Teaching & Learning Guide for: Rebuilding Australia’s Linguistic Profile – Recent Developments in Research on Australian Aboriginal Languages
Authors: Gaby Alice 
Published: August 2009

Author’s Introduction

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.

Author Recommends

The five books and articles listed below include a general overview of Australian aboriginal languages (Dixon 2002), an overview of Australian phonologies (Evans 1995), a work of particular significance to morphosyntactic theory (Austin and Bresnan 1996), a chapter considering the significance of Australian languages in the post‐colonial context (Bell 2003) and two books with opposing takes on the applicability of the comparative method to the Australian context (Bowern and Koch 2004 and Dixon 2002). Those interested in other topics or further sources relating to these topics are directed to the references given throughout the sample syllabus below.

Austin, Peter and Joan Bresnan. 1996. Non‐configurationality in Australian aboriginal languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14, 215–268.

Since Hale’s (1983 and elsewhere) description of Warlpiri as a non‐configurational language (i.e. possessing free word order, discontinuous noun phrases and null anaphora), debate has raged as to how best to integrate such languages into existing syntactic theories. This article reviews the arguments made in support of two key analyses; the dual structure hypothesis and the pronominal argument hypothesis. On the basis of data from eight Australian languages, Austin and Bresnan argue in favour of the dual structure hypothesis. Advanced students may also wish to read Pensalfini (2004) for an updated typology of (non)configurationality.

Bell, Jeanie. 2003. Australia’s indigenous languages. Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by indigenous Australians, ed. by Michele Grossman, 159–170. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press.

Bell considers the social, cultural and historical significance of language and linguistic work from two perspectives; as a linguist and as a Murri woman. This chapter stresses the importance of language maintenance and revitalization in indigenous communities, especially in cases where languages have been wrongly dismissed as ‘dead’. Bell also addresses the often sensitive relationship between members of these communities and outsider linguists.

Bowern, Claire, and Harold Koch. (eds) 2004. Australian languages: classification and the comparative method. Current issues in linguistic theory. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.

This volume comprises 12 chapters that apply the comparative method to various putative subgroups of Australian languages, as well as two introductory chapters focusing on the methodology under examination. The volume was compiled largely in response to Dixon’s (2002 below, and elsewhere) provocative claim that the genetic relationships between most Australian languages cannot be gleaned through the application of the comparative method (used to reconstruct the form of languages no longer spoken on the basis of descendent languages). The chapters herein also evaluate the framework’s ability to model language change involving both descent and diffusion.

Dixon, Robert M. W. 2002. Australian languages: their nature and development (Cambridge language surveys). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

The most comprehensive overview of the structures found in Australian aboriginal languages is Dixon’s (1980), now sadly out of print. Though Dixon’s (2002) Australian Languages may be considered an updated version of his 1980 monograph, this more recent volume weighs heavily on the (in)appropriateness of the comparative method to the Australian context. As such, this book (and in particular Chapter 2) makes an excellent counterpoint to Bowern and Koch (2004).

Evans, Nicholas. 1995. Current issues in the phonology of Australian languages. The Handbook of Phonological Theory. J. Goldsmith. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 723–761.

This chapter gives an extremely clear overview of the most theoretically significant features of various Australian phonologies, outlining several of the important contributions these languages have made to the development of phonological theory. Evans provides a description of the typical Australian phonological system and the more noteworthy departures from it, including discussions of phonotactics and syllable structure, stress and metrical structure, prosodic domains and reduplication. He also discusses some theoretical issues these languages raise, including proposals for a flat syllable structure, and arguments that some Australian languages organize syllable structure on a VC basis – preferring closed syllables with codas over those with onsets – contrasting with the proposed universal preference for CV syllable structure.

Additional references

Dixon, Robert M. W. 1980. The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kenneth Hale. 1983. Warlpiri and the grammar of non‐configurational languages. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5–47.

Robert Pensalfini. 2004. Towards a typology of configurationality. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 359–408.

Online Materials

There are few websites directly addressing the academic interests of Australianist linguists other than the homepages and blogs of those linguists themselves and several research project websites

The Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition project: http://www.linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/research/projects/ACLA/

The Murriny Patha Song Project: http://azoulay.arts.usyd.edu.au/mpsong/

Austkin: http://austkin.pacific‐credo.fr/.

