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This paper presents the results of a survey of geocentric directional systems across Australia using published and unpublished material as well as fieldwork data, providing the first systematic overview of such systems in Australia. The 116 sampled varieties, spoken across diverse landscapes, exhibit variation within and across languages. Many make use of more than one directional system. This paper sets out to create a systematic typological overview of geocentric directionals in Australia taking into account cultural and topographic salience, revisiting existing classifications of directional systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Principles of morphotactics are a major source of morphological diversity amongst the world's languages, and it is well-known that languages exhibit many different types of deviation from a canonical ideal in which there is a unique and consistent mapping between function and form. In this paper we present data from Murrinhpatha (non-Pama-Nyungan, northern Australia) that demonstrates a type of non-canonical morphotactics so far unattested in the literature, one which we call positional dependency. This type is unusual in that the non-canonical pattern is driven by morphological form rather than by morphosyntactic function. In this case the realisation of one morph is dependent on the position in the verbal template of another morph. Thus, it is the linearisation of morphs that conditions the morphological realisation, not the morphosyntactic feature set. Positional dependency in Murrinhpatha thus expands our typology of content-form interactions and non-canonical morphotactics with implications for our understanding of morphological structure cross-linguistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Murrinhpatha, a non-Pama-Nyungan language from the Daly region of the Northern Territory of Australia, has an extant ergative case marker that has been reported to be very rare in use. In this paper we report on the use of ergative marking in an experimental study of sentence production. Forty-six adult L1 speakers of Murrinhpatha were asked to describe a series of unrelated bivalent scenes that were manipulated for humanness (±human) in the agent and patient roles. Our results show higher than expected ergative use given previous descriptions (more than 14% of utterances with an overt agent NP). Furthermore, we found an alternating pattern between multiple ergative markers that is correlated with variations in word order and humanness of agent and patient characters. This pattern seems consistent with the available naturalistic corpus, but the rate of ergative marking is so low that it may never have been identified. Our study both contributes to the typology of ergative case marking and demonstrates the value of experimental research for language description in unearthing properties of the grammatical system that may not be easily discernible in other types of corpora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of opportunities to study Indigenous languages at tertiary level in Australia highlights the devaluing of Indigenous languages and cultures in Australia. Innovation in methods of delivery is required, to enable Indigenous language authorities to configure their own arrangements of content and pedagogy in collaboration with university academics, to comply with the different requirements of each group. Some of the identified challenges of developing university courses for Indigenous languages include shortages of resources, teachers, students, and personal connections. This paper describes an experiment in mobilising digital technologies to develop new approaches through the collaborative design of an online university course teaching the Kunwinjku language (Bininj Kunwok) of the Northern Territory, using a Digital Language Shell. This paper argues that collaborative work in this space can serve to create new resources, teachers, students and personal connections in the learning of Indigenous languages. Such work has potential to engage Indigenous language authorities and integrate Indigenous language and knowledge practices in the academic life of Australian universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrative studies with migrant teachers offer new perspectives on local educational practices and policies. As part of a study investigating German migrant teachers' experiences in Australian language classes, this paper uses narratives to evaluate present language education strategies in Germany and Australia. It examines the provision and uptake of foreign languages as a subject area in the two countries and compares existing educational goals and arrangements regarding language education in Germany and Australia. The German migrant teachers' accounts illustrate how current school policies and the value placed on language proficiency and multilingualism in the two countries' education are impacting on learning and teaching in the language classroom. The findings have significant potential to inform and stimulate the evaluation of recent national initiatives in language education in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the author's recent work on political, sociolinguistic and educational aspects of bilingual and immersion education in Australia. Among the cases considered are: the development of a professional position statement on bilingual and immersion education, to be disseminated to policy makers; advising on an Auslan (Australian language of the Deaf) bilingual programme; and a proposed investigation of why there are no Italian late immersion programmes in