Proceedings of the 42nd Australian Linguistic Society Conference - 2011

ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag

Non-referential actor indexing in Nehan

Non-referential actor indexing is found in many languages in the form of 3PL impersonal constructions. In the sentence, “They don’t drink root beer in Australia.”, the actor 'they' does not refer to any specific entity. In addition to 3PL impersonals, the Nehan language of northern Bougainville uses non-referential actor indexing for middle voice-like constructions, undergoer promotion, and — perhaps uniquely — expands impersonal constructions using 3SG agreement to indicate that the actor of the verb either lacks sentience or has accidentally carried out an action. This paper describes the semantics of non-referential actor indexing constructions and their role in argument structure.ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag

Non-finite complementation in French L2: a learner corpus approach

The Complementizer Phrase (CP) is mainly unexplored territory in L2 French acquisition studies (Herschensohn 2007:128). This study aims at partially filling this gap by exploring the structure of non-finite complementation using data from a longitudinal oral learner corpus of 10 Jamaican learners of French (Peters 2005, 2006). It specifically explores the realization of the Complementizer (COMP) functional category, and analyses the structure of the nonfinite embedded clauses with control and raising structures and embedded interrogative. The influence of the native languages and of the French input on non-target uses will be evaluated. The present study, therefore, answers White’s (2003:36) call “to probe quite intricate properties of the interlanguage representation, in order to understand the nature of the grammar that the learner creates to account for the L2.” Furthermore, this presentation explores a methodological interface (Rankin 2009) between the framework of the Principle and Parameter framework, and the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, 1999) as applied to SLA research (Lardière 1998, 2000, 2009a, b) and the methods of learner corpus linguistics (Granger et al. 2000). The corpus approach, although unlikely to answer all relevant question of structure when crucial data is missing in naturally occurring data, will prove useful in clarifying the issues and delineate further areas of investigation.ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag

Sad stories: a preliminary study of NAPLAN practice texts analysing students’ second language linguistic resources and the effects

This paper analyses practice texts produced by Indigenous students who are first language (L1) speakers of the local variety of Torres Strait Creole, and second language (L2) learners of Standard Australian English (SAE). Writing such texts served as preparation for the writing component of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). These students had been exposed to classroom instruction on the schematic discourse organisation of the preannounced test genre, a narrative, and had been given repeated practice of writing this genre under NAPLAN-like conditions. Analysis of their texts reveals that they attempt to implement this classroom instruction, but their levels of L2 proficiency impact greatly on the texts they generate. Their writing displays a wide range of non-target language features, which suggest that teaching approaches would need to include explicit instruction of SAE. This preliminary study raises issues for further investigation around the narrowed or even hidden curriculum for L2 learners of SAE in a high stakes testing environment.ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag

Body-parts in Dalabon and Barunga Kriol: matches and mismatches

This article describes a number of body-part lexemes in Dalabon, a non-Pama-Nyungan language of the Gunwinyguan family (Australia), and their counterparts in Barunga Kriol, the local creole. The aim of this paper is a comparison between some aspects of the Dalabon body-part lexicon and their counterparts in Barunga Kriol. I discuss particularities of the Dalabon bodypart lexicon and of linguistic descriptions of the body in this language. Throughout the study of Dalabon and Barunga Kriol lexemes denoting the hand (or front paw) and its digits, the foot (or back paw) and its digits, the face, the nose and the nostrils, and finally, the head and the crown of the head, it is found that Barunga Kriol replicates some of the lexical structures of the local Aboriginal languages, but not all of them. In particular, a remarkable specificity of Dalabon, the fact that the head and the face are not labelled as such, and are preferably described as an assemblage of features, is only partially replicated in Barunga Kriol. The paper seeks to identify some of the factors explaining the matches and mismatches between Barunga Kriol and DalabonANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag

Simplifying a system: a story of language change in Lelepa, Vanuatu

This paper focuses on the problem posed by the vowel surfacing during two encliticization processes in Lelepa (Oceanic, Vanuatu), with the nominalizer =na ‘NMLZ’ and the pronominal =s ‘OBL’. For instance, the verbs faam ‘eat’, mat ‘dead’ and fan ‘go:IRR’ are derived as nafaamina ‘food’, nmatena ‘funeral’ and nafanona ‘departure’. While the base forms have the same vowel /a/, those vowels surfacing before =na seem unpredictable. This paper discusses several possible explanations for these vowels and shows that both historical and phonological approaches are needed to account for them. Still, there is variation in the nominalisation of certain native verbs such as raik ‘fish with hand spear’, which is derived as either naraikana or naraikina ‘hand spear fishing’. It is shown that while naraikana is accounted for in diachrony, naraikina results from a reanalysis process indicated by intergenerational variation.ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag

Musicolinguistic artistry of niraval in Carnatic vocal music

Niraval is a form of virtuosic musicolinguistic improvisation in Carnatic music whereby a line within a song is repeated in various melodic and rhythmic manifestations within the rāgam (melodic framework) and tāḷam (beat cycle). For a Carnatic singer, niraval makes different aesthetic demands than other forms of non-textual improvisation within the tradition. To convey artful, sincere renditions of the same lyrical text, the singer-musician must imaginatively devise interesting repetitions which attend to both melodic and rhythmic elements and the lyric text. Combining melodic and rhythmic skill and verbal artistry in a range of South Indian languages as well as Sanskrit, Carnatic singers display extraordinary communicative and artistic competence and captivate their audiences. This paper analyses the musical and linguistic elements of a single niraval performance in Sydney’s Carnatic music community. It is hoped that such research will contribute to a greater understanding of the interplay of language and music in sung performanceANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag

The Vietnamese classifiers ‘CON’, ‘CÁI’ and the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach: a preliminary study

This preliminary study is the first-ever attempt to analyse the lexical semantics of the two most commonly used classifiers in the Vietnamese language, ‘con’ and ‘cái’, using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach (Wierzbicka 1996; Goddard & Wierzbicka 2002; Goddard 2009). The study originates from an experience in teaching Vietnamese as a foreign language in Australia, where students’ difficulty in learning/acquiring the usage of the Vietnamese classifiers and the classifier noun phrases was observed. The ultimate aim of this pilot study is to use the semantic analysis of the classifiers achieved through NSM to enhance teaching and learning Vietnamese as a foreign language, and to advance the understanding of one of the world’s most extensive and elaborate classifier systems. If this aim is achieved then the study will further support the claim that NSM is an effective tool in the explanation of lexical semantics and language-specific grammatical categories and constructions (Goddard 2011:336).ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag

Case marking (accounts) in collapse: evidence from Early Modern Dutch egodocuments (1572-1573)

In this study, I examine the intermediate stages of case marking systems essential for testing hypotheses about the loss of case and its syntactic effects in Dutch. Past accounts typically compare earlier Middle Dutch (1200-1350), when a transparent case system was still in use, with Modern Dutch, which has lost morphological case. Scholars have made claims about the order in which the cases disappeared in Middle Dutch and generally view the end of the 15th century as the point by which the case system had broken down. With a several hundred year gap between the Middle and Modern Dutch periods and no detailed studies chronicling the deflexion process, however, these claims remain largely untested. Using a corpus of 42,000 words comprised mainly of unpublished archival manuscripts—eyewitness accounts chronicling the terror and destruction at the start of the Eighty Years War—I consider the questions of when, how quickly and where the case system collapsed, while situating the discussion in the context of the intense dialect contact situations that prevailed over the period of many centuries in Middle and Early Modern Dutch urban centres.ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag

The linguistic anatomy of individual differences in Japanese monologues: focusing on particles and interjections

This is a linguistic study on idiosyncrasy manifested through language use in Japanese monologues. For this purpose, we use speaker classification techniques as analytical tools. Focusing on Japanese particles, the subcategories of these particles, and interjections, we aim to find out to what extent Japanese speakers are idiosyncratic in selecting certain words above others in monologues. We are interested in how differently or similarly the individualising information of speakers is manifested between the subcategories of these particles, and also between particles and interjections. The genres of the monologues in this study vary from conference presentations on various topics covering humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering to mock public speeches on a variety of general topics, such as “most pleasant memory,” “about your community,” etc. We demonstrate in this study that Japanese particles and interjections carry different degrees of individualising information. We also discuss what contributes to the identified differences between them.ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences, School of Language Studies; ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, School of Culture, History and Languag