01/08/2022

ALS Newsletter July 2022

 

 

News from the University of Sydney

Linguistics at the University of Sydney has now moved from the School of Arts, Literature, and Media to the new School of Humanities.

The Sydney Centre for Language Research

The Sydney Centre for Language Research has a “Posts” page for news and updates. Recently, we have published news and updates from research students: https://sydneylanguageresearch.org/posts/

The Centre for Cultural-Linguistic Diversity (Eastern Himalaya) (CCLD-EH)

The CCLD-EH has received a four-year seed grant from the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research to operate our established program Training and Resources for Indigenous Community Linguists (TRICL) and to build on this by establishing a new fellowship program open to TRICL alums, FeLlowships for Indigenous Community Researchers (FLICR). In 2022, five FLICR fellows have already begun documenting the languages and cultural practices of the Hruso, Milang, Tawrã, Dakpa and Lisu peoples, in year-long projects supervised by Yankee Modi, Mark W. Post, Zilpha Modi (Rajiv Gandhi University) and Kellen Parker Van Dam (University of Zürich). 

The Sydney Corpus Lab

The Sydney Corpus Lab aims to promote corpus linguistics in Australia. Its mission is to build research capacity in corpus linguistics at the University of Sydney, to connect Australian corpus linguists, and to promote the method in Australia, both in linguistics and in other disciplines. A summary of the lab's 2021 activities and news can be found here.

Recent posts on the lab's site can be found here: including an interview with Pam Peters, an overview of the FAIR and CARE principles , an update on the Sydney Speaks project, the Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA), and a case study of emotional labour. 

The lab maintains a mailing list with announce occasional news and events. You can subscribe to the mailing list here. The lab is open to new Affiliates from Australian universities who have an interest in corpus linguistics, and welcomes guest blog posts by affiliates. Contact: info@sydneycorpuslab.com

Publications

New books

Enfield, N. J. 2022. Language Vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-04661-9. https://twitter.com/njenfield/status/1508952167516078081

Roche, Gerald and Gwendolyn Hyslop. 2022. Bordering Tibetan tongues: Making and marking languages in Transnational High Asia. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463725040/bordering-tibetan-languages

Post, Mark, Stephen Morey, and Toni Huber, eds. 2022. (Publishing 18 August 2022.) Ethnolinguistic Prehistory of the Eastern Himalaya. Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library, volume 52. Leiden, Boston: Brill. https://brill.com/view/title/61878?language=en

Ngo, Thu, Susan Hood, J. R. Martin, Clare Painter, Bradley A. Smith, and Michele Zappavigna. 2022. Modelling Paralanguage Using Systemic Functional Semiotics: Theory and Application. London, New York: Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/modelling-paralanguage-using-systemic-functional-semiotics-9781350074910/

Selected new articles

Beers Fägersten, K. & M. Bednarek (2022) The evolution of swearing in television catchphrases. Language and Literature [Online First]. https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470221090371

Bednarek, M. (2021) Using corpus linguistics to study indexicality in Indigenous-authored television drama: Keyword analysis and lexical profiling. In Carmen Gregori-Signes, Miguel Fuster-Márquez, and Sergio Maruenda-Bataller (eds). Discourse, Dialogue and Characterisation in TV Series. Granada: Editorial Comares: 1-21. 

Fuoli, M. & M. Bednarek (2022) Emotional labor in webcare and beyond: a linguistic framework and case study. Journal of Pragmatics 191: 256-270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2022.01.016

Bednarek, M., Ross, A. S.,  Boichak, O., Doran, Y. I., Carr, G., Altmann, E. G. & T. J. Alexander (2022) Winning the discursive struggle? The impact of a significant environmental crisis event on dominant climate discourses on Twitter. Discourse, Context & Media 45, 100564, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2021.100564

Enfield, N. J. (2022). Utilitarian versus intellectualist explanations of lexical content: A false dichotomy. In The Art of Language, edited by Anne Storch and R. M. W. Dixon. Leiden: Brill.

Enfield, N. J. 2022. Enchrony. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews – Cognitive Science. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1597

Zuckerman, Charles H. P. and Enfield, N. J. 2022. The Unbearable Heaviness of Being Kri: House Construction and Ethnolinguistic Transformation in Upland Laos. Journal of The Royal Anthropological Institute.  28.1, 178-203. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.13657

Parker, Lisa, Jennifer A Byrne, Micah Goldwater, and N. J. Enfield. 2021. Misinformation: An Empirical Study with Scientists and Communicators during the COVID-19 Pandemic. BMJ Open Science 5, no. 1 (November 2021): e100188. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjos-2021-100188.