Victoria, despite the importance of Italian as a community language of long standing. Several aspects of heritage/community language education in Australia will be discussed: political issues of programme staffing and funding; the impact of sociolinguistic factors, relating to a particular community language and how it is viewed by its own and other communities, on the types of programmes that will be undertaken; and the effect of educational decisions taken by school administrators on the language learning experiences of children in immersion programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marri Tjevin is the language of the Rak Thangkurral and Rak Nadirri people of the Daly River region in northern Australia. Unusually for an Australian language, Marri Tjevin has fricatives at all points of articulation /β, ð, ʐ, ʒ, ɣ/, contrasting with phonetically long, voiceless stops /p, t̪, t, ȶ, k/. These series are only contrastive word-medially, while most word-initial obstruents vary freely in stricture and voicing, which constitutes a typologically unusual form of obstruent manner neutralization. Additionally there are two contrastive voiced stops /b, d/, which occur both medially and initially. In this paper we present the first detailed analysis of Marri Tjevin's system of obstruent contrasts and positional neutralization, as well as reporting an interesting association between phonemic stops and prosodic prominence. We argue that the Marri Tjevin stop/fricative contrast shows distributional and phonetic commonalities with fortis/lenis obstruent contrasts in some other Australian languages, while the association of phonemic stops with prosodic prominence also echoes patterns observed elsewhere in Australia. Thus, while Marri Tjevin's system of fricative contrast and neutralization is typologically unusual, it shows striking parallels with other Australian phonologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a lexical study of rations – flour, sugar, tea and tobacco – in Australian languages. The distribution of food played an important role in relations between Aboriginal people and colonizers: this study complements existing historical and ethnographic work on the topic by investigating the lexicon of rations in a set of 197 languages across Australia. We discern a number of patterns. There are relatively few extensions of terms for traditional equivalents in the case of 'flour', 'sugar' and 'tea', for a number of reasons, while 'tobacco' shows more such extensions. Extensions based on other terms highlight semantic features like texture for flour and sugar, shape of the main ingredient for tea, and smoking as the new mode of consumption for tobacco. Other minor patterns highlight colour, processing and flavour. There is also some areal patterning in the data, some related to borrowing, from Austronesian languages as well as internally, and others based on semantic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounts of turn-taking in much of the CA literature have largely focused on talk which progresses with minimal gaps between turns at talk, longer gaps being found to be symptomatic of, for example, engagement in non-talk activities, or as indicators of some kind of trouble in the interaction. In this paper we present an account of turn-taking in conversations between Indigenous Australians where longer gaps are frequent and regular. We show that in sequences of such slow-paced conversation, gaps are not always treated as problematic, nor are they associated with non-talk activities that might inhibit talk. In such contexts we argue that there is less orientation to gap minimization, reflecting a lack of pressure for continuous talk. We also discuss qualitative differences in the nature of the gaps between turns in which there is a selection of next speaker, and those where no next speaker has been selected. Finally we consider whether such talk is a feature of Indigenous Australian conversation, or a more widespread practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-stopping is a widespread and usually non-contrastive phenomenon in Australian languages. Contrastive pre-stopping is rare and materials on it are limited. Based partly on original phonetic data, this paper provides evidence that Arabana, a language of northern South Australia, has contrastive pre-stopping of both laterals and nasals. Current analyses of pre-stopping, both contrastive and non-contrastive, model pre-stopped sequences as complex segments, and relate their diachrony to perceptual motivations favouring the enhancement in the discrimination of place oppositions. We provide evidence that pre-stopped sequences in Arabana are best analyzed as heterosyllabic clusters, and that their diachrony centrally involves perceptual motivations favouring the augmentation of phonologically strong constituents, specifically stressed syllables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warndarrang and Marra have a high level of shared vocabulary, 54%, and also share some grammatical morphemes and structures. The question is whether these commonalities result from borrowing, inheritance from a lower level proto-language, inheritance from a higher level proto-language, or a mixture of all three. If the shared lexicon results principally from borrowing, then this would establish a significant new peak for lexical borrowing in Australia, as the highest reliable level otherwise attested is 40%. There are proposals for a low level proto-language including Warndarrang and Marra, most commonly known as Proto-Marran. This paper shows that there is not sufficient evidence to include Warndarrang within the putative Marran family. Consequently, the 54% shared lexicon between Warndarrang and Marra does establish a new peak in lexical borrowing. However, despite this peak, the paper shows that there has only been minimal grammatical borrowing between Warndarrang and Marra, and that most shared grammatical morphemes reflect inheritance from a higher level proto-language, possibly Proto-Australian. