Teaching & Learning Guide for: Rebuilding Australia’s Linguistic Profile – Recent Developments in Research on Australian Aboriginal Languages

BOOK NOTICES Yir-Yoront lexicon: Sketch and dictionary of an Australian language. By Barry Alpher. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991. Pp. xi, 795. DM 298.00. Alpher's Ph.D. dissertation on the phonology and grammar of Yir-Yoront—with the engaging title Son ofergative (Cornell, 1973)—is the most thorough and respected description of a language from the Cape York Peninsula, North Queensland. The first hundred pages of the present volume recapitulate the main points of the thesis, as improved and revised during five more field trips between 1974 and 1988. The phonemic inventory is typical for an Australian language, with six stops and nasals (including two apical and two laminai series), three laterals, two rhotics, and two semivowels. There are six vowels (the standard five plus schwa) and a glottal stop. While other languages of the Cape York Peninsula have undergone initial dropping, Yir-Yoront has truncated the ends of words. What were case endings may have dropped, having left a trace through assimilation and the like. Thus, forms of the noun 'blood' have developed as follows: absolutive kamu > kam, ergative kamu-nggu > kumu, and dative kamu-gu > kumu (II). The morphophonemic rules, which ran to 88 pages in the original thesis , are here condensed into nine pages. Nouns and interrogatives follow an absolutive -ergative system of inflection, while pronouns show a nominative-accusative pattern. Singular pronouns have distinct accusative and dative forms, but these fall together for nonsingulars . The ablative case also covers 'aversive' function (e.g. ? was afraid of the dog'), something that is often accorded a separate case form in Australian languages (29). Nonsingular pronouns have a Distributive Plural form, e.g. ngunnguwl 'you(pl.) and 1, acting separately', created from the regular plural (ngopol 'you(pl.) and G) by lenition, ablaut, and reduplication (37). Adjectives function like common nouns in inflection and in syntactic properties, but A is able to put forward five structural and semantic criteria to define a subclass of Adjectives, a most perspicuous and useful analysis. Like other languages of its area, Yir-Yoront has a set of generic nouns which often occur in an NP with a specific noun; A discusses about 20 of them (72-77). He has a detailed and insightful analysis of the kinship system (189-203) and of the way kin terms are grouped together on the basis of a common sign language correspondent, the latter also referring to a body part—e.g. 'shin' for various sibling terms and father's father ; 'arm' for father, father's sister, and male's child. He also gives 45 words (ten ofthem verbs) in the respect register which is used with, or in speaking about, or in the presence of certain relatives and states the one-to-many correspondences between respect style and ordinary language words (103-7). All this is a preliminary to the dictionary (125-694), which is certainly the fullest and most informative dictionary produced for any Australian language. A simply provides all of the information anyone could possibly require: form, alternative forms, any irregular inflections , word class, transitivity and conjugation class for verbs, the appropriate generic term for nouns, all the different senses (written in clear English), and a number of well-chosen examples , mostly taken from texts. (One hopes that A will also be publishing a volume of texts.) There are also most useful notes on etymology, and cognates in other Australian languages. The 'index' is an adequate finder list of English words (695-787). There are always points of analysis with which one disagrees and some etymologies that could be improved (e.g., I'd prefer to relate YirYoront pirri 'emu' (45 1 ) to Dyirbal kapirri rather than, as Alpher does, to Guugu Yimidhirr purriwi ). But these are minor matters, and insignificant given the strength of this work. Certain types of words are not generally used in academic reviews, among them 'magnificent'. But this dictionary simply is a magnificent achievement . [R. M.W. Dixon. Australian National University.] Linguistic perspectives on the Romance languages. Ed. by William J. Ashby, Marianne Mithun, Giorgio Perissinotto, and Eduardo Raposo. (Current issues in linguistic theory, 103.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia : John Benjamins, 1993. Pp. xxii, 404. 593 594 LANGUAGE...