Hyslop, Gwendolyn. 2021. Between stress and tone: acoustic evidence of word prominence in Kurtöp. Language Documentation & Conservation 15: 550-574.  https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/fd723525-1199-4755-bcae-562bc5540f07

Hyslop, Gwendolyn. 2021. Language as a window into the past: Proto East Bodish language and culture. In Diana Lange, Jarmila Ptáčková, Marion Wettstein and Mareike Wulff (eds.) Crossing Boundaries: Tibetan studies unlimited, 289-310. Prague: Academia Publishing House. 

San Roque, Lila, and Bambi B. Schieffelin. (accepted) 2022. “San Roque, L. & B. B. Schieffelin. Language Socialisation in the Papuan Context.” (To appear in in N. Evans & S. Fedden (eds.), The Oxford Guide to Papuan Languages.) PsyArXiv. December 13 2021. https://psyarxiv.com/jp7tn/

Torwali, Mujahid and Troy, Jakelin. "Saving Torwali Music and Dance: Community Led Performance and ‘Public’ Archiving" Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture, vol. 50, no. 3-4, 2021, pp. 151-163. https://doi.org/10.1515/pdtc-2021-0028

Selected talks and conference presentations

• Monika Bednarek. "Corpus-based media linguistics: A case study of linguistic diversity in Australian television" presented at the University of Queensland's LADAL Opening Webinar Series 2021 is now available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g54yLpYefbI
• Monika Bednarek - Plenary address on “Corpus linguistics and television series: A critical reflection” at the International  Conference on Rethinking disciplines with TV series: an epistemological perspective, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, France
• Monika Bednarek participated in the panel on “Computational social science in Australia: research approaches” at the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Workshop 
• Monika Bednarek and Nick Enfield presented at the launch of the Fighting Truth Decay research node of the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney.
• Enfield, N. J. Pragmatic Universals. Keynote speech at INPRA 2022, Brisbane, June 2022 (9^th International Conference on Pragmatics and Communication).
• Hyslop, Gwendolyn. 2022. Language documentation and speaker perspective: How comparing forms across conversation genres led to the ‘discovery’ of egophoricity in Kurtöp. ZAS/ELDP seminar series. 4 March. Berlin (online)
• Hyslop, Gwendolyn. 2022. Decolonisation as default perspective in language documentation. Humboldt University Tibet & Himalaya Lecture Series: Decolonising Himalayan Studies? Putting theory into practice. 10 January. Berlin (online). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUrNC_-Y_LY
• Jim Martin and associates Yaegan Doran and Christian Matthiessen participated in a conference in Korea with the theme “Language, Function and Use.” Martin focused on the systemic functional grammar of Korean he has been working on with colleagues for the past decade (to be published by Cambridge in early 2023).

PhD student completion

• Kelvin Lee - Language and Character Identity: A Study of First-Person Pronouns in a Corpus of Science Fiction Anime Dialogue (Japanese Studies, co-supervised with Nerida Jarkey):

New graduate students in Linguistics at USYD:

• Zeina TALEB:  Maintaining heritage languages in Australia: The case of Arabic speaking parents.
• Badr ALSHAMMARI:  The Acoustic Properties of Laryngeal Contrast in Arabic and Dzongkha Initial Stops.
• Samuel HERRIMAN:  The role of the screenwriter in representations of Aboriginal English and Australian Indigenous Languages in fictional screen media
• Tracy Yumin GAO:  A CREDIBLE Project: Integrating PDA approach to design materials for educating children to reduce plastic pollution
• Sharmi BARUA:  A Grammar of Patro

Nick Enfield

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News from the University of New South Wales

HDR news   

Congratulations to Caroline Cheng who was awarded a university medal for her outstanding research in an honours thesis (2021) titled When two languages have to collide - A study of simultaneous bilingual Cantonese/English acquisition of English epistemic modals. Supervised by Dr Debra Aarons and Dr Mengistu Amberber. 

Congratulations to Sophia Ra who has been awarded her PhD for Communication challenges for healthcare interpreters within a multicultural society: intercultural or ethical? Supervised by Prof Sandra Hale and Prof Ludmila Stern. Publicly available on UNSWorks. 

Project update: Access to justice in interpreted proceedings: the role of Judicial Officers 

This research project, funded by an ARC Linkage Program grant and carried out by CI Prof Ludmila Stern (lead), Prof Sandra Hale, A/Prof Stephen Doherty and A/Prof Melanie Schwartz at UNSW, aims to examine the ways judicial officers can improve courtroom communication and prevent miscommunication and error, particularly in criminal cases where speakers of the ‘new and emerging’ and First Nations languages are involved, and where interpreters receive limited or no specialised training.  