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the functions of represented speech and thought (RST) in narratives in Umpithamu, a Pama-Nyungan language of Cape York Peninsula (Australia). The paper first surveys the different mechanisms available for marking a shift from the narrator's deictic centre to a narrative participant, including a number of constructions that use perception and motion predicates to signal RST. The analysis then focuses on the narrative functions of RST, showing that it has a macrostructural function beyond the representation of a specific participant's speech and thought, more specifically highlighting the central episodes of a narrative. The evidence comes from an analysis of three genres with a different macrostructure: one (personal history) for which the classic Labovian schema of complication–resolution works well and two others (both dealing with the supernatural world) that rely on different structuring principles. It is shown that RST is systematically associated with central episodes across the three genres, and that the location and nature of RST co-vary with the different location and nature of these episodes in the three genres. In narratives of supernatural encounter, for instance, RST conveys modal negotiation about the interpretation of the central events in terms of the supernatural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview of the current state of historical linguistics in Australian languages. Australian languages have been important in theoretical debates about the nature of language change and the possibilities for reconstruction and classification in areas of intensive diffusion. Here are summarized the most important outstanding questions for Australian linguistic prehistory; I also present a case study of the Karnic subgroup of Pama–Nyungan, which illustrates the problems for classification in Australian languages and potential approaches using phylogenetic methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the evidence on the classification of the Garrwan language family, in terms of the Pama-Nyungan vs Non-Pama-Nyungan opposition. The Garrwan language family is the only family whose status has been analyzed as indeterminate or intermediate with respect to this opposition. This paper shows that Proto-Garrwan was characterized by a high degree of innovation in grammatical morphology. Consequently, there are only limited materials, restricted to the pronominals, which can serve to evaluate its genetic status. This paper shows that this evidence, though limited, is sufficient to classify Garrwan as a Pama-Nyungan family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate the Proto-Iwaidjan hypothesis, which proposes that several languages in northwestern Arnhem Land in Northern Australia are genetically related. The evaluation is based on a rigorous application of the Comparative Method to provide an initial reconstruction of the Proto-Iwaidjan segmental inventory. We show that Amurdak, Iwaidja and Mawng are demonstrably genetically related. Given that Ilgar and Garig are very close in terms of grammar and vocabulary to Iwaidja, their membership of the Iwaidjan family is also supported. However, there is insufficient evidence to support the inclusion of Marrku, Wurrugu and Manangkari within the Iwaidjan language family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate the Proto-Iwaidjan hypothesis, which proposes that several languages in northwestern Arnhem Land in Northern Australia are genetically related. The evaluation is based on a rigorous application of the Comparative Method to provide an initial reconstruction of the Proto-Iwaidjan segmental inventory. We show that Amurdak, Iwaidja and Mawng are demonstrably genetically related. Given that Ilgar and Garig are very close in terms of grammar and vocabulary to Iwaidja, their membership of the Iwaidjan family is also supported. However, there is insufficient evidence to support the inclusion of Marrku, Wurrugu and Manangkari within the Iwaidjan language family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost universally, diachronic sound patterns of languages reveal evidence of both regular and irregular sound changes, yet an exception may be the languages of Australia. Here we discuss a long-observed and striking characteristic of diachronic sound patterns in Australian languages, namely the scarcity of evidence they present for regular sound change. Since the regularity assumption is fundamental to the comparative method, Australian languages pose an interesting challenge for linguistic theory. We examine the situation from two different angles. We identify potential explanations for the lack of evidence of regular sound change, reasoning from the nature of synchronic Australian phonologies; and we emphasise how this unusual characteristic of Australian languages may demand new methods of evaluating evidence for diachronic relatedness, and new thinking about the nature of intergenerational transmission. We refer the reader also to Bowern (this volume) for additional viewpoints from which the Australian conundrum can be approached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kaurna, the language of the Adelaide Plains, has been taught now for many years. It was introduced into Kaurna Plains