School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses
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ItemLanguages of the body : Kathy Acker's corporeal sublime(University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemIn states and up town and down country : poetic landscapes of Richard Hugo(University of Melbourne, 2006)
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ItemHurdy-gurdy: new articulations( 2016)The purpose of this thesis is to expand existing literature concerning the hurdy-gurdy as a contemporary musical instrument. Notably, it addresses the lack of hurdy-gurdy literature in the context of contemporary composition and performance. Research into this subject has been triggered by the author’s experience as a hurdy-gurdy performer and composer and the importance of investigating and documenting the hurdy-gurdy as an instrument capable of performing well outside the idioms of traditional music. This thesis consists of a collection of new works for hurdy-gurdy and investigation of existing literature including reference to the author’s personal experience as a hurdy-gurdy composer and performer. It will catalogue and systematically document a selection of hurdy-gurdy techniques and extended performance techniques, and demonstrate these within the practical context of new music compositions created by the author. This creative work and technique investigation and documentation is a valuable resource for those seeking deeper practical and academic understanding of the hurdy-gurdy within the context of contemporary music making.
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ItemDepictive secondary predication and quantization( 2017)This thesis analyses depictive secondary predicates and their restrictions. Depictives can be predicated of either the subject or object of a clause (e.g. John ate the fish drunk vs John ate the fish raw). These types are known as Subject-oriented and Object-oriented depictives respectively. Object-oriented depictives show more restrictions in their distribution than Subject-oriented depictives, e.g. Johni pushed Maryj drunki /∗j . This depends on the verb class, and Object-oriented depictives are generally most acceptable when predicated of objects of accomplishment verbs. This restriction has led to the claim that Object-oriented depictives are unacceptable with non-accomplishment verbs. However, this is incorrect, and there are cases of Object-oriented depictives being acceptable with non-accomplishment verbs, like e.g. John pushed the cart loaded. This thesis addresses this variable acceptability, and presents an account that captures and explains the difference in acceptability of Object-oriented depictives with different verb classes. The variable acceptability of Object-oriented (adjectival) depictives with objects of activity verbs depends on the type of adjective scale used, and this is ultimately due to the depictive’s sensitivity to quantization. Since quantization surfaces in various domains (e.g. Mass/Count in nominal, telic/atelic in verbal, Closed/Open scales in adjectival, Stage-Level/Individual-Level predicate in the predicative domain), this predicts that depictive acceptability should interact with changes in these domains, which is shown to be borne out. This can be extended to interactions with lexical aspect more generally, which captures the variable acceptability of Object-oriented depictives with different verb classes. Based on this, this thesis poses the Depictive Aspectuality Constraint: Object-oriented depictives and the sentence they are contained within must be aspectually compatible with durativity and quantization. This constraint gives a greater empirical coverage of depictive behaviour than previous analyses, and successfully predicts and explains previously unnoticed interactions of depictives with other domains.
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ItemFriends are friends are friends: a study of communication and meaning on Facebook( 2016)As the impact and capacity of online technologies grows, we are increasingly spending much of our lives communicating using social networking sites such as Facebook. These novel ways of interacting with the world present many avenues for research that challenge the way we think about communication and the role it plays in our lives. All communication is constructed and understood in relation to time and space, which are fused inseparably to form the context of social action. At the same time, online media are subject to a process of ‘context collapse’ (Marwick & boyd (2010) or ‘convergence’ (Rambe, 2013), where multiple and distinct contexts or audiences merge into a single group. These environments can and do destabilise traditional conceptualisations of time, space and the nature of communicative interactions. This study therefore, conceptualises Facebook primarily as a mediating artefact through which meanings can be created and communicated, rather than simply as a technological tool comprising a set of features or affordances. The aim of this research is to explore how Facebook users communicate with their ‘friends’ in such unstable and ever-changing environments. The research adopted a mixed methods approach, which involved the analysis of data from 230 online surveys and 9 interviews. Findings indicated that Facebook ‘friends’ can and do inhabit multiple spaces simultaneously, in particular, those that are both personal and professional. Importantly, despite the fact that participants felt very strongly that Facebook should offer a personal space and should not encroach on their professional lives, this was a conviction that many struggled to reinforce. The destabilising nature of this interactive communication environment resulted in participants feeling dragged into multiple digital and physical spaces simultaneously. This study concludes that Facebook is a source of tension: it creates a mediating and interactive environment that facilitates fluid and multimodal forms of communication between its users across multiple time-space zones simultaneously. It is also a site of struggle, in which participants attempt to resist a sense of ‘context collapse’ and ‘convergence’ within and between online and offline interactions. Further research into the nature of this struggle and how it is played out between other Facebook ‘friends’, and across other forms of technologically mediated communication environments, would be very valuable.
