The grammar of knowledge: a cross-linguistic view of evidentials and epistemological expressions. How does a speaker know that what they say is correct? Some languages have obligatory marking for stating 'information source' ('seen', 'inferred', or 'reported'). In others a source is optional - 'the (reported) theft'. This cross-linguistic investigation will advance our understanding of human interaction and the expression of knowledge.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE170100026
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$312,000.00
Summary
A comparison of everyday and therapeutic talk. This project aims to equip therapists to support clients to overcome mental distress. Psychotherapy is an established approach for treating mental distress, but how therapy differs from supportive conversations with family or friends remains unclear. The project will use text analytic software and conversation analysis to identify therapeutic ways of discussing personal troubles and their association with therapeutic outcomes. Understanding this ass ....A comparison of everyday and therapeutic talk. This project aims to equip therapists to support clients to overcome mental distress. Psychotherapy is an established approach for treating mental distress, but how therapy differs from supportive conversations with family or friends remains unclear. The project will use text analytic software and conversation analysis to identify therapeutic ways of discussing personal troubles and their association with therapeutic outcomes. Understanding this association is expected to enable therapists to use communication practices that are most likely to benefit clients.Read moreRead less
The impact of technological modality on troubles telling and advice giving on a national children's helpline. Over half a million children and young people contact the Kids Help Line every year. They make contact through telephone calls, emails and online interactive chats. This study of these differing types of contact will advance knowledge of children and young people's social and emotional health, the national priority area Promoting and maintaining good health. It informs the counselling, h ....The impact of technological modality on troubles telling and advice giving on a national children's helpline. Over half a million children and young people contact the Kids Help Line every year. They make contact through telephone calls, emails and online interactive chats. This study of these differing types of contact will advance knowledge of children and young people's social and emotional health, the national priority area Promoting and maintaining good health. It informs the counselling, health and educational communities. It addresses key priorities identified in National policy documents on children and young people. Finally, the study will have direct relevance for professional training in telephone and computer mediated forms of communication for counsellors, young people, educators, health professionals and policy makers. Read moreRead less
Understanding communication about advance care planning across the lifespan. This project aims to understand how people communicate about advance care planning for children, adolescents, and adults. This project expects to generate new knowledge by using leading social scientific and linguistic methods to analyse real-world advance care planning conversations and documents. Expected outcomes include detailed knowledge about challenges people encounter in these conversations and how to manage the ....Understanding communication about advance care planning across the lifespan. This project aims to understand how people communicate about advance care planning for children, adolescents, and adults. This project expects to generate new knowledge by using leading social scientific and linguistic methods to analyse real-world advance care planning conversations and documents. Expected outcomes include detailed knowledge about challenges people encounter in these conversations and how to manage these challenges. Over 170,000 Australians die each year, most from serious illness. This project should provide significant benefits to future initiatives for enhancing communication about advance care planning, especially in relation to young Australians, older Australians, and Australians with disabilities.Read moreRead less
The development of refined and validated Language Australia ESL Bandscales for improved assessment, reporting and outcomes of English-as-a-second-language learners in schools. One in four school students (migrant-background and indigenous) are non-English speaking background, many speaking English-as-a-second-language or dialect (ESL/ESD). Since many are 'at risk' according to Literacy Benchmarks testing, optimal ESL-informed teaching, reporting and assessment is needed. The ESL Bandscales, wid ....The development of refined and validated Language Australia ESL Bandscales for improved assessment, reporting and outcomes of English-as-a-second-language learners in schools. One in four school students (migrant-background and indigenous) are non-English speaking background, many speaking English-as-a-second-language or dialect (ESL/ESD). Since many are 'at risk' according to Literacy Benchmarks testing, optimal ESL-informed teaching, reporting and assessment is needed. The ESL Bandscales, widely used for 8 years, will be empirically validated using quantitative (Rasch modeling) and qualitative techniques to provide a more trustworthy teaching/reporting map. A team of researchers, including 3 APAIs, will draw on and improve understandings and assessment of Industry Partner teachers of migrant-background and indigenous learners, resulting in a new map(s) of ESL/ESD learning, published as ESL Bandscales II.Read moreRead less
Australian Laureate Fellowships - Grant ID: FL120100116
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$2,416,141.00
Summary
How gender shapes the world: a linguistic perspective. This project will seek to understand and explain gender roles in Australian society, and in nearby nations. Emphasis is placed on training researchers with an immigrant or minority background, working towards the empowerment of women researchers. This will enhance our nation's capacity to interpret and manage gender roles in multicultural contexts.
