Australian Aboriginal Languages Research Articles

Embedded and Adjoined Relative Clauses in Ancient Egyptian

Ancient Egyptian “virtual” relative clauses are analysed, following certain earlier proposals, as syntactically adjunctive constructions similar to so-called adjoined relatives found especially in various Australian Aboriginal languages. The structural behaviour of the said type of relative clauses differs markedly from that of the “real” relative constructions, which (in attributive use) are argued to be embedded as constituents of their antecedent NPs.

How Grammar Changes Perception: An Australian Aboriginal language provides unexpected insight.

How Grammar Changes Perception: An Australian Aboriginal language provides unexpected insight.

Towards an interactional grammar of interjections: Expressing compassion in four Australian languages

ABSTRACT Words classified as ‘interjections’ tend to be treated in descriptive grammars as outside of morphosyntax, too contextually bound to warrant a systematic description of their syntagmatic relations. In this paper we argue that if one takes grammar to include recurrent patterns in conversational turns that are routinely connected with particular interactional functions, such as assessments and acknowledgements, then the grammar of interjections can indeed be incorporated into language description in ways that show the systematic relationships between form and function. We use a comparative corpus of conversations in four typologically distinct Australian Aboriginal languages (Garrwa, Gija, Jaru and Murrinhpatha) to illustrate how such an analysis may be developed. We focus on forms which have been described as ‘compassionate interjections’, which express that the speaker takes a compassionate affective stance towards something described in prior talk or evident in the situation. Despite differences in the morphological properties of these words in the languages we compare here, they display remarkable similarities in where they occur within conversational turns, and the functions they serve in different turn-related positions.

JSwarm: A Jingulu-Inspired Human-AI-Teaming Language for Context-Aware Swarm Guidance

Bi-directional communication between humans and swarm systems begs for efficient languages to communicate information between the humans and the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled agents in a manner that is most appropriate for the context. We discuss the criteria for effective teaming and functional bi-directional communication between humans and AI, and the design choices required to create effective languages. We then present a human-AI-teaming communication language inspired by the Australian Aboriginal language of Jingulu, which we call JSwarm. We present the motivation and structure of the language. An example is used to demonstrate how the language operates for a shepherding swarm guidance task.

Sound change in Aboriginal Australia: word-initial engma deletion in Kunwok

Abstract This paper examines word-initial engma deletion in Bininj Kunwok. Loss of initial consonants is a well-documented historical process in many Australian languages (Blevins, Juliette. 2001. Where have all the onsets gone? Initial consonant loss in Australian Aboriginal languages. In Jane Simpson, David Nash, Mary Laughren, Peter Austin & Barry Alpher (eds.), Forty years on: Ken Hale and Australian languages, 481–492. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics), but there has been no systematic analysis of initial consonant loss as a synchronic variable (Fletcher, Janet & Andrew Butcher 2014. Sound patterns of Australian languages. In Harold Koch & Rachel Nordlinger (eds.), The languages and linguistics of Australia, 91–138. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton). In the case of Kunwok, word-initial velar nasal deletion (e.g. nganabbarru ∼ anabbarru ‘buffalo’) has been described as having regional distribution and is a prominent feature of speakers from the western and southern peripheries of the dialect chain, but variable in speakers from the central region (Evans, Nicholas. 2003. Bininj Kunwok: A pan-dialectal grammar of Mayali, Kunwinjku and Kune. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics). This study tests the distribution of the word-initial engma for both linguistic conditioning and sociolinguistic factors, and arrives at three conclusions. First, that preceding environment is a contributing factor. Second, that morphological class is a categorical conditioning factor. And third, that the phenomenon is spreading and there is evidence of language change in progress. This paper also takes into consideration community perspectives, noting that the sound change in progress is accompanied by a change in perceptions.

