Code-switching helps to maintain traditional language use

Code-switching was a major factor in the emergence of the mixed language, Light Warlpiri, and therefore in a partial shift away from speaking Warlpiri, the traditional language, as the speakers' primary language. Now, Light Warlpiri speakers make use of both Light Warlpiri and Warlpiri verbal resources to organize discourse, with a by-product of promoting maintenance of Warlpiri. This paper responds to Simpson's (2015) call for "much more work … to discern the variation of ways of talking which occurs during times of rapid [language] change", by documenting code-switching by multilingual speakers in a community undergoing rapid change. In the 1970-80s adult speakers of Warlpiri in one community code-switched to very young children in a specific pattern that was then conventionalized by the children as a single code (Author 2013). Defining features of Light Warlpiri are re-analyzed verbal structure, derived from English and Kriol, with some innovations, combined with the Warlpiri nominal case-marking system. Light Warlpiri and Warlpiri are differentiated by verbal lexicon and verbal structure. Light Warlpiri speakers code-switch fluidly between between Light Warlpiri and Warlpiri, and they consider the interaction of multiple codes part of their local speech style. In this paper I will present code-switching data, and analyze the motivations for the code-switches using Gumperz' (1982) and Poplack's (1980) discourse organizing factors. I argue that code-switching between Light Warlpiri and Warlpiri for discourse purposes keeps some elements of Warlpiri verbal lexicon and structure accessible to Light Warlpiri speakers, even when not speaking Warlpiri for sustained periods of time. The data are of two types. One set is recordings of elicitation sessions where Light Warlpiri speakers spontaneously created scenarios, or recounted events, to illustrate their use of particular verbs. In the scenarios and recounts, when providing examples of actual or imagined speech, the speakers code-switch between Light Warlpiri and Warlpiri verbal lexicon and structures. The other set, more naturalistic, is recorded interactions of Light Warlpiri speakers telling a story from picture stimulus. The same kinds of discourse patterns are seen in the more, and less, naturalistic types of data, suggesting high data validity. References: Author. (2013). The role of multiple sources in the formation of an innovative auxiliary category in Light Warlpiri, a new Australian mixed language. Language, 89 (2), 328-354. Gumperz, John J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Poplack, Shana. (1980). Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en Espanol: toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 18, 581-618. Simpson, Jane. (2015). Language attrition and language change. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics (pp. 537-554). London: Routledge

Language contact and children's bilingual acquisition: learning a mixed language and Warlpiri in northern Australia

This dissertation documents the emergence of a new language, Light Warlpiri, in the multilingual community of Lajamanu in northern Australia. It then examines the acquisition of Light Warlpiri language, and of the heritage language, Lajamanu Warlpiri, by children. Light Warlpiri has arisen from contact between Lajamanu Warlpiri (a Pama-Nyungan language), Kriol (an English-based creole), and varieties of English. It is a Mixed Language, meaning that none of its source languages can be considered to be the sole parent language. Most verbs and the verbal morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol, while most nouns and the nominal morphology are from Warlpiri. The language input to children is complex. Adults older than about thirty speak Lajamanu Warlpiri and code-switch into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Younger adults, the parents of the current cohort of children, speak Light Warlpiri and code-switch into Lajamanu Warlpiri and into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, the two main input languages to children, both indicate A arguments with ergative case-marking (and they share one allomorph of the marker), but Lajamanu Warlpiri includes the marker much more consistently than Light Warlpiri. Word order is variable in both languages. Children learn both languages from birth, but they target Light Warlpiri as the language of their everyday interactions, and they speak it almost exclusively until four to six years of age. Adults and children show similar patterns of ergative marking and word order in Light Warlpiri. But differences between age groups are found in ergative marking in Lajamanu Warlpiri - for the oldest group of adults, ergative marking is obligatory, but for younger adults and children, it is not. Determining when children differentiate between two input languages has been a major goal in the study of bilingual acquisition. The two languages in this study share lexical and grammatical properties, making distinctions between them quite subtle. Both adults and children distribute ergative marking differently in the two languages, but show similar word order patterns in both. However the children show a stronger correlation between ergative marking and word order patterns than do the adults, suggesting that they are spearheading processes of language change. In their comprehension of sentences in both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, adults use a case-marking strategy to identify the A argument (i.e. N+erg = A argument, N-erg = O argument). The children are not adult-like in using this strategy at age 5, when they also used a word order strategy, but they gradually move towards being adult-like with increased age

Language contact and children's bilingual acquisition: learning a mixed language and Warlpiri in northern Australia

