PROGRAMME
AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES WORKSHOP,
PEARL BEACH, 2007
updated 30/3/07
Following Noel
Pearson's manifesto
for saving Indigenous languages published in The Australian (10/3/07), we had a
discussion of where this
manifesto could be
taken. Abstract here.
TIMETABLE
ABSTRACTS
|
SATURDAY
17 MARCH
|
9.00-9.40
|
Brett
Baker,
University of New England |
Geminates
and NC
clusters as onsets: the
Australian evidence |
| 9.40-10.20 |
Rachel
Nordlinger,
University of Melbourne |
Reciprocal Constructions in the
Daly |
10.20-10.40
|
MORNING TEA
|
10.40-11.20
|
Hywel
Stoakes,
University of Melbourne |
Articulatory evidence regarding
glottalization of stops in Bininj Gun-Wok |
| 11.20-12.00
|
Jeffrey
Chapman,
University of Queensland |
Some Aspects of
Intonation in Warlpiri |
12.00-12.40
|
Bruce
Birch,
University of Melbourne
|
Some Diagnostics Of
the Iwaidja Word
|
12.40-2.00
|
LUNCH
|
2.00-2.40
|
Mark
Harvey,
University of Newcastle |
The
Origin of
Conjugation Markers |
| 2.40-3.20
|
Patrick
McConvell, AIATSIS |
Discussion of
Noel Pearson's manifesto
|
3.20-3.40
|
AFTERNOON TEA
|
3.40-4.20
|
Michael
Walsh,
University of Sydney |
Australian
Aboriginal song language: so many questions, so little to work
with |
4.20-5.00
|
Aaron
Corn,
University of Sydney
and
Joe Gumbula,
University of Sydney |
Following the voices of
ancestors |
|
WALK.. SWIM..
DINNER ETC
|
ABSTRACTS [arranged
in alphabetical order by surname]
Indigenous
languages policy and regional archives
a
discussion theme, prepared by Patrick McConvell
Noel
Pearson has recently spoken out about the severely endangered state of
Australia's indigenous languages and
proposed measures to meet the situation, in an opinion
piece in The Australian.
A national report in 2005
also drew attention to the desperate situation of Indigenous
languages and made a number of
recommendations. The National Indigenous Language Survey
report (compiled by the Australian Institute of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies together with the
Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Languages was released by the Department of Communications,
Information Technology and the Arts. Among the
prime recommendations were support for Language Nests, an early
childhood program that has been successful in
New Zealand and elsewhere.; community language teams; regional language
centres, and a National Indigenous
Language Centre, which could carry out many of the functions which Mr.
Pearson views as essential. Other strong
themes of the report are Indigenous languages as a key part of
our national heritage; the importance of
detailed documentation of languages; and the use of new technology, all
advocated by Mr. Pearson. Opportunities
exist for taking up these initiatives but as Mr. Pearson
comments, there continues to be lack of adequate
funding.
There
are also points of difference between Mr. Pearson and many indigenous
people and linguists over his
insistence that school education should be an English domain. Yet there
may be sufficient points of
commonality to allow a joint approach with him and it is timely for us
to discuss what such a strategy may
entail.
One
possible area which we may be able to advance without entering what may
be murky waters around the national
centre question, is providing access to at least some sets of digital
documentation, and ability to annotate such
material, for remote sites, and this is precisely the kind of
technological development Mr. Pearson is also
advocating. An offer has recently been made by the Max-Planck Institute
in Nijmegen to assist AIATSIS to
establish a DOBES regional archive which might house not only DOBES
collections but also others such as a Cape York
Peninsula collection including both ELDP and other material. AIATSIS
does not have funds in its budget to
support the infrastructure for such an initiative this year or next
year; DCITA may have such funds but the
logistics of application are difficult. If stakeholders and other
interested parties think this is a good idea then
we should discuss how it can be achieved.