‘Stop Measuring Black Kids with a White Stick’: Translanguaging for Classroom Assessment

In this conceptual paper, we explore the opportunities and challenges that translanguaging may provide for students from Australian Aboriginal backgrounds and their teachers. We use examples taken from Australian Aboriginal students who may speak Standard Australian English, Australian Aboriginal English, creoles (Kriol being the common one across the north of Australia) and traditional languages (e.g. Kija, Martu). We begin by examining the concept of translanguaging and show how Australian Aboriginal students can move fluidly between their various linguistic resources, dialects and repertoires to make meaning, express their thoughts, understandings and feelings, create their identities, and do so in often playful and creative ways. The principles of fair and valid assessment are explored and the role that translanguaging can fulfil for assessment purposes is considered. We also document some of the social, cultural and linguistic biases that underpin aspects of assessment, and make suggestions for improvement. In particular, we examine how teachers could approach assessment so that students with Aboriginal backgrounds are able to draw on their full linguistic repertoire and, in this way, address the issues surrounding discriminatory assessment practices that are founded on monolingual mindsets. We also take up the gauntlet to ‘stop measuring black kids with a white stick’ and seek positive and embracing ways for all students with Aboriginal backgrounds to engage in assessment practices.

The epistemics of social relations in Murrinhpatha, Garrwa and Jaru conversations

We present a comparison of practices of person reference in three different Australian Aboriginal language communities and discuss how the selection of referring expressions contributes to an ‘epistemics of social relations’. In all three communities, while names and nicknames are common ways of referring to non-present referents, kinterms serve to position referents within communal space, and thus within the epistemic domain of the participants. Conversely, we find that generic descriptors (e.g. whitefella, policeman) are commonly used for outsiders, even when their names are known. As highly specific relational descriptors, kinterms thereby accentuate participants' relative rights and responsibilities to know about the referents and their concerns. As non-relational terms generic descriptors do not place referents within the communal epistemic domain and they do not provide information about participants' rights and responsibilities with respect to those referents. We show here how the selection of kinterms and generics are locally managed in conversation to position referents with respect to a communal epistemic domain.

Locational pointing in Murrinhpatha, Gija, and English conversations

Abstract It has been suggested that the gestural accuracy used by speakers of Australian Aboriginal languages like Guugu Yimidhirr and Arrernte to indicate directions and represent topographic features is a consequence of absolute frame of reference being dominant in these languages; and that the lackadaisical points produced by North American English speakers is an outcome of relative frame being dominant in English. We test this claim by comparing locational pointing in contexts of place reference in conversations conducted in two Australian Aboriginal languages, Murrinhpatha and Gija, and in Australian English spoken by non-Aboriginal residents of a small town in north Western Australia. Pointing behaviour is remarkably similar across the three groups and all participants display a capacity to point accurately regardless of linguistic frame of reference options. We suggest that these speakers’ intimate knowledge of the surrounding countryside better explains their capacity to accurately point to distant locations.

Contrasting Warlpiri and English Language Features

If you were to think that the English language and the Australian Aboriginal Warlpiri language are poles apart in character and nature, you could be correct, at least in principle. There are differences, of course, but the intriguing question must be whether those language differences are sufficient enough to form a strong contrast between the languages. This paper proposes the thesis that a demonstration of just a small number of differences, each of which is critical in nature, would ensure that Warlpiri will be seen, not just as apart from English, but as worlds apart from English; that is, the Warlpiri language has cleaved loyally to its heritage of complexity, while English has cleaved far away from its now distant origins and could be described as simplistic when viewed against the complex richness of Warlpiri. The methodology used in this essay is to provide Warlpiri language exemplars across a small number of the diverse differences which make Warlpiri unique in its own ways, while listing a small number of differences that make English unique. This discussion should make understandable Warlpiri youth’s recent drive to creating a parallel and successful version of their language.

The “Untranslatables” as Symptoms of Difference: From a Network of Languages to a Language of Networks


 
 
 The purpose of this paper is to address the concern for the preservation of language difference and diversity. The threat to language diversity can be found historically in the dominance given to English and more recently, in the emergent forms of digital technologies. Their point of contact is the act of translation. In taking up Cassin’s concept of the “untranslatables”, the paper provides a critical foundation for thinking through the issue of language diversity. A focus on the translation of the bible into the Central Australian Aboriginal language of Aranda underpins how universal concepts are absorbed by the singularity of languages. In a re-think of the issues raised for translation practices when they are dominated by machine translation, digital technologies have also innovated new language usage exemplified by evolving forms in text messaging and the rise of image translation formats such as emojis. This raises the question as to whether specifically designed emojis for Indigenous speakers is a threat to, or a form that preserves and extends, Indigenous languages. The paper concludes with a consideration of the value of translation in a digital world where post-truth dominates the information landscape.
 
