School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses
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ItemThe Dynamics of Contemporary Pitjantjatjara: An Intergenerational Study( 2022)This thesis investigates several areas of Pitjantjatjara grammar, drawing attention to the ways in which the language varies between and within generations, and the ways that the language is being both adapted and maintained by young adults. The primary goal of the thesis is to find out how young people are speaking Pitjantjatjara today, against a backdrop of rapid social change and language contact. How does their language use differ in comparison to older generations, and to previous descriptions, and what areas of the grammar are being changed or maintained? Pitjantjatjara is one of only a dozen Australian First Nations languages that have been continuously transmitted since colonisation, and which are still being acquired by children as a first language today. Many Pitjantjatjara speakers have noticed that the language is changing and are concerned about its future. In light of speakers' concerns, which are presented at length, this thesis investigates six topics in the language: phonetics and phonology, verbal morphology, case-marking, possession, nominalisation, and negation. Each of these presents a different picture of a dynamic system in constant flux, with different patterns of variation and change, maintenance and innovation, simplification and complexification. To investigate these issues, a corpus of over 40,000 words was recorded in Pukatja/Ernabella (SA). This corpus was designed to capture spontaneous speech among different generations of women. In addition, I draw upon an annotated collection of previously published texts, from the substantial body of previous description and documentation of the language. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is used to investigate variables and grammatical structures of interest. In some areas, such as the phonetics and phonology, there are numerous differences between generations; over a dozen variables are described. In the verbal morphology, there is variation in both derivational and inflectional morphology. This appears to be system-internal, not motivated by language contact, and shows an overall maintenance of a complex and interesting system. The syntax of case is fully maintained, although there is some change in case allomorphy, and a new, innovative use of the inclusory construction that has not been documented elsewhere. Possession is an area where contact-induced change has been reported in many languages, including in Pitjantjatjara. However, variation in this domain appears stable between generations, and influenced by subtle semantic, pragmatic, and lexical factors. Nominalisation shows significant morphosyntactic complexity, which is described in detail. Complex sentence structures utilising nominalisations are being fully maintained, with no reduction in the range or use of subordination constructions among young people. Negation is also an area with significant complexity in Pitjantjatjara, and which is typologically unusual in many respects. While there is currently no variation in negation between generations, there are some differences to previous descriptions, and this can shed light on broader questions of how negation constructions evolve. Overall, my findings do not point to a single identifiable youth variety, a radical break between `traditional' and `contemporary' Pitjantjatjara, or to any significant grammatical borrowing from English. The thesis makes a descriptive and analytical contribution to our understanding of Pitjantjatjara phonology, morphology, and syntax, pointing out several areas of typological and theoretical interest. It also adds to the growing body of work describing variation, change, and contact in contemporary Aboriginal language varieties. The findings of this thesis show the benefits of embedding the study of variation and young people's language within language documentation.