Mushira Eld (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic linguistics I. Papers from the first Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science. Series IV: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Vol. 63.) xiii, 293 pp. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1990. Guilders 185, 74. - Volume 56 Issue 1

Australia as a product of setter colonialism and of mass immigration is a society that is characterised by widespread multilingualism, although at the same time, it is also a society characterised by widespread monolingualism in the dominant language, English. It is thus a society in which many heritage language speakers are present but also one in which prevailing beliefs about the desirability and sufficiency of English language monolingualism have influenced how languages are understood and treated (Clyne, 2008). The presence of linguistic diversity and the dominance of English have shaped Australia’s educational responses to languages and its language-in-education policies. This chapter will explore how language-in-education policy has addressed the needs of heritage language learners who speak either indigenous or immigrant languages. Before beginning this discussion, however, there is a need to consider some of the terminological issues that exist in Australia around heritage language learning. The term ‘heritage languages’ is not actually a widely used term in the Australian context and languages are more usually referred to as ‘community languages’, meaning immigrant languages, which are contrasted with ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages’, ‘Australian languages’ or ‘indigenous languages’. The term ‘community languages’ has been preferred in Australia over ‘heritage languages’ because it does not imply that the languages concerned are being lost or associated with the past and so has a particular discursive resonance. At the same time, this terminology creates a division between speakers of types of languages, which is consequential for how Australia understands minority languages. In Australia the term ‘background speaker’ is often used to indicate a person who has a heritage connection with a language. This term typically refers to a speaker of an immigrant language and has a rather fluid definition ranging from those who acquire a language other than the dominant English language at home as a first language to those with a family connection to the language but who do not speak it. In this chapter I will use ‘immigrant languages’ and ‘indigenous languages’ to refer to the two distinct groups of languages and will break with Australian usage to use heritage languages, when it offers a convenient way to make connections across these categories, which could not be done easily using the more conventional Australian terminology. This chapter will examine government language-in-education policy for provision of education programs for immigrant and indigenous languages and trace the ways that these policies have evolved over time and how they interact with other aspects of language in education policy.

Reviewed by: Cartesian linguistics: A chapter in the history of rationalist thoughtby Noam Chomsky Julia S. Falk Cartesian linguistics: A chapter in the history of rationalist thought. 2nd edn. By Noam Chomsky. Ed. with an introduction by James McGilvray. Christchurch, New Zealand: Cybereditions, 2002. Pp. 161. ISBN 187727545X. $17.95. Noam Chomsky’s Cartesian linguistics( CL) was originally published in 1966 (New York: Harper & Row) and was preceded by four versions of his plenary session address to the 1962 Ninth International Congress of Linguists (ICL). The four versions are: (i) ‘The logical basis of linguistic theory’, Preprints of papers for the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, ed. by Morris Halle, 509–74, Cambridge, MA: Morris Halle, 1962; (ii) ‘The logical basis of linguistic theory’, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, ed. by Horace G. Lunt, 914–78, The Hague: Mouton, 1964; (iii) ‘Current issues in linguistic theory’, The structure of language, ed. by Jerry A. Fodor and Jerrold J. Katz, 50–118, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964; and (iv) Current issues in linguistic theory, The Hague: Mouton, 1964. Each version of the ICL paper incorporates increasingly lengthy and more detailed discussion of pre-twentieth-century views of linguistic creativity and the innate principles of mind that make language acquisition possible. These are the concepts that form the central themes of CL, which editor James McGilvray here calls ‘one of the most original and profound studies of language and mind in the 20th century’ (7). Chomsky’s presentations and interpretations of the ideas of René Descartes and of other rationalist and romanticist philosophers and writers (such as Géraud de Cordemoy, Ralph Cudworth, August Wilhelm Schlegel, and Wilhelm von Humboldt) brought to the attention of linguists in the 1960s an intellectual history that had been largely ignored during an extended period of ahistoricism in twentieth-century American academic life (for discussion see Julia S. Falk’s ‘Turn to the history of linguistics: Noam Chomsky and Charles Hockett in the 1960s’, Historiographia Linguistica30.129–85, 2003). CLand the earlier ICL papers led to a surge of American interest in the history of linguistic concepts and ideas, and it provoked some hostile critiques and misinterpretations (e.g. ‘The history of linguistics and Professor Chomsky’, by Hans Aarsleff, Language46.570–85, 1970; see the rejoinder to Aarsleff by Harry M. Bracken, ‘Chomsky’s Cartesianism’, Language Sciences22.11–17, October 1972). McGilvray has chosen to ‘not discuss the reviews here’ (40, n.1), but he does attempt to explain the ‘prominence of René Descartes’ name in the book’s title’ (8), which was one source of controversy among reviewers. McGilvray’s introduction (7–44) is ‘organized in terms of a distinction between rationalist and empiricist approaches to mind that Chomsky suggests but does not pursue in CL’ (7), taking up the topics of linguistic creativity, rationalist-romantic efforts to deal with such creativity, and the place of nativism and of contemporary forms of empiricism and rationalism in the study of mind. The main sections of CLitself are: ‘Creative aspect of language use’ (51–71), ‘Deep and surface structure’ (72–87), ‘Description and explanation in linguistics’ (88–93), and ‘Acquisition and use of language’ (94–103); there are also extensive notes (105–41) and a bibliography (143–50) that combines the original references and those added by the editor. Chomsky begins and ends his text with commentary on a remark by Alfred North Whitehead: ‘A brief, and sufficiently accurate, description of the intellectual life of the European races during the succeeding two centuries and a quarter up to our own times is that they have been living upon the accumulated capital of ideas provided for them by the genius of the seventeenth century’ ( CL, 1st edn., p. xvi). The quotation itself was left out of the new edition, but, according to the editor, it is included in later printings. In the first edition of CLmany quotations appeared in their original French or German, and McGilvray [End Page 774]suggests that this diminished the impact of the book. However, in the United States this is unlikely since at the time of its publication virtually all linguistics programs...