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Brett Baker, University
of New England
Geminates
and homorganic nasal-stop clusters as onsets: the Australian evidence
Geminates
and homorganic nasal-stop clusters are both 'monogestural': involving a
single articulatory stricture location and type in the oral cavity, but
having the duration of a cluster. The ambivalent nature of monogestural
clusters leads to conflicting analyses by linguists, according to their
phonological and phonetic characteristics. I examine evidence from
quantity-sensitive stress, reduplication patterns, phonotactics of the
syllable, and speaker parsing which point towards these clusters being
treated as onsets in many Australian languages, at least for some
phonological patterns. The evidence leads us to think that
syllabification in Australian languages may work on the basis of
gesture, rather than timing positions as in most other languages. This
has implications for the universality of the 'mora' as a unit of
timing, as well as weight.
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Bruce Birch, University of Melbourne
Some Diagnostics Of the Iwaidja Word
This paper examines aspects of the intonation system of Iwaidja which
make reference to the boundaries of both monomorphemic and
polymorphemic words. The evidence suggests that studies which diagnose
wordhood on the basis of broad
notions of accentability may be missing out on diagnostics which emerge
from a finer-grained analysis of intonational features such as accent
distribution. It is also claimed that both function words and content
words in Iwaidja exhibit prosodic alternations, requiring in some cases
adjustments in foot structure.
Joe Blythe,
University of Sydney
Prosodic
Person Reference in Murriny Patha (Reported) Conversation
Recent
research within interactional linguistics and CA on the pragmatic roles
of prosody within talk-in-interaction has concentrated on areas such as
mimicry, affect, reported speech, repair and turn-taking; all of which
can have a bearing on the interpretation of referents. However there
has not been a lot of research that specifically deals with the
pragmatic role of prosody in deixis. This may be because better
understood referring strategies (i.e., morphosyntactic strategies) can
mask the deictic role of prosody when speakers have employed more than
one strategy at a given time. In Murriny Patha conversations, person
references may be multilayered constructions that span across more than
one turn-at-talk.
In
the case of reported speech, hearers interpret the bundling of prosodic
features across passages of talk (global marking) as hailing from an
‘alien’ world of discourse. This ‘alien’ world of discourse has its own
referential frame, where all second person references are understood to
not be personally addressing current members of the audience. On the
other hand, local prosodic marking also plays an important role in
person reference. Distinctive marking of referential items can be
demonstrated to mark both coreference and non-coreference. When the
capacity of polysynthetic reference is pushed to the limit, the use of
this local prosodic marking gives the hearer important cues as to the
correct readings of referents.
Jeff Chapman, University of Queensland Australia
Some Aspects of Intonation in Warlpiri
This paper presents initial findings of an investigation of the
intonational contours and prosodic structure of the indigenous
Australian language Warlpiri. The study was undertaken because
Warlpiri segmental syntax and phonology has been well described,
providing the basis for a detailed analysis of intonation.
Warlpiri is a non-configurational language (Hale, 1983) with free word
order, discontinuous constituents and zero anaphora for clause
arguments. Some aspects of word order are determined by information
structure, and these features make discourse and syntactically related
phenomena more salient.
A detailed analysis of a limited corpus was undertaken to identify
significant elements of Warlpiri prosody, and provide a basis from
which to develop hypotheses about prosodic structure. An acoustic
analysis was made of two studio quality recordings of two narrative
monologues, spoken by two female speakers of the south-western
(Yuendumu) dialect. Performance narratives provide a text with few
disfluencies and display discourse relations. The recordings were
annotated in an autosegmental-metrical framework using a tones
and break indices (ToBI) style notation.
The principal findings which I will discuss were:
- Many words conformed to a standard intonation contour, with a high
initial tone and a gradual fall in intonation to a low final tone.
- Verb compounds and the auxiliary complex show a single falling
contour, leading to the conclusion that these expressions are a single
accentual phrase (Beckman and Pierrehumbert, 1986), bounded by initial
high and final low tones.
- No evidence was found for a culminative accent on words with either
narrow or broad focus.
Warlpiri uses a final rising intonation in questions, and final
lowering at the end of a number of declarative utterances.
