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
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
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).
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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.
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The languages of Southern New Guinea. This project will investigate, analyse and record the barely-known languages of Southern New Guinea, stretching across Papua New Guinea and Indonesia just kilometres from Australia's borders. It will produce grammatical descriptions for ten of the thirty languages of the area, plus a comparative database and handbook of the languages of this strategic region.
Social cognition and language - the design resources of grammatical diversity. This project will (a) improve Australia's capacity to interact and communicate with other cultures (b) promote advanced training and research (including 9 doctoral students) on the languages of our region (c) carry out extensive new research on 20 languages of the Pacific region, most of which represent gravely endangered cultural traditions (d) draw on the design solutions identified in these languages to develop ....Social cognition and language - the design resources of grammatical diversity. This project will (a) improve Australia's capacity to interact and communicate with other cultures (b) promote advanced training and research (including 9 doctoral students) on the languages of our region (c) carry out extensive new research on 20 languages of the Pacific region, most of which represent gravely endangered cultural traditions (d) draw on the design solutions identified in these languages to develop models appropriate to the social cognition element of human-computer and computer-computer interfacesRead moreRead less
New Guinea's place in Southeast Asia: a study integrating archaeology, linguistics and genetics. The multi-disciplinary research will develop an historical context for understanding present-day processes of cultural interaction in eastern Indonesia. Understanding Australia's past, and that of its neighbours, is a clear need for our country. The Onin Peninsula of western New Guinea (within Indonesia's Papua Barat Province) is the focus of multi-disciplinary research, involving archaeology and lin ....New Guinea's place in Southeast Asia: a study integrating archaeology, linguistics and genetics. The multi-disciplinary research will develop an historical context for understanding present-day processes of cultural interaction in eastern Indonesia. Understanding Australia's past, and that of its neighbours, is a clear need for our country. The Onin Peninsula of western New Guinea (within Indonesia's Papua Barat Province) is the focus of multi-disciplinary research, involving archaeology and linguistics, and incorporating human genetics to better understand the historical construction of identity within this region westward to Island Southeast Asia over the last 10,000 years and to develop closer ties with researchers in our neighbouring country.Read moreRead less