School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 2 of 2
-
ItemThe Russian language in an Australian environment: a descriptive analysis of English interference in the speech of bilingual Russian migrants( 1973)The purpose of this dissertation is to present a descriptive analysis of English interference phenomena observed in Australian Russian as spoken in the urban communities of Melbourne, Sydney and. Brisbane. The project concentrates on vocabulary and idiom (the level at which the bulk of interference phenomena occurs) but phonological and grammatical aspects are introduced in the analysis of integration processes in Chapter IV. Chapter I contains a survey of previous work on bilingualism, language contact and linguistic interference. The basic concepts pertaining to this type of investigation are discussed and defined. Fieldwork is also described. Material for the study was gathered in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. It consists of tape-recorded interviews with individual informants and group conversations on the following topics: daily activities, including work and recreation, and memorable events that had occurred before and after migration to Australia. Forty-six informants were used in the investigation and they represent both adult and childhood bilinguals, and a cross-section of the different backgrounds that characterise the Russian migrant population in Australia. As well as a classification of the informants, Chapter I also contains a brief outline of the history of Russian migration to Australia and a description of Russian community activities and efforts towards Russian language maintenance in Australia. Chapter II is concerned with a discussion of the fundamental causes of interference in Australian Russian speech. Actual contextual examples of interference phenomena are described, classified and as far as possible explained using the author's own observations and the findings of other researchers in this field. The analysis shows that interference in the speech corpus may be correlated with sociocultural, structural and psychological factors and that the situations in which Russian and English are used, as well as the attitudes of the speaker, play an important role in conditioning the extent and nature of interference. Chapter III presents a classification of interference phenomena according to different modes of interference, namely, the transfer of English identities (words and expressions in their entirety of form and meaning); the transfer of English distributions (the semantic extension of Russian words on the model of English and the translation of English expressions); the transfer of English identities and distributions to form bilingual compounds and phrases. The transfer of English identities was found to outnumber other modes of interference in the corpus. Chapter IV describes the integration processes used by the informants to adapt English items to the phonological and morphological systems of Russian. The examples show a clear pattern of sound substitution of Russian phonemes for English ones, a strong tendency to assign the majority of English nouns to the masculine gender, a preference for the productive declension, conjugation and word-formation patterns. A number of words and expressions are classified as socially integrated or adopted into Australian Russian on the basis of their frequency and range of occurrence. Chapter V discusses the few examples of code-switching between English and. Russian that occur in the corpus. The Conclusion contains a recapitulation of the main findings of this project and a brief discussion of what these findings indicate about the changing function of Russian in Australia. The three Appendices contain a description of the informants, sample interviews and extracts from Unification relevant to Chapter I.
-
ItemA French-Australian writer: Paul Wenz( 1948)Paul Wenz, the Frenchman, came to Australia in 1892, at the age of twenty-three and died at his station, “Rahima”, in New South Wales in 1939. He was an extraordinary person, both as a writer and as a man: living most of his life in Australia, yet never becoming an Australian citizen; a Frenchman leaving his own country to settle overseas – a rare enough thing – and not choosing any of the French colonies, but plumping for a British country, after having roamed North Africa, South America and New Zealand; finally picking Australia; and not only deciding to make his home in the Commonwealth, but determined to go on the land; and not only settling in an outback area, but also writing books; books not about France or things French, but books dealing mainly with Australian or Australian soldiers overseas – and not only writing books, but indeed excellent books, portraying the people and customs of the outback as few have done before or after, combining the best features of French and Australian literary tradition; leavening a gentle, but constructive criticism of Australian habits and oddities with his never failing humour, sensitiveness and sympathy, and preaching as well as living the gospel of good neighbourliness – Henry Lawson’s spirit of mateship-; the whole steeped in a deep admiration for his adopted country, his second home; and in spite of hardships, toil and discouragement loving with all his heart the Australian bush, its solitude, quietness, and all-embracing charm and majesty. To understand this extraordinary personality, we must go back and glance at his childhood at Rheims, discover his relationship with his parents, brothers and sister, look at his upbringing, investigate his tastes and dislikes, follow up his hopes and aspirations, watch him meet visitors from distant countries, and describe his first, though indirect, contacts with Australia.