Fieldwork addressing migrant languages in NSW, QLD, VIC and TAS courts has been completed and continues for First Nations interpreting in WA. This has included court observations and follow-up interviews with judicial officers and interpreters. Project investigators hope to extend this fieldwork in First National interpreting to the NT in 2023, including bush courts. Project webpage: https://research.unsw.edu.au/projects/access-justice-interpreted-proceedings-role-judicial-officers 

Community engagement   

On Friday, 10 June, School of Humanities and Languages was visited by 20 students from Matraville Sports High School. Clair Hill ran a 90-minute session for the students, introducing them to the diverse work of the school and her own research. The students learnt about the Speaking Our Language project (collaboration between Lockhart River Aboriginal Council, MARCS at WSU, eLearn Australia and UNSW) which is developing a Umpila and Kuuku Ya’u phrase-based language learning using the Listen N Talk app shell. The students trialed the app shell using Dharawal language phrases provided by Gujaga Foundation. 

Clair Hill

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News from UNE

New Publications

• Elizabeth Margaret Ellis and Margaret Sims (2022). “It’s like the root of a tree that I grew up from….”: Parents’ linguistic identity shaping family language policy in isolated circumstances. Mouton de Gruyer, Multilingua, pp. 1-20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2021-0100.
• Piers Kelly - Piers Kelly's new book, The last language on earth: Linguistic utopianism in the Philippines (New York: Oxford University Press) was officially launched at Boobooks bookshop in Armidale at an event featuring exuberant Filipino karaoke. Piers will give a talk on the topic of the book at the SS24 Sociolinguistics Symposium in Ghent on 13 July. 
• Finex Ndhlovu (2022) Pan-African identities and literacies: The orthographic harmonisation debate revisited. South African Journal of African Languages 41(2): 1-18 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2022.
• Margaret Sharpe – Has recently published a Dictionary for the northern dialects of Yugambeh-Bundjalung, that span the Northern Rivers of NSW through to areas around the Logan River in Queensland. The Dictionary also includes words from the Minyung dialect in the Byron Bay and Brunswick River area of NSW, south of the Tweed.

Call for Chapter Contributions – Routledge Handbook of Language and Decolonisation

Finex Ndhlovu (UNE Linguistics) and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni have signed a contract for the first ever Routledge Handbook of Language and Decolonisation. They are calling for expressions of interest to contribute chapters to this volume.

Synopsis: Critical social science scholars have long argued that languages and cultures are social constructs that sustain dominant ideologies of the time, including the ideology of coloniality. Organized around five interrelated themes, the volume searches for pathways we might follow in operationalising ‘decolonising’ in a manner that bridges traditional disciplinary divides. It aims to unsettle the various ways languages have been instrumentalised to advance colonial projects of domination, control, and the exercising of power. Contributors are encouraged to (i) adopt a historical approach to the various mutations of the global project of coloniality that dates to at least the last 500 years; and (ii) utilise ‘decolonising’ as a methodology and approach to their analyses. The goal is to centre previously marginalised and ignored voices, narratives, grammars, and vocabularies on the sociality of language. Submit EOIs (200 – 250-word abstracts) to Finex Ndhlovu fndhlovu@une.edu.au by 31 July 2022.

Conference Presentations

Dr Arvind Iyengar presented a paper at the biennial Grapholinguistics in the 21st century conference (https://grafematik2022.sciencesconf.org/), held in hybrid mode on location in Paris as well as online from June 8–10, 2022. Arvind’s presentation was titled The akshara as a graphematic unit, and can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/Vttnz65v96s . A written version of the paper will appear as part of the conference proceedings in the coming months.

HDR Theses Submitted

Congratulations to Ms Leei Wong who recently submitted her PhD thesis for examination.

Thesis title: Teaching and Learning Linguistic Politeness in Australian Higher Education: Chinese as an Additional Language. Supervisors: A/Professor Finex Ndhlovu, A/Professor Eveline Chan, Dr Huifang Li, and Dr Joshua Esler.

Finex Ndhlovu

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News from RMIT Language Studies/Applied Linguistics

Recent publications

Crozet, C. (2022). Journey into Indian spirituality: A Westerner perspective. In Moloney, R. & Mansour, S. (Eds.). Language and Spirit: Exploring languages, religion and spirituality in Australia today. Switzerland: Springer Nature.