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ItemLanguage and identity in Melbourne's Francophone Mauritian community( 2007)Australia’s 18,000-plus Mauritian immigrants make up the country’s largest single French-speaking community, but they also speak Kreol, a creole language specific to Mauritius and its dependent island Rodrigues. Kreol is both the lingua franca of Mauritius and the L1 of a growing majority of people there. Census data show that in Australia, Mauritians maintain French as a language at home at much higher rates than Kreol, while this and earlier research by the author (Adler, Lord & McKelvie 2003) indicates that the two languages are used and valued differently in the immigrant community. A starting point for this study was the idea that although social conditions affecting immigrants after they have settled in their adopted country must impact on their ability to maintain first language(s), their pre-migration experiences, beliefs and identities should also be taken into account but are often ignored in accounts of language maintenance and language shift (LM/LS). Through a thematic analysis of interviews with 17 French- and Kreol-speakers from Melbourne’s Mauritian community, this study explores the language attitudes these immigrants acquired growing up in Mauritius, and investigates the impact of these attitudes on postmigration maintenance of French and Kreol. It then examines the part French and Kreol play in post-migration identity construction. The study shows that their premigration beliefs, attitudes and experiences were in fact extremely relevant, even decisive, to subsequent LM/LS and language use for this group of Mauritians. Specifically, the study shows that the attitudes to and beliefs about French and Kreol that the study participants brought with them from Mauritius led them to put more effort into transmitting French than Kreol to their children, but have also led them not to resist a shift by children to English at home. However, for themselves, the participants continued to use both French and Kreol at home with spouses and in the Mauritian immigrant community, and in the latter context, some of the dominant French-speakers appeared to be using more Kreol socially than they would once have done in Mauritius. The research harnesses Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, in particular his concepts of ‘habitus’ and ‘symbolic violence/domination’, to show how the participants’ attitudes were formed and how they have played out in post-migration language choices and use. For these 17 participants growing up in Mauritius, dissatisfaction with the economic and social disadvantages of using Kreol and with the low status offered to Kreol-speakers was transformed – in an instance of the symbolic violence described by Bourdieu – into an undervaluing of the language itself, and that French was misrecognised as an inherently superior and more useful language, a differential valuation embedded in diglossic usage in Mauritius. This process led the study participants to accord French a greater symbolic value, which has persisted in the postmigration context regardless of the fact that in that broader Australian context French and Kreol are of similar value to the Mauritian community.
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ItemTime and place in the books of Sophie Calle( 2015)Sophie Calle is a French photographer and writer who has been working since the 1970s. She produces photographic works for exhibition that adapt perfectly to book form since their content is narrative in nature and almost always include written as well as photographic content. The aim of this work is to reveal the determinant role of place in producing her work. Mikhael Bakhtin proposed that the chronotope (time and place) had a direct influence on the development of literary genre and claimed time as the dominant element in this process. Paul Smethurst overturned this order, showing that place is the dominant chronotopic element in postmodern literature. This is true of Sophie Calle’s work in which both time and place are detectable influences but in which place is determinant of narrative development and content, the existence of extratextual references and the presentation of the work. Finally, place determines how works are grouped together as Calle resituates her exhibited work and makes places for its publication in books.
