School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications

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    /æl/-/el/ transposition in Australian English: Hypercorrection or a competing sound change?
    Loakes, DE ; Hajek, JT ; Fletcher, J (City University of Hong Kong, 2011)
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    Vowel perception in Victoria: variability, confusability and listener expectation
    Loakes, DE ; GRAETZER, N ; Hajek, JT ; Fletcher, J (Macquarie University, 2012)
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    An Investigation of the /el/-/ae l/ Merger in Australian English: A Pilot Study on Production and Perception in South-West Victoria
    Loakes, D ; Clothier, J ; Hajek, J ; Fletcher, J (Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2014-01-01)
    This exploratory study looks at evidence of merger between /el/ and /æl/ in Australian English, and the possible relationship between production and perception that might be involved in such a process. This merger appears to occur primarily in Victoria, although its regional distribution within that state still requires investigation. The phenomenon appears to be motivated by the interaction of three different phonetic processes: increasing lateral velarization; increasing vowel lowering; and misperception/misparsing of the phonetic signal. We focus here on the behaviour of a sample of native speakers from Warrnambool, a regional township in south-west Victoria. Given evidence that some speakers merge the vowels in /el/ and /æl/ while others do not, our participants are categorized as maintainers (those who keep /el/–/æl/ distinct) and combiners (those who merge /el/–/æl/), and we compare how the groups process /el/–/æl/ in perception. Overall results point to an association, according to category, between listeners' own production and perception of /el/–/æl/ in an identification task, although individual variability is also evident and needs to be understood.
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    Identifying /el/-/æl/: A comparison between two regional Australian towns
    Loakes, D ; Hajek, J ; Clothier, J ; Fletcher, J ; Hay, J ; Parnell, E (University of Canterbury, 2014)
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    Short vowels in L1 Aboriginal English spoken in Western Victoria
    LOAKES, D ; Fletcher, J ; Hajek, J ; Clothier, J ; Volchok, B ; Carignan, C ; Tyler, MD (Causal Productions, 2016-12-16)
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    Intonational correlates of subject and object realisation in Mawng (Australian)
    FLETCHER, J ; Stoakes, H ; Singer, R ; Loakes, D ; BARNES, J ; VEILLEUX, N ; SHATTUCK-HUFNAGEL, S ; BRUGOS, A (ISCA, 2016)
    A range of intonational devices can be used in the grammar of information and corrective focus marking in languages with relatively free word order. In this paper we explore whether nouns in the Australian Indigenous language Mawng are realised differently depending on syntactic function and focus. Results show that the pitch level associated with Subjects is higher in conditions of corrective focus compared to other utterance contexts and there is a strong correlation between focus and utterance position. Placing a word in a corrective focus context does not appear to have an effect on word duration in this corpus confirming that pitch register variation and intonational phrasing are the major prosodic cues associated with corrective focus in Mawng.
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    Child-caregiver interaction in two remote Indigenous Australian communities
    VAUGHAN, J ; Wigglesworth, G ; Loakes, D ; Disbray, S ; Moses, K (Frontiers, 2015)
    This paper reports on a study in two remote multilingual Indigenous Australian communities: Yakanarra in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and Tennant Creek in the Barkly region of the Northern Territory. In both communities, processes of language shift are underway from a traditional language (Walmajarri and Warumungu, respectively) to a local creole variety (Fitzroy Valley Kriol and Wumpurrarni English, respectively). The study focuses on language input from primary caregivers to a group of preschool children, and on the children’s productive language. The study further highlights child-caregiver interactions as a site of importance in understanding the broader processes of language shift. We use longitudinal data from two time-points, approximately 2 years apart, to explore changes in adult input over time and developmental patterns in the children’s speech. At both time points, the local creole varieties are the preferred codes of communication for the dyads in this study, although there is some use of the traditional language in both communities. Results show that for measures of turn length (MLT), there are notable differences between the two communities for both the focus children and their caregivers. In Tennant Creek, children and caregivers use longer turns at Time 2, while in Yakanarra the picture is more variable. The two communities also show differing trends in terms of conversational load (MLT ratio). For measures of morphosyntactic complexity (MLU), children and caregivers in Tennant Creek use more complex utterances at Time 2, while caregivers in Yakanarra show less complexity in their language at that time point. The study’s findings contribute to providing a more detailed picture of the multilingual practices at Yakanarra and Tennant Creek, with implications for understanding broader processes of language shift. They also elucidate how children’s language and linguistic input varies diachronically across time. As such, we contribute to understandings of normative language development for non-Western, non middle-class children in multilingual contexts.
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    Accentual prominence and consonant lengthening and strengthening in Mawng
    Fletcher, J ; Stoakes, H ; Loakes, D ; Singer, R ; Wolters, M ; Livingstone, J ; Beattie, B ; Smith, R ; MacMahon, M ; Stuart-Smith, J ; Scobbie, J (University of Glasgow, 2015)
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    SPECTRAL AND DURATIONAL PROPERTIES OF VOWELS IN KUNWINJKU
    FLETCHER, J ; STOAKES, HM ; LOAKES, D ; Butcher, (UNIVERSITY OF SAARLAND, 2007)
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    (Mis)perceiving /el/ ~ /æl/ in Melbourne English: a micro-analysis of sound perception and change
    Loakes, DEL ; Hajek, JTH ; Fletcher, JF (Australasian Speech Science and Technology Australia (ASSTA), 2010)