Jindan, N. & Lintao, Q. (2022). A Translational History of The Dream of the Red Chamber in Japan. In Qi, L. & Tobias, S. (Eds). Encountering China’s Past. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0648-0_3

Conference presentations

• Mullan, K. (with David, C., Poussard, C., Vincent-Durroux, L. and Béal, C. in absentia). First vs. second language pragmatics of humour. International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics and Communication (INPRA2022), University of Queensland, 21-23 June 2022.
• Mullan, K. with Arab, R. Too Funny for Words? Contrastive Semantics of “FUNNY” Words in French and Persian. Humour Symposium, University of Queensland, 20 June 2022.

Kerry Mullan

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News from Monash University

Staff

We are thrilled to announce the arrival of Jill Vaughan (from June) and Ward Peeters (from November) to the Linguistics Program at Monash — a warm welcome to both.

Jess Birnie-Smith has left us to take up a position at La Trobe Uni — we will all miss Jess greatly.

Academic Publications late 2021 — early 2022

Allan, Keith 2022 Obscenity, slurs, and taboo. Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Jan-Ola Östman & Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hop.24.obs1 http://users.monash.edu.au/~kallan/papers/ost.pdf

Allan, Keith 2022 On the semantics of cup. In Helen Broomhead & Zhengdao Ye (eds) Meaning, Life and Culture: In conversation with Anna Wierzbicka. Canberra: ANU Press. http://users.monash.edu.au/~kallan/papers/cup.pdf

Allan, Keith, Réka Benczes & Kate Burridge 2021. “Seniors, Older People, the Elderly, Oldies, and Old People: What Language Reveals about Stereotypes of Ageing in Australia”, In: Macagno Fabrizio, Capone Alessandro. (eds) Inquiries in Philosophical Pragmatics. (Series: Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology) vol 28. Springer, Cham; pp. 111-125.

Birnie-Smith, Jessica & Robertson, Wesley C., 2021. Superdiversity and translocal brutality in Asian extreme metal lyrics, Language and Communication. 81: 48-63 16.

Birnie-Smith, Jessica. 2021 Framing Chineseness and Indonesianness on the Periphery. Unpacking Discourses on Chineseness: The Cultural Politics of Language and Identity in Globalizing China, edited by Shuang Gao and Xuan Wang, Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, pp. 80-105.

Birnie-Smith, Jessica 2022 (in press) Framing variation and intersectional identities within Indonesia's ethnic Chinese minority Multilingua.

Birnie-Smith, Jessica 2022. Investigating structure and agency in Chinese Indonesians’ identity work. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.

Bohnemeyer, J., Alshehri, A., Blythe, J., Cerqueglini, L., Danziger, E., Donelson, K., Eggleston, A., Gaby, A., Lin, Y.-T., Lum, J., Moore, R., Nikitina, T. & Stoakes, H. 2022. Reference frames in language and cognition: Cross-population mismatches. Linguistics Vanguard 8(s1). Pp. 175-189. (Supplementary materials available here)

Bonotti, Matteo & Louisa Willoughby 2022. Citizenship, Language Tests, and Political Participation, Nations and Nationalism. Volume 28 (2): 449-464.

Burke Isabelle & Kate Burridge 2021. “Privileging informality: cultural influences on the structural patterning of Australian English”,  in Pam Peters & Kate Burridge eds) Exploring the Ecology of World Englishes in the Twenty-First Century: Language, Society and Culture, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; pp. 324-44.

Burridge, Kate & Caroline Biewer 2021 “Where grammar meets culture: Pronominal systems in Australasia and the South Pacific revisited”,  in Pam Peters & Kate Burridge eds) Exploring the Ecology of World Englishes in the Twenty-First Century: Language, Society and Culture, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; pp. 260-79.

Burridge, Kate 2022. Review of Raymond Hickey (ed.), Raymond Hickey (ed.), English in multilingual South Africa: The linguistics of contact and change (Studies in English Language). CUP, English Language and Linguistics 26: 216-222.

Burridge, Kate 2022. Truthiness and Language—Popular Perception and Fall-Out, in Anne Storch & RMW Dixon (eds) The Art of Language (Series: Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture, Volume: 32).

Burridge, Kate, Melanie Keller, Philipp Striedl, Daniel Biro & Johanna Holzer 2021. “Circumnavigating taboos: A functional and formal typology”. In Special issue of Pragmatics & Cognition 28(1): 5-24.