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE100100211
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$650,000.00
Summary
The Big Australian Speech Corpus: An audio-visual speech corpus of Australian English. Contemporary speech science and technology are driven by the availability of large speech corpora. While audio databases exist for languages spoken in America, Europe and Japan, there is currently no large auditory-visual database of spoken language, and certainly not one for Australian English. Here we will establish the Big Australian Speech Corpus, which will support a speech science research and developmen ....The Big Australian Speech Corpus: An audio-visual speech corpus of Australian English. Contemporary speech science and technology are driven by the availability of large speech corpora. While audio databases exist for languages spoken in America, Europe and Japan, there is currently no large auditory-visual database of spoken language, and certainly not one for Australian English. Here we will establish the Big Australian Speech Corpus, which will support a speech science research and development using Australian English and facilitate the development of Australian speech technology applications from automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis used in taxi and other ordering services, to hearing prostheses and talking head aids for learning-impaired children, and a range of security and forensic applications.Read moreRead less
Revival' in the Middle East: The Genesis of Israeli ('Modern Hebrew') - lessons for revival of no-longer spoken Australian languages. This project will enhance mutual understanding within multicultural Australia: (1) helping community leaders seeking to apply the lessons of Israeli to the revival of no-longer spoken Australian languages; (2) assisting local Jews to explore their roots and substantially improving Israeli and Hebrew teaching methodologies at universities and Jewish schools in Aust ....Revival' in the Middle East: The Genesis of Israeli ('Modern Hebrew') - lessons for revival of no-longer spoken Australian languages. This project will enhance mutual understanding within multicultural Australia: (1) helping community leaders seeking to apply the lessons of Israeli to the revival of no-longer spoken Australian languages; (2) assisting local Jews to explore their roots and substantially improving Israeli and Hebrew teaching methodologies at universities and Jewish schools in Australia. Globally, the project will enhance Australia's understanding of social, political and cultural conditions in the Middle East, by facilitating a clearer and more complex understanding of the languages and politics in the region. It will therefore make a valuable contribution to the war against terrorism, now the major threat to national security.Read moreRead less
Extraordinary yet mundane talk: children navigating palliative care. This project aims to provide foundational evidence of how clinicians and families communicate effectively with children with life-limiting conditions. Finding ways to sensitively communicate with children about matters that will profoundly affect them will support the everyday work of skilled healthcare professionals. In developing the first nation-wide repository of video-recordings of paediatric palliative care consultations, ....Extraordinary yet mundane talk: children navigating palliative care. This project aims to provide foundational evidence of how clinicians and families communicate effectively with children with life-limiting conditions. Finding ways to sensitively communicate with children about matters that will profoundly affect them will support the everyday work of skilled healthcare professionals. In developing the first nation-wide repository of video-recordings of paediatric palliative care consultations, the project will generate new knowledge by using conversation analysis to examine how these conversations occur in real-life clinical settings. The project expects to inform research, policy, and practice, by revealing more effective communication approaches, benefiting researchers, clinicians, healthcare users, and policy makers.Read moreRead less
A fast comparative method for historical linguistics. Linguists are able to infer ancient histories of languages by a procedure known as the Comparative Method. Its results are used in related studies of human genetic and cultural change. However, the Comparative Method is a manual-only process and thus currently is a bottleneck for the science of unravelling the human past. This project aims to overcome this limitation and significantly accelerate linguistic discovery, by combining recent advan ....A fast comparative method for historical linguistics. Linguists are able to infer ancient histories of languages by a procedure known as the Comparative Method. Its results are used in related studies of human genetic and cultural change. However, the Comparative Method is a manual-only process and thus currently is a bottleneck for the science of unravelling the human past. This project aims to overcome this limitation and significantly accelerate linguistic discovery, by combining recent advances in computational language processing, statistics and cultural-evolutionary modelling. By producing innovative mathematical means for rapidly discovering ancient language relationships, it will enable a breakthrough in our capacity to uncover human linguistic, genetic and cultural heritage worldwide.Read moreRead less