 

Thought complements in Australian languages

Very little has been written on the grammar of complement constructions in Australian Aboriginal languages. Grammars rarely provide much information, and few references treat the topic either in particular languages or cross-linguistically. This paper addresses this lacuna with a typological investigation of thought complements in the languages of the continent. Some languages show evidence of a separate construction type for coding propositional thoughts. In most Australian languages it seems that a limited range of verbs can be employed in the matrix clause; these usually include generic verbs meaning ‘say, do, think’ or ‘hear, think’. Two other constructions resemble the reported thought construction, a type of desiderative, and mistaken belief constructions; the major grammatical features of these constructions are discussed. In most languages there is no compelling evidence that the clause of thought serves as an argument of the matrix clause, and thus the construction is not a complement construction in the traditional sense. Rather, what is involved is framing – a relation distinct from both embedding and dependency; some issues with this analysis are discussed and resolved. The investigation is based on a corpus of just over seventy languages, partly a convenience sample (depending on available information) and partly a representative one (the major geographical regions and families are included, albeit unevenly).

Review of CLYNE (1976): Australia Talks : Essays on the Sociology of Australian Immigrant and Aboriginal Languages

Review of CLYNE (1976): Australia Talks : Essays on the Sociology of Australian Immigrant and Aboriginal Languages

LARA in the Service of Revivalistics and Documentary Linguistics: Community Engagement and Endangered Languages

We argue that LARA, a new web platform that supports easy conversion of text into an online multimedia form designed to support non-native readers, is a good match to the task of creating high-quality resources useful for languages in the revivalistics spectrum. We illustrate with initial case studies in three widely different endangered/revival languages: Irish (Gaelic); Icelandic Sign Language (ÍTM); and Barngarla, a reclaimed Australian Aboriginal language. The exposition is presented from a language community perspective. Links are given to examples of LARA resources constructed for each language.

Grammar and levels of addressivity

AbstractEvans et al. (2018a,b) introduce the notion of ‘engagement’ as a new grammatical domain related to intersubjective coordination of knowledge. The present paper applies this notion to data from the Australian Aboriginal language Ungarinyin. It identifies three markers/construction types in the language as expressions of engagement and develops a descriptive framework rooted in Bakhtinian Dialogism in order to demonstrate why these expressions represent the category. It is argued that the main problems that arise in the analysis of engagement are very similar to those that have been encountered in the description of (other) TAME-categories as well, and that these may be overcome by applying Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of ‘addressivity’. It concludes that a better understanding of the category of engagement that explores its relation to addressivity may contribute to the development of an approach to grammar in which sociality takes priority, a Dialogic linguistics.

"Language Breathes Life"-Barngarla Community Perspectives on the Wellbeing Impacts of Reclaiming a Dormant Australian Aboriginal Language.

Traditional languages are a key element of Indigenous peoples’ identity, cultural expression, autonomy, spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and wellbeing. While the links between Indigenous language loss and poor mental health have been demonstrated in several settings, little research has sought to identify the potential psychological benefits that may derive from language reclamation. The revival of the Barngarla language on the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, offers a unique opportunity to examine whether improvements in mental health and social and emotional wellbeing can occur during and following the language reclamation process. This paper presents findings from 16 semi-structured interviews conducted with Barngarla community members describing their own experienced or observed mental health and wellbeing impacts of language reclamation activities. Aligning with a social and emotional wellbeing framework from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective, key themes included connection to spirituality and ancestors; connection to Country; connection to culture; connection to community; connection to family and kinship; connection to mind and emotions; and impacts upon identity and cultural pride at an individual level. These themes will form the foundation of assessment of the impacts of language reclamation in future stages of the project.