Ennever, Thomas 2021. A Grammar of Ngardi. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton

Gaby, A. 2022. Comment on Ian Keen – The Evolution of Australian Kin Terminologies: Models, Conditions, and Consequences. Current Anthropology 63(1):  52-53. 

Gaby, Alice, Bill Palmer, Jonathon Lum & Jonathan Schlossberg (eds). 2022. Sociotopography. Special collection of Linguistics Vanguard 8(s1). Pp. i-203.

Hoffmann, D., Palmer, B. & A. Gaby. 2022. Geocentric directional systems in Australia: A typology. Linguistics Vanguard 8(s1). Pp. 67-89.

Lum, Jonathon, Bill Palmer, Jonathan Schlossberg & Alice Gaby. 2022. Diversity in representing space within and between language communities. Linguistics Vanguard 8(s1). Pp. 1-10.

Manns, H. 2021. Alignment and belonging in the sociolinguistic interview: Research assistants and negotiated rapport. In Z. Goebel (ed), Reimagining Rapport (pp. 139-157). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Manns, H., Willougby, L., Iwasaki, S. & Bartlett 2022. (in press). Intersubjectivity and (non-)shared modes of interaction in Australian tactile signing. Lingua. 

Margetts, Anna, Haude, Himmelmann, Jung, Riesberg, Schnell, Seifart, Sheppard & Wegener. 2022. Cross-linguistic patterns in the lexicalisation of BRING and TAKE. Studies in Language. 

Margetts, Anna, Riesberg & Hellwig (eds.). 2022. Caused Accompanied Motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective. Typological Studies in Language, 134. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 437 pp.

Newman, J. (Guest Editor). 2022. Special Issue of Cognitive Linguistics: Early Career Researchers. Cognitive Linguistics 23.1.

Newman, J. 2021. Child and children in a corpus of American fiction: Contrasting semantic preferences and their experiential motivations. Cognitive Semantics 7.1: 1-30.

Newman, J. 2021. Singular and plural preferences among adjectival collocates of CAT and DOG. LaMiCuS (Language, Mind, Culture, and Society) 5: 12-32.

Newman, J. 2022. Experiential motivation and the linguistics of sitting, standing, and lying. WIREs Cognitive Science. 

Newman, J. and D. Zhao. 2022. Mandarin chi ‘eat’ in elicitation and corpora. Chinese Language & Discourse.

Rajeg, Gede Primahadi Wijaya, Poppy Siahaan & Alice Gaby. 2022. The Spatial Construal of TIME in Indonesian: Evidence from Language and Gesture. Linguistik Indonesia 40(1). 1–24. 

Xu, Z. & Zhang, D. 2022. Exploring the use of English in Chinese social media. In E. L. Low, & A. Pakir (Eds.), English in East and South Asia: Policy, Features and Language in Use. Singapore: Routledge (Routledge World Englishes series), 185-197

Xu, Z. 2022. Unpacking pragmatic norms of Chinese speakers of English for English as a lingua franca (ELF) communication. In I. Walkinshaw (Ed.), Pragmatics in English as a Lingua Franca: Findings and Developments. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 203-220

A selection of non-academic pieces

The Monash Lens is publishing a weekly blog series that fills readers in on exciting discoveries from our ARC funded project on the history and evolution of Australian slang. Here’s the link to the blog: https://lens.monash.edu/@history-evolution-of-australian-slang

And here’s a link to the most recent piece by Simon Musgrave Australian slang: Literary genre and ‘the people’s poetry: https://lens.monash.edu/2022/07/05/1384853/australian-slang-literary-genre-and-the-peoples-poetry

Also on the theme of slang, we have published a number of articles in The Conversation:

Manns H. & K. Burridge Orright you spunkrats, here’s where all our Aussie summertime language came from (Dec. 31 2021) https://theconversation.com/orright-you-spunkrats-heres-where-all-our-aussie-summertime-language-came-from-171113

Burridge, K. & H. Manns Kris Kringles and yuletide jingles: unboxing the wonders of Christmas lingo (Dec 200 2021) https://theconversation.com/shrill-bossy-emotional-why-language-matters-in-the-gender-debate-158310

Burridge, K. D. Hughes, H. Manns, I. Burke, K. Allan & S. Musgrave Yeah, nah: Aussie slang hasn’t carked it, but we do want to know more about it (August 12 2021) https://theconversation.com/yeah-nah-aussie-slang-hasnt-carked-it-but-we-do-want-to-know-more-about-it-165746

Manns H. & K. Burridge Shrill, bossy, emotional: why language matters in the gender debate (May 10 2021)  https://theconversation.com/shrill-bossy-emotional-why-language-matters-in-the-gender-debate-158310;

Kate Burridge

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News from Griffith University

Publications

Eisenchlas, S. A., & Shoecraft, K. (2022) Empowering effective language learners: An innovative course addressing language learning challenges in one Australian university. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'22), 1193-1201. Editorial Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia.

