Australian Aboriginal Languages Research Articles

Ethnogeographical categories in English and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara

This study examines the contrastive lexical semantics of a selection of landscape terms in English and the Australian Aboriginal language, Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. It argues that languages and cultures categorize the geographical environment in diverse ways. Common elements of classification are found across the languages, but it is argued that different priorities are given to these factors. Moreover, the study finds that there are language-specific aspects of the landscape terms, often motivated by culture and land use. Notably, this study presents ethnogeographical concepts as being anchored in an anthropocentric perspective, based on human vision and experience in space. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) technique of semantic analysis is used throughout, and it is argued that this methodology provides an effective tool in the exploration of ethnogeographical categories.

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

At the end of the eighteenth century, between 250 and 700 languages were spoken on the Australian continent. No genetic link has been proven between these languages and those elsewhere, and there was remarkably little contact between speakers of Australian aboriginal languages and others during the tens of thousands of years that intervened between the first occupation of the continent and the arrival of English speakers. Although there are many hallmarks of Australian phonologies, morphology and syntax, as well as recurrent themes in semantic categorization and the linguistic reflexes of cultural preoccupations, there is considerable current debate over which of these may be attributed to shared inheritance from a common ancestor and which to more recent contact between linguistic groups. A course on the aboriginal languages of Australia might cover: (i) the structural features typical of Australian languages (highlighting those that are atypical in global perspective); (ii) whether and how these can be related to typical features of Australian cultures; (iii) the particular challenges Australian languages have posed to linguistic theories and typologies developed on the basis of other languages; and (iv) the genetic relationships between Australian languages and how well these are modelled by traditional methodologies.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Typology of Ergativity

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Typology of Ergativity

‘Optional’ ergativity and the framing of reported speech

This paper focuses on optional ergative marking in the Papuan language Ku Waru and the Australian Aboriginal language Bunuba, especially in constructions with verbs of speaking. It addresses two interrelated issues: (i) What semantic and pragmatic factors are associated with the difference between ergative and non-ergative subject marking in languages where this is not strictly determined by whether the verb is grammatically transitive or intransitive; (ii) How are we to understand the grammatical relationship between verbs of speaking and the material they frame? In both languages that material behaves in some respects like a grammatical object. These locutionary objects differ among themselves in the extent to which they stand out as distinct speech events in relation to the framing one, and those differences are correlated with the presence or absence of ergative marking on the subject of the framing verb. I argue that Bunuba and Ku Waru optional ergative marking in this context can be accounted for by an extended version of Hopper and Thompson's notion of object individuation, in which the grammar treats the metalinguistic relationship between reported speech and that which reports it as analogous to that between Patient and Agent in canonical transitive clauses.

A Novel ABA Insensitive Mutant of Lotus japonicus with a Wilty Phenotype Displays Unaltered Nodulation Regulation

An ABA insensitive mutant, Beyma, was isolated in Lotus japonicus MG-20 from an EMS mutagenesis population using root growth inhibition to applied ABA as the screening criterion. (The name 'Beyma' was taken from the Australian Aboriginal language, Wagiman, beyma, meaning 'drying up'.) The stable mutant that segregates as a dominant Mendelian mutation is insensitive to ABA induced inhibition of germination, vegetative growth, stomatal opening, as well as nodulation. Tissue ABA levels were normal, suggesting a sensitivity rather than biosynthesis mutation. It is slow-growing (50-70% of wild-type MG-20) and has a near-constitutive wilty phenotype associated with its inability to regulate stomatal opening. Whilst showing a wide range of ABA insensitive phenotypes, Beyma did not show alteration of nodule number control, as, in the absence of added ABA, the number and patterning (but not size) of nodules formed in the mutant were similar to that of MG-20. Split root experiments on MG-20 showed that application of ABA on one side of the root inhibited nodulation locally but not systemically. We propose that ABA is not involved directly in systemic autoregulation of nodulation (AON).

A preliminary study of jaw movement in Arrernte consonant production

This study presents jaw movement data from Central Arrernte, an Australian Aboriginal language with six places of articulation in the stop series, including four coronal places of articulation. The focus of the study is on jaw consonant targets, and on the opening and closing movements of the jaw. As a point of comparison, data are also presented for English, a language with three places of articulation in the stop series. In line with previous results for English, jaw position in Arrernte is lowest for the velar /k/. The apico-post-alveolar (retroflex) /ʈ/, which is not found in English, has a jaw position almost as low as /k/. By contrast, the lamino-alveo-palatal /c/, which is also not found in English, has the highest jaw position. The remaining coronal consonants in Arrernte, /t/ (apico-alveolar and lamino-dental, respectively), show intermediate jaw positions, with differences between speakers. In terms of the kinematic measures examined (namely, variability in distance, duration and velocity of opening and closing movements), results show no consistent differences between English and Arrernte jaw movement.

