Australian Indigenous languages

The semantics of gender in Mayali: Partially parallel systems and formal implementation

by Greville G. Corbett

Emu divorce: A unified account of gender and noun class assignment in Mayali

by Greville G. Corbett

Nicholas Evans, Dunstan Brown and Greville G. Corbett. 1999. Emu Divorce: A Unified Account of Gender and Noun Class Assignment in Mayali. CLS 34: Part 1: Papers from the Main Session: April 17-19, 1998 (The Proceeding from the Main Session of the Chicago Linguistic Society’s Thirty-fourth Meeting), ed. by M. Catherine Gruber, Derrick Higgins, Kenneth S. Olson & Tamra Wysocki, 127-142. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

Developing a database for Australian Indigenous kinship terminology: The AustKin project

by Rachel Hendery

Co-authored with Laurent Dousset, Claire Bowern, Harold Koch and Patrick McConvell

In order to make Australian Indigenous kinship vocabulary from hundreds of sources comparable, searchable and... more In order to make Australian Indigenous kinship vocabulary from hundreds of sources comparable, searchable and accessible for research and commu- nity purposes, we have developed a database that collates these resources. The creation of such a database brings with it technical, theoretical and practical challenges, some of which also apply to other research projects that collect and compare large amounts of Australian language data, and some of which apply to any database project in the humanities or social sciences. Our project has sought to overcome these challenges by adopting a modular, object-oriented, incremental program- ming approach, by keeping metadata, data and analysis sharply distinguished, and through ongoing consultation between programmers, linguists and communities. In this paper we report on the challenges and solutions we have come across and the lessons that can be drawn from our experience for other social science database projects, particularly in Australia.

Mama and papa in Australian Languages

by Rachel Hendery

with Patrick McConvell. In Patrick McConvell, Ian Keen and Rachel Hendery (eds.), Change in Kinship Systems. Utah: University of Utah Press.

Anthropologists and linguists following Murdock (1959) and Jakobson (1960) have explained the high frequency of words... more Anthropologists and linguists following Murdock (1959) and Jakobson (1960) have explained the high frequency of words like mama and papa respectively for ‘mother’ and ‘father’ around the world, as spontaneously recurring inventions, in the case of ‘mama’ related to sounds made by an infant while breast-feeding. This type of explanation has tended to make linguists generally suspicious of finding deep etymologies for such words or reconstructing them to proto-languages.  At the other extreme there are linguists of the ‘long-range comparison’ school who believe that they can reconstruct a number of ‘proto-world’ or ‘proto-Sapiens’ kinship terms, and include *mama and *papa among this set.

As a corrective to both these approaches we closely examine the kinship roots mama and papa, which are widespread in Australian Indigenous languages. In investigating the distribution and varying meanings of these roots we use the on-line database of Australian kinship terms, AustKin, which has been being compiled as part of an ARC Discovery Grant based at the Australian National University.

Other Australian kinship roots (for grandparents) have been shown to have a split distribution with one root dominating in the east and one in the west for what is apparently a single proto-meaning. The distribution of mama and papa is not so clear-cut, but we outline how it can be accounted for without resorting either to recurrent invention or inheritance from some putative proto-world ancestral language.

Lardil and Damin Phonotactics

by David Nash

(with Ken Hale). 1997. Lardil and Damin Phonotactics, pp.247-259 in Boundary Rider. Essays in honour of Geoffrey O'Grady, ed. by Darrell Tryon & Michael Walsh. Pacific Linguistics C-136.

Compares the phonological inventory and and phonotactics of the Lardil language with its special register Damin;... more Compares the phonological inventory and and phonotactics of the Lardil language with its special register Damin; points to evidence that Damin consciously inverts some patterns.

Hot and cold over clockwise

by David Nash

published in 1992 in The language game: papers in memory of Donald C Laycock, ed. By T.E. Dutton, M.D. Ross & D.T. Tryon pp 291-297, Pacific Linguistics Series C-110

Reflections on the concept 'clockwise' in Aboriginal Australia Reflections on the concept 'clockwise' in Aboriginal Australia

Australian Aboriginal Words in Dictionaries: A reaction

by David Nash

* a reply to Dixon 2008 doi:10.1093/ijl/ecn008; replied to by Dixon 2009 doi:10.1093/ijl/ecp011, to which see my rebuttal http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2008/10/an_unsaleable_bent_stick_boome_1.html#comment-572801
* written up with further comment by Frederick Ludowyk 'Boomerang, boomerang, thou spirit of Australia! ' OzWords 18.2(October 2009),1-3.
* formatting fix: on page 181, 7th line up: unindent and insert paragraph break before "Troy's"

A study of the etymology of 'boomerang' shows it comes from a neighbouring language of the Sydney Language. A study of the etymology of 'boomerang' shows it comes from a neighbouring language of the Sydney Language.

Bardi Temperature Terms

by Claire Bowern

forthcoming in a volume on crosslinguistic temperature conceptualization, ed by Maria Koptevskaja-Tamm.

