Carl "Calle" Börstell

Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University

My name is Carl "Calle" Börstell. I will be working at Stockholm University from August 2020 as a substitute Associate Professor (Swedish "lektor"), after two years at Radboud University Nijmegen as a postdoctoral researcher (Mar 2018–Jul 2020) and a 6-month visiting professorship at the University of Hamburg (Oct 2019–Mar 2020).

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

I also do programming, mainly for various sign language applications, using Python and R (see Software & Resources).

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, Software & resources, and Popular science.

Papers and chapters

  • Kimmelman, Vadim & Carl Börstell. To appear. Word classes in sign languages. In Eva van Lier (ed.), Handbook of Word Classes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Expected 2021). [ bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl. To appear. Searching and utilizing corpora. In Julie Hochgesang & Jordan Fenlon (eds.), Sign Language Corpora. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. (Expected 2020). [ bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl & Ryan Lepic. 2020. Spatial metaphors in antonym pairs across sign languages. Sign Language & Linguistics 23(1–2): 112–141. [ http | pdf | bib ]
  • Gonga, Aurélia Nana Gassa, Onno Crasborn, Carl Börstell & Ellen Ormel. 2020. Comparing IS and NGT Interpreting Processing Time: A case study. In: McDermid, Campbell, Suzanne Ehrlich & Ashley Gentry (eds.), Proceedings of the 2019 WASLI Conference: Honouring the Past, Treasuring the Present, Shaping the Future, 74–95. Paris: WASLI. [ pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl, Onno Crasborn & Lori Whynot. 2020. Measuring Lexical Similarity across Sign Languages in Global Signbank. In Mayumi Bono, Eleni Efthimiou, Stavroula-Evita Fotinea, Thomas Hanke, Julie Hochgesang, Jette Kristoffersen, Johanna Mesch (eds.), Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Sign Language Resources in the Service of the Language Community, Technological Challenges and Application Perspectives [Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC)], 21–26. Marseille: European Language Resources Association (ELRA). [ pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl, Tommi Jantunen, Vadim Kimmelman, Vanja de Lint, Johanna Mesch & Marloes Oomen. 2019. Transitivity prominence within and across modalities. Open Linguistics 5: 666--689. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2019-0037 [ html | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2019. Differential object marking in sign languages. Glossa 4(1): 3. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.780 [ http | bib ]
  • Östling, Robert, Carl Börstell & Servane Courtaux. 2018. Visual Iconicity across Sign Languages: Large-Scale Automated Video Analysis of Iconic Articulators and Locations. Frontiers in Psychology 9: 725. [ http | bib ]
  • Kankkonen, Nikolaus R., Thomas Björkstrand, Johanna Mesch & Carl Börstell. 2018. Crowdsourcing for the Swedish Sign Language Dictionary. In Mayumi Bono, Eleni Efthimiou, Stavroula-Evita Fotinea, Thomas Hanke, Julie Hochgesang, Jette Kristoffersen, Johanna Mesch & Yutaka Osugi (eds.), Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Involving the Language Community [Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC)], 171–176. Miyazaki: European Language Resources Association (ELRA). [ pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2017. Types and trends of name signs in the Swedish Sign Language community. SKY Journal of Linguistics, vol. 30:2017: 7–34. [ pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2017. Object marking in the signed modality: Verbal and nominal strategies in Swedish Sign Language and other sign languages. [Dissertation abstract]. Sign Language & Linguistics 20(2): 279–287. [ http | bib ]
  • 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. Portorož: 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. Portorož: 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. Reykjavík: 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