Garcia, F. J., Powell, M. B., Brubacher, S. P., Eisenchlas, S. A., & Low-Choy, S. (2022). The influence of transition prompt wording on response informativeness and rapidity of disclosure in child forensic interviews. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 28(2), 255–266. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000347

Heinrichs, D.H. (2022). The generative affects of social media scroll-back interviews: In conversation with Spanish as a world language educators during the COVID-19 lockdown in Australia. In J. Chen (Ed.). Emergency remote teaching and beyond: Voices from world language teachers and researchers (pp.37-389). https://www.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84067-9_17

Heinrichs, D. H. (2022). Spanish as a world(ing) languaging: A multimodal critical discourse analysis of teachers’ everyday practices in Australia. [Doctoral Dissertation, University of Queensland].  https://doi.org/10.14264/b6d821c

Conference/seminar organising

NSM-Con2022 “Global Meanings”

Lauren Sadow, Cliff Goddard and Alena Kazmaly organised NSM-Con2022 “Global Meanings” (27-29 April), an online conference sharing research from around the world using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage framework. Presenters came from ten countries (Australia, USA, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, Czech Republic, Israel, Denmark, Italy, Russia).

One highlight was the presentation by Kay Yeo (NUS, Singapore), winner of the Bert Peeters Prize for best student essay on NSM, ʹUnderstanding an “atas Singaporean: the cultural semantics of the Singlish keyword atas.’

Many of the talks are being released on the YouTube channel “NSM Lab”.

SocioPhonAus workshop

Griffith hosted the 3rd SocioPhonAus workshop in Brisbane (11-12 July). With 25 participants from across Australia and four who made the trip from New Zealand, it felt almost like old times, and the general enthusiasm and relief about actually being able to connect with colleagues old and new to discuss sociophonetics topics was palpable. There was a series of excellent papers on a wide range of topics, and a fabulous keynote presentation by Debbie Loakes from the University of Melbourne.

There will be two further keynote presentations at a SocioPhonAus satellite session scheduled alongside the SST conference in Canberra in mid-December. Keynote speakers for that satellite session will be Ghada Khattab (Newcastle University, UK) and Márton Sóskuthy (UBC, Canada). 

SocioPhonAus participants also had the opportunity to participate in an interactive session on the on-going Language Data Commons of Australia project facilitated by Michael Haugh (UQ), Catherine Travis (ANU) and Simon Musgrave (UQ). The SocioPhonAus3 organisers (Janet Fletcher, Josh Clothier, Gerry Docherty) are very grateful for the support received from the Australasian Speech Science & Technology Association, CoEDL, the University of Melbourne, and from Griffith University.

Conference/seminar presentations

• Helen Bromhead. 2022. ‘Clearer, more accessible disaster messaging using a minimal languages approach’. NSM-Con2022 (April 28 2022).
• Ida Stevia Diget. 2022. ‘Standard Translatable English and public messaging: Creating public health posters’. NSM-Con2022 (April 29 2022).
• Cliff Goddard. 2022. ‘Rethinking the semantic molecules LONG, FLAT and ROUND’. NSM-Con2022 (April 28 2022).
• Alena Kazmaly. 2022. ‘Personality adjectives in English and Russian: ‘Moody person’ and ‘kaprizjij chekovek’. NSM-Con2022 (April 28 2022).
• Sam Rarrick presented ‘Analyzing Non-Manuals in Hawai‘i Sign Language & Sinasina Sign Language: Implications for Language Documentation & Typology’ at the University of Hawai'i Linguistic Department Tuesday Seminar series. This talk included an update on her ongoing project investigating eyeblinks in Hawai'i Sign Language. Sam also spent some time meeting in late June with other linguists at Victoria University of Wellington.

Grants news

Major Research Grant success for Lauren Sadow!!! She was a named Research Fellow in the project “Danish in the making: Intercultural Pragmatics for learners and teachers of Danish as a second language” (DKK 6 million). The project is led by Susana Fernández (Aarhus University) and Carsten Levisen (Roskilde University). https://veluxfoundations.dk/en/core-group-grants-2022

Lauren will be moving to Denmark for 2 years 2023-2024 to work intensively on a pedagogically-oriented “cultural dictionary” of Danish.