Lexical similarity and endemism in historical wordlists of Australian Aboriginal languages of the greater Sydney region

AbstractTo reconstruct an indigenous language known solely from historical wordlists, the linguist needs to decide which source wordlists are most relevant, i.e. which sources are most likely to be attestations of the language to be reconstructed. There is little published research on methods appropriate to this task, and yet there is increasing attention to indigenous language reconstruction in support of language revival and revitalisation in education and community contexts. This paper1 describes a replicable and relatively objective method for comparing lexical similarity within a set of historical sources. The method described draws on the use of measures of lexical similarity in linguistics and the use of measures of endemism in biogeography. The method is illustrated via an analysis of historical sources for Aboriginal languages from the greater Sydney region, New South Wales, Australia. The sample is used to describe the overall similarity and difference between wordlists from this region, and to identify which wordlists are most similar to the wordlist recorded by the surveyor R. H. Mathews (e.g. 1903) as Darkinyung language.

Enhancing the left edge: The phonetics of prestopped sonorants in Australian languages.

The consonant systems of Australian Aboriginal languages are very similar to one another but very different from those of most other languages of the world. They have unusually few contrasts in manner of articulation and an unusually large number of places of articulation. Previous research has shown that speakers appear to employ a number of strategies to preserve place of articulation distinctions, particularly in intervocalic (coda) consonants. One such strategy is that in vowel + nasal sequences speakers avoid lowering the velum until the latest possible instant, presumably to preserve spectral clarity at the VC boundary. This often results in a brief homorganic oral stop occurring before the nasal. Phonetically prestopped nasals occur in a large number of languages across Australia and have become distinctive phonemes in a number of languages in the center and south. Less well documented is the parallel phenomenon of prestopped laterals, which is taken to be the outcome of a similar coarticulation avoidance strategy. This paper describes the wide distribution and distinctive phonetic characteristics of prestopped nasals and laterals in a number of Australian languages and proposes that both strategies are aimed at the enhancement of the left edge of the sonorant consonant.

Rebuilding Australia's Linguistic Profile: Recent Developments in Research on Australian Aboriginal Languages

AbstractThe more than 250 languages spoken in Australia prior to the nineteenth century exhibit both striking similarities to one another and remarkable variation. The exponential increase in what linguists have learned about these languages since the 1960s has been sadly in inverse proportion to the number of people learning them as a mother tongue. This article will review some of the most exciting recent developments in Australianist linguistic research, while also acknowledging the context of language loss and disenfranchisement within which they are situated. The message it offers is ultimately optimistic, however. For the languages still spoken regularly, research into the previously neglected components of the multimodal communicative system that is language in use is adding new depth to the existing documentation. For the majority of Australia's indigenous languages – where economic, social and political pressures have taken their toll – a different set of concerns has emerged. Linguists are now grappling with a range of theoretical and empirical questions regarding the mechanisms of language contact and attrition, even as they continue to contribute new insights into the traditional ‘core’ fields of phonetics and phonology, morphosyntax, semantics and historical linguistics. Moreover, an increasing consciousness of the respective roles of outsider researcher and speech community is changing not only the methodologies of linguists ‘in the field’, but also the research itself. All of these factors will shape the directions of future Australianist linguistic research, as well as the number and nature of languages that remain to be studied.

Linguistic aspects of Australian Aboriginal English

It is probable that the majority of the 455 000 strong Aboriginal population of Australia speak some form of Australian Aboriginal English (AAE) at least some of the time and that it is the first (and only) language of many Aboriginal children. This means their language is somewhere on a continuum ranging from something very close to Standard Australian English (SAE) at one end, through to something very close to creole at the other. The phonetics and phonology, grammar, and lexicon of AAE are influenced to varying degrees by the Australian Aboriginal language substrate. There are also some features typical of non‐standard Englishes in general, and some which have been retained from earlier forms of the colonial language. Many teachers still see this variety as an uneducated or corrupted form of Standard Australian English, rather than as a different dialect of English that is just as efficient a medium of communication.

Fieldwork on Australian Aboriginal Languages

Fieldwork on Australian Aboriginal Languages

Spearing the Emu Drinking: Subordination and the Adjoined Relative Clause in Wambaya*

Studies of subordination in Australian Aboriginal languages have been heavily influenced by Hale's foundational paper on the ‘adjoined relative clause’—a non-embedded, multifunctional subordinate clause type found in Warlpiri and a ‘large number of Australian languages’ [Hale K 1976 ‘The adjoined relative clause in Australia’ in RMW Dixon (ed.) Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages AIAS Canberra: 78–105 at 78]. Since this paper, almost every Australian grammar makes some reference to this clause type, presenting a general picture of structural homogeneity across subordination structures in Australian languages, and leading to the general perception that Australian languages typically don't have syntactic embedding. In this paper I present an analysis of subordinate clauses in Wambaya, arguing that these share many features of Hale's ‘adjoined relative clause’ while still being clearly subordinate. The differences between subordinate clauses in Warlpiri and Wambaya show that complex constructions in Australian languages can be structurally dissimilar while sharing many of the properties of the ‘adjoined relative clause’ type. I argue, therefore, that clause-combining in Australian languages may be more structurally heterogeneous than is traditionally assumed, and that a single analysis for complex sentences across a majority of Australian languages is quite likely inappropriate. This has implications for both the analysis and description of subordination in Australian Aboriginal languages, and for their relationship to the typological literature on subordination more generally.

