A longitudinal study of the interaction of home and school language in three Aboriginal communities. The importance of language skills cannot be underestimated, and contribute to 'a healthy start to life'. In multilingual Indigenous communities, children must negotiate the complexities of different languages used for different purposes. This project will provide detailed insights into how children manage differences between home and school language, the kinds of problems they encounter when the ....A longitudinal study of the interaction of home and school language in three Aboriginal communities. The importance of language skills cannot be underestimated, and contribute to 'a healthy start to life'. In multilingual Indigenous communities, children must negotiate the complexities of different languages used for different purposes. This project will provide detailed insights into how children manage differences between home and school language, the kinds of problems they encounter when they enter the school system, and how their languages develop over the first four crucial years of school which provide the foundation for the children's future education. Their ability to manage the language of school underpins their ability to lead successful and engaged lives as adults. Read moreRead less
Thinking and talking about atolls: the role of environment in shaping language and our understanding of physical space. This project investigates the role of environment in shaping how we think about physical space. By comparing how people in the highly specialised environment of the atoll talk about space in different parts of the world we will gather new data to test ideas on the roles of language and environment in shaping how we understand the physical world.
How mixed language input affects child language development: case studies from Central Australia. Case studies of three Aboriginal communities (Gurindji at Victoria River Downs, Alyawarr at Epenarra, Warumungu at Tennant Creek) will identify: (i) the language input young children receive from traditional indigenous languages, Kriol and English varieties, and from code-switching involving these languages (ii) the effect on first language acquisition; (iii) the processes of language shift and mai ....How mixed language input affects child language development: case studies from Central Australia. Case studies of three Aboriginal communities (Gurindji at Victoria River Downs, Alyawarr at Epenarra, Warumungu at Tennant Creek) will identify: (i) the language input young children receive from traditional indigenous languages, Kriol and English varieties, and from code-switching involving these languages (ii) the effect on first language acquisition; (iii) the processes of language shift and maintenance resulting from multilingual environments, and consequent transmission or loss of target languages, and emergence of new mixed languages. This is an unexplored area of bilingual first language acquisition, and has theoretical implications for language shift, and practical applications for language maintenance.Read moreRead less
Australian Aboriginal conversational style. This project aims to re-examine claims that Aboriginal Australians conduct conversations in different ways to Anglo-Australians. It will investigate and compare ordinary conversations in these groups on a large scale. The project expects to provide new evidence to explicate Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal conversational norms, pinpointing differences which may lead to intercultural miscommunication. Expected outcomes include endangered language documenta ....Australian Aboriginal conversational style. This project aims to re-examine claims that Aboriginal Australians conduct conversations in different ways to Anglo-Australians. It will investigate and compare ordinary conversations in these groups on a large scale. The project expects to provide new evidence to explicate Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal conversational norms, pinpointing differences which may lead to intercultural miscommunication. Expected outcomes include endangered language documentation, and evidence-based findings to disseminate to service providers, to communities and to Aboriginal organisations to improve ways of engaging with each other. In addition, the project will benefit Aboriginal communities with new approaches to language revitalisation.Read moreRead less
From little things, big things grow: how children learn a morphologically complex Australian indigenous language. This project investigates the acquisition of Murrinh-Patha, one of a small number of Australian indigenous languages still being learned by children. The results of this research will inform our understanding of the ways in which children learn grammatically complex languages, and facilitate the maintenance of this and other indigenous languages.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130100399
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
He's not heavy, he's my brother: the acquisition of kinship terminology in a morphologically complex Australian language. Murrinh-Patha is one of the few Australian indigenous languages still being acquired by children. This project investigates how children acquire the grammar and lexicon of kinship. It will inform our understanding of how children gain social competence and learn complex kin-based grammars. It will help to maintain this and other indigenous languages.
Landscape, language and culture in Indigenous Australia. This project aims to determine how culture and social diversity interact with landscape in representing physical space in the minds and grammars of speakers of Australian Indigenous languages. The project will conduct the first Australia-wide survey of Indigenous spatial description correlated with landscape, and the first large-scale investigation of diversity in spatial behaviour among individuals within communities. The findings are exp ....Landscape, language and culture in Indigenous Australia. This project aims to determine how culture and social diversity interact with landscape in representing physical space in the minds and grammars of speakers of Australian Indigenous languages. The project will conduct the first Australia-wide survey of Indigenous spatial description correlated with landscape, and the first large-scale investigation of diversity in spatial behaviour among individuals within communities. The findings are expected to inform crucial debates on the formative role of landscape in language, and advance our knowledge of human spatial cognition. It will collect completely new experimental and natural data in six endangered languages, with significant benefits for the maintenance of Indigenous languages and cultures.Read moreRead less
ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. Language is central to human existence and to the flow of information. The Centre will address the most critical questions about language: How do languages evolve? How different can languages be? How do our brains acquire and process them? How can technologies deal with the complexity and enormous variability of language in its central role in human information processing? What can Australia do to increase its linguistic abilities at a time ....ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. Language is central to human existence and to the flow of information. The Centre will address the most critical questions about language: How do languages evolve? How different can languages be? How do our brains acquire and process them? How can technologies deal with the complexity and enormous variability of language in its central role in human information processing? What can Australia do to increase its linguistic abilities at a time of increasingly multilingual demands in trade and information? The Centre will also secure language heritage, develop new language technologies, connect policy with indigenous and migrant communities, and build strategies to help 1st and 2nd language learning and those isolated by language difficulties.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE0560711
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$325,873.00
Summary
PARADISEC, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures: Accessibility and Decentralisation. PARADISEC, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures, is a collaborative facility established in 2003 to preserve and make accessible Australian researchers' field recordings of endangered languages and musics from the area around Australia. Improvement plans for 2005 include: decentralising audio ingestion; adding audio restoration capabil ....PARADISEC, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures: Accessibility and Decentralisation. PARADISEC, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures, is a collaborative facility established in 2003 to preserve and make accessible Australian researchers' field recordings of endangered languages and musics from the area around Australia. Improvement plans for 2005 include: decentralising audio ingestion; adding audio restoration capabilities; developing a geographical interface to our collection; web-publishing our catalogue; developing and testing protocols for linking audio with text, images and relevant material in other collections; and participating in international consortia developing standards and tools for management of and access to endangered cultural recordings. Read moreRead less
Are super-complex words represented like sentences in speakers' minds? This project aims to examine speakers' knowledge of super-complex words in the remote Australian language Wubuy. The project will provide a crucial test of current theories of language processing and linguistic typology via experimental work on the Indigenous language Wubuy, a language that defies the perceived fundamental distinction between words and phrases. This will have significant benefit to Indigenous language mainten ....Are super-complex words represented like sentences in speakers' minds? This project aims to examine speakers' knowledge of super-complex words in the remote Australian language Wubuy. The project will provide a crucial test of current theories of language processing and linguistic typology via experimental work on the Indigenous language Wubuy, a language that defies the perceived fundamental distinction between words and phrases. This will have significant benefit to Indigenous language maintenance and revitalisation efforts and thus help improve Indigenous education outcomes and reinforce cultural pride.Read moreRead less