Farzad Sharifian, (Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of language and culture. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Pp. xv-522. ISBN: 978-0-415-52701-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-79399-3 (ebk)7

Farzad Sharifian, (Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of language and culture. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Pp. xv-522. ISBN: 978-0-415-52701-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-79399-3 (ebk)7

Epistemic authority and sociolinguistic stance in an Australian Aboriginal language

AbstractMurrinhpatha, an Aboriginal language of northern Australia, has an initialk-alternation in verbs that has hitherto been resistant to grammatical analysis. I argue thatk-does not encode any feature of event structure, but rather signals the speaker’s epistemic primacy over the addressee. This authority may relate to concrete perceptual factors in the field of discourse, or to socially normative authority, where it asserts the speaker’s epistemic rights. These rights are most salient in the domains of kin, country and totems, as opposed to other topics in which speakers are habitually circumspect and co-construct knowledge. My analysis of thek-alternation thus brings together the typology of epistemic grammar (Evans, Bergqvist, & San Roque, 2018a, 2018b), and a sociolinguistic perspective on stance (Jaffe, 2009).

Vigna lanceolata u ratarenju vatrom i australijskoj urođeničkoj kulturi

An amphicarpic and tuberous legume yam Vigna lanceolata Benth., endemic to Australia, has had an extraordinary significance in the peculiar type of farming and entire culture of the Aboriginal peoples for tens of millennia. Our review, welding plant and human sciences, offers a concise and informative presentation of the species, by elaborating its taxonomy and morphology, describing its beneficial nutritional and medicinal properties, exploring its ecogeography, with a remarkable population abundance in the northern areas of the continent, assessing its extensive spreading as a consequence of the past fire-use environmental changes and ways of its wilderness reconnaissance, harvest and food preparation, depicting its role in the Australian Aboriginal art, as one of the most sacred objects in the Dreamtime religion, presenting its vernacular names in 85 extinct and living Australian Aboriginal languages and concluding with opening new horizons of its research, through recently established biodiversity and breeding programmes.

Uniform orthographies and phonetics in Central Australia 1890–1910

ABSTRACT Knowledge of a researcher’s orthographic conventions is necessary for interpreting pronunciation from early sources on Australian Aboriginal languages. Early researchers of Australian languages were more likely to represent sounds consistently if they used a uniform orthography, allowing the problems of English spelling to be avoided. Uniform orthographies began with a concern for the accurate transliteration of literary languages in the late eighteenth century and were further developed for the description of previously unwritten languages in the nineteenth century. This paper traces the development of the uniform orthographies and their pioneering role in linguistic description in Central Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Stop, approximant, and timing slot: The changing faces of the velar stop in Iwaidja

Limited access to speakers and incomplete lexical knowledge are common challenges facing phonetic description of under-documented languages. We address these challenges by taking a multi-dimensional approach, seeking to constrain our phonetic description by covariation across acoustic and articulatory parameters. We demonstrate the approach through an analysis of velar consonsants in the Australian Aboriginal language Iwaidja. Existing accounts contrast a velar stop /k/ with a velar approximant /ɰ/ in word-medial position (Evans 2009). Converging evidence from ultrasound images of the tongue body and acoustic analysis of intensity data reveal that the posited opposition is not consistent across speakers (N = 4) and lexical items. Unsupervised categorization of the phonetic data indicates two phonetic categories, appropriately labelled as [a] and [ɰ], which do not map consistently to dictionary labels in existing descriptions. We conclude that speaker-specific allophonic variation is the result of an ongoing process of lenition of /k/ between sonorant segments which has not yet phonologized. More broadly, integrating phonetic dimensions revealed categories that were ill-defined on the basis of just acoustic or articulatory measures alone. Depth of analysis, characterized by phonetic multi-dimensionality, may support robust generalization where broad analysis (multiple speakers, large corpora) are impractical or impossible.Limited access to speakers and incomplete lexical knowledge are common challenges facing phonetic description of under-documented languages. We address these challenges by taking a multi-dimensional approach, seeking to constrain our phonetic description by covariation across acoustic and articulatory parameters. We demonstrate the approach through an analysis of velar consonsants in the Australian Aboriginal language Iwaidja. Existing accounts contrast a velar stop /k/ with a velar approximant /ɰ/ in word-medial position (Evans 2009). Converging evidence from ultrasound images of the tongue body and acoustic analysis of intensity data reveal that the posited opposition is not consistent across speakers (N = 4) and lexical items. Unsupervised categorization of the phonetic data indicates two phonetic categories, appropriately labelled as [a] and [ɰ], which do not map consistently to dictionary labels in existing descriptions. We conclude that speaker-specific allophonic variation is the result of an ongoi...