- Some declarative utterances conclude with a rising final intonation
which occurs where the following sentence continues the action with the
same participants.
- Final rising intonation associated with pauses, indicates the
presence of intonational phrase boundaries related to syntactic
constituent structure, marking off left dislocated topics, adjuncts,
and words and phrases used in apposition, a common device in
Warlpiri.
- Initial words receive a greater prominence when they start direct
speech within the narrative.
- A stylized high sustained intonation is used in an iconic way to
indicate duration, as in other Australian languages, e.g., Bininj
Gun-wok (Bishop, 2003).
Future research will analyse a larger corpus of narrative texts to
confirm (or disprove) current hypotheses about Warlpiri prosodic
structure; and identify how Warlpiri speakers use the placement of
intonational phrase boundaries, combined with word order changes, to
signal the precise pragmatic prominence required.
References
Beckman, M. E. and Pierrehumbert, J. B. 1986. Intonational Structure in
English and
Japanese.
Phonology Yearbook,
3, 255-310.
Bishop, J. B. 2003.
Aspects of
intonation and prosody in Bininj Gun-wok: an
autosegmental-metrical analysis,
Department of Linguistics and Applied
Linguistics, University of Melbourne: Ph D thesis.
Hale, K. 1983. Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages
. Natural
Language & Linguistic Theory,
1, 5-47.
Sarah Cutfield, Monash University
Discourse functions of nominal
demonstratives in a Dalabon narrative
In this paper I describe the discourse uses and functions of the
nominal demonstratives found in a Dalabon narrative. Of particular
interest is the use of demonstratives where underspecification of
referents and lack of definiteness marking on nominals is the unmarked
referencing strategy. I also reflect on the usefulness of discourse
measures in characterising the data. For example, Himmelmann (1996)
proposes four typological usage types for nominal demonstratives in
discourse: situational, discourse deictic, tracking and recognitional.
The recognitional use involves the speaker appealing to the hearer’s
shared knowledge and is widely reported in Australian languages.
Looking at the Dalabon data, it is possible to give a refined
description of this use as it occurs in Dalabon.
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Aaron Corn and Joe
Gumbula,
University
of Sydney
Following the voices of ancestors
Names are the most important hereditary property held by the Yolngu
(People) of NE Arnhem Land other than country itself. They mark the
identities of individuals and land-owning groups, record the original
observations of ancestors, and largely comprise the esoteric languages
traditionally deployed by appointed Yolngu Elders in ceremonial and
diplomatic contexts.
This presentation will explore the role of hereditary Yolngu Manikay
(Song) as the root medium through which Names and their esoteric
meanings are expressed and taught using Gupapuyngu Yolngu recordings
directed by Neparrnga Gumbula at Djiliwirri in 2004 and 2005. It will
demonstrate the vital role of Yolngu Elders in maintaining traditional
knowledge and esoteric discourses that can only be taught through
Manikay, and the continuing centrality of such endeavours to Yolngu
cultural survival and social cohesion.
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Eleonora Deak, Wangka Maya
Contemporary Thalanyji: How a Highly
Endangered Language is Being Used
Today
Thalanyji is one of the highly endangered languages of the Pilbara
region in North Western Australia. The six fluent speakers and the ten
to twenty partial speakers of Thalanyji mostly live in the town of
Onslow. This informal study of contemporary Thalanyji has taken place
within the context of Wangka Maya Language Centre's current work with
Thalanyji: database and dictionary updating, a book on local plants and
the Onslow town signage project. Historically, the Thalanyji speakers'
strongest geographic, economic, social, cultural relationships have
been with the speakers of the other Ganyara languages: Binigura and
Burduna which are now no longer spoken at all and Bayungu which has a
handful of partial speakers. These languages are structurally almost
identical and lexically very similar. There is also evidence of
some social and linguistic interaction with other neighbouring language
communities. Insofar as its possible, all of these relationships
continue today. These factors all suggest that certain aspects of
contemporary Thalanyji linguistic forms and even a few Thalanyji
structural elements may now differ from previous descriptions of the
language.