Bela Brogyanyi (ed.): Studies in diachronic, synchronic, and typological linguistics. Festschrift for Oswald Szemerenyi on … his 65th birthday. (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, IV.—Current issues in Linguistic Theory, Vol. 11, I–II.) xiv, 487 pp., front.; [X], pp. 489–994. Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1979. Guilders 200. - Volume 44 Issue 2

Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (CILT) is a theory-oriented series which welcomes contributions from scholars who have significant proposals that advance our understanding of language, its structure, its function and especially its historical development. CILT offers an outlet for meaningful contributions to current linguistic debate.

Winfred P. Lehmann (ed.), Language typology 1985: papers from the linguistic typology symposium, Moscow, 9–13 December 1985. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 47.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1986. Pp. viii + 209. - Volume 25 Issue 2

Germanic linguistics: Syntactic and diachronic. Edited by Rosina L. Lippi-Green and Joseph C. Salmons. (Current issues in linguistic theory, 137.) Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1996. Pp. vii, 192. Hardcover. $65.00. - Volume 10 Issue 1

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has been developing language-specific curricula for a range of languages in the Australian Curriculum: Languages and has also undertaken development of a Framework for Australian Languages, to provide guidance for the development of curricula for specific Australian Languages (Aboriginal languages and Torres Strait Islander languages) to accommodate the varied situations across Indigenous Australia. Foremost among the challenges for the Framework for Australian Languages is the multiplicity of languages potentially to be covered. It is estimated that there were some 250 Australian Languages at the time of the first sustained contact with outsiders. Of these only about 20 are still spoken 'right through'. The other languages are in various states ranging from minimal documentation and language use through to significant advances in language revitalisation (Walsh, 2001). Because there are so many languages, the framework is not, and cannot be, a language-specific curriculum. The learner pathways for the framework are: first language learner, language revival learner and second language learner. Typically the first language learner pathway will be for Indigenous students 'on country' in more remote parts of Australia. The second language pathway, on the other hand, will typically be learned 'off country' as is the case for Pitjantjatjara in places like Adelaide and other centres in South Australia quite distant from the Pitjantjatjara homelands. The largest array of languages is in the language revival learner pathway, which will most often be studied by non-Indigenous as well as Indigenous students. In this article we explore some of the framework's challenges in embracing the concept of Babel- from the Biblical story of the scattering of people across the earth and the 'confounding' of communication through the introduction of multiple languages. KEY WORDS Australian Curriculum, curriculum, curriculum development, Aboriginal languages, Torres Strait Islander languages, intercultural language learning, curriculum design, linguistic and cultural diversity [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE FRAMEWORK FOR AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has been developing language-specific curricula for a range of languages, and has also undertaken the development of the Framework for Australian Languages (hereafter the Framework). This document will provide guidance for the development of curricula for specific Australian Languages. It therefore has been pitched at a high level of generality so as to be able to accommodate the varied situations across Indigenous Australia. One point of comparison might be to consider what a Framework for European Languages might look like: it would need to cover Finnish and French as well as German and Greek! The Framework has been designed so as to assist people in developing a language-specific curriculum for potentially any of the 250 Australian Languages. THE ECOLOGY OF AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES Broadly speaking, it is estimated that there were 250 Australian Languages at first significant outside contact. Roughly 20 of these are still spoken 'right through' with the remainder in various stages of decline or revival (Schmidt, 1990, p. 1-2; Commonwealth of Australia, 2012, p. 34). In addition, for most languages there is dialectal variation which can be important for group identity and thus adds to the complexity of the overall linguistic situation (see, for example, Dixon, 2010). Particularly over recent decades there has been an extraordinary increase in language revitalisation activity (e.g. Troy & Walsh, 2010; Walsh, 2001). Some languages that had been written off are gaining new texts and new vocabulary. One such example is Butchulla from south-east Queensland for which a lullaby has been performed and written by the Aboriginal language activist, Joy Bonner (see https://open. …