Early Childhood Centre in 1989/90 and Kaurna Plains School in 1992 and has been taught there ever since. It has also been taught in a range of other schools and institutions to children of all ages, adults, members of the Kaurna community and to the public at large. By far the biggest hurdle confronting efforts to implement Kaurna language programs has been finding the teachers. Teaching languages requires special skills, and teaching a language, such as Kaurna, that is being reclaimed from written sources poses additional challenges, not least being the need to learn the language first and to be flexible and creative in developing new words and expressions where needed. It has been especially difficult to find young Karma people to take on the teaching. One who has risen to the challenge is Jack Kanya Buckskin, who started out working on Kaurna language projects, which included recording Kaurna words and phrases. He began attending Kaurna language classes at the Living Kaurna Cultural Centre, Warriparinga, then taught these classes in 2008 and in 2009 took full responsibility for these and other Kaurna language classes at Kaurna Plains School. This paper reflects on the positives that low from taking on the teaching role, as well as some of the difficulties faced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kaurna people were the first South Australians to bear the brunt of the effects of colonisation. Even as early as 1850, the Kaurna language was said to be 'extinct', though it was probably still spoken as an everyday language up until the 1860s. Ivaritji, the so-called 'last speaker', died in 1929. Nonetheless, we still see enduring patterns of kinship categorisation and associated behaviours that clearly have their roots in Kaurna culture, or at least local Aboriginal cultures, persisting to the present day. This paper sets out to document those enduring patterns, as well as the re-introduction of kin terms and accompanying knowledge of Kaurna kinship associated with Kaurna language reclamation efforts. A great many Kaurna kinship terms were documented in the 1840s and a few in the early twentieth century, though many of these were under-defined and poorly described. Comparative linguistics has assisted in making sense of the historical record, though many uncertainties remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose a semantic type-driven account of verb-formation patterns in Panyjima. By offering an explicit theory for the construal of semantically simplex event descriptions from morphologically complex verbal stems, we flesh out intuitions dating back to Clark and Clark (1979) about the role of derivational morphology in the interpretation of derived verbs, especially denominal verbs. This latter point is of particular relevance to a general theory of verb meaning (inclusive of, but not limited to, Aktionsart/lexical aspect), as most formal theories of lexical semantics have been primarily developed for languages with a rich verbal lexicon. By contrast, Australian languages often have a much smaller verbal lexicon and rely more heavily on productive processes of verbalization. The challenge we intend to meet is to provide a formal analysis that matches the productive morphology of the language under investigation. We offer an implementation couched within the Type Composition Logic (TCL) of Asher (2011), which demonstrates how TCL can successfully capture the contextual interpretation of productively derived Panyjima verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an analysis of an aspectual construction in Jaminjung, a non-Pama-Nyungan Australian language of the Mirndi family. At first sight, this looks like construction conveying grammatical aspect, specifically progressive, since it bears both formal and functional resemblances to typical progressive constructions. At closer investigation, however, the two morphemes crucially involved in the construction, a grammatical morpheme = mayan and a ‘semantically light’ inflecting verb, in their combination can be shown to convey lexical rather than grammatical aspect:=mayan, which occurs in a wider range of contexts, can be analysed as a marker of iterativity, and the inflecting verbs -yu ‘be’ and -ijga ‘go’ signal atelicity of different flavours, and are selected as classificatory verbs in analogy to other closed-class verbs in complex predicates in Jaminjung. The findings support a distinction made in the literature between event-internal and event-external pluractionality. Of all pluractionals, only event-internal iterative expressions (which include not only complex predicates but also iterated direct speech) are overtly marked as atelic in Jaminjung, and only those exhibit the functional overlap with a progressive. The study of this construction thus provides an insight into the pathway of grammaticalization between lexical and grammatical aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper describes a system of ergative marking in Umpithamu (Cape York Peninsula, Australia), in which the use of the ergative marker is determined by a combination of principles of animacy and information structure. Inanimate transitive subjects receive obligatory ergative marking, whereas animate transitive subjects only receive ergative marking when they are in focus, defined here as a principle of local prominence. Further evidence for this analysis is provided by showing that the principles governing optional ergative marking also govern other aspects of morphosyntactic organization, specifically the position of pronouns and the marking of objects. The system in Umpithamu is compared with other optional ergative systems in Australia, and it is shown that the principle of local prominence is unusual, with most other languages relying on more global, episode-level types of prominence. This also has a number of theoretical implications, including the need to recognize different construction types in applying rules for case marking in transitive clauses, and the challenge of mixed categories to the modular organization of grammatical models. