Linguistic prehistory in Mainland Southeast Asia: 2000 years of language and culture contact between Austroasiatic and Chamic speakers. The project focuses on the Austroasiatic language groups, Bahnaric, Katuic and Khmer, and one Austronesian, Chamic, which are located in Vietnam, Cambodia and southern Laos. These languages have been in contact for around 2000 years. I will investigate the history of language contact and change, leading to improved understanding of the particular and general pro ....Linguistic prehistory in Mainland Southeast Asia: 2000 years of language and culture contact between Austroasiatic and Chamic speakers. The project focuses on the Austroasiatic language groups, Bahnaric, Katuic and Khmer, and one Austronesian, Chamic, which are located in Vietnam, Cambodia and southern Laos. These languages have been in contact for around 2000 years. I will investigate the history of language contact and change, leading to improved understanding of the particular and general processes involved, and the histories of the languages and their speakers. Outcomes will include improved reconstructions of proto-languages, papers describing in detail the typology and processes of language contact and change, and a substantial monograph on the (pre)history of Mainland Southeast Asia.Read moreRead less
Voices of Regional Australia: The linguistic patterning of local attachment. This project aims to investigate language and social dynamics among regional Australians, who, despite representing one third of the population, have been often neglected in the research to date. The project expects to generate new knowledge around regional attachment and the impact that has on speech patterns, adapting for the first time recently developed international metrics to the Australian context. Expected outco ....Voices of Regional Australia: The linguistic patterning of local attachment. This project aims to investigate language and social dynamics among regional Australians, who, despite representing one third of the population, have been often neglected in the research to date. The project expects to generate new knowledge around regional attachment and the impact that has on speech patterns, adapting for the first time recently developed international metrics to the Australian context. Expected outcomes include a better understanding of models of language change across urban and rural areas, and a novel dataset recording the stories of regional Australians, and in particular, their experiences facing bushfire. This should provide significant benefits as a record of life, language and community in regional Australia.Read moreRead less
The Semantics of Canonical Parallelism: Oral composition among Rotinese poets, eastern Indonesia. The pairing of words, known in linguistics as parallelism, is a critical feature of the oral traditions of the world. This strict use of couplets for oral compositions is a characteristic of the vibrant traditions of verbal communication on all the islands of eastern Indonesia. This project focuses on the oral traditions of the island of Roti, Australia's closest Indonesian neighbour. Using new anal ....The Semantics of Canonical Parallelism: Oral composition among Rotinese poets, eastern Indonesia. The pairing of words, known in linguistics as parallelism, is a critical feature of the oral traditions of the world. This strict use of couplets for oral compositions is a characteristic of the vibrant traditions of verbal communication on all the islands of eastern Indonesia. This project focuses on the oral traditions of the island of Roti, Australia's closest Indonesian neighbour. Using new analytic techniques applied to an extensive recorded corpus, it seeks to identify underlying mechanisms of verbal composition that may be applied comparatively to other oral traditions throughout the world, thus locating Australia at the forefront of the international study of oral traditions.Read moreRead less
Languages of Barrier Islands, Sumatra: Description, History and Typology. This project aims to investigate endangered languages of the Asia-Pacific via four undocumented languages in the Barrier Islands, Indonesia. New knowledge will be generated into the languages, cultures and societies of the region on an unprecedented scale, and be made freely available to the public. New data will uncover past migration patterns in Southeast Asia, advance language theory (such as linguistic typology and lan ....Languages of Barrier Islands, Sumatra: Description, History and Typology. This project aims to investigate endangered languages of the Asia-Pacific via four undocumented languages in the Barrier Islands, Indonesia. New knowledge will be generated into the languages, cultures and societies of the region on an unprecedented scale, and be made freely available to the public. New data will uncover past migration patterns in Southeast Asia, advance language theory (such as linguistic typology and language change), and support the computational modelling of Austronesian for future language technologies. Connections with Indonesian institutions will strengthen Australia’s regional engagement, and support language revitalisation and maintenance among minority communities for the preservation of their culture and history.Read moreRead less
Understanding Indonesian: developing a machine-usable grammar, dictionary and corpus. Australia's relationship with Indonesia is of great significance. The need for good relationships founded on appreciation of the range of societies and views in modern Indonesia is widely acknowledged. A better knowledge of the languages is essential for this, and so are fast, efficient information gathering systems for processing multilingual sources (including Indonesian text), that can analyse large volumes ....Understanding Indonesian: developing a machine-usable grammar, dictionary and corpus. Australia's relationship with Indonesia is of great significance. The need for good relationships founded on appreciation of the range of societies and views in modern Indonesia is widely acknowledged. A better knowledge of the languages is essential for this, and so are fast, efficient information gathering systems for processing multilingual sources (including Indonesian text), that can analyse large volumes of text. The skills to build such systems exist internationally. Through collaboration with established international teams, we plan to transfer cutting-edge skills in the development of machine-useable grammars to Australian researchers, and to create the language resources essential for understanding Indonesian.Read moreRead less
Proto Oceanic Language, culture and environment: Foundations of the Austronesian settlement of the Pacific. The project aims to reconstruct the lexicon of Proto Oceanic. Proto Oceanic was ancestral to most Austronesian languages of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia. By paying attention to the semantics of terminologies, we expect to learn much about the culture, society and cosmology of Proto Oceanic speakers and their conception of and adaptation to the natural environment. The results will ....Proto Oceanic Language, culture and environment: Foundations of the Austronesian settlement of the Pacific. The project aims to reconstruct the lexicon of Proto Oceanic. Proto Oceanic was ancestral to most Austronesian languages of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia. By paying attention to the semantics of terminologies, we expect to learn much about the culture, society and cosmology of Proto Oceanic speakers and their conception of and adaptation to the natural environment. The results will be presented in Volumes 3-5 of a five-volume series. Volume 1 was published in 1998; volume 2 is almost complete. This project will support fundamental research for volumes 3 (flora and fauna), 4 (people and society) and 5 (indices, etc).