Grammaticalization of Demonstratives as Subordinate Complementizers in Ngumpin-Yapa*

Demonstratives have grammaticalized as subordinate, including relative, complementizers in a number of language groupings around the world, including Germanic. This paper provides evidence for this type of grammaticalization in the ‘adjoined relative clause’ in Australian Aboriginal languages, in particular in one Pama-Nyungan subgroup, Ngumpin-Yapa, where there has been a series of parallel grammaticalizations of various demonstratives in different languages. There are two main types of outcomes involved: (1) paradigm type: choice among a set of demonstratives in initial position, followed in some cases by a separate or adjoined complementizer; and (2) specialized type: a single complementizer descended from one demonstrative in initial or second position. The common explanations for demonstrative > complementizer grammaticalization in other language groups have been a transition between parataxis and hypotaxis, and the interpretation of the demonstrative as cataphoric. It is argued that these explanations require modification for the Ngumpin-Yapa case, and a different analysis is proposed in which the demonstrative is located in Spec-CP at some stage in the process, and in some cases (especially of the specialized type) ends up in C as a result of Spec-Head reduction.

Case stacking in realizational morphology

Case stacking, the phenomenon whereby a single word may bear multiple cases reflecting its relation to a number of different syntactic elements, is an important phenomenon both for the development of theories of inflectional morphology and for our understanding of the relation between morphology and syntax. However, to date it has received virtually no attention from theoretical morphology. Working within the inferential-realizational framework of paradigm function morphology (PFM), we provide a morphological analysis of the phenomenon of case stacking as found in the Australian Aboriginal languages Kayardild (Tangkic) and Martuthunira (Pama-Nyungan). We argue that the standard assumptions concerning morphological property sets in PFM are too weak to satisfactorily accommodate case stacking morphology, and we propose that (in some languages) the morphological property sets which define paradigm cells are structured rather than being the simple objects of the standard view. We show how this provides a comprehensive analysis of the complex case and number stacking facts and further, allows for a straightforward (although nontrivial) mapping between the morphology and the syntax as outlined in Sadler and Nordlinger (2004).

Bibliography on Language Endangerment (review)

Reviewed by: Bibliography on language endangerment by Tasaku Tsunoda Gary Holton Bibliography on language endangerment. By Tasaku Tsunoda. (ICHEL linguistic studies 7.) Tokyo: Department of Asian and Pacific Linguistics, University of Tokyo, 2002. Pp. 77. ISBN 4990134419. Available online at http://www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/BibLE. The difficulty in compiling a bibliography on language endangerment lies in limiting its scope. With so many of the world’s languages now endangered, much of our field arguably concerns language endangerment in one way or another. Tsunoda is thus to be commended for limiting this list to some 700 entries. In lieu of a definition of language endangerment, T lists sixteen topics that fall within the purview of the bibliography. The list includes surveys, documentation methods, language revitalization, ethics, and language policy—reflecting a broad view of the subject of language endangerment. Unfortunately, the bibliographic entries themselves are not annotated, so it is not always possible to determine which topic(s) is (are) addressed by a particular entry. The lack of annotations is especially problematic with respect to seemingly peripheral entries. For example, why does the list include dictionaries of some endangered languages (e.g. Jaru and Nunggubuyu) but not of others? And how is the 1975 unpublished manuscript ‘Kaufman’s basic concept list on historical principles’ relevant to endangerment? Nevertheless, T has certainly uncovered some obscure references, such as an item appearing in the newsletter of a regional Australian aboriginal language center (complete with telephone and email contact information for the center). Indeed, this level of detail in a bibliography of such broad scope reveals a slight regional bias toward Australian languages. However, the standard references are not overlooked. Tincludes a complete listing of works appearing in the many recent volumes of collected papers and conference proceedings dedicated to the subject of language endangerment. Those unfamiliar with the many endangered languages volumes published in Japan over the past decade will find this especially useful. In fact, even those quite familiar with the endangered languages literature are likely to discover herein references of which they were previously unaware. Both the compiler and the publisher are to be commended for making the bibliography available online. This effort will surely increase the usefulness of the bibliography, making it available to a wider audience and facilitating future updates. One can only hope that future editions may include refinements such as an author index, subject index, language index, and descriptive annotations. [End Page 546] Gary Holton University of Alaska Fairbanks Copyright © 2005 Linguistic Society of America

