The design and trial of an interactive computer program Lata-kuunu to support Warlpiri school children’s literacy learning

Research report by Wendy Baarda on using computers to teach literacy. rtf available for downloading here.

(via Jane Simpson)

OREL

The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project has just launched OREL: Online Resources for Endangered Languages.

OREL is a new and unique resource – a library of over 200 annotated and categorised links to websites for people interested in endangered language documentation and revitalisation. To access OREL go to http://www.hrelp.org/languages/resources/

There is a version of OREL also available in Arabic at http://www.hrelp.org/languages/resources/orel-ar/index.html

Peter Austin
Marit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics
Director, Endangered Languages Academic Programme
SOAS

Annie Langlois: Wordplay in Teenage Pitjantjatjara

Australian Journal of Linguistics: 26/2.

Here is the abstract of the paper:

‘Secret languages’ of children and teenagers are found in many cultures and societies. In the Pitjantjatjara community of Areyonga in Central Australia, teenage girls have developed a language that allows them secrecy in their private conversation. They called this ‘special’ language the ‘short-way language’. Though the data is limited,1¹This paper is based on data collected between September 1994 and December 1995. this article provides an initial description of the language. An account of the Areyonga community is also provided to support the description.

Carmel O’Shannessy, Language contact and children’s bilingual acquisition

Carmel O’Shannessy, Language contact and children’s bilingual acquisition: Learning a mixed language and Warlpiri in northern Australia. University of Sydney. Supervisors: Melissa Bowerman and Penelope Brown (MPI Nijmegen), and Jane Simpson (University of Sydney).

This dissertation documents the emergence of a new language, Light Warlpiri, in the multilingual community of Lajamanu in northern Australia. It then examines the acquisition of Light Warlpiri language, and of the heritage language, Lajamanu Warlpiri, by children. Light Warlpiri has arisen from contact between Lajamanu Warlpiri (a Pama-Nyungan language), Kriol (an English-based creole), and varieties of English. It is a Mixed Language, meaning that none of its source languages can be considered to be the sole parent language. Most verbs and the verbal morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol, while most nouns and the nominal morphology are from Warlpiri.

The language input to children is complex. Adults older than about thirty speak Lajamanu Warlpiri and code-switch into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Younger adults, the parents of the current cohort of children, speak Light Warlpiri and code-switch into Lajamanu Warlpiri and into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, the two main input languages to children, both indicate A arguments with ergative case-marking (and they share one allomorph of the marker), but Lajamanu Warlpiri includes the marker much more consistently than Light Warlpiri. Word order is variable in both languages. Children learn both languages from birth, but they target Light Warlpiri as the language of their everyday interactions, and they speak it almost exclusively until four to six years of age. Adults and children show similar patterns of ergative marking and word order in Light Warlpiri. But differences between age groups are found in ergative marking in Lajamanu Warlpiri – for the oldest group of adults, ergative marking is obligatory, but for younger adults and children, it is not.

Determining when children differentiate between two input languages has been a major goal in the study of bilingual acquisition. The two languages in this study share lexical and grammatical properties, making distinctions between them quite subtle. Both adults and children distribute ergative marking differently in the two languages, but show similar word order patterns in both. However the children show a stronger correlation between ergative marking and word order patterns than do the adults, suggesting that they are spearheading processes of language change. In their comprehension of sentences in both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, adults use a case-marking strategy to identify the A argument (i.e. N+erg = A argument, No = O argument). The children are not adult-like in using this strategy at age 5, when they also used a word order strategy, but they gradually move towards being adult-like with increased age.

For copies, contact: Carmel O’Shannessy, Language Resource Officer, DEET NT, PO Box 1420, Alice Springs NT 0870, ph no: 08 89 517 006, carmeloshannessy-at-gmail.com.

Two jobs in linguistics at Rice

My department will have two positions available next year. One is a post-doc position for a specialist in (child) language acquisition. The other is a one-year lectureship with open specialization. The ads are posted below. The original job announcements had two mistakes in them – electronic applications are no longer encouraged (please send us paper copies!) and a PhD is required by the start date, not the application date.

I will be one of the department reps at the LSA annual meeting in Anaheim. We will not be conducting formal interviews, but my colleague Nany Niedzielski and I will be available to answer any questions applicants might have about the position and the department.

Ozbib update

OZBib

A linguistic bibliography of Aboriginal Australia

and the Torres Strait Islands

SUPPLEMENT 1999-2006

Compiled by Geraldine Triffitt

Published by Mulini Press, Canberra

OZBIB was compiled by Lois Carrington and Geraldine Triffitt and published by Pacific Linguistics in 1999. Its aim was to provide a full bibliographical listing of all published materials and theses on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and linguistics. This Supplement covers the period from July 1999 to September 2006 plus addenda from OZBIB. There are both language and subject indexes to the bibliography.

OZBIB is broad in scope. It lists both theoretical and applied linguistics works. It covers the description and analysis of languages, dictionaries, grammars, works on bilingual education, language policy, language use in courts of law, the experiences of language speakers and the linguistic output of language centres. Included in the Indigenous languages are creoles and Aboriginal English.

Available from

Naviti Documentation, PO Box 537, MAWSON, ACT 2607
No Credit Card facilities available

$30 + postage and handling.

Postage rates: Australia $5.50: Overseas air mail $10-$17 depending on destination

Geraldine Triffitt is a librarian with linguistic qualifications from the Australian National University. She worked as Bibliographer (Linguistics) and Collection Manager (Linguistics) at AIAS and AIATSIS Library from 1986 to 1997.

Grammars of Space

CUP page for Levinson and Wilkins (eds) Grammars of Space is here. A detailed table of contents list can be found here.

Publisher’s blurb:

Spatial language – that is, the way languages structure the spatial domain – is an important area of current research, offering new insights into one of the most central areas of human cognition. In this pioneering collection, a team of leading scholars review the spatial domain across a wide variety of languages. Contrary to existing assumptions, they show that there is great variation in the way space is conceptually structured across languages, thus substantiating the controversial question of how far the foundations of human cognition are innate. Grammars of Space is a supplement to the psychological information provided in its companion volume, Space in Language and Cognition. It represents a new kind of work in linguistics, ‘Semantic Typology’, which asks what are the semantic parameters used to structure particular semantic fields. Comprehensive and informative, it will be essential reading for those working on comparative linguistics, spatial cognition, and the interface between them.

Language Archives Newsletter

Volume 8 of LAN is up.