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Nicholas Evans, University of Melbourne
Polyglot narratives: two case studies.
Many commentators mention that narratives in Australian languages may
move between more than one language according to character, setting and
other motives, but there have been few actual case studies. In this
paper I analyse two traditional narratives from different parts of
northern Australia: one from Croker Island (in Marrku, Iwaidja and
Kunwinjku) and one from Mornington Island (in Lardil and Yangkaal),
showing rather different bases for language choice by a polyglot
narrator.
Mark Harvey, University of Newcastle
The Origin of Conjugation Markers
This paper compares two hypotheses as to the origin of ‘conjugation
markers’ in the verbal paradigms of Australian languages. Conjugation
markers are segments in verbal paradigms which cannot be
straightforwardly assigned to either the root or to the set of Tense,
Aspect, Mood suffixes. Dixon (1980:409, 2002:215) proposes that the
conjugation markers originated as the final segment of the verb root.
Over time, various types of phonological interactions across the
boundary between the verb root and TAM suffixes have resulted in roots
no longer ending in their original final segment in all cases. In the
remaining cases where they do, the original final segment is analysed
as a conjugation marker.
Alpher, Evans & Harvey (2003:347-349) present an alternative
hypothesis. They propose that conjugation markers originated in the use
of inflected verbal forms as stems.
[[verb root + TAM suffix]
stem + suffix A / + suffix B /+
suffix C]
word
Over time, developments have obscured the status of the [verb root +
TAM suffix] form as a stem, leading to a re-analysis of the TAM suffix
as a conjugation marker.
[[verb root + conjugation marker]
stem + suffix A / +
suffix B /+ suffix C]
word
I show that the evidence supports the second hypothesis and not the
first.
Tom
Honeyman
,
PARADISEC, University of Sydney
A broad search for cognates across
40+ Northern Australian languages
In this presentation I will describe the methodology used on a project
to collect cognates from roughly 40 neighbouring non Pama-Nyungan
languages. This was done using a mix of computational analysis and
human annotation. The aim was to collect a broad collection of cognates
rather than a deep one, and as such the method was geared towards
assisting a human reader in discovering cognates as quickly as possible
while also grading their likelihood of being cognates. This is not an
exhaustive method for collecting cognates.
The lexicon for each language was normalised to a single orthography
and then all entries in one lexicon are compared to all entries in the
other. They are compared for exact matches, matches with lenition rules
applied, and then fuzzier sub-string matches. This produces a summary
file which must then be checked.
The idea was to produce a summary that could include almost all
possible matches to save a researcher from jumping around a dictionary
looking for cognates themselves. The algorithm depends however on a
human to find the actual cognates, The output is sorted so that, based
on the shape of the lexical entry, the more likely matches appear
closer to the top of the list. Where there are simply too many matches
the list is culled in various ways.
Because the matches are indexed across languages, matches across
languages pairs that have been checked can be used to predict matches
across unchecked languages pairs by transitivity. Longer chains of
cognates across languages can then be extracted and examined more
closely. Additionally it may be useful for suggesting matches that were
missed in the first pass.
Mary Laughren,
The University of Queensland
Another
foray into
Warlpiri complex verbs; which bit determines argument structure?
Warlpiri verbs can be
extremely complex in their morphological structure and internal
syntactic
behaviour. They are headed by an inflectional category: tense/mood if
finite,
versus non-finite. The inflectional category is a verbal suffix whose
stem is a
member of a relatively limited class of verbal stems. This stem may be
'thematic' or 'aspectual'. If the latter, then the thematic verb must
be
inflected as non-finite. Thematic stems may (some must) be 'modified' by a 'lexical' preverb or a
non-finite
verb. This complex may be further modified by more 'outer' preverbal
elements:
adverbial, adjunct dative and quantificational (following Nash's (1982)
classification of Warlpiri preverbs). This paper will reexamine the
'inner
thematic core' of Warlpiri verbs [(PVlexical])=V], with a
view to
establishing which elements determine the verb's
predicate-argument-structure.
