Vanishing languages of the Pacific Rim

Oxford University Press site. Peter Austin has posted on the book at ELAC.

Explaining Color Term Typology With an Evolutionary Model

Journal article which includes data from Australian languages: http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15516709cog3101_4?prevSearch=authorsfield%3A%28Dowman%2CMike%29

An expression-induction model was used to simulate the evolution of basic color terms to test Berlin and Kay’s (1969) hypothesis that the typological patterns observed in basic color term systems are produced by a process of cultural evolution under the influence of biases resulting from the special properties of universal focal colors. Ten agents were simulated, each of which could learn color term denotations by generalizing from examples using Bayesian inference, and for which universal focal red, yellow, green, and blue were especially salient, but unevenly spaced in the perceptual color space. Conversations between these agents, in which agents would learn from one another, were simulated over several generations, and the languages emerging at the end of each simulation were investigated. The proportion of color terms of each type correlated closely with the equivalent frequencies found in the World Color Survey, and most of the emergent languages could be placed on one of the evolutionary trajectories proposed by Kay and Maffi (1999). The simulation therefore demonstrates how typological patterns can emerge as a result of learning biases acting over a period of time.

Habitat of Australia’s Indigenous Languages

Publisher’s site is here, and publisher’s blurb is reproduced below:

The languages of Aboriginal Australians have attracted a considerable amount of interest among scholars from such diverse fields as linguistics, political studies, archaeology or social history. As a result, there is a large number of studies on a variety of issues to do with Aboriginal Australian languages and the social contexts in which they are used. There is, however, no integrative reader that is easily accessible to the non-specialist in any of the areas concerned. The collection edited by Leitner and Malcolm fills this gap.

Looking at Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and their changing habitats from pre-colonial times to the present, the book covers languages from a structural and functional linguistic perspective, moves on to the issue of cultural maintenance and then turns to language policy, planning and the educational and legal dimensions. Among the many themes discussed are: the social and linguistic history of language contact after 1788 (including the Macassans); the demographic base of indigenous languages; traditional indigenous languages; results of language contact such as the modification of traditional languages and the rise of contact languages (pidgins, creoles, esp. Kriol, Torres Strait Creole, and Aboriginal English); the impact of the Aboriginal languages on mainstream Australian English; maintenance, shift, revival and documentation of indigenous and contact languages; language planning; language in education; language in the media; language in the law courts.

The contributors are leading experts in their fields. The book can serve as a reader for university courses but also as a state-of-the-art work and resource for specialists like applied linguists or educational planners.

McGregor, Nekes and Worms

Anthropos 102 includes an article by Bill McGregor on the editing of Nekes and Worms’ Australian Languages. The abstract can be found here.