Loanwords between the Arandic languages and their western neighbours: principles of identification and phonological adaptation

https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/40970

Loanwords between the Arandic languages and their western neighbours: principles of identification and phonological adaptation

By Harold Koch

This paper summarises the characteristics of loanwords, especially the ways in which they are adapted to the structure of the borrowing language, and surveys the various tests that have been provided in both the general historical linguistics literature and Australianist literature for identifying the fact and direction of borrowing. It then provides a case study of loanwords out of and into the Arandic languages; the other languages involved are especially Warlpiri but to some extent dialects of the Western Desert language. The primary focus is on the phonological adaptation of loanwords between languages whose phonological structure differs especially in the presence vs. absence of initial consonants, in consequence of earlier changes whereby Arandic languages lost all initial consonants. While loanwords out of Arandic add a consonant, it is claimed that loanwords into Arandic include two chronological strata: in one the source consonant was preserved but the other (older) pattern involved truncation of the source consonant. Reasons for this twofold behaviour are presented (in terms of diachronic and contrastive phonology), and the examples of the more radical (older) pattern are individually justified as loanwords, using the criteria discussed earlier in the article.

Acquisition of Ergative Case in Warlpiri

Edith Bavin has a chapter on the acquisition of the ergative in Warlpiri, in a book called The Acquisition of Ergativity (Bavin and Stoll, eds)

Hope McManus: Loanword Adaptation

Hope McManus’ Honours Thesis is available from the University of Sydney eScholarship site.

Loanword Adaptation: A study of some Australian Aboriginal Languages

Abstract:

This thesis is a case study of some aspects of the adaptation of English words in several Australian Aboriginal languages, including Martu Wangka, Gamilaraay and Warlpiri. I frame my analysis within Smith’s (to appear) source-similarity model of loanword adaptation. This model exploits loanword-specific faithfulness constraints that impose maximal similarity between the perceived source form and its corresponding loan. Using this model, I show that the conflict of the relevant prosodic markedness constraints and loanword-specific faithfulness constraints drives adaptation. Vowel epenthesis, the most frequent adaptation strategy, allows the recoverability of a maximal amount of information about the source form and ensures that the loan conforms to the constraints of language-internal phonological grammar. Less frequent strategies including deletion and substitution occur in a restricted environment. The essence of the present analysis is minimal violation, a principle that governs loanword adaptation as well as other areas of phonology.

Oxford Handbook of Compounding

The Oxford Handbook of Compounding contains a chapter by Jane Simpson on Warlpiri compounding.

Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages

[includes paper by Carmel O’Shannessy on change in Warlpiri]

Edited by James N. Stanford and Dennis R. Preston

Dartmouth College / Oklahoma State University

Indigenous minority languages have played crucial roles in many areas of linguistics – phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, typology, and the ethnography of communication. Such languages have, however, received comparatively little attention from quantitative or variationist sociolinguistics. Without the diverse perspectives that underrepresented language communities can provide, our understanding of language variation and change will be incomplete. To help fill this gap and develop broader viewpoints, this anthology presents 21 original, fieldwork-based studies of a wide range of indigenous languages in the framework of quantitative sociolinguistics. The studies illustrate how such understudied communities can provide new insights into language variation and change with respect to socioeconomic status, gender, age, clan, lack of a standard, exogamy, contact with dominant majority languages, internal linguistic factors, and many other topics.

Geminates and Light Syllables

Light Syllables and Geminates in Moraic Theory. Mentions Warlpiri.

Colour Universals

Why there are no `colour universals’ in language and thought

Author: Wierzbicka, Anna

Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Volume 14, Number 2, June 2008 , pp. 407-425(19)

Publisher: Blackwell Publishing

 

Abstract:

Do all people live in a world full of colours? Perceptually, yes (unless they are visually impaired), but conceptually, no: there are many languages which have no word for `colour’ and in which the question `what colour is it?’ cannot be asked and presumably does not arise. Yet the powerful and still immensely influential theory of Berlin and Kay assumes otherwise. While building on my earlier work on colour semantics, this article brings new evidence against the Berlin and Kay paradigm, and presents a fundamentally different approach. The new data on which the argument is based come from Australian languages. In particular, the article presents a detailed study of the visual world reflected in the Australian language Warlpiri and in Warlpiri ways of speaking, showing that while Warlpiri people have no `colour-talk’ (and no `colour-practices’), they have a rich visual discourse of other kinds, linked with their own cultural practices. It also offers a methodology for identifying indigenous meanings without the grid of the English concept `colour’, and for revealing `the native’s point of view’. Résumé

Tout le monde vit-il dans un monde plein de couleurs ? Du point de vue de la perception, la réponse est oui (sauf en cas de handicap visuel), mais au niveau des concepts, c’est non : dans de nombreuses langues, le mot « couleur » n’existe pas et la question « de quelle couleur est ceci ? » ne peut pas être posée, et ne se pose probablement même pas. Pourtant, théorie de Berlin et Kay, puissante et encore immensément influente, affirme le contraire. Tout en exploitant ses travaux antérieurs sur la sémantique des couleurs, l’auteur apporte de nouvelles preuves à l’encontre du paradigme de Berlin et Kay et présente une approche fondamentalement différente. Les nouvelles données sur lesquelles se base son argumentation proviennent des langues australiennes. L’article présente en particulier une étude détaillée du monde visuel tel qu’en rend compte la langue australienne warlpiri. Les expressions dans cette langue montrent que bien que les Warlpiri n’aient pas de « langage des couleurs » (ni de « pratique des couleurs »), ils ont un riche discours visuel à propos d’autres propriétés liées à leur propre pratique culturelle. L’article expose également une méthodologie pour identifier les significations indigènes en dehors de la grille du concept occidental de « couleur », et pour révéler « le point de vue indigène ».

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2008.00509.x

Morphological and abstract case

 

Linguistic Inquiry

 

Winter 2008, Vol. 39, No. 1, Pages 55-101

Posted Online January 4, 2008.

(doi:10.1162/ling.2008.39.1.55)

Morphological and Abstract Case

Julie Anne Legate

Department of Linguistics, 217 Morrill Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853. jal252@cornell.edu

 

This article examines the relationship between abstract and morphological case, arguing that morphological case realizes abstract Case features in a postsyntactic morphology, according to the Elsewhere Condition. A class of prima facie ergative-absolutive languages is identified wherein intransitive subjects receive abstract nominative Case and transitive objects receive abstract accusative Case; these are realized through a morphological default, which is often mislabeled as absolutive. Further support comes from split ergativity based on a nominal hierarchy, which is shown to have a morphological source. Proposals that case and agreement are purely morphological phenomena are critiqued.

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)

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.