Garry W. Davis and Gregory K. Iverson, eds. Explanation in Historical Linguistics. In the series Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 1992. Pp. xiv + 238. US$69.00 (hardcover). - Volume 39 Issue 3

The present chapter describes the decline and revitalisation of Australian Aboriginal languages—also called Australian languages. As preliminaries, it looks at the following: (i) a brief history of Aboriginal Australians, (ii) degrees of language viability, (iii) current situation of Australian languages, (iv) value of linguistic heritage, and (v) methods of language revitalisation. It then describes five selected language revitalisation activities, concerning Warrongo, Kaurna, Bandjalang, Thalanyji and Wiradjuri languages. In particular, it provides a detailed account of the Warrongo language revitalisation activity (in which the author has been participating). It finally examines a problem that is frequently encountered in language revitalisation activities: confusion over writing systems. The entire chapter pays careful attention to the changing political climate that surrounds Australian languages and activities for them.

The present chapter describes the decline and revitalisation of Australian Aboriginal languages — also called Australian languages. As preliminaries, it looks at the following: (i) a brief history of Aboriginal Australians, (ii) degrees of language viability, (iii) current situation of Australian languages, (iv) value of linguistic heritage, and (v) methods of language revitalisation. It then describes five selected language revitalisation activities, concerning Warrongo, Kaurna, Bandjalang, Thalanyji and Wiradjuri languages. In particular, it provides a detailed account of the Warrongo language revitalisation activity (in which the author has been participating). It finally examines a problem that is frequently encountered in language revitalisation activities: confusion over writing systems. The entire chapter pays careful attention to the changing political climate that surrounds Australian languages and activities for them.

[no title] - William O’Grady. Categories and Case: The Sentence Structure of Korean. In the series Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 1991. Pp. viii + 298. Hfl 110,–; US$58.00 (hardcover). - Volume 40 Issue 1

Carl Kirschner and Janet DeCesaris, eds. Studies in Romance Linguistics. Selected Papers from the Seventeenth Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (XVII. LSRL). Rutgers University, 27–29 March 1987. In the series Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1989. Pp. x + 500. Hfl. 220,-; US$116.00 (hardcover). - Volume 35 Issue 3

In this paper we provide an overview of dorsovelar articulations and acoustics in several Australian Aboriginal languages, and we compare these results with data from English. We examine languages that have a single dorsal, as well as languages that have two dorsal places of articulation. Using direct palatography and F₂ transition measures, we show that Australian languages appear to have a distinct velar target for each of the three major vowel contexts, with a high degree of coarticulation between each velar allophone and its following vowel target, whilst English has only two velar targets – back and non-back, with a lower degree of coarticulation between velar allophones and their corresponding vowel targets. Thus, whilst the range of allophonic variation for velars extends further back in the Australian Aboriginal languages than in English, there appears to be no difference in the articulation of velars in the front vowel context. Drawing on results from the biomechanics, language acquisition, speech perception and acoustics literatures, we suggest that this result may be due to conflict between systemic constraints imposed by the place-rich consonant systems of Aboriginal languages and universal acoustic constraints on the identity of front-velar sounds, which may contribute to the instability of such articulations and the relative infrequency of velar + high vowel combinations in the world’s languages.