In (1a) karri- 'stand, stop' hosts a finite inflection –mi and determines the PAS of the verb as
intransitive.
In (1b-e) karri hosts the
non-finite –nja and
precedes the
verb stem which hosts the finite inflection. In (1b,c) karri does not determine the PAS – the finite verb
does. In (1d,e), however the
non-finite karri does
determine
the PAS while the finite verb expresses aspectual values.
(1)
a. [karri-mi]
(stand-npast) 'stand,
stop' (x)
b.
karri-nja-[pardi-mi] (stand-inf-rise-npast) 'stand up, arise' (x)
c.
karri-nja-[yirra-rni] (stand-inf-put-npast) 'put in standing
position' (x,y)
d.
[karri-nja]-parnka-mi (stand-inf-run-npast) 'go to stand' (x)
e.
[karri-nja]-ya-ni (stand-inf-go-npast) 'stand along' (x)
While the semantic
relationship between the non-finite verb and the finite verb in (1b-e)
is
fairly transparent and these combinations are productive, the
relationship
between the lexical PV pata
in (2)
and the following verb is somewhat less transparent and productive. The
bracketed verb determines the PAS of the complex
(2)
a. pata-[karri]-mi 'fall, drop' (x) (synonymous with wanti-mi)
b.
pata-[kiji]-rni
'throw down; make drop' (x,y)
c.
pata-[karri-nja]-ya-ni
'fall as going along' (x)
d.
pata-[kiji-rninja]-ya-ni
'throw down as going along' (x,y)
The complex verbs in (3a,b),
however, are semantically opaque, made up of synchcronically
non-productive
PV-V combinations. (3a) and (3b) express meaning which is the same as
that
expressed by the simplex verb in (3c).
(3)
a. [tarda-ya-ni]
'sit/perch/land' (x)
b.
[pirri-ma-ni]
'sit/perch/land' (x)
c.
[nyina-mi] 'sit/perch' (x)
In the non-productive (4a)
the finite verb ya-ni is
part of
the thematic core, whereas it is the non-finite ya-ninja which is part of the thematic core while the
finite –ya-ni is
aspectual.
(4)
a. [nyunjurl-ya-ni]
'spit curse at/on' (x,y)
b.
[nyunjurl-ya-ninja]-ya-ni
'spit curse at/on along' (x,y)
The verb ‑ma-ni in (3a) typically indicates a two place
predicate, but
this combination is monadic, whereas -ya-ni in (4a) (and ya-ninja in (4b)) typically indicates a one place
predicate,
but the PV-V combinations in (4) are dyadic. While the PV-V
combinations in
(2-4) must be lexically stored, elements which appear to be generated
syntactically can combine with these complex verbs in ways which
suggest that
syntactically generated elements can intervene between lexically
generated
elements.
This paper will propose that
part of processing the inner core of Warlpiri verbs is mapping semantic
features onto a phrasal syntactic structure headed by categories
assocated with
rather abstract features; simplex verbs like karri- in (1a) and nyina- in (3c) may be mapped onto the same
underlying
structure as complex thematic cores.
Reference:
Nash, David. 1982. Warlpiri
preverbs and verb roots. Swartz, S. (ed.),. Papers
in Warlpiri grammar: in memory of Lothar Jagst Work Papers of SIL-AAB, Series A Volume 6,
165-216. Berrimah, N.T.: SIL-AAB.
Patrick McConvell, AIATSIS
Loanwords in Gurindji:
identification, stratigraphy and loan-paths
Gurindji is a Pama-Nyungan language of the Ngumpin-Yapa subgroup,
spoken in the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory,
Australia. Its vocabulary consists of at least 30% loanwords, mostly
from the Jaminjungan branch of the non-Pama-Nyungan Mirndi family, to
its north. The paper surveys the sources of the loans and their
distribution in different grammatical and semantic categories * for
instance Jaminjungan loans are particularly numerous in environmental
vocabulary and coverbs. The paper focuses on three aspects of the
analysis of loanwords:
(1) identification: signatures of loanword pnonology (eg absence of
sound-changes like intervocalic lenition) , tracing of sources^;
(2) stratigraphy: chronological layering of different loanwords based
on phonological and morphological characteristics, and its relationship
to culture contacts;
(3) loan-paths: some loanwords travel far in many directions (
Wanderwoerter); some follow more
circumscribed routes and may be predominantly in one direction. From a
typology of loan-paths inferences can be drawn about cultural
prehistory.
