Line Sjøtun Helganger

Line Sjøtun Helganger is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Languages and Literature Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Sports and Educational Science, University of South-Eastern Norway (USN). Her research focuses on preschool children’s language acquisition and pragmatic development, particularly investigating how children use intonation as a communicative tool. She is affiliated with Campus Notodden and can be reached at line.s.helganger@usn.no.

Research Interests: Helganger’s work centers on experimental studies exploring children’s production and comprehension of intonation patterns (e.g., Polarity Focus) and the theoretical puzzle of production-comprehension asymmetry. Her methodologies include semi-structured elicitation tasks and eye-tracking technology to analyze pragmatic development in 2-5 year-olds.

Key Projects:

• Production Study: Demonstrates preschoolers as young as 2 years produce intonation signaling attitude (endorsement/denial) in contexts like gutten LESER bok (‘The boy does read a book’).
• Comprehension Study: Investigates 3-5-year-olds’ understanding of additive focus particles (e.g., også ‘also’) using eye-tracking to distinguish subject vs. object interpretations.
• Production-Comprehension Asymmetry: Theoretical analysis questioning whether observed asymmetries stem from true linguistic gaps or methodological biases in experimental design.

Advising & Grants: No current advisees or grants explicitly listed. Research is publicly disseminated through platforms like Cristin, though specific publications require further access.