Danielle Heinrichs received a Griffith New Researcher Grant (NRG): “Transformative Action Research for Decolonising Pronunciation Pedagogy in World Languages Classrooms”. The project will work with secondary school teachers and students of Spanish in Queensland. Danielle also received an AEL Seeding Grant for a project titled “What are ‘authentic’ world language practices in Australia?  Insights from the everyday lives of world language teachers.” With a focus on Spanish and German, this project will explore the everyday, mundane and ordinary language practices of world language teachers in two distinct settings: social media (TikTok) and their lived, daily lives by videoing teachers for an entire day.  

PhD News

Ida Stevia Diget is spending some months in Townsville, at JCU. Her local supervisor there is Dr. Maria (Maru) Castellanos Reynosa, lecturer in epidemiology. Ida works under her and Prof Maxine Whittaker (former dean of the College of Public Health, Medical & Vet Sciences at JCU) on the PacMOSSI project. [https://indopacifichealthsecurity.dfat.gov.au/building-capacity-evidence-based-sustainable-vector-surveillance-and-control-pacific-pacmossi]

PhD candidate Alena Kazmaly delivered the most highly-ranked presentation at the Griffith Arts, Education & Law heat of the University’s 3 minute-thesis competition. She provided an excellent overview of her project in a talk entitled “Personality across languages: Is it people that differ or words?”. Alena now progresses to the University-wide final in early September.

Lisa Petersen commenced her PHD (main supervisor Sam Rarrick) in late April, on the topic of phonological variation in Hawai’i Sign Language.

Marie Pavlaskova is a visiting PhD scholar from Charles University, Prague. She’s studying up on NSM as a tool for Czech ethnolinguistics.

Postgraduate events

Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Reserach has started a new seminar series, titled ‘Research Futures: Trajectories in Postdoctoral Research’. It highlights the work of the Centre's Resident Adjuncts, organised around GCSCR's four research themes. The first seminar is on the theme ‘Language, Culture and Belonging’, It will feature Dr. Reza Arab, Dr. Benjamin Duester and Dr. Kelly Shoecraft. More detail in next Newsletter, but briefly …  Reza Arab’s research investigates humour in online reviews for stigmatised territories, especially correctional centres in Australia.  Ben Duester’s research investigates how a growing environmental awareness in DIY music scenes is practically addressed through sustainable engagements with material culture and waste. Kelly Shoecraft’s research is situated in French bilingual school settings. It explores children’s use of multiple languages during whole class and group work activities (translanguaging) and the development of their bi/plurilingual identities.  

Outreach, public writing and engagement

Helen Bromhead continues to work, together with Cliff Goddard, on a project with the Griffith Climate Action Beacon exploring how everyday discourse about extreme weather and climate change relates to expert or specialised discourses. Helen also joined the Queensland Inspector General of Emergency Management’s Research Advisory Panel. On this general theme, Helen produced: “Managed Retreat” Is a Terrible Way to Talk About Responding to Climate Change. Slate. [https://slate.com/technology/2022/04/managed-retreat-climate-change-language.html]

Cliff and Helen also collaborated with A/Prof Holly Searle, an infectious diseases social scientist at UNSW, on accessible messaging in relation to COVID-19 and vaccinations.

Susana Eisenchlas was active in promoting the benefits of bi/multilingualism in migrant and refugee communities in Australia through her public talks at the Brisbane City Council's Chermside Library and at the Jabiru/ITAV Playgroup (Save the Children -Australia).

Other

Griffith students Lissara Bergamaschi and Isabella Schulz have co-founded Griffith Languages Club, /glæŋ/. The club aims to provide speaking opportunities for students learning languages (formally or informally); to promote cultural awareness and multilingualism; and to create connections between Australian & international students. 

GLang is hosting a variety of events and has recently started a podcast, "Langwich", supervised by Dr Kelly Shoecraft and supported by Griffith University. "Langwich" is available on Audible, with more episodes coming soon!

Cliff Goddard

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News from UWA

Language Lab

Director Celeste Rodríguez Louro is excited to announce the launch of Language Lab, a hub for the study of human language and its connection to history, community, and culture. We have an impressive team of collaborators and an incredibly diverse cohort of linguists and language workers. Check us out here: https://www.uwa.edu.au/schools/research/the-language-lab

Attendees at the F2F launch of Language Lab, UWA Perth Campus, 1 July 2022.