Electronic dictionaries for language reclamation (presentation)

by Aidan Wilson

Presentation with James McElvenny at the University of Sydney in 2008

Electronic dictionaries for language reclamation

by Aidan Wilson

Published in Hobson, J. et al. (2010) Re-Awakening Languages: theory and practice in the revitalisation of Australia’s Indigenous languages. Sydney: Sydney University Press

Owing to the disproportionately low level of literacy in remote Indigenous communities, especially in Indigenous... more Owing to the disproportionately low level of literacy in remote Indigenous communities, especially in Indigenous languages, printed books are perhaps not the most appropriate form of delivering language-learning materials such as dictionaries. Electronic versions based on computers are more useful. However the availability of computers, and consequently computer literacy, in remote Australian communities is still very low. Mobile phones are a much more common form of technology. Unfortunately mobile phones generally only allow small applications, meaning that most content expected in a reasonable language learners’ dictionary must be jettisoned. This paper proposes and documents a ␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣ of computer-based dictionaries, as well as the portability of mobile phones. ␣␣␣␣␣ ␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣ ␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣ ␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣ ␣␣ ␣␣␣␣␣␣␣ ␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣ ␣␣␣␣ ␣␣␣␣␣ ␣␣␣␣ ␣␣␣ ␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣ to dictionary visualisation programs and applications that can be installed on a mobile phone, as well as a number of other formats in various media. Computer- based resources may contain as much information as is necessary in a format that can be navigated easily, while a mobile phone-based version will contain only a reduced range of the original content, although it will be available to the user without the need of a computer.phone-based version will contain only a reduced range of the original content, although it will be available to the user without the need of a computer.

Bardi songs and song poetry

by Claire Bowern

Morphological Change in Nyikina Verbal Prefix Bundles

by Claire Bowern

The typological implications of Bardi complex predicates

by Claire Bowern

The way to go. On the distribution of Path in Motion Descriptions in Jaminjung and Kriol

by Dorothea Hoffmann

Path Salience in Jaminjung

by Dorothea Hoffmann

Language Contact in Australia

by Dorothea Hoffmann

Master Dissertation

This MA dissertation is on the domain of language contact. It investigates the effects of standardisation and the... more This MA dissertation is on the domain of language contact. It investigates the effects of standardisation and the development of a writing system on the formerly solely oral language Diyari of South Australia, using documentation sources collected over a period of 110 years. One of the main findings was that a significant change occurred in both language attitude and language structure resulting from missionary influence and the introduction of literacy. Furthermore, a lack of morphological features in Diyari recorded for related languages puzzled the author of the last descriptive grammar of the language (Austin, 1981). As detailed in the dissertation, the results suggest that grammatical reduction due to language contact and standardization was the cause of these phenomena.

The many ways of falling down a cliff: Culture- and language-specific ways of expressing path in Jaminjung and Kriol

by Dorothea Hoffmann

Orientation or Location? A Case-Study of Jaminjung and Kriol

by Dorothea Hoffmann

Does lateral transmission obscure inheritance in hunter-gatherer languages?

by Jason Zentz

Bowern, Claire, Patience Epps, Russell Gray, Jane Hill, Keith Hunley, Patrick McConvell & Jason Zentz. 2011. Does lateral transmission obscure inheritance in hunter-gatherer languages? PLoS ONE 6(9): e25195. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025195.

In recent years, linguists have begun to increasingly rely on quantitative phylogenetic approaches to examine language... more In recent years, linguists have begun to increasingly rely on quantitative phylogenetic approaches to examine language evolution. Some linguists have questioned the suitability of phylogenetic approaches on the grounds that linguistic evolution is largely reticulate due to extensive lateral transmission, or borrowing, among languages. The problem may be particularly pronounced in hunter-gatherer languages, where the conventional wisdom among many linguists is that lexical borrowing rates are so high that tree building approaches cannot provide meaningful insights into evolutionary processes. However, this claim has never been systematically evaluated, in large part because suitable data were unavailable. In addition, little is known about the subsistence, demographic, ecological, and social factors that might mediate variation in rates of borrowing among languages. Here, we evaluate these claims with a large sample of hunter-gatherer languages from three regions around the world. In this study, a list of 204 basic vocabulary items was collected for 122 hunter-gatherer and small-scale cultivator languages from three ecologically diverse case study areas: northern Australia, northwest Amazonia, and California and the Great Basin. Words were rigorously coded for etymological (inheritance) status, and loan rates were calculated. Loan rate variability was examined with respect to language area, subsistence mode, and population size, density, and mobility; these results were then compared to the sample of 41 primarily agriculturalist languages in [1]. Though loan levels varied both within and among regions, they were generally low in all regions (mean 5.06%, median 2.49%, and SD 7.56), despite substantial demographic, ecological, and social variation. Amazonian levels were uniformly very low, with no language exhibiting more than 4%. Rates were low but more variable in the other two study regions, in part because of several outlier languages where rates of borrowing were especially high. High mobility, prestige asymmetries, and language shift may contribute to the high rates in these outliers. No support was found for claims that hunter-gatherer languages borrow more than agriculturalist languages. These results debunk the myth of high borrowing in hunter-gatherer languages and suggest that the evolution of these languages is governed by the same type of rules as those operating in large-scale agriculturalist speech communities. The results also show that local factors are likely to be more critical than general processes in determining high (or low) loan rates.

Comparing vowels in Gurindji Kriol and Katherine English: Citation speech data

by Heather Buchan

Jones, C., Meakins, F., Buchan, H. 2011. Australian Journal of Linguistics.