Blogs of particular note to students of Australian languages (though not concerned with Australian languages exclusively) are as follows:

Claire Bowern’s Anggarrgoon: http://anggarrgoon.wordpress.com/

The University of Sydney’s Transient Languages and Cultures: http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/

Arwarbukarl Indigenous Language and Information Technology Blog: http://www.arwarbukarl.net.au/blog/?page_id=2.

More personal blogs concerning Australian languages and fieldwork include:

langguj gel: http://langguj.blogspot.com/

matjjin‐nehen: http://www.matjjin‐nehen.com/

that munanga linguist: http://www.munanga.blogspot.com/

finding a voice: http://www.inspiredwandering.blogspot.com/

indigenous language SPEAK: http://languagespeak.wordpress.com/.

The websites listed below either point to useful published and unpublished linguistic resources on Australian aboriginal languages, or provide multimedia content targeting language learners and others interested in indigenous language and culture.

Oz Papers Online

http://ozpapers.wordpress.com/

This blog, edited by Claire Bowern, provides notices of books, articles, dissertations, websites and other publications pertaining to Australia’s indigenous languages, starting from February 2005. Where available online, a link to the paper or abstract is provided as well as a short extract, contents list or commentary. The blog archives are searchable by category.

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

http://www.aiatsis.gov.au

AIATSIS is an important resource for anyone interested in Australian languages. Their website is the portal to the online catalogue, Mura (http://mura.aiatsis.gov.au/uhtbin/cgisirsi/YMjVx4JIpi/SIRSI/117380007/60/1180/X), as well as such multimedia highlights as the Aboriginal Australia map (http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/aboriginal_studies_press/aboriginal_wall_map/map_page) and numerous online exhibitions (e.g. Collectors of Wordshttp://www1.aiatsis.gov.au/exhibitions/languages/lang_hm.html).

Handbook of Western Australian Languages South of the Kimberley Region

http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLPages/AborigPages/LANG/WA/contents.htm#top

This website, compiled by Nicholas Thieberger, provides a guide to the indigenous languages to the south of the Kimberleys, Western Australia. It includes an annotated bibliography of work on these languages, as well as information about their locations, speakers, dialect names, orthographies in use and language programmes.

Aboriginal Languages of Australia

http://www.dnathan.com/VL/austLang.htm

This directory, edited by David Nathan, provides annotated links to 231 resources for about 80 Australian languages, classified by resource type, language and state.

Gayarragi, Winangali

http://lah.soas.ac.uk/projects/gw/

Visitors to this website can download a free interactive language ‐earning resource for the Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay languages of northern New South Wales, Australia. This includes a searchable dictionary, example sentences, stories and songs with audio and hyperlinks to the dictionary, along with games and other language learning activities. (See also http://www.yuwaalaraay.org/ for further Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay resources).

Ngapartji Ngapartji

http://ninti.ngapartji.org/

This website of the Big hART language and arts project offers (for a fee) Pitjantjatjara language lessons and cultural education, associated with live Ngapartji Ngapartji theatre performances around Australia. It is also possible to view the first five lessons for free by signing in as a guest.

Warlpiri Media

http://www.warlpiri.com.au

This site provides links to numerous Warlpiri video and audio files, including the popular ‘Bush Mechanics’ documentary.

Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages

http://www.fatsil.org.au/

The Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages supports language maintenance and revitalization programmes in indigenous communities around Australia. Their website includes an archive of the quarterly Voice of The Land newsletter.

Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre

http://acl.arts.usyd.edu.au/projects/wangkamaya/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

This website provides linguistic, demographic and cultural information about the languages of the Pilbara, serviced by the Wangka Maya language centre, as well as a full catalogue of resources.

Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co‐operative

http://www.muurrbay.org.au/

The Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co‐operative supports the Many Rivers Aboriginal Language Centre, which conducts revitalization programmes and research on languages of the northern and central coasts of New South Wales.

Katherine Regional Language Centre: Diwurruwurru‐jaru

http://www.kathlangcentre.org.au/

The Katherine Language Centre supports language programmes in 32 traditional languages and Kriol, spoken across 15 aboriginal communities in the Katherine region.