Read moreRead less
The building blocks of meaning: a linguistic approach. This project will investigate how complex meanings are built up from more basic building blocks, and to what extent basic meanings differ between different languages, cultures, and geographical zones. The project is expected to lead to significant advances in the scientific knowledge of language. Nothing comparable has been attempted before. Expected outcomes include a rich harvest of new knowledge, digital tools to assist with analysing and ....The building blocks of meaning: a linguistic approach. This project will investigate how complex meanings are built up from more basic building blocks, and to what extent basic meanings differ between different languages, cultures, and geographical zones. The project is expected to lead to significant advances in the scientific knowledge of language. Nothing comparable has been attempted before. Expected outcomes include a rich harvest of new knowledge, digital tools to assist with analysing and translating complex meanings, and ongoing international collaborations. This will provide significant benefits such as enabling messaging and communication in education, health care, service delivery and international affairs to be clearer, more accessible and more translatable.Read moreRead less
The English Language: Meaning, History and Culture. The theory developed by the CI (and her colleague Cliff Goddard)contributes to Australia's prestige on the academic scene world-wide and attracts many graduate students to this country. This project should further strengthen its influence.
Australia is a multicultural society, united (but also divided) by the English language. Educating Australians of all backgrounds about the cultural assumptions and values embedded in English is a matter o ....The English Language: Meaning, History and Culture. The theory developed by the CI (and her colleague Cliff Goddard)contributes to Australia's prestige on the academic scene world-wide and attracts many graduate students to this country. This project should further strengthen its influence.
Australia is a multicultural society, united (but also divided) by the English language. Educating Australians of all backgrounds about the cultural assumptions and values embedded in English is a matter of vital national and community interest. The outcome of this project will be an important resource for intercultural training in Australia and other English-speaking countries. The project will enhance Australia's capacity to interpret itself to the world.
Read moreRead less
The building blocks of language: Words in Central Australian languages. This project seeks to model the structure of words and phrases in three indigenous languages of of central Australia: Anmatyerr, Kaytetye, and Warumungu. The project will advance our understanding of the different ways that words and phrases function as the building blocks of language: how words vary in complexity, and the different ways that they combine to generate higher levels of linguistc structure. The project will pre ....The building blocks of language: Words in Central Australian languages. This project seeks to model the structure of words and phrases in three indigenous languages of of central Australia: Anmatyerr, Kaytetye, and Warumungu. The project will advance our understanding of the different ways that words and phrases function as the building blocks of language: how words vary in complexity, and the different ways that they combine to generate higher levels of linguistc structure. The project will preserve Indigenous language heritage and contribute to Indigenous cultural maintenance, a significant factor in advancing Indigenous well-being. The project will generate new insights into language structure that will advance linguistic theory, and inform language teaching and speech processing technologies.Read moreRead less
How free is free?: word order in Australian Indigenous languages. This project aims to address the fundamental issue of how the grammatical structure of the language we speak shapes the way we plan and interpret sentences. The project will use innovative methodologies to investigate language production and comprehension in three Australian Indigenous languages that have unusually free word order, where the words in a sentence can be varied in multiple ways without changing the overall meaning. E ....How free is free?: word order in Australian Indigenous languages. This project aims to address the fundamental issue of how the grammatical structure of the language we speak shapes the way we plan and interpret sentences. The project will use innovative methodologies to investigate language production and comprehension in three Australian Indigenous languages that have unusually free word order, where the words in a sentence can be varied in multiple ways without changing the overall meaning. Expected outcomes include new knowledge of the relationship between language structure and human cognition, a deeper understanding of the grammatical structure of three Indigenous languages and how they differ from other languages, and important contributions to Indigenous language maintenance and education.Read moreRead less