Papers by Rachel Nordlinger
In this paper we present the Daly Languages Project (www.dalylanguages.org), funded by the ARC Ce... more In this paper we present the Daly Languages Project (www.dalylanguages.org), funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, and in collaboration with the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC), which has developed website landing pages for all of the languages of the Daly region of northern Australia. These landing pages provide a useful and usable interface by which a range of users can access primary recordings, fieldnotes, and other resources about the Daly languages; they are powered by a relational database which allows for easy updating, ensuring consistency across the website and allowing for an immediate response to community requests. Moreover, since the website is built with a commitment to open source, it is available for other researchers to adapt to their own projects and language groups. In this paper we discuss the goals and outcomes of the project, the design and functionality of the website landing p...
Audiovisual materials have been produced and stored by remote Indigenous media and cultural organ... more Audiovisual materials have been produced and stored by remote Indigenous media and cultural organisations in Australia for over thirty years, representing a distributed national collection of high cultural, linguistic and national significance. However, technical obsolescence of analogue materials, harsh environmental conditions and limited access to technological and financial resources in many remote communities present serious risk of information and knowledge being lost forever. This report outlines a collaborative project undertaken by the Melbourne Networked Society Institute and researchers from the University of Melbourne’s Australian Indigenous Studies Unit, Research Unit for Indigenous Languages and the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation. In partnership with the Kanamkek-Yile Ngala Museum, Wadeye, NT, and the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the researchers investigated how culturally significant and endangered Indige...
Language Testing, 2018
All educational testing is intended to have consequences, which are assumed to be beneficial, but... more All educational testing is intended to have consequences, which are assumed to be beneficial, but tests may also have unintended, negative consequences (Messick, 1989). The issue is particularly important in the case of large-scale standardized tests, such as Australia’s National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), the intended benefits of which are increased accountability and improved educational outcomes. The NAPLAN purpose is comparable to that of other state and national ‘core skills’ testing programs, which evaluate cross-sections of populations in order to compare results between population sub-groupings. Such comparisons underpin ‘accountability’ in the era of population-level testing. This study investigates the impact of NAPLAN testing on one population grouping that is prominent in the NAPLAN results’ comparisons and public reporting: children in remote Indigenous communities. A series of interviews with principals and teachers documents informants’ first...
First Language, 2015
The field of first language acquisition (FLA) needs to take into account data from the broadest t... more The field of first language acquisition (FLA) needs to take into account data from the broadest typological array of languages and language-learning environments if it is to identify potential universals in child language development, and how these interact with socio-cultural mechanisms of acquisition. Yet undertaking FLA research in remote field-based situations, where the majority of the world’s languages are spoken and acquired, poses challenges for best-practice methodologies assumed in lab-based FLA research. This article discusses the challenges of child language acquisition research in fieldwork contexts with lesser-known, under-described languages with small communities of speakers. The authors suggest some modified approaches to methodology for child language research appropriate to challenging fieldwork situations, in the hope of encouraging more cross-linguistic acquisition research.
Australian Journal of Linguistics, 2016
Comparisons of prosodically defined units and grammatical structure in typologically diverse lang... more Comparisons of prosodically defined units and grammatical structure in typologically diverse languages may reveal insights into how language is processed. This paper presents examples of intonation units comprising two or more verbs in Dalabon, a polysynthetic head-marking language from Australia. The prosody, semantics and grammar of these multi-verb intonational units is examined and it is shown that intonation is used as a delimitative device to signal the higher-level groupings of grammatical constituents in the discourse. What is interesting in these findings is that, despite the multiple grammatical constructions available to signal subordination in Dalabon, grammatical subordination is infrequently used. Instead, Dalabon speakers make use of intonation to group two or more verbs, in order to represent the close temporal relationship of events. The close examination of multi-verb intonational units presented in this paper may reveal more about the interaction between intonation and syntactic organization in a polysynthetic, head-marking language such as Dalabon.
This paper examines best-practice frameworks for reporting data in the field of first language ac... more This paper examines best-practice frameworks for reporting data in the field of first language acquisition. It investigates the challenges these may present for researchers of lesser-known, under-described languages with small communities of speakers whose members are highly mobile for ceremonial and family reasons. This paper is offered as a springboard for discussion around how best to integrate the rigor of data collection and analysis required for language development research with the study of typologically diverse languages, often spoken in remote communities.