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ItemAspectual expression in Ngandi: past and present( 2015)Ngandi is a Gunwinyguan language spoken in south-eastern Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. Like other Gunwinyguan languages, there is an obligatory aspectual distinction in how past eventualities are expressed in Ngandi. Heath’s 1978 grammar describes two past inflections: Past Punctual (PPUN) and Past Continuous (PCON), which are commonly accepted to contrast with respect to viewpoint aspect (perfective and imperfective viewpoint respectively). Ngandi also utilises a number of non-inflectional prefixes which appear to have aspectual connotations, as well as verb root reduplication. The language itself is rarely spoken in the 21st century, and is considered moribund. This thesis provides an analysis of Ngandi past aspectual expression, utilising resources from two timeframes: texts published in Heath (1978b), as well as elicitation exercises conducted in 2013. The thesis addresses three research questions: 1. What is the nature of the aspectual contrast found in the Ngandi inflectional system, in past positive contexts? 2. In what way, if any, does non-inflectional verbal morphology and verb root reduplication function to influence aspectual interpretation in past positive contexts? 3. Given Ngandi is a moribund language, how has the manner of aspectual expression changed in the last 40 years? Analysis of the 1978 texts takes two forms: a general overview of the functions of the inflections, non-inflectional morphology and verb root reduplication; as well as an in-depth analysis of selected narratives using Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT). It is shown that the PPUN functions solely to communicate perfective viewpoint aspect, supported at times by the discourse marker -ja-. The PCON inflection generally functions as a marker of imperfective viewpoint aspect: the reading of the eventuality depends both on the situation type of the verb as well as the presence of non-inflectional morphology. At times, however, the PCON is observed to communicate perfective viewpoint aspect with certain situation types. This is also a function of the PRS inflection, which is used to communicate ‘historical present’ within texts based in the past: the viewpoint aspect presented is dependent on context. Elicitation sessions conducted in 2013 indicate that in this now moribund language, the rare perfective function of PCON and the flexibility of the PRS inflection are trends that have expanded over the last 41 years. The perfective viewpoint function of PCON has extended to include most situation types, and the PRS inflection at times supersedes the use of PPUN or PCON with this function. Durative verbs are more likely to take a range of inflections in the communication both perfective and imperfective viewpoint, with other factors playing a role; while punctual verbs are more likely to take PPUN to communicate perfective viewpoint, and will only take PCON in imperfective viewpoint contexts. The in-depth study of an aspectual system in a language such as Ngandi contributes invaluable information to aid further research into aspectual expression in the Gunwinyguan language family as a whole, as well as setting the scene for the study of the changes occurring within aspectual systems in situations of language change.
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ItemBaudelaire, Wilde and the Spatial Dynamics of Decadence( 2014)This thesis illuminates the spatial dynamics of decadence in the works of Baudelaire and Wilde, writers who have been particularly associated with decadence in France and in England. Baudelaire was portrayed as its forefather by Gautier, Bourget and Huysmans, whereas Wilde was depicted by Symons as its representative in England. This thesis redefines decadence as a matrix which produces, within imagination, a decadent universe which is confining. If decadence etymologically refers to physical, moral and social decline, it is also described by the philosopher Jankélévitch in his article entitled “La décadence” as an ensemble of symptoms experienced by a subjective consciousness which are manifested in its creations. This thesis is founded on the hypothesis that these symptoms are dynamically reflected in the literary space of decadent works which functions as much more than a setting. This hypothesis is in turn grounded on Bakhtin’s theory of the chronotope which posits literary space as dynamic conjunction of time and space. It is also grounded on Bachelard’s theory of space and imagination which describes literary space as reflexive, resonant and moulded by consciousness. In order to bring to light the spatial dynamics of decadence, this project relies on these theories as methodological instruments. Furthermore, according to Foucault’s concept of heterotopias, certain compartmentalised spaces shelter narratives of reality which differ from the norm. Understanding decadence to be forging such a narrative, this project shall also explore the heterotopias appearing in Baudelaire and Wilde’s poetic universes. Its aims are to understand the construction of decadence as a confining universe and to identify whether a way out of this confinement is proposed either in Baudelaire’s or in Wilde’s works.
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ItemTiwi revisited: a reanalysis of traditional Tiwi verb morphology( 2013)Traditional Tiwi is a language isolate within the Australian language group, traditionally spoken on the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin. This language exhibits the most complex verb structure of any Australian language. Altogether there are 18 distinct verb slots; 14 prefixes and 4 suffixes. They encode subject, object and oblique arguments, they inflect for tense, aspect and mood, the location and direction of events with respect to the speaker, and the time of day that an event takes place. They also take prefixes and suffixes denoting associated motion, can be argument-raised by a causative or detransitivised by derivational morphology, and can take incorporated nominals, incorporated verbs, and incorporated comitative or privative arguments. Traditional Tiwi has not been adequately described. Previous descriptions are limited and do not cover verb morphology with enough detail. This thesis brings together previous descriptions, early recorded data, and adds newly collected data and findings to produce an updated description of the language, with special reference to the verb morphology. I focus in particular on two aspects of the verb morphology: agreement and incorporation. The Traditional Tiwi agreement system of inflecting verbs shows a high degree of complexity due to the interactions between subject, object and tense marking. I argue for the occurrence of an otherwise unreported phenomenon by which agreement affixes can shift between various controllers depending on the morphosyntactic context. Incorporation is also highly complex, as with other northern Australian languages that exhibit this feature. There are four distinct types of incorporation including verb incorporation, comitative and privative constructions, body part incorporation and regular nominal incorporation. I describe these with reference to incorporation phenomena in other Australian languages. Traditional Tiwi however, is no longer spoken; the last two speakers died in 2012. The majority of the data on which this thesis is based was collected with one of these two last speakers, and therefore represents possibly the last documentary linguistic record of this important language.