bib ]

Software & resources

  • Börstell, Carl. 2016. ELAN annotation duration - Tool that counts the total duration span of annotations in ELAN annotation files (.eaf) in a folder. (Python) [ url ]
  • Gärdenfors, Moa, Carl Börstell, Robert Östling, Lars Wallin & Mats Wirén. 2016. SSL dataset for Universal Dependencies v1.4. [ url ]
  • Börstell, Carl & Robert Östling. 2015. SSL-lects - An online interface for plotting lexical variation data from the Swedish Sign Language Corpus. (Python) [ url ]

So, is it Carl or Calle?

My name seems to cause some problems for non-Scandinavians, so I will try to sort things out here.

  1. My given name is Carl, which is pronounced [kʰɑːɭ].
  2. Bearers of the name Carl (or the alternate form Karl) often receive the nickname Calle (or Kalle). This is true for me, so most people in Sweden address me as Calle (we are very informal with names in Sweden, so feel free to use this form). Calle is pronounced [ˈkʰa᷆lːɛ̂], so yeah, it is also this thing about pitch accent here.
  3. My last name is tricky even for Swedish speakers, perhaps because it is quite uncommon. However, it is supposed to be pronounced [bœʂˈtɛlː].

In conclusion: When citing my work, please use Carl, but in all other contexts, do call me Calle! I use Calle also when signing – although I've had a number of different name signs over the years (btw, I have a paper on name signs), the one that has stayed with me the longest is a simple fingerspelled CALLE.

Contact

You can find my contact details on my department website. It is easiest to reach me via email (calle AT ling DOT su DOT se):