The Languages and Linguistics of Australia
The languages of Australia in linguistic research: context and issues 1 Background on the Indigen... more The languages of Australia in linguistic research: context and issues 1 Background on the Indigenous languages of Australia At the time of colonisation in the late 18 th century, Australia was home to 700-800 language varieties, distributed across the continent (and including Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islands), which can be grouped into more than 250 distinct languages, some of which include a number of dialects.¹ , ² These language varieties were spoken across a population of around one million people (e.g. Butlin 1983), which indicates the enormous linguistic diversity of Indigenous Australia. In many cases small populations (e.g. 40-50 people) maintained distinctive language varieties, and the largest populations speaking a single language variety were probably no bigger than 3000-4000 people. Linguistic diversity was not necessarily an impediment to communication, however, since Indigenous societies were frequently highly multilingual, with an individual oft en speaking up to 4-6 languages of the surrounding area. Linguistic diversity, in fact, was valued for its indexical relationship to identity and group membership (Evans 2007). The relationship between language and identity is strong for all human societies, but is particularly so in Indigenous Australia, where language is oft en related directly to the land. As Rumsey (1993, 2005) explains, in Australia there is a direct relationship between a language and a tract of land; in creation myths it is very common for the ancestors to be described as passing across the land instilling diff erent languages into diff erent areas as they go (Evans 2007: 20). People are then connected to a particular tract of land and, through that connection, to the language associated with that place. Thus the Wambaya people are Wambaya because they are linked to places which are associated with the Wambaya language, and therefore speak Wambaya (see Rumsey 1993, 2005 for discussion). This ideology leads to an important distinction between speaking a language and "owning" a language. A person will "own" the language of the land to which her clan, family or group is connected, even if she doesn't speak it. 1 We wish to extend our thanks to Jane Simpson for reading an earlier version of this chapter and providing many suggestions and comments that have led to substantial improvements in coverage and content. 2 The number of languages cited in the literature generally ranges from 250-300. Recent work by Claire Bowern (NSF grant 0844550) suggests that the figure might be closer to 350 (270 Pama-Nyungan, and 80-90 non-Pama-Nyungan (Claire Bowern pers. comm. 28/11/13)).
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2014
The Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad (OzCLO) started in 2008 in only two locatio... more The Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad (OzCLO) started in 2008 in only two locations and has since grown to a nationwide competition with almost 1500 high school students participating in 2013. An Australian team has participated in the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) every year since 2009. This paper describes how the competition is run (with a regional first round and a final national round) and the organisation of the competition (a National Steering Committee and Local Organising Committees for each region) and discusses the particular challenges faced by Australia (timing of the competition and distance between the major population centres). One major factor in the growth and success of OzCLO has been the introduction of the online competition, allowing participation of students from rural and remote country areas. The organisation relies on the goodwill and volunteer work of university and school staff but the strong interest amongst students and teachers shows that OzCLO is responding to a demand for linguistic challenges.
Proceedings of the LFG08 Conference, University of Sydney, 2008
In this paper, we present an analysis of classifier noun incorporation in Gunwinyguan languages f... more In this paper, we present an analysis of classifier noun incorporation in Gunwinyguan languages from northern Australia, focussing particularly on generic specific constructions. We show how the analysis of Sadler and Nordlinger (2006) for generic-specific constructions forms through nominal juxtaposition can be extended to account for incorporated generic-specific constructions also. In this analysis, each nominal (or incorporated noun) is treated as belonging to a set at fstructure, on a par with the standard ...
Proceedings of the LFG06 Conference. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications: https://www-csli. stanford. edu/publications, 2006
A standard analysis of coordination assumes the coordination schema XP → XP CONJ XP mapping onto ... more A standard analysis of coordination assumes the coordination schema XP → XP CONJ XP mapping onto a hybrid f-structure – containing both a set of f-structures and the nondistributive CONJ and (resolved) agreement features: ... (1) Jose Jose y and yo I hablamos. speak.PRES.1PL ... (3) For any distributive property P and set s, P(s) iff ∀f ∈ sP(f). For any nondistributive property P and set s, P(s) iff P holds of s itself. (Dalrymple and Kaplan, 2000) ... Dalrymple and Kaplan (2000) propose a mechanism for syntactic feature resolution of the non-distributive ...