  • Börstell, Carl & Felicia Bisnath. 2020. On islands in the sea: Swedish preposition usage with island nations. High Desert Linguistics Society 14 (HDLS 14). University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA. [http]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2020. Isn't it iconic? (Don't you think?). Higher Seminar in Linguistics. Stockholm University, Sweden. (Invited talk)
  • Börstell, Carl. 2020. Isn't it iconic? (Don't you think?). PPLS Linguistic Circle seminar series. University of Edinburgh, UK. (Invited talk)
  • Börstell, Carl, Onno Crasborn & Lori Whynot. 2019. True friends or false friends? Lexical similarity for predicting cross-signing success. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 13 (TISLR 13). University of Hamburg, Germany. [pdf]
  • Börstell, Carl, Onno Crasborn & Adam Schembri. 2019. Signs of reduction: Frequency, duration, and signing rate in three sign language corpora. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 13 (TISLR 13). University of Hamburg, Germany. [pdf]
  • Börstell, Carl & Ryan Lepic. 2019. Spatial metaphors in antonym pairs across sign languages. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 13 (TISLR 13). University of Hamburg, Germany. [pdf]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2019. Grammaticalization of differential object marking (DOM) across sign languages. Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication seminar series. University of Amsterdam, NL. (Invited talk)
  • Börstell, Carl. 2019. Metaphorical height contrasts across sign languages and in cross-signing. Gesture–Sign Workshop Prague 2019. Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. [pdf]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2019. Vertical metaphors in sign language antonyms. The 12th International Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature. Lund University, Sweden.
  • Börstell, Carl. 2019. Metaphorical height contrasts across sign languages and in cross-signing. CLS Colloquium. Radboud University, Nijmegen, NL. (Invited talk)
  • Börstell, Carl. 2018. Iconicity of articulators and locations in 31 sign languages. Sign Pop-Up Series, Radboud University, Nijmegen, NL. (Invited talk)
  • Börstell, Carl, Robert Östling & Servane Courtaux. 2018. Iconicity of articulators and locations in 31 sign languages. The first international workshop on cognitive and functional explorations in sign language linguistics (Sign CAFE 1), University of Birmingham, UK.
  • Börstell, Carl. 2018. Articulatory plurality as a universal iconic strategy. IMPRS Conference 2018. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. [pdf]
  • Börstell, Carl, Tommi Jantunen, Johanna Mesch, Vadim Kimmelman, Marloes Oomen & Vanja de Lint. 2018. Transitivity prominence within and across modalities. Argument Structure across Modalities (ASAM2018) workshop. University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
  • Börstell, Carl. 2017. There's something about PERSON: Grammaticalization of DOM in sign languages. Diachrony of Differential Object Marking workshop. INaLCO, Paris, France.
  • 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. 2010. Kurudu NP morphology. [Originally "The morphosyntax of the NP in Kaipuri"]. Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University (Course paper). [ html | 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. 2020. signglossR – an R package that facilitates visual representation of sign language data. (R) [ url ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2019. A Typology of Dumpling. [ url ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2018. SSLD-videos – Script that downloads videos from the Swedish Sign Language Dictionary. (Python) [ url ] [NB: Current version greatly improved by Mark Otzen.]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2018. Make sign stills - Script that creates sign stills from sign language videos based on estimated hold sequences. (Python) [ url ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2018. ELAN make subtitles - Script that creates subtitled video clips from ELAN annotation files (.eaf). (Python) [ url ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2018. SSLD-images - Script that downloads and combines still images of signs from the Swedish Sign Language Dictionary. (Python) [ url ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2018. Ett tecken varje dag (@allatecken) - A Twitter bot that posts a random sign from the SSL dictionary every day. (Python) [ @allatecken ]
  • Gärdenfors, Moa, Carl Börstell, Robert Östling, Lars Wallin & Mats Wirén. 2017. SSL dataset for Universal Dependencies v2.1. [ url ]
  • 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 ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2019 [2010]. Kurudu NP morphology: A sketch of Kurudu (kjr) noun phrase morphosyntax. [ url ]

Popular science

  • Börstell, Carl. 2017. "Härmed tecknar jag dig ...". In: Språktidningen, vol. 7, p. 52–57. [ html | pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2017. "Persontecken avslöjar vilka vi är". In: Dövas Tidning, vol. 3, p. 7. [ pdf | bib ]
  • Börstell, Carl. 2013. "Här är 4% av invånarna döva". In: Dövas Tidning, vol. 4, p. 13. [ pdf | bib ]

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. Think about the French city Calais or Superman's real name Kal-El.
  3. My last name is tricky even for Swedish speakers, perhaps because it is quite uncommon. However, it is supposed to be pronounced [bœʂˈtɛlː].
  4. 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 ones used most are either a fingerspelled CALLE (in Swedish Sign Language) or the sign for DUCK because it is also the name sign of Donald Duck (Swedish: Kalle Anka).

In conclusion: When citing my work, please use Carl, but in all other contexts, do call me Calle!

Contact

It is easiest to reach me via email (calle AT ling DOT su DOT se):