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The term optional case marking (OCM) refers to the situation in which, in specifiable grammatical environments, a case marking morpheme may be either present or absent from an NP without affecting the grammatical role borne by that NP. This phenomenon is attested in many ergative languages of Australia, New Guinea, and the Himalayas, where the ergative marker is sometimes omitted from the subject of a transitive clause; a number of accusative languages show optional accusative marking of transitive object NPs. OCM has enjoyed little prominence in linguistic theory or typology; this is partly a consequence of the dearth of careful descriptive treatments of the phenomenon in particular languages. This paper represents an initial investigation of OCM in a cross-linguistic perspective, with focus on optional ergative marking. It provides some idea of its cross-linguistic extent, and attempts to situate it in relation to other types of asymmetries in case systems and case marking. It is suggested that use and non-use of case markers are never in totally free variation. Motivations are discussed and evaluated, and a general framework is put forward. It is further suggested that this framework permits an explanation for the origins and grammaticalisation of some split case marking systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The languages of the small Nyulnyulan family of the far northwest of Western Australia all exhibit a grammatical category traditionally dubbed irrealis. In this paper we describe the grammatical expression of this category, and its range of meanings and uses. It is argued that these can be accounted for as contextual senses or pragmatic inferences based on a single encoded core meaning, that the referent situation is construed by the speaker as unrealized. This semantic component remains invariant across all uses of the category, and is not defeasible. Contra claims by some investigators, the realis-irrealis mood contrast is fundamental, and encapsulates a viable conceptual contrast between real and unreal events; epistemic and deontic notions of probability, necessity, desirability, and the like are secondary pragmatic inferences. The irrealis is thus a modal category that can grammaticalize in human languages; indeed, it is a communicatively useful category. We explicate the nature of the conceptual contrast between the construed real and unreal. It is further argued that the notion of scope is essential to an understanding of the irrealis, and its interaction with other mode-like categories. Finally, we situate the Nyulnyulan irrealis in the wider cross-linguistic context of irrealis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jiwarli is an Australian Aboriginal language that was formerly spoken in the north-west of Western Australia. It shows a high degree of (suffixing) morphological complexity, has a split-ergative case-marking system, and a switch-reference system in dependent clause linkage. Verbs are also strictly subcategorized for transitivity and there are interactions between clause type and case marking. A prevalent feature of Jiwarli discourse is the non-occurrence of overt arguments in both main and dependent clauses. In narratives, 65–75% of transitive clauses have at least one missing argument (depending on genre), with 20% consisting of just a verb alone. Also, 25% of intransitive clauses lack their single (intransitive subject) argument. Zero arguments in Jiwarli can have either unspecified reference or else be anaphoric. This paper discusses the occurrence of zero arguments and outlines the means by which anaphoric relations are expressed. I will show that there is an interaction between verb transitivity, clause type, switch-reference, and the case-marking system which assists with reference determination in narrative discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pitjantjatjara is an Australian language with five stop places of articulation /pt ʈ ck/ in three vowel contexts /aiu/. We present word-medial stop burst data from nine speakers, examining duration, formant, spectral moment and spectral tilt measures. Our particular focus is on the apical contrast (alveolar /t/ vs. retroflex /ʈ/) and on the alveo-palatal /c/ vs. velar /k/ contrast. We observe differences between the palatal and the velar depending on vowel context, and we discuss the possible aerodynamic and acoustic sources for these differences. By contrast, we find that differences between the alveolar and the retroflex are minimal in all three vowel contexts. Unexpectedly, in the context of /i/, various spectral measures suggest that the articulatory release for the retroflex /ʈ/ is in fact more anterior than the release for the alveolar /t/ – we discuss this result in terms of possible articulatory overshoot of the target for /ʈ/ before /i/, and suggest that this result provides additional explanation for the cross-linguistic rarity of retroflexes in an /i/ vowel context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the highlights of the Australian Languages Workshop organised by Doctor Kazuko Obata, co-hosted by the Australian National University held in March 2009. Among the activities held at the event are the presentation of 19 papers, show-and tell events and the launch of a book and a map. About 36 participants reportedly attended this year's event, which is said to be an increase from 26 in 2008.

