School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemBridging Australian Indigenous language learner’s guides with SLA materials development frameworks(Taylor and Francis Group, 2022)The learner’s guide (LG) is a genre of pedagogical materials for Australian Indigenous languages, but LGs developed by field linguists are often questioned regarding their capacity to effectively facilitate language learning and, eventually, language revitalisation. This reflects a gap in the literature where applied linguistics perspectives are limited in Indigenous language studies, and vice versa. This study aims to address this gap by examining nine existing LGs published over the past four decades using a modified framework based on Tomlinson’s guidelines for second language acquisition (SLA) materials development. Findings show that the LGs are designed based on one of the three model types: (1) Type 1: non-communicative grammar-based, (2) Type 2: practice-integrated grammar-based, and (3) Type 3: text-driven meaning-based, among which the text-driven model has, theoretically speaking, the best potential to achieve pedagogical purposes. Yet, in general, existing LGs likely fail to equip learners with communicative competence. Other issues of greater complexity are also raised, including material comprehensibility and limited resources. A critical implication for the field is the necessity of empirical needs analyses for future LG development.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableProsodic phrasing, pitch range and word order variation in Murrinhpatha(ASSTA, 2022)Like many Indigenous Australian languages, Murrinhpatha has flexible word order with no apparent configurational syntax. We analyzed an experimental corpus of Murrinhpatha utterances for associations between different thematic role orders, intonational phrasing patterns and pitch downtrends. We found that initial constituents (Agents or Patients) tend to carry the highest pitch targets (HiF0), followed by patterns of downstep and declination. Sentence-final verbs always have lower Hif0 values than either initial or medial Agents or Patients. Thematic role order does not influence intonational patterns, with the results suggesting that Murrinhpatha has positional prosody, although final nominals can disrupt global pitch downtrends regardless of thematic role.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableSentence planning and production in Murrinhpatha, an Australian 'free word order' language(Linguistic Society of America, 2022-06-01)Psycholinguistic theories are based on a very small set of unrepresentative languages, so it is as yet unclear how typological variation shapes mechanisms supporting language use. In this article we report the first on-line experimental study of sentence production in an Australian free word order language: Murrinhpatha. Forty-six adult native speakers of Murrinhpatha described a series of unrelated transitive scenes that were manipulated for humanness (±human) in the agent and patient roles while their eye movements were recorded. Speakers produced a large range of word orders, consistent with the language having flexible word order, with variation significantly influenced by agent and patient humanness. An analysis of eye movements showed that Murrinhpatha speakers’ first fixation on an event character did not alone determine word order; rather, early in speech planning participants rapidly encoded both event characters and their relationship to each other. That is, they engaged in relational encoding, laying down a very early conceptual foundation for the word order they eventually produced. These results support a weakly hierarchical account of sentence production and show that speakers of a free word order language encode the relationships between event participants during earlier stages of sentence planning than is typically observed for languages with fixed word orders.
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ItemCategory Clustering and Morphological Learning(WILEY, 2022-02-01)Inflectional affixes expressing the same grammatical category (e.g., subject agreement) tend to appear in the same morphological position in the word. We hypothesize that this cross-linguistic tendency toward category clustering is at least partly the result of a learning bias, which facilitates the transmission of morphology from one generation to the next if each inflectional category has a consistent morphological position. We test this in an online artificial language experiment, teaching adult English speakers a miniature language consisting of noun stems representing shapes and suffixes representing the color and number features of each shape. In one experimental condition, each suffix category has a fixed position, with color in the first position and number in the second position. In a second condition, each specific combination of suffixes has a fixed order, but some combinations have color in the first position, and some have number in the first position. In a third condition, suffixes are randomly ordered on each presentation. While the language in the first condition is consistent with the category clustering principle, those in the other conditions are not. Our results indicate that category clustering of inflectional affixes facilitates morphological learning, at least in adult English speakers. Moreover, we found that languages that violate category clustering but still follow fixed affix ordering patterns are more learnable than languages with random ordering. Altogether, our results provide evidence for individual biases toward category clustering; we suggest that this bias may play a causal role in shaping the typological regularities in affix order we find in natural language.
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ItemWambaya, Gudanji, Binbinka and Ngarnka Plants and Animals: Aboriginal biocultural knowledge from Gulf of Carpentaria and the Barkly Tablelands, north Australia.(Tennant Creek: Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security & Papulu Apparr-kari Aboriginal Corporation, 2021)
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ItemAn LFG approach to Icelandic reciprocal constructions(Oxford University Press, 2021)
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ItemPositional dependency in Murrinhpatha: expanding the typology of non-canonical morphotactics(Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2021-01-27)Principles of morphotactics are a major source of morphological diversity amongst the world’s languages, and it is well-known that languages exhibit many different types of deviation from a canonical ideal in which there is a unique and consistent mapping between function and form. In this paper we present data from Murrinhpatha (non-Pama-Nyungan, northern Australia) that demonstrates a type of non-canonical morphotactics so far unattested in the literature, one which we call positional dependency. This type is unusual in that the non-canonical pattern is driven by morphological form rather than by morphosyntactic function. In this case the realisation of one morph is dependent on the position in the verbal template of another morph. Thus, it is the linearisation of morphs that conditions the morphological realisation, not the morphosyntactic feature set. Positional dependency in Murrinhpatha thus expands our typology of content-form interactions and non-canonical morphotactics with implications for our understanding of morphological structure cross-linguistically.
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ItemDemorphologization and deepening complexity in Murrinhpatha.(Oxford University Press, 2020-09-24)This volume explores the multiple aspects of morphological complexity, offering typological, acquisitional, sociolinguistic, and diachronic perspectives.
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ItemFrom body part to applicative: Encoding ‘source’ in Murrinhpatha(Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2019)Murrinhpatha (non-Pama-Nyungan, Australia) is typologically unusual in having a single applicative construction with the semantics of source/malefactive, but never benefactive. In this paper I discuss the development of this applicative from an incorporated body part meaning ‘hand’. I show that the applicative developed from a reanalysis of the external possession construction; and that the applicative morphology developed from the incorporated body part, rather than from a verbal or adpositional source. This contributes to our understanding of the typology of applicative constructions and also highlights the value in exploring the complex verbal constructions of polysynthetic languages to inform our understanding of grammaticalisation possibilities.
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ItemWorking at the interface: the Daly Languages project(University of Hawaii Press, 2019)In this paper we present the Daly Languages Project (www.dalylanguages.org), funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, and in collaboration with the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC), which has developed website landing pages for all of the languages of the Daly region of northern Australia. These landing pages provide a useful and usable interface by which a range of users can access primary recordings, fieldnotes, and other resources about the Daly languages; they are powered by a relational database which allows for easy updating, ensuring consistency across the website and allowing for an immediate response to community requests. Moreover, since the website is built with a commitment to open source, it is available for other researchers to adapt to their own projects and language groups. In this paper we discuss the goals and outcomes of the project, the design and functionality of the website landing pages, and advise readers on how they can access and adapt the open-source framework for their own purposes.
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