Death by a Thousand Cuts: Indigenous Language Bilingual Education Programmes in the Northern Territory of Australia, 1972–1998

The Northern Territory's bilingual education programmes, in which local Australian Aboriginal languages and English were used side by side in a minority of Aboriginal primary schools in remote northern Australia, came into being in 1973 under the broader federal government policy imprimatur of ‘self-determination’ for Indigenous Australians. These programmes enjoyed considerable support from Indigenous Australian communities, until 1998 when the Northern Territory Government passed legislation to axe these programmes. This ran counter to the articulated wishes of the overwhelming majority of Aboriginal community members and Aboriginal school staff in affected communities. The authorities' stated reason for the closure of these programmes was that of the putative ‘poor standards in English literacy’ in bilingual schools, in comparison with English-only Aboriginal schools, although no evidence has ever been proffered to support such a claim. Since the official closure of the programmes, some of the schools that were formerly bilingual have been attempting to ‘go it alone’ to keep their bilingual education programmes operational. This is however a difficult task given that the bilingual education programmes are no longer state-sanctioned. Supporters of the former Indigenous Australian bilingual education programmes perceive the current emphasis on a monolingual curriculum in English in Indigenous primary schools in the Northern Territory schools as a denial of the human rights of significant numbers of Aboriginal children. In this paper the reasons why Indigenous communities wish to retain these programmes are outlined and it is explained that the lack of official support for these programmes is a long-term phenomenon, rather than a recent development.

Stop contrasts in languages of Arnhem Land: From the perspective of Jawoyn, Southern Arnhem Land

A number of languages in the Northern Territory are unusual amongst Australian Aboriginal languages in showing contrasts between two types of stops, the most salient feature of which is apparently duration of constriction. After placing the present work in context through discussion of analyses of neighbouring languages, this paper reconsiders the contrast in Jawoyn. Examination of the phonetic features that are correlated with the contrast indicate that not only duration of constriction, but also voicing through the closed phase and voice onset time play a role in its realization. Consideration is then given to the possible phonological analyses of this contrast. Three types of analysis, prosodic, segmental and geminate, are discussed, and while a prosodic interpretation of the Jawoyn data appears untenable, there is no clear evidence to indicate that either a segmental or geminate phonological analysis is more appropriate. Rather, it is argued that the evidence is 'indeterminate' at the phonological level.

On the Back of the Tongue: Dorsal Sounds in Australian Languages

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.

PROCESSES OF LANGUAGE CONTACT: STUDIES FROM AUSTRALIA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC. Jeff Siegel (Ed.). Saint-Laurent, Canada: Fides, 2000. Pp. xvi + 320. $34.95 paper.

The present volume highlights studies of languages created by contact-induced language change in Australia and the Pacific. Editor Jeff Siegel identifies six processes involved in the formation of pidgins, creoles, and other such language contact varieties: reanalysis, simplification, leveling, diffusion, language shift, and depidginization/decreolization. The process of reanalysis is the focus of four chapters: “The Role of Australian Aboriginal Language in the Formation of Australian Pidgin Grammar: Transitive Verbs and Adjectives” by Koch; “‘Predicate Marking' in Bislama” by Crowley; “Predicting Substrate Influence: Tense-Modality-Aspect Marking in Tayo” by Siegel, Sandeman, and Corne; “My Nephew Is My Aunt: Features and Transformation of Kinship Terminology in Solomon Islands Pijin” by Jourdan; and “Na pa kekan, na person: The Evolution of Tayo Negatives” by Corne.

Lexigenesis in ancestral south-east Australian Aboriginal language

The 1/x frequency distribution is known to researchers ranging from economists and biologists to electronic engineers. It is known to linguists as Zipf's Law (Zipf, 1949) and has recently been shown not to be a consequence of the Central Limit Theorem (Troll & Graben, 1998)--leaving an "unsolved problem' in information theory (Jones, 1999). This 1/x distribution, associated with scale-invariant physical systems (Machlup & Hoshiko, 1980), is a special case of the general power law xλ arising from the Lagrangian L(x,[Fdot](x)) = ½x1-λ[Fdot]2 and, as λ need not be an integer, some related research understandably involves fractals (Allison et al. , 2001). The present paper generalizes this Lagrangian to include a van der Waals effect. It is argued that ancestral Aboriginal language consisted of root-morphemes that were built up into, and often condensed within, subsequent words or lexemes. Using discrete-optimization techniques pioneered elsewhere (Illert, 1987; Reverberi, 1985), and the new morpho-statistics, this paper models lexeme-condensation in ancestral south-east Australian Aboriginal language.