Second Position Clitic Phenomena in North-Central Australia: Some Pragmatic Considerations

Second position phenomena in North-central Australia: some pragmatic considerations. This paper presents a cross-linguistic investigation of the discourse-pragmatics of second position clitic attachment in seven languages of North-central Australia. The presence of (obligatory) pronominal enclitics constitutes an areal feature of Central-Northern Australian languages, from Western Australia to the Queensland Border. In some languages enclitics are described as primarily attaching to verbs (eg. Western Desert), others to the first ‘constituent’ (eg. Warlpiri). In many of these languages, pronominal clitics combine with tense, aspect and/or mood markers to form ‘clitic complexes’ (or ‘auxiliaries’), which may in turn have fixed clausal positions (eg. Warlpiri, Wambaya). Most investigations of clitic complexes have focussed on their formal properties, especially the range of phenomena that may function as clitic hosts, and the implications of different patterns of clitic attachment for syntactic description (eg. Simpson & Withgott 1986, McConvell 1980, 1996, Laughren 2002). While much of this work acknowledges that pragmatics plays a role in what motivates patterns of clitic attachment, these studies tend to go no further than to assign a label ‘focus’ to that which attracts the clitic complex. Here I explore what is meant by ‘focus’ by closely examining and comparing pragmatic relationships between the clitic complex and its host in the discourse of a number of languages. Such cross-linguistic work not only provides evidence for the pragmatic sensitivities of clitic complexes synchonically, but it also provides evidence for variations in their grammaticalisation status in individual languages

Free to bound to free? Interactions between pragmatics and syntax in the development of Australian pronominal systems

Data from dual pronoun systems in Australian languages is used to show the pragmatic basis for a cycle of pronoun creation - reduced pronouns from free forms and free from reduced - and the motivation to maintain both types in a linguistic system. Free pronouns become positionally restricted reduced forms by association of clause-initial position with discourse prominence (Swartz 1988, Choi 1999). The same pragmatic motivations result in the creation of new free pronouns, and the divergence of free and reduced pronouns with respect to ergative case marking. Examples of languages at different stages of the cycle include Garrwa (one set of free pronouns, with a strong preference for second position); Djambarrpuyngu and Gupapuyngu (two sets of pronouns transparently related in form and in complementary distribution); Ritharrngu, Djinang, and Djinba (two sets of pronouns transparently related in form but in which the reduced pronouns are becoming obligatory); Warlpiri (two sets of pronouns, which diverge in form, and the reduced set is obligatory); and Warumungu (one set of reduced pronouns, indicating how new free pronouns might emerge based on information-packaging principles). The creation of free pronouns from reduced pronouns argues against strict unidirectionality of change

Motivations for second position: Evidence from North-Central Australia

It has long been observed that many languages from all over the world require that certain grammatical categories (e.g., person, number, tense, modality) occur in the "second position" of a clause. Much of the research into second position has developed formal explanations for this recurring pattern, based on interactions between morphosyntax and phonology. In this article I explore how pragmatics of information packaging interacts with these other features in the development of such morphosyntactic architecture in three North-Central Australian languages: Warlpiri, Wambaya, and Garrwa

Young children's tool innovation across culture: Affordance visibility matters

Young children typically demonstrate low rates of tool innovation. However, previous studies have limited children’s performance by presenting tools with opaque affordances. In an attempt to scaffold children’s understanding of what constitutes an appropriate tool within an innovation task we compared tools in which the focal affordance was visible to those in which it was opaque. To evaluate possible cultural specificity, data collection was undertaken in a Western urban population and a remote Indigenous community. As expected affordance visibility altered innovation rates: young children were more likely to innovate on a tool that had visible affordances than one with concealed affordances. Furthermore, innovation rates were higher than those reported in previous innovation studies. Cultural background did not affect children’s rates of tool innovation. It is suggested that new methods for testing tool innovation in children must be developed in order to broaden our knowledge of young children’s tool innovation capabilities

Word order pragmatics and narrative functions in Garrwa

This paper presents an analysis of the order of full noun phrase arguments with respect to the verb in Garrwa non-personal narrative. Word order in this corpus is shown to be motivated by a combination of established pragmatic relations (here characterized as kontrast and rheme, following Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998), and some specific narrative functions relating to perspective structure (e. g. shifts from one character's perspective to another). I also argue that the particular patterns found in the Garrwa corpus are related to its status as a verb initial language, typologically unusual in the Australian context. The results present a nice illustration of the need for close discourse based analyses of word order pragmatics, before universal primitive notions like 'focus' and 'topic', terms which have been commonly used in the Australianist literature, should be adopted. This paper has developed from a presentation given at the 2003 "Blackwood" Workshop on Australian Languages. Many thanks to the Garrwa people who have generously allowed me to record them. And thanks also to Jane Simpson, Mary Laughren and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions. I take responsibility for any remaining errors

Linguistic cues for recipient design in an Indigenous Australian conversational narrative

This article presents an examination of some of the linguistic and interactional features of a story emerging from talk in a remote Indigenous Australian community. In the data used here, the storyteller is an elderly Garrwa woman in Borroloola who speaks Garrwa and Kriol. The focus is on how the addition of a non-community member to the field of interaction affected the way the storyteller recounted events from a situation within the previous 24 hours. This is seen not only in what events are told, but also how the teller tailored her story to her audience in the context of telling — a recognition that stories are interactively achieved. Here I examine how she accommodated the knowledge states of her audience, how recipients responded and how this in turn affected the trajectory of the storytelling