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2014
One of the major challenges in acquiring a language is being able to use morphology as an adult w... more One of the major challenges in acquiring a language is being able to use morphology as an adult would, and thus, a considerable amount of acquisition research has focused on morphological production and comprehension. Most of this research, however, has focused on the acquisition of morphology in isolating languages, or languages (such as English) with limited inflectional morphology. The nature of the learning task is different, and potentially more challenging, when the child is learning a polysynthetic languagea language in which words are highly morphologically complex, expressing in a single word what in English takes a multi-word clause. To date, there has been no cross-linguistic survey of how children approach this puzzle and learn polysynthetic languages. This paper aims to provide such a survey, including a discussion of some of the general findings in the literature regarding the acquisition of polysynthetic systems.
Proceedings of LFG10
In this paper we examine the interaction of a number of grammatical phenomena in Wubuy, a polysyn... more In this paper we examine the interaction of a number of grammatical phenomena in Wubuy, a polysynthetic language from northern Australia, and show how they can be given a comprehensive analysis within the framework of LFG. While each of these phenomena–noun incorporation, verbal agreement, coordination and external possession–has received various treatments within the LFG literature, no one study has addressed the compatibility of these analyses under interaction, despite the fact that they frequently co-occur in the ...
Linguistics Vanguard
Principles of morphotactics are a major source of morphological diversity amongst the world’s lan... more Principles of morphotactics are a major source of morphological diversity amongst the world’s languages, and it is well-known that languages exhibit many different types of deviation from a canonical ideal in which there is a unique and consistent mapping between function and form. In this paper we present data from Murrinhpatha (non-Pama-Nyungan, northern Australia) that demonstrates a type of non-canonical morphotactics so far unattested in the literature, one which we call positional dependency. This type is unusual in that the non-canonical pattern is driven by morphological form rather than by morphosyntactic function. In this case the realisation of one morph is dependent on the position in the verbal template of another morph. Thus, it is the linearisation of morphs that conditions the morphological realisation, not the morphosyntactic feature set. Positional dependency in Murrinhpatha thus expands our typology of content-form interactions and non-canonical morphotactics with...
Indigenous people in remote Australia face many dilemmas in relation to the status and vitality o... more Indigenous people in remote Australia face many dilemmas in relation to the status and vitality of their languages and communication ecologies. Cultural leaders want to maintain endangered heritage languages, yet this concern is balanced against an awareness that English competency is a necessary life skill. Remote Indigenous groups must also negotiate the effect of globalized media on language and cultural practices. While public policy seeks to bridge the digital divide in remote Australia, little attention has been paid to the dominance of English in the new digital environment and the potential impact that increased English language activities may have on endangered Indigenous languages. In this paper we discuss the Getting in Touch project, a joint initiative between linguists, Australian Indigenous language speakers, and software developers. Using a participatory, collaborative process, the project aims to develop ideas for digital resources that privilege Indigenous languages and knowledge systems. We argue that taking Indigenous languages into account in app design may help enhance digital literacies in remote Indigenous communities and promote digital inclusion.
Reciprocals are characterized by a crossover of thematic roles within a single clause. So, in Joh... more Reciprocals are characterized by a crossover of thematic roles within a single clause. So, in John and Mary wash each other, each of John and Mary is both washer and washed, both agent and patient. This often plays havoc with the process of mapping to argument structure, which in regular clauses assumes a unique thematic role for each argument. The competing pressures to distinguish and merge the reciprocating argument(s) are resolved by different languages in very illuminating ways that, at the same time, often create special argument configurations not found in other clause types. While some languages either treat reciprocals as clearly transitive (like Warlpiri or English), or clearly intransitive (like Gumbaynggir or Yimas), other languages adopt a mixed or ambivalent solution. In this paper we examine a range of transitivity mismatches in reciprocal constructions including: (a) monovalent clauses with a single ergative NP; (b) mismatches between case marking and the number of a...
racheln unimelb.edu.au Abstract. Murrinh-Patha (non-Pama-Nyungan, Australia) has a serial verb co... more racheln unimelb.edu.au Abstract. Murrinh-Patha (non-Pama-Nyungan, Australia) has a serial verb construction that is used to encode imperfective aspect. In this construction, one of a set of seven intransitive verbs is serialised to the end of the polysynthetic main verb. Previous descriptions of Murrinh-Patha (e.g. Walsh 1976, Street 1987) state that the serial verb in the imperfective aspect construction must agree with the main verb in terms of subject person and number, and tense/aspect/mood. While this is generally true, in fact the situation is not as straightforward as this would suggest and apparent agreement mismatches arise in a number of ways. In this paper I present the full range of these agreement puzzles in Murrinh-Patha serial verb constructions and discuss the challenges they pose for linguistic analysis. I argue that when viewed within the context of the Murrinh-Patha agreement system more generally their analysis becomes more straightforward and show how they can b...
