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This article introduces student readers to the realm of the interdisciplinary, with a primary focus on the humanities. We first introduce interdisciplinarity and other related terms as concepts. We then present eight specific examples, on which we illustrate interdisciplinary research. Finally, we address the question of when one should be interdisciplinary.

Det danske sprog anses af mange lørnere som svært at lære, og især anses det som svært at blive flydende i. Dette bliver ofte tilskrevet den svære danske udtale. Artiklen her viser, at sprogskolernes håndtering af udtaleundervisning kan bidrage til voksne andetsprogstaleres udtaleproblemer. Her undersøges voksne lørneres og underviseres iagttagelser omkring det svære danske sprog, og undervisningen af det. I denne undersøgelse inddrages en analyse af undervisningsmateriale brugt ved voksenundervisning i dansk som andetsprog, og en diskussion af danskeksamener for andetsprogstalere. Vores resultater indikerer at udtale, og især vokaler, anses af både lørnere og undervisere som særligt svære at mestre. Samtidig undervises der ifølge vores informanter ikke nok i vokaludtale på de danske sprogskoler. Selvom de to informantgrupper generelt er relativt enige er især mængden af undervisning i udtale et kontrastpunkt mellem lørnere og undervisere. Vi diskuterer denne forskel, samt betydningen af meget lidt undervisningsmateriale der fokuserer på udtale efter DU-modul 1, og et manglende fokus på udtale i danskeksamenerne.

This paper is a replication of Lowry’s (2002) study of Belfast English nuclear intonation. The original paper revealed a tendency for speakers to produce a greater-than-expected amount of falling tunes in more careful speech styles, while informal speech styles almost exclusively yielded the canonical Belfast English rise-plateaux. According to Lowry, this finding reflected an attempt by speakers to emulate the prestige variety of SSBE, in which declarative falls are the norm. However, since Lowry's study, a new nuclear tune has entered the scene: increasingly, studies report the use of uptalk rises in the British Isles. This study analyses data from sociolinguistic interviews with 6 adolescent male speakers of Belfast English to investigate whether this speaker group still produces SSBE- like falls in formal contexts. Findings indicate that rise- plateaux are still produced in informal contexts, that use of falls may be idiolectal or used with greater frequency by speakers that are politically oriented towards the UK, and that speakers in the present sample now realise the majority of declarative statements with uptalk rises in formal styles.

Simple Summary There are several animal welfare concerns in farmed mink, including the occurrence of wounds, such as tail tip lesions. However, little is known about how these lesions develop. An increasing tendency to develop tail tip wounds was reported by Norwegian mink farmers after the introduction of multilevel cages. It appears that the mink jump directly at a presumably high speed from the upper level towards the nest box on ground level, causing the tail to hit the wire mesh several times. This study investigates whether cage design may be involved in the development of tail tip lesions. Specifically, effects of installing an additional hammock in standard multilevel cages, intended to reduce speed during transitions between cage levels and thereby assumed to lower the incidence and severity of tails hitting the wire mesh, were investigated in 600 mink at three farms (300 with hammocks and 300 without hammocks). More tail tip lesions were found in mink housed in cages without a hammock. Further studies are needed to understand the causal relationship between cage design and tail tip lesions in mink, in order to develop recommendations for improved cage designs and thereby improving animal welfare. Abstract The occurrence of wounds in different anatomical regions, such as tail tip lesions, is an important welfare concern in farmed mink. This study investigated whether mechanical factors attributed to cage design in multilevel cages may be involved in the etiology of tail tip lesions. Specifically, effects of an additional hammock intended to reduce speed during transitions between cage levels and thereby assumed to lower the incidence and severity of tails hitting the wire mesh were investigated. Three mink farms and a total of 600 mink participated in the study. On each farm, brown female mink (n = 100) were either housed in multilevel cages equipped with plastic hammocks (placed either perpendicular or parallel to the sidewalls) or in standard multilevel cages without hammocks (n = 100). The study was conducted from December to March using singly housed females. Significant differences in the number of tail tip wounds were found between groups with a hammock installed in the cage vs. control groups in two of the farms (p = 0.029 and p = 0.031), with more wounds developing in cages without a hammock. Furthermore, there was a trend towards difference in the number of tail tip wounds in groups with hammocks installed perpendicular vs. groups with hammocks installed parallel to the cage sidewalls, but a potential farm effect cannot be ruled out. This study is the first to suggest that mechanical factors associated with cage design may play a role in the etiology of tail tip lesions in farmed mink. Further studies are needed to understand the causal relationship between cage design and tail tip lesions in mink.

Listeners of different languages have been reported to vary significantly in prominence perception tasks. We know very little, however, about which exact cues different listeners use in these tasks. In this study, we examined the role of duration in the perception of prominence in both typologically different and related languages. The stimuli consisted of the disyllabic logatome for which the durations of the first and second syllable were systematically manipulated. 80 listeners (8 varieties*10 listeners/variety) judged the relative prominence of the two syllables. We found that differences in the sensitivity to duration cues between varieties of the same language can be equal in magnitude to those found for typologically unrelated languages. Results are discussed in light of prosodic typology and speech perception.

This paper presents work in progress on the phonetic realization of uptalk rises in Northern Irish English, a variety which is well-known for another type of rising intonation, the rise-plateau(-slump) (Cruttenden 1997; Grabe 2002; Ladd 2008). However, a recent pilot study has shown that the steeper and more steadily rising uptalk rise, which is mainly associated with American and Antipodean Englishes, is now found not only in Southern British English (cf. Arvaniti and Atkins 2016), but also in Northern Ireland. For this study, 6 female speakers were recorded while taking part in a Map Task and approximately 3 minutes of speech was examined. Intonational rises were labeled using the IViE guidelines (see Grabe et al. 2000; Grabe 2002) and f0 measurements were taken at 10 intervals between the low starting points and peaks of each rise. Rises were then assigned to either the rise-plateau or uptalk categories according to the phonological label assigned and the steepness, height and steadiness of the rise. T...