Paakantyi and Arabana Possession

Luise Hercus: The influence of English on possessive systems as shown in two Aboriginal languages, Arabana (northern SA) and Paakantyi (Darling River, NSW)

http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/6630

Nostratic

Pama-Nyungan and Nostratic. [Link goes to PDF which I don't dare try to download on dialup.]

Sacred Earth

In my search for new Pama-Nyungan articles, I came across this CD. A good birthday present for the Australianist in your life?

Australia’s Linguistic Profile

Rebuilding Australia’s Linguistic Profile: Recent Developments in Research on Australian Aboriginal Languages

Alice Gaby.

The more than 250 languages spoken in Australia prior to the nineteenth century exhibit both striking similarities to one another and remarkable variation. The exponential increase in what linguists have learned about these languages since the 1960s has been sadly in inverse proportion to the number of people learning them as a mother tongue. This article will review some of the most exciting recent developments in Australianist linguistic research, while also acknowledging the context of language loss and disenfranchisement within which they are situated. The message it offers is ultimately optimistic, however. For the languages still spoken regularly, research into the previously neglected components of the multimodal communicative system that is language in use is adding new depth to the existing documentation. For the majority of Australia’s indigenous languages – where economic, social and political pressures have taken their toll – a different set of concerns has emerged. Linguists are now grappling with a range of theoretical and empirical questions regarding the mechanisms of language contact and attrition, even as they continue to contribute new insights into the traditional ‘core’ fields of phonetics and phonology, morphosyntax, semantics and historical linguistics. Moreover, an increasing consciousness of the respective roles of outsider researcher and speech community is changing not only the methodologies of linguists ‘in the field’, but also the research itself. All of these factors will shape the directions of future Australianist linguistic research, as well as the number and nature of languages that remain to be studied.

Ergative Marking of Intransitive Subjects in Warrwa

Bill McGregor, University of Aarhus. AJL 27/2

Abstract

As in a number of ergative languages, the ergative case-marker -na∼-ma in Warrwa is occasionally found on the subject of intransitive clauses, indeed even on the subject of verbless clauses. I argue that the presence vs. absence of the ergative marker in this environment is not random free variation, but is motivated and highly constrained. The paper is concerned with identifying the motivations. It is proposed, based on an investigation of uses in a corpus of narrative and other texts, that two features are relevant: (a) semantic - the subject is highly agentive; and (b) referential - the identity of the subject is not predictable: it is unexpected. Use of the ergative on an intransitive subject thus highlights both the agentivity and the unexpectedness of the subject. I argue that, contrary to recent claims by some, Warrwa is not an active language: it is not the case that -na∼-ma groups together some intransitive and transitive subjects, while zero marking groups some intransitive subjects with transitive objects; these groupings are, I argue, purely formal and epiphenomenal. Finally, I situate optional marking of intransitive subjects in Warrwa in a wider theory of optional case marking.

This is a revised version of a paper presented to the Australian Linguistic Society Conference, University of Queensland, 7 July 2006. Thanks to the audience for useful questions, and to Jane Simpson and two anonymous referees for comments on an earlier draft, which was written during a two month stay in the Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, July–August 2006. I am grateful to Andy Pawley for making me welcome in his department, and providing infrastructure support for the duration of my stay. I am also grateful to Alec Coupe, Alice Gaby, Felicity Meakins, Carmel O’Shannessy, Edgar Suter, and Jean-Christophe Verstraete for making unpublished work available to me, and for discussions of optional ergative marking. The fieldwork on which this paper is based was funded by Australian Research Council Large Grants A58930745 and A59332055. The initial research was undertaken during tenure of a Research Fellowship at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1998; this was followed up by further research at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. Thanks are due to these organizations for their support. My greatest debt of gratitude, of course, goes to my Warrwa teachers, Maudie Lennard and †Freddy Marker.

Reassessing Karnic

Gavan Breen, in Australian Journal of Linguistics. Volume 27, Issue 2 October 2007 , pages 175 - 199

Previous work on the proposed Karnic subgroup, comprising languages formerly spoken in the Lake Eyre Basin, a large area of eastern-central Australia, has been reviewed and found to be wanting in several respects. Application of a modified lexicostatistic method, together with grammatical comparisons, suggests that the western branch of the proposed three-branch subgroup (the southern portion of which is excluded from the subgroup in one of the studies) may in fact not be genetically closely related to the central and eastern branches. Detailed reconstruction is still needed to confirm the genetic unity of this branch. Two languages formerly included in the eastern branch are shown to be not closely related. Recent analyses of the central branch are supported.

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.

Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork

Many academic disciplines depend on analysis of primary data captured during fieldwork. Increasingly, researchers today are using digital methods for the whole life cycle of their primary data, from capture to organisation, submission to a repository or archive, and later access and dissemination in publications, teaching resources and conference presentations. This conference and workshop will showcase a number of projects that have been developing innovative and sustainable ways of managing such data.

The conference will be in three parts: Academic papers on the theme “Fieldwork: from creation to archive and back”; demonstrations of tools and platforms for submitting and disseminating digital ethnographic material; and a hands-on workshop to introduce researchers to relevant recommended tools.

Held at  the University of Sydney

Organised by PARADISEC (http://paradisec.org.au)

December 4 - 6, 2006

Abstract Deadline: August 30, 2006
Paper Deadline: October 20, 2006
For further details see: http://conferences.arts.usyd.edu.au/index.php?cf=11

suspended affixation

SUSPENDED AFFIXATION DAY

Konstanz
24 June 2006

CALL FOR PAPERS

Suspended Affixation Day is not to be confused with Ascension Day, which is
on Thursday, 25 May, while the former will only be held on Saturday, 24
June.  We'd like to invite phonologists, morphologists, syntacticians, and
semanticists (and why not pragmaticists too) to join us in paying homage to
the marvels of suspended affixation on that day.

Suspended affixation is what you see, or indeed don't see, in this Turkish
sentence:

Tebrik ve teSekkür-ler-im-i sunaržm.
congratulation and thank-PL-1SG-ACC I.offer
'I offer my congratulations and thanks'

In a syntactic construction (coordination) where two members (nouns) can
potentially be affixed for the same inflectional categories (number, person
and number of possessor, case), one (the first) isn't.  Though it could be
(tebrik-ler-im-i …), with no great semantic or pragmatic difference in
this particular case.  As everybody knows, however, it does make a
difference whether you suspend or don't in cases like this:

Laurel('s) and Hardy's films

The term "suspended affixation" was probably coined by G. L. Lewis in his
Turkish Grammar (1967), and has subsequently found particular favour in
Turkic linguistics (see further
http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/home/kabak/papers/Kabak2007saff.pdf).
However, the phenomenon as such had been much discussed in morphological
typology, most notably, in the Humboldt/Steinthal tradition, by Franz
Nikolaus Finck in his Die Haupttypen des Sprachbaus (1910), where it is
subsumed under the notion of "group inflection".  (What's nowadays called
"phrase marking", as opposed to "word marking".  See the introduction to
Double Case, if you find the original sources too heavy-going.)

At any rate, suspended affixation is not something limited to inflection;
on certain conditions, derivational affixes can be suspended, too:

This stuff is neither eat- nor drink-able.

If you need further background, drop us a line.

For Suspended Affixation Day we invite papers on questions such as the
following, and whichever others you feel bear on the issue:

*  In which languages can affixation be suspended?
(surely not in all …)

*  What kinds of syntactic constructions admit suspended affixation in the
relevant languages?
(coordination, tight/loose apposition, subordinative constructions, …)

*  What does suspended affixation tell us about the nature of constructions?

*  Which kinds of morphological milieus are conducive to affix suspension?
(agglutination, with affixes separatist, invariant, loosely-bound, not
flexion, with affixes cumulative, variant, tightly-bound?)

*  What kinds of semantic and pragmatic constraints curb suspended
affixation in circumstances where it would be possible on morphosyntactic
and phonological grounds?
(semantic unity, scope, frequency, …)

*  What kinds of prosodic constraints curb suspended affixation?
(phonological wordhood of bases, prosodic weight of affixes, …)

*  What notions of "word" and "phrase" are relevant for accounting for
suspended affixation?
(phonological, morphological, syntactic …)

*  What is the relation of suspended affixation to phrase marking?
(to patterns such as these:  N-case;  N-ADJ-case)

Unlike Ascension, Suspended Affixation Day will be an informal affair.  If
interested in giving a paper (length within reason:  do send a title,
preferably with an abstract), or just to listen in and join in the
discussion, let us know asap, and we'll be in touch.

The presenters and discussants will minimally include the three undersigned
locals and two local affiliates, Amanda Pounder (Calgary) and Olya Gurevich
(Berkeley).

Unfortunately we can't cover travel costs.  We'd be at your assistance,
though, helping you find (i) your way to Konstanz and (ii) reasonable
accommodation.

Frans Plank (frans.plank@uni-konstanz.de)
Baržs Kabak (baris.kabak@uni-konstanz.de)
Bernhard Wälchli (bernhard.waelchli@uni-konstanz.de)

Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft & Sonderforschungsbereich 471,
Universität Konstanz
Konstanz, Germany