In Gunwinyguan languages (Northern Australia), nouns may incorporate not only into verbs, but als... more In Gunwinyguan languages (Northern Australia), nouns may incorporate not only into verbs, but also adjectives. These N-Adj compound structures have interpretations identical to those of noun phrases modified by an adjective in English. A consideration of the evidence nevertheless argues that the morphological head of the N-Adj construction is the adjective. We show that this paradox can be resolved using inside-out function application to allow the compound to be headed by the adjective at c-structure, but by the noun at f-structure. We show further that the same analysis extends to cases of nominal ‘classification’ where the incorporated nominal is construed as a generic classifier together with an independent specific noun in apposition.
We are also grateful to Ryo Otuguro and two anonymous reviewers for comments on this paper. Remai... more We are also grateful to Ryo Otuguro and two anonymous reviewers for comments on this paper. Remaining errors are of course solely our own responsibility. Sadler is grateful to the University of Essex for a period of sabbatical leave during which this work was completed, and Nordlinger for the support of the Australian Research Council, grant F9930026, held at the University of Melbourne. 2 Existing work touching on, or having consequences for, these issues includes Ackerman 1990,
Papulu Apparr-Kari Language Centre in Tennant Creek, from Rachel Nordlinger (Papulu Apparr-Kari h... more Papulu Apparr-Kari Language Centre in Tennant Creek, from Rachel Nordlinger (Papulu Apparr-Kari has my contact details), or from the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra. Wambaya Dictionary (includes example sentences and translations, English-Wambaya finder list). Compiled by Rachel Nordlinger. Latest draft September 1998. A Grammar of Wambaya, Northern Territory (Australia). By Rachel Nordlinger. Published in 1998 by Pacific Linguistic Canberra. (Warning: this is written for linguists so uses lots of linguistic terminology, but contains texts and examples that might be helpful.) Wambaya Story Books and Picture Books. These include: Picture Books: Arna irrin irriyani 'What are they doing?' Yangaji 'Animals' Gurijba maga 'Good country' Julaji 'Birds' Gayina yana 'What is this?' Ngarninji 'The body' Song Book Wambaya Barkly Tableland Songs by Betty Tennyson Story Books Gunbi and Garrgalyi 'The Blanket lizard and the Plains lizard' (told by Molly Grueman) Barnanggi and Jabiru (told by Molly Grueman) Indilyawurna and Wardangarri 'The Curlew and the Moon' (told by Molly Grueman) Gambada and Wardangarri 'The Sun and the Moon' (told by Molly Grueman) TO BEGIN: Listen to the snippet of Wambaya conversation on the tape, just to get a feel for how Wambaya sounds. You should come back to this text periodically as you work through this Learner's Guide; hopefully you will find that you can slowly pick up more and more words, and finally understand it completely. Yarru ngurr-any gurdi-nmanji ngajbarda. go we-AWAY bush-TO looking Gannga ngurr-amany bangarniga. return we-TOWARDS this way Gurijba gin mirra ngarrga maga. good it sit my house Darryl, Jesse, nyamirniji, ngawurniji ngurr-any ngajbi barrawu. you I we-AWAY look house Gurinymi gin mirra barrawu. properly it sit house 'We went to the bush to have a look (at my house). Then we came back this way. My house is fine. Darryl, Jesse, you and I went to look at the house. The house is good.' 'The girl has a stick.' Alaji gijilulu-waji. boy(I) money-NOT HAVE(I) 'The boy has no money.' Alanga gijilulu-wajarna. girl(II) money-NOT HAVE(II) 'The girl has no money.'
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Papers by Rachel Nordlinger
Unit, Research Unit for Indigenous Languages and the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation. In partnership with the Kanamkek-Yile Ngala Museum, Wadeye, NT, and the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the researchers investigated how culturally significant and endangered Indigenous audiovisual archives could be effectively preserved and transmitted to current and future generations using
innovative digital technologies.