Crosslinguistic influence has been seen in bilingual adult and child learners when compared to monolingual learners. For speakers of Light Warlpiri and Gurindji Kriol there is no monolingual group for comparison, yet crosslinguistic influence can be seen in how the speakers resolve competition between case-marking and word order systems in each language. Light Warlpiri and Gurindji Kriol are two new Australian mixed languages, spoken in similar, yet slightly different, sociolinguistic contexts, and with similar, yet slightly different, argument marking systems. The different sociolinguistic situations and systems of argument marking lead to a difference in how speakers of each language interpret simple transitive sentences in a comprehension task. Light Warlpiri speakers rely on ergative case-marking as an indicator of agents more often than Gurindji Kriol speakers do. Conversely, Gurindji Kriol speakers rely on word order more often than Light Warlpiri speakers do. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Here I present a case study of change in the complex verb morphology of the Nyikina language of Northwestern Australia. I describe changes which lead to reanalysis of underlying forms while preserving much of the inherited phonological material. The changes presented here do not fit into previous typologies of morphological change. Nyikina lost the distinction between past and present, and in doing so, merged two paradigms into one. The former past tense marker came to be associated with intransitive verb stems. The inflected verbs thus continue inherited material, but in a different function. These changes are most parsimoniously described in a theory of word formation which makes reference to paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents EPG (electro-palatographic) data on (alveo-)palatal consonants from two Australian languages, Arrernte and Warlpiri. (Alveo-)palatal consonants are phonemic for stop, lateral and nasal manners of articulation in both languages, and are laminal articulations. However, in Arrernte, these lamino-(alveo-)palatals contrast with lamino-dental consonants for all three manners of articulation (i.e., it is a double-laminal language), whereas in Warlpiri this laminal contrast does not exist (i.e., it is a single-laminal language). Data are analyzed according to manner of articulation, vowel context and phrase position. Results suggest that in the double-laminal language Arrernte, the (alveo-)palatal articulation is further back than in the single-laminal language Warlpiri, presumably due to the presence of the lamino-dental in the Arrernte phoneme inventory. The lateral has the least contact in the back regions of the palate for both languages, but there is no significant difference in contact pattern between the stop and the nasal. However, results tentatively suggest that the nasal (alveo-)palatal is the most likely to show effects of prosodic or vocalic context, and it is suggested that this is due to the less strict airflow requirements for the nasal than for the stop or the lateral. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Diverse evidence from Bardi and other Australian languages is used here to argue for a multifunctional view of complex predication, one which includes event classification but is not limited to it. These data bear directly on the question of whether complex predicate formation involves the transfer of arguments from the light verb to the preverb, or whether complex predicates are better analysed as a unification of preverb and light verb. The multifunctionality of the construction, as well as the syntax of Bardi and other languages, provides arguments against the argument transfer analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gurindji Kriol is a mixed language spoken in northern Australia. It is derived from Gurindji, a Pama-Nyungan language, and Kriol, an English-lexifier creole language. Despite these clear sources, Gurindji Kriol contains grammatical systems which are not found in Gurindji or Kriol, for example asymmetrical serial verb constructions. The origin of these constructions is unclear given that Kriol only contains a very limited set of serial verb constructions and they are not found in Gurindji. The development of asymmetrical serial verb constructions is examined and it is suggested that they are a product of the more restricted Kriol serial verb construction developing and expanding under the influence of the Gurindji complex verb. The formation of this construction was a part of the more general genesis of the mixed language which was derived from code-switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a linguistic perspective on the structure and the interpretation of a key historical narrative in Umpithamu (a Pama-Nyungan language of Cape York Peninsula, Australia), against the background of a larger corpus of narrative texts in Umpithamu. The analysis focuses on the role of participant tracking devices in the macro-structure of the narrative, and the role of case marking in the build-up of narrative motifs. It is argued not only that marked types of participant tracking serve to mark the boundaries of episodes, as often noted in the literature, but also that some types have additional functions within episodes, which leads to a proposal for refinement of Fox's (1987) Principle of Morphosyntactic Markedness. On a micro-structural level, it is shown how a rare system of case marking is used by the narrator to