Worrorra: a language of the north-west Kimberley coast

Mark Clendo

Global change explains reduced seeding in a widespread New Zealand tree: indigenous Tūhoe knowledge informs mechanistic analysis

IntroductionClimate change is expected to exacerbate the pressures faced by already fragile ecosystems. Negative impacts on the localized and culturally significant plant and animal species within these ecosystems will have cascading effects for the indigenous communities that interact with those species. Understanding how climate change affects culturally important seed crops may be particularly important, as seeds are critical for forest regeneration as well as providing sustenance for wildlife and people. In the central North Island/Te Ika-a-Māui of Aotearoa-New Zealand, Tūhoe elders of the Tuawhenua region have observed declines in seed production by the large-fruited locally dominant forest tree Beilschmiedia tawa (tawa, Lauraceae) over the last half century, which could be related to climate change.MethodsWe used seed trap data from six sites throughout the geographic range of tawa to measure trends in seed crop size from 1986 to 2020 and to determine which weather factors affect seed crops. We then used these weather predictors to hindcast how tawa seeding may have changed in Tuawhenua forests from 1910–2019, based on historic weather data.ResultsSeed trap data showed a decline in seeding through time across tawa’s range, and that seeding was lower at more northerly sites. Seed crops were synchronous among trees within sites, but were strongly asynchronous among sites. High seed crops were associated with cooler summer and winter temperatures, and with high rainfall. In the Tuawhenua region, increases in summer and winter temperatures appear to have contributed to the declines in tawa seed crops observed by elders, with the model predicting that years with heavy fruiting have become less frequent after 1940.DiscussionOur study provides strong evidence that tawa is undergoing changing seedfall patterns in response to changing climate. The biggest weather drivers of seeding that we identified in tawa were winter and summer temperature, both of which were negatively associated with crop size. Both winter and summer temperatures have increased in Tuawhenua in the last 100 years suggesting a possible mechanism to explain observations of long-term declines in tawa seedfall observed by Tūhoe elders of the Tuawhenua region, with ecological and cultural implications

Reassessing Australia's Linguistic Prehistory

The origin of the typological split between the Australian PamaNyungan and nonPamaNyungan languages is here described by reference to palaeogeography. In the model advanced here these currently contiguous groups are understood to have originated in widely separate regions of Sahul at a time depth about twice that of previous estimates. Australian linguistic diversity is explained in terms of climatic events at the end of the last ice agethose that brought about the evacuation of the central arid zone during it and the evacuation of the Arafuran floodplain after it. The argument advanced here crucially concerns the origin and nature of the PamaNyungan and nonPamaNyungan (Arafuran) language groups, and the implications of the model for this discussion are addressed. The PamaNyungan and nonPamaNyungan groups are now understood to represent very ancient Sprachbnde rather than the results of phylogenetic spreading from protolanguage ancestors.Mark Clendo

Dog-people : the meaning of a north Kimberley story

Mark Clendo

Words needed for sharing a story: Implications for vocabulary selection in augmentative and alternative communication

Background: This study examined the narrative vocabulary of typically developing children for the purpose of guiding vocabulary selection for children with complex communication needs. Method: Eight children in their first year of schooling (aged 5 years 0 months to 5 years 8 months) and 10 children in their second year of schooling (aged 6 years 0 months to 7 years 2 months) generated story retell, personal, and script narratives. These were analysed using the Child Language Analysis (MacWhinney, 2008) program. Results: Several words occurred with high frequency across all tasks. Other words were more specific to particular tasks and topics. In the story-retelling task, the majority of the unique words used were from the original story. However, of the total words available in the original story, only a small proportion was used. Conclusions: Some of the high frequency words overlapped with those included in existing wordlists. However, other words were unique to this study. The wordlists generated will provide a useful resource that can be used alongside existing wordlists to guide decision making around vocabulary selection for children with complex communication needs

Lean thinking in dementia care through smart assistive technology: an evaluation

This chapter provides an analysis and evaluation of a community based project trialling the use of Smart Assistive Technologies (AT) for people with dementia and their families. The 12 month project was funded by Home and Community Care (HACC) Queensland and conducted by Alzheimer's Queensland and the University of Southern Queensland in the North Brisbane and Toowoomba areas