Sample Unit

Unit 1: Australian linguistic culture

 The relationship between land, language and local group (tribe, clan, moiety, etc.).

 Registers: mother‐in‐law language, bereavement registers, song language, manual signs.

 Linguistic taboos and lexical replacement.

 Traditional Australian interaction: multilingualism and communicative style.

 Knowledge and the ‘oral information economy’.

 Colonialism and the history of research on Australia’s indigenous peoples.

Reading:

Michaels, E. 1985. ‘Constraints on Knowledge in an Economy of Oral Information’, Current Anthropology 26, pp. 505–510.

Sharp, L. 1952. Steel axes for stone age Australians. In Edward Spicer (ed.), Human Problems in Technological Change. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 69–90.

Dixon, R. M. W. 1980. The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 2.

Unit 2: The sounds of Australian languages

 What does an Australian language sound like?

 What is a typical Australian consonant inventory?

 What is a typical Australian vowel system?

 Atypical Australian phonologies and phonemes (click consonants, fricatives, and more)

 Phonotactics and the VC syllable

 Prosody

Reading:

Bishop, J. and J. Fletcher. 2005. ‘Bininj Gun‐Wok Intonation’. In Sun‐Ah Jun, ed., Prosody and typology – The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing. Oxford: OUP, 331–361.

Butcher, A. 1994. On the phonetics of small vowel systems: evidence from Australian languages. In R. Togneri, ed. Proceedings of the 5th Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology. Canberra: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association, Vol. I, 28–33.

Evans, N. 1995. Current issues in the phonology of Australian languages. The Handbook of Phonological Theory. J. Goldsmith. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 723–761.

Unit 3: The morpho(syntactic) core

 ‘Prefixing’ languages vs. suffixing languages

 Head‐marking vs. dependent marking

 Pronouns and verbal cross‐referencing

 Tense, aspect and mood

 Case and (some of) its functions

Reading:

Nordlinger, R. 1998. Constructive Case: Evidence from Australian languages. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Ch1, Ch2.

Verstraete, Jean‐Christophe. 2005. The semantics and pragmatics of composite mood marking: The non‐Pama‐Nyungan languages of northern Australia. Linguistic Typology 9: 223–226.

Bowern, Claire. 2004. The origins of tense‐based case marking in Pitta‐Pitta and Wangkajutjuru. Australian Journal of Linguistics 24.163–183.

Unit 4: The (morpho)syntactic core

 Word order and non‐configurationality

 Argument ellipsis and multiple reference

 Voice and transitivity (antipassives, reflexives, reciprocals, applicatives, etc.)

 Coordination, subordination and switch‐reference

Reading:

Austin, P. and J. Bresnan. 1996. Non‐configurationality in Australian Aboriginal languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 14, 215–268.

Hale 1976. The adjoined relative clause in Australia. In R.M.W. Dixon (ed.) Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages. AIAS Canberra: 78–105.

Blake, Barry. 2001. ‘The noun phrase in Australian languages’. In Jane Simpson, David Nash, Mary Laughren, Peter Austin and Barry Alpher (eds) Forty years on: Ken Hale and Australian languages. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Pp. 415–426.

Terrill, A. 1997. ‘The development of antipassive constructions in Australian languages’. Australian Journal of Linguistics. Volume 17:1.

Unit 5: ‘Kintax’– the grammaticization of kinship in Australian languages

 Classificatory kinship systems

 The spread of subsections

 Kinship pronouns

 Kinship dyads

Reading:

Evans, N. 2000. Kinship verbs. In Petra M. Vogel & Bernard Comrie, eds. Approaches to the Typology of Word Classes. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Pp. 103–172.

Dench, A. 1987 Kinship and collective activity in the Ngayarda languages of Northwest‐Western Australia. Language in Society, 16, 321–339.

Heath, J., F. Merlan and A. Rumsey, eds, 1982. The languages of kinship in Aboriginal Australia. Oceania Linguistic Monographs, 24. Sydney: University of Sydney.

McConvell, P. 1985. The origin of subsections in northern Australia. Oceania 56:1–33.