Felicity Meakins, University of Melbourne
Alternational Code-switching and
mixed language genesis
The extent to which code-switching is a factor in the formation and
resulting character of mixed languages is debated extensively. Although
some maintain that code-switching plays no role in mixed language
genesis
(Bakker, 2003), a body of work is growing which supports the
contribution of code-switching (Auer, 1999). Within this work the
different
structures of mixed languages are compared with insertional and
alternational
code-switching, with insertional code-switching favoured as the
predecessor to mixed languages. Insertional code-switching constraints
are then considered to be responsible for the resultant shape of the
mixed language (Myers-Scotton, 2002). Alternational code-switching is
deemed too unconstrained and structurally variable to grammaticalise
with any consistency (Backus, 2003).
One of the problems with this discussion is the lack of empirical
evidence. Such evidence exists in one case of a mixed language,
Gurindji Kriol (Australia). In the mid 1970s, code-switching between
Gurindji and Kriol was a very common style of communication (McConvell,
1985). Thirty years later Gurindji people speak a mixed language,
Gurindji Kriol,
which exhibits a split along NP-VP lines. Gurindji contributes the NP
structure including case and derivational morphology, and the VP
structure including TAM morphology originates from Kriol. McConvell and
Meakins (2005) show that code-switching not only preceded the formation
of
Gurindji Kriol, but that the split of the mixed language corresponds
with the pattern of code-switching. In this paper I will build on this
work and demonstrate that, contrary to expectations, the code-switching
of
the 1970s exhibits both insertional and alternational structures and
the alternational structures are responsible for the presence of
case-marking in Gurindji Kriol.
Auer, P. (1999). From codeswitching via language mixing to fused lects:
Toward a dynamic typology of bilingual speech.
Journal of Bilingualism,3(4),
309-332.
Backus, A. (2003). Can a mixed language be conventionalized
alternational codeswitching? In Y. Matras & P. Bakker (Eds.),
The mixed language debate: Theoretical and empirical
advances (pp. 237-270). Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter.
Bakker, P. (2003). Mixed languages as autonomous systems. In Y. Matras
& P. Bakker (Eds.),
The mixed
language
debate: Theoretical and empirical advances (pp. 107-150).
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
McConvell, P. (1985). Domains and codeswitching among bilingual
Aborigines. In M. Clyne (Ed.),
Australia, meeting place of languages (Vol. C-92, pp. 95-125).
Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
McConvell, P., & Meakins, F. (2005). Gurindji Kriol: A mixed
language emerges from code-switching.
Australian
Journal of Linguistics, 25(1), 9-30.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2002).
Contact
linguistics : bilingual encounters and grammatical outcomes. Oxford ;
New York: Oxford University Press.
O'Shannessy, C. (2006).
Language
contact and children's bilingual
language acquisition: Learning a
mixed language and Warlpiri in northern Australia. Unpublished PhD,
University of Sydney, Sydney.
David Nash,
ANU and AIATSIS
Where do Warlpiri simple verbs come
from?
The Ngumbin-Yapa subgroup of Pama-Nyungan (McConvell and Laughren 2004)
comprises half a dozen languages whose verb inventory is at most 45 or
so simple verbs -- except for Warlpiri which has more than twice as
many (over 118 at
http://www.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/aust/wlp/wlp.verb-roots.html).
The verb roots common across the Ngumbin-Yapa subgroup have clear
correspondences also in Warlpiri, but what of the 70 or so "extra"
Warlpiri verb roots? Is Warlpiri the sole language of the
subgroup to preserve scores of verbs lost from all its sister
languages? Alternatively, has Warlpiri acquired (by loan or internal
formation) scores of verb roots since it separated from its sister
languages? Dixon 2001 interprets Nash 1982 to propose the
latter. I present evidence for the partial truth of both
histories.