This dissertation documents the emergence of a new language, Light Warlpiri, in the multilingual community of Lajamanu in northern Australia. It then examines the acquisition of Light Warlpiri language, and of the heritage language, Lajamanu Warlpiri, by children. Light Warlpiri has arisen from contact between Lajamanu Warlpiri (a Pama-Nyungan language), Kriol (an English-based creole), and varieties of English. It is a Mixed Language, meaning that none of its source languages can be considered to be the sole parent language. Most verbs and the verbal morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol, while most nouns and the nominal morphology are from Warlpiri. The language input to children is complex. Adults older than about thirty speak Lajamanu Warlpiri and code-switch into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Younger adults, the parents of the current cohort of children, speak Light Warlpiri and code-switch into Lajamanu Warlpiri and into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, the two main input languages to children, both indicate A arguments with ergative case-marking (and they share one allomorph of the marker), but Lajamanu Warlpiri includes the marker much more consistently than Light Warlpiri. Word order is variable in both languages. Children learn both languages from birth, but they target Light Warlpiri as the language of their everyday interactions, and they speak it almost exclusively until four to six years of age. Adults and children show similar patterns of ergative marking and word order in Light Warlpiri. But differences between age groups are found in ergative marking in Lajamanu Warlpiri - for the oldest group of adults, ergative marking is obligatory, but for younger adults and children, it is not. Determining when children differentiate between two input languages has been a major goal in the study of bilingual acquisition. The two languages in this study share lexical and grammatical properties, making distinctions between them quite subtle. Both adults and children distribute ergative marking differently in the two languages, but show similar word order patterns in both. However the children show a stronger correlation between ergative marking and word order patterns than do the adults, suggesting that they are spearheading processes of language change. In their comprehension of sentences in both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, adults use a case-marking strategy to identify the A argument (i.e. N+erg = A argument, N-erg = O argument). The children are not adult-like in using this strategy at age 5, when they also used a word order strategy, but they gradually move towards being adult-like with increased age

A Happy Marriage: The Stop and Affricate Inventory of the Mixed Language Light Warlpiri (Australia)

This paper presents a first acoustic analysis of the stops and affricates of the mixed language Light Warlpiri (Australia). The results suggest that the Light Warlpiri phonological inventory consists of a voiced and voiceless series of stops and affricates, differentiated by Voice Onset Time (VOT) wordinitially and by Constriction Duration (CD) medially, by incorporating English-like VOT differentiation and Constriction duration differences found in Kriol and also in a number of traditional Indigenous Australian languages. Word-initially, stops from Warlpiri words pattern with English/Kriol voiced stops; medially with the ‘long’ stops in Kriol, /c/ being the exception in patterning with short /ʤ/, rather than the voiceless /ʧ/. This inventory allows speakers of Light Warlpiri to maintain sufficient phonemic contrasts to accommodate vocabulary items in Light Warlpiri sourced from English/Kriol as well as Warlpiri, the Indigenous Australian language that they also speak

When more is more : the mixed language Light Warlpiri amalgamates source language phonologies to form a near-maximal inventory

This paper presents a combined analysis of the perception and production study of the mixed language Light Warlpiri (Australia), which systematically combines elements of Warlpiri, Kriol and English. The perception and production results suggest that the Light Warlpiri phonological inventory consists of a voiced and voiceless series of stops and affricates, differentiated by Voice Onset Time (VOT) word-initially and by Constriction Duration (CD) medially, by incorporating English-like VOT differentiation and Constriction duration differences found in Kriol and also in a number of traditional Indigenous Australian languages. The results also show that Light Warlpiri speakers perceptually differentiate stops and fricatives at the same POA, but that voicing distinctions in fricatives are more difficult to discriminate than voicing distinctions in stops. The large phonological inventory of Light Warlpiri combines most features of the source languages, allowing speakers of Light Warlpiri to maintain sufficient phonemic contrasts to accommodate vocabulary items in Light Warlpiri sourced from English/Kriol as well as Warlpiri

Reflexive and reciproal encoding in the Australian mixed language, Light Warlpiri

Mixed languages combine significant amounts of grammatical and lexical material from more than one source language in systematic ways. The Australian mixed language, Light Warlpiri, combines nominal morphology from Warlpiri with verbal morphology from Kriol (an English-lexified Creole) and English, with innovations. The source languages of Light Warlpiri differ in how they encode reflexives and reciprocals—Warlpiri uses an auxiliary clitic for both reflexive and reciprocal expression, while English and Kriol both use pronominal forms, and largely have separate forms for reflexives and reciprocals. English distinguishes person and number in reflexives, but not in reciprocals; the other source languages do not distinguish person or number. This study draws on naturalistic and elicited production data to examine how reflexive and reciprocal events are encoded in Light Warlpiri. The study finds that Light Warlpiri combines near-maximal distinctions from the source languages, but in a way that is not a mirror of any. It retains the person and number distinctions of English reflexives and extends them to reciprocals, using the same forms for reflexives and reciprocals (like Warlpiri). Reflexives and reciprocals occur within a verbal structure (perhaps under influence from Warlpiri). The results show that a mixed language can have discrete contributions from three languages, that the source languages can influence different subsystems to different extents, and that near-maximal distinctions from the source languages can be maintained.The project was funded by a National Science Foundation Grant #1348

National Indigenous Languages Report

The National Indigenous Languages Report is a collaboration between the Australian Government Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), and the Australian National University. The Report strengthens the evidence base regarding the use, importance, and state of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. It identifies the strengths and speaker numbers of Australia's Indigenous languages, as well as the many economic and social benefits gained through the recognition, use and reawakening of those languages. The Report provides guidance on practical ways to use its findings to inform policy, program development and service delivery for Australia's First Peoples. The National Indigenous Languages Report is a key achievement through Australia's participation in the United Nation’s 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages. The authors of the National Indigenous Languages Report acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia and acknowledges their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to the people, the cultures and the elders past, present and emerging

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stories to elicit overt transitive subject NP