construe white-Aboriginal interactions as events in which the Aboriginal participants experience an extreme lack of control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before colonisation Australia was fully named by its Indigenous population, but that complex network of naming was largely overlooked as Europeans introduced their own names for features and settlements. Each of Australia's states and territories now has a nomenclature authority, whose activities are coordinated through the Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia. Recently there has been a focus on increasing the number of placenames of Indigenous origin within the Introduced system through assigning Indigenous names to places hitherto lacking official names; using dual names; and replacing Introduced names regarded as offensive by members of Indigenous communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been observed that many languages from all over the world require that certain grammatical categories (e.g., person, number, tense, modality) occur in the “second position” of a clause. Much of the research into second position has developed formal explanations for this recurring pattern, based on interactions between morphosyntax and phonology. In this article I explore how pragmatics of information packaging interacts with these other features in the development of such morphosyntactic architecture in three North-Central Australian languages: Warlpiri, Wambaya, and Garrwa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay, a companion to Linda Barwick's article in this volume, provides evidence to show that the Marri Ngarr song register differs from the mundane register in several important respects and, in doing so, challenges accepted generalizations about these differences in Australian languages. Fluent speakers of Marri Ngarr number fewer than ten; all are old and ill and the language itself is expected to cease being spoken within the next few decades. The evidence comes from analysis of the linguistic structure of a representative sample of Marri Ngarr lirrga song-texts recorded in 1998, compared with a narrative text recorded in the year 2000. Analysis shows that the complexity of the lirrga song register is not mirrored in the current mundane register and probably reflects a period when the language was used more widely. The analysis of Marri Ngarr song-texts can therefore give us important clues as to what the language may have been like in its heyday. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Australian languages as examples, cultural selection is shown to shape linguistic structure through invisible hand processes that pattern the unintended outcomes (structures in the system of shared linguistic norms) of intentional actions (particular utterances by individual agents). Examples of the emergence of culturally patterned structure through use are drawn from various levels: the semantics of the lexicon, grammaticalized kin-related categories, and culture-specific organizations of sociolinguistic diversity, such as moiety lects, "mother-in-law" registers, and triangular kin terms. These phenomena result from a complex of diachronic processes that adapt linguistic structures to culture-specific concepts and practices, such as ritualization and phonetic reduction of frequently used sequences, the input of shared cultural knowledge into pragmatic interpretation, semanticization of originally context-dependent inferences, and the input of linguistic ideologies into the systematization of lectal variants. Some of these processes, such as the emergence of subsection terminology and moiety lects, operate over speech communities that transcend any single language and can only be explained if the relevant processes take the multilingual speech community as their domain of operation. Taken together, the cases considered here provide strong evidence against nativist assumptions that see linguistic structures simply as instantiations of biologically given "mentalese" concepts already present in the mind of every child and give evidence in favor of a view that sees individual language structures as also conditioned by historical processes, of which functional adaptation of various kinds is most important. They also illustrate how, in the domain of language, stable socially shared structures can emerge from the summed effects of many communicative micro-events by individual agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to raise a number of issues in relation to language and identity within the urban Aboriginal context. The author will do this in the light of work carried out in the Nunga languages of South Australia, with a particular focus on the Kaurna language. The author uses the term Nunga languages to refer to those languages belonging to Aboriginal people living in and out Adelaide, specifically Ngarrindjeri, Narrunga, and Kaurna. Formerly, Ngarrindjeri was the language of the Lower Murray and Coorong, Narrunga the language of Yorke Peninsula, and Kaurna the language of the Adelaide Plains. The Adelaide Tribe was a small group never numbering more than 300 people and occupying about 100 square miles of country in the immediate vicinity of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. However, as S. Hemming noted, Kaurna territory as established by the anthropologist, N. B. Tindale, is considerably more extensive than the tract of country identified by earlier writers. According to Tindale, it stretched from Crystal Brook to Cape Jervis across about 2,800 square miles. C. G. Teichelmann and Moorhouse, the Protector of Aborigines, recorded a population of 650 living in this area in 1841.