References
1982. Warlpiri preverbs and verb roots, pp.165-216 in
Work Papers of SIL-AAB, Series A Volume 6
in Memory of Lothar Jagst, ed. by Stephen M. Swartz. Berrimah,
NT: SIL-AAB.
http://www.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/papers/1982-Wlp-preverbs.pdf
McConvell, P. and M. Laughren (2004). The Ngumpin-Yapa subgroup,
pp.151-178 in
Australian languages:
classification and the comparative method, ed. by C. Bowern and
H. Koch. Amsterdam, John Benjamins.
Dixon, RMW. 2001. The Australian linguistic area, pp.64-104 In
Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance:
Problems in comparative linguistics, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and
RMW Dixon. OUP. §3.1 Verbal organization, pp.71-75; slightly
revised version in Dixon 2002.
Kazuko Obata,
AIATSIS, and Harold Koch, ANU
Towards AIATSIS
Indigenous languages/dialects classification - with a Yuin-Kuri example
AIATSIS is currently doing research on Australian Indigenous
languages/dialects classification. So far, we have compiled information
from the past major classifications, Wurm (1994 and 1971), Ethnologue
(2005), Oates (1975), Dixon (2002), Atlas (1981) and O'Grady et al
(1966) as well as information from a selection of recent publications.
We have then put together a tentative classification with problematic
groups and languages/dialects identified. One of these is the Yuin-Kuri
group and Harold Koch will present his analysis on the internal
relationship of this group.
Jane Simpson, University of Sydney
Warumungu pronouns: another go
At first glance the Warumungu pronoun system diverges markedly from its
neighbours, both in syntactic structure and in morphological
shape. In part this can be attributed to paradigmatic
reshaping - the Warumungu pronouns show considerable
regularity in structure, although there are some
irregularities, especially in the non-singular portmanteau
Subject-Non-subject forms. There is one system of pronouns,
which are restricted to first or second position, and which are
portmanteau (subject and object pronouns do not appear
separately) and may include a tense inflection. Their
restricted position and portmanteau structure makes them more like the
bound pronouns in dual pronoun systems than like free pronouns.
Among Warumungu's neighbours on the west, north and
north-east (Ngumbin-Yapa languages, Mirndi languages and
the Ngarna language Wakaya) dual systems of bound pronouns and
free pronouns are found (although the free pronouns in Warlmanpa are
reduced to just two forms for first and second person). To the south
and east are Arandic languages with basically a single series of
pronouns, which are usually treated as free pronouns. I
show that, while Warumungu pronouns show some resemblances to most of
the
neighbours, there are more similarities with pronouns in Arandic
languages.
Michael Walsh, University of Sydney
Australian Aboriginal song language:
so many questions, so little to work with
Song language traditions in Aboriginal Australia exhibit a considerable
range of variation. Some traditions include material far removed from
'everyday' spoken language: for example, there are ghost or spirit
languages which have little, or no, connection with the host language.
There are also situations in which the song language is quite similar
to the everyday spoken language, even if showing a considerable degree
of ellipsis, economy of expression and allusion. In this overview I
will seek to delineate the range of variation found in Aboriginal song
language traditions. In doing so, a number of questions will arise:
does the structure of the everyday language determine or influence the
nature of the song language? as many Aboriginal languages are losing
speakers, what effect does this have on song language? are there
regional differences in the deployment of expressive language?
This overview will draw on more detailed knowledge from a particular
set of song traditions hosted by the Murriny Patha language, mainly
spoken at Wadeye, about 250 kms south west of Darwin in the Northern
Territory. This knowledge derives from an ongoing collaborative
research project (involving a team of linguists and musicologists)
running from 2004 to 2008 (http://azoulay.arts.usyd.edu.au/mpsong/).
But the overview will also survey the research carried out across
Aboriginal Australia up to the present day.