School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemIt's a word isn't it? Language affection as an outcome of language programmes.(School of Languages and Linguistics, 2000)Structural linguistics has a particular view of the integrity of language which may be detrimental to the construction of appropriate language maintenance programmes for small indigenous languages. In this paper I outline ways in which ‘affective’ use of language may be the most useful target of language programmes in some situations, based on my experience with Australian indigenous languages. Fluency in a language may not be the achievable outcome of a language course for a number of reasons, not least among them being the enormity of the task perceived by learners of the language. For languages with few or no speakers we should be able to construct language programmes in which the use of a small number of terms in the target language, for purposes of identity, is a sufficient and realistic outcome.
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ItemThe Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive (ASEDA)(De Gruyter, 1995)
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ItemKaipuleohone, The University of Hawai'i's Digital Ethnographic Archive(University of Hawaii Press, 2009)The University of Hawai‘i’s Kaipuleohone Digital Ethnographic Archive was created in 2008 as part of the ongoing language documentation initiative of the Department of Linguistics. The archive is a repository for linguistic and ethnographic data gathered by linguists, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and others. Over the past year, the archive has grown from idea to reality, due to the hard work of faculty and students, as well as support from inside and outside the Department. This paper will outline the context for digital archiving and provide an overview of the development of Kaipuleohone, examining both concrete and theoretical issues that have been addressed along the way. The creation of the archive has not been problem-free and the archive itself is an ongoing process rather than a finished product. We hope that this paper will be useful to scholars and language workers in other areas who are considering setting up their own digital archive.
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ItemHandbooks of Aboriginal languages(Institute for Aboriginal Development, 1986)Handbooks of Australian Aboriginal languages have been or are currently being produced in various parts of the country. In this paper we wish to address some issues and problems we have encountered in compiling handbooks which may have wider theoretical import and practical applications.
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ItemComputers in Field Linguistics(Elsevier, 2006)Computers have been associated with field linguistics from their earliest days, as witness the enthusiasm with which computers were embraced by linguists, from mainframe computers in the 1960s to personal computers in the 1980s. While initially it was common to force our efforts into the framework provided by particular software, we are now more aware of the need to see the data itself as the primary concern of the analyst and not the software that we use to manipulate the data. Inasmuch as it allows us to carry out the main functions desired by a field linguist, software is a tool through which our data passes, the data becoming transformed in some way, but surviving the journey sufficiently to live on, independent of any software, into the future.
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ItemEOPAS, the EthnoER online representation of interlinear text(University of Sydney, 2006)One of the goals of the Australian Research Council-funded E-research project called Sharing access and analytical tools for ethnographic digital media using high speed networks, or simply EthnoER, is to take outputs of normal linguistic analytical processes and present them online in a system we have called the EthnoER online presentation and annotation system, or EOPAS. EthnoER has twenty-three chief investigators from ten organisations, both Australian and international, at Universities and other agencies, including the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), language centres and language archives. The project includes a set of testbed projects with varying requirements for online annotation and presentation of data. We aim to provide online mechanisms for annotating data in order that, for example, archival media files can be annotated by experts with local knowledge and that samples of that media, perhaps a three minute chunk, can be presented so that users can get a sense of the quality of the recording and other information that may influence their decision to download the whole file.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableHandbook of Western Australian Aboriginal Languages South of the Kimberley Region(Pacific Linguistics Publishers, 1993)An annotated bibliography and guide to the indigenous languages of part of Western Australia. Information on individual languages can be found via a geographic, alphabetic, or language family index.
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ItemDocumentation in practice: developing a linked media corpus of South Efate(Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2004)There is a growing need for linguists working with endangered languages to be able to provide documentation of those languages that will serve two functions, not only the analysis and presentation of examples and texts, but also the means for accessing the material in the future. In this paper I describe a workflow for building documentation into a language description developed in the course of writing a grammar of South Efate, an Oceanic language of Vanuatu, for a PhD dissertation. I suggest that, with appropriate tools, the effort of recording and transcribing documentary field recordings can result in a media corpus from which we can produce instant links between text and media, which in turn enriches our analysis. Further, these annotations are in an ideal form for archiving and for providing access to data by the speakers of the language. I take it as axiomatic that we must archive our recordings and associated material and that this step is integral to the larger project of language documentation.
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ItemALS Hypothetical( 2005-09)A hypothetical scenario prepared by Simon Musgrave and Nick Thieberger and the presentation was by John Henderson (who added his own flourishes).This scenario draws out some significant ethical issues facing linguists, in particular those arising from the use of recording media and, increasingly, from more in depth studies of small, so-called ‘endangered’ languages in use in various contexts. The scenario is a background against which the panel can discuss the issues in character, and it should be made clear to the audience the characters do not reflect on the real-life panel members except in occasional asides, and that any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is inevitable.
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ItemLanguage is like a carpet: Carl-Georg von Brandenstein and Australian languages(Pacific Linguistics Research School of Pacific and Asian Stu, 2008)Born in 1909 in Hannover, Germany, Carl Georg Christoph Freiherr von Brandenstein (Carl) entered the Australian linguistic scene in the 1960s with recordings and analysis of languages of Western Australia, mainly from the Pilbara. Over the next thirty years he also recorded information about Ngadjumaya from the south-east of WA and Noongar in the south-west. His idiosyncratic style didn’t help his reputation in a linguistic scene which became increasingly monocultural in its approach during his research career. He was never part of the mainstream of linguistics in Australia, but followed his own path, and has left a legacy of records of languages for which little else is known. He was always generous in providing material when requested, as much to champion his theories as to engage in academic openness. This chapter discusses Carl’s contribution and the period of Australian linguistics in which he worked.