Unit 6: How to converse in an Australian language

 Greetings

 Politeness (how to make a request, how to register a complaint)

 Reference tracking (how to introduce and track referents throughout a conversation)

Reading:

Wilkins, David. 1986. Particles/clitics for criticism and complaint in Mparntwe Arrernte (Aranda). Journal of Pragmatics 10(5), 575–596.

Garde, Murray. 2002. Social Deixis in Bininj Kun‐wok Conversation, University of Queensland: PhD thesis.

Ngay Kuuk Thaayorre yiik CD‐ROM

Unit 7: Semantic categorization in Australian languages

 Recurrent patterns of polysemy: actual/potential, body parts, etc.

 Space and frames of reference

 Australian taxonomies: ethnobotany and ethnozoology

 Nominal classification

 Verbal classification

 Inalienability, possession and partonomy

Reading:

Heath, J. 1978 Linguistic approaches to Nunggubuyu ethnozoology and ethnobotany. In L.R. Hiatt (ed.), Australian Aboriginal Concepts. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 40–55.

McGregor, W. 2002. Verb classification in Australian languages (Empirical approaches to language typology, 25). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Harvey, Mark, and Nicholas Reid. (eds) 1997. Nominal classification in aboriginal Australia. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.

Evans, Nicholas & David Wilkins. 2000. In the mind’s ear: the semantic extensions of perception verbs in Australian languages. Language 76.3: 546–592.

Unit 8: Language contact

 Small‐scale multilingualism

 Dialect continua

 Language areas

 Contact with English and contact languages (Kriol, Aboriginal English and mixed languages)

Reading:

Smith, I. 1986. Language contact and the life or death of Kugu Muminh. In F. Fishman, A. Tabouret‐Keller, M. Clyne, Bh. Krishnamurti and M. Abdulaziz (eds). Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Malcolm, I. 2002. Aboriginal Genres in Perth. Mt Lawley: Edith Cowan University.

Schmidt, A. 1985. Young People’s Dyirbal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bowern, Claire (2006). Another look at Australia as a linguistic area. In Yaron Matras, April McMahon and Nigel Vincent (eds), Linguistic Areas, Palgrave Macmillan.

Unit 9: The development of Australian languages

 How applicable is the comparative method to the Australian situation?

 Punctuated equilibrium and linguistic areas

 The Pama‐Nyungan expansion

 Non‐Pama‐Nyungan languages

 Evidence for proto‐Australian (its proponents and critics)

 Where did the first Australians come from? Structural phylogeny and Sahul linguistic prehistory.

Reading:

Dixon, Robert M. W. 2002. Australian languages: their nature and development (Cambridge language surveys). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 2.

Bowern, Claire and Harold Koch (2004b). Introduction: subgrouping methodology in historical linguistics. In Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (eds), Australian languages: classification and the comparative method, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory vol. 249, chap. 1, 1–16.

Evans, Nicholas (2003). Introduction: Comparative Non‐Pama‐Nyungan and Australian historical linguistics. In Evans (ed.) The non‐Pama‐Nyungan languages of northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent’s most linguistically complex region. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 3–25.

Evans, Nicholas and Rhys Jones. 1997. ‘The cradle of the Pama‐Nyungans: Linguistic and archaeological speculations’. In Patrick McConvell and Nicholas Evans, eds, Archaeology and linguistics: Global perspectives on ancient Australia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 385–415.

McConvell Patrick (1985). The origin of subsections in Northern Australia. Oceania 56: 1– 33.

Seminar/Project Idea

Individual or Group Project: Nunggubuyu dictionary entries

The instructor chooses one or more highly polysemous words from Jeffrey Heath’s (1982) Nunggubuyu Dictionary and collects at least 15 example sentences illustrating the various uses of the words from Heath’s (1980) Nunggubuyu myths and ethnographic texts. On the basis of these example sentences alone, students are asked to construct dictionary entries (alone or in groups). In order to do this well, they must decide how many distinct senses are illustrated by the data, identify and characterize the meanings of each sense, and explain how seemingly disparate uses (from the English perspective) may be unified. Students can then compare their dictionary entries with one another, as well as with Heath’s (1982) entry for the relevant word(s).