Welcome

We welcome Dr Iryna Khodos who will be lecturing Level 2 units in Semester 2, 2022. Dr Iryna Khodos specialises in bilingualism, additional language education, language processing, and language behaviours in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) communities.

HDR student updates

PhD candidate Connor Brown is writing up his thesis which examines the semantics of temporality in an East Kimberley variety of Kriol. Lately, he has been writing about the tense system, and how aspect influences temporal interpretation in the absence of tense marking. He hopes to have a complete draft of the thesis by early next year.

PhD candidate Madeleine Clews completed her confirmation of candidature with a progress summary presentation in April, and is now preparing to undertake fieldwork at the Royal Botanic Gardens of Victoria Herbarium Library in Melbourne. Madeleine will be investigating the Herbarium library’s extensive collection of correspondence to and from the Government Botanist Ferdinand Mueller between 1850 and 1890. She plans to build a corpus of several hundred letters from amateur botanical collectors around the country as a resource for historical sociolinguistic analysis of Australian English across the Victorian era.

PhD candidate Troy Reynolds has been working on the statistical modelling of his research into high-rising terminals in Aboriginal English, and will be presenting his work at the Third workshop on Sociophonetic Variability in the English Varieties of Australia in Brisbane (11-12 July 2022). Troy also recently appeared on ABC Radio Perth’s WA Afternoons with Christine Layton discussing Western Australian English varieties. You can listen here: https://www.abc.net.au/perth/programs/wa-afternoons/can-you-tell-a-wa-accent/13943056

PhD candidate Eleanor Yacopetti travelled to Sydney in March/April to participate in the OzSpace workshop. While in Sydney, Eleanor was also able to visit and work with speakers of Kune to continue data collection and language consultation. On return to Perth, she began an analysis of Kune topological relations. Eleanor is now back in the field, having recently departed for Maningrida (Arnhem Land, NT) for her PhD project’s second fieldtrip.

PhD candidate Lucía Fraiese’s research proposal has now been approved by the UWA Graduate Research School, and Prof. Emma Moore (University of Sheffield) has joined the team as external supervisor. Lucía hopes to commence fieldwork soon. Lucía has also been working as a Research Assistant for Dr Celeste Rodríguez Louro, collecting data for her ARC DECRA project on Aboriginal English. Celeste and Lucía are also writing a co-authored autoethnography on their experiences as academics from the Global South to be published in a Routledge book edited by Sender Dovchin and colleagues. Lucía has also recently been appointed to the role of HDR Student representative for Social Sciences.

Publications

Miceli, L., & Round, E. (2022). Where have all the sound changes gone? Examining the scarcity of evidence for regular sound change in Australian languages. Linguistics Vanguard. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0094

Moore, David (2021). Closing the Gap in Legal Communication: The Challenges of Interpreting Indigenous Languages in Central Australian Courts. In Judy Wakabayashi and Minako O’Hagan (eds.) Translating and Interpreting in Australia and New Zealand (pp. 23-43). London: Routledge.

Moore, David (Forthcoming) Many members, one body: a multilingual church in Central Australia. In Robyn Molony and Shenouda Mansour (eds.) Language and Spirit, Exploring languages, religion and spirituality in Australia today. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rodríguez Louro, Celeste, Glenys Collard and Troy Reynolds (forthcoming). Australian Aboriginal English. In Carolin Biewer and Kate Burridge (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes. London: Wiley Blackwell.

Grants

Dr Luisa Miceli, Dr Maïa Ponsonnet (Laboratoire Dynamique Du Language, CNRS; Adjunct UWA), Dr Ingrid Ward (Archaeology, UWA) and Dr Emilie Dotte (Archaeology, UWA) have been awarded a 2022 Australian Linguistic Society Research Grant to examine domestic uses of fire in Australia. The project title is ‘Domestic uses of fire in past and present Australia: what language can tell us’. A description appears below.

Bringing together Australian linguists, First Nations language experts, and archaeologists, this project innovates a style of collaboration where language knowledge and lexicography play a pivotal role in understanding Australian cultures past and present. The project explores an under-researched aspect of Australian Indigenous life: domestic uses of fire. In spite of their cultural centrality, everyday practices and techniques around fire in ‘camps’ (i.e. hearths) have not been systematically documented so far (but see Evans 1992), perhaps because they typically pertain to traditionally ‘female’ knowledge. Building upon a pilot study that involved 10 Australian languages (Ward et al. 2021), this project systematically investigates an additional 30 languages from across the continent, extracting frequent lexical categories for functions and techniques related to fires, including potential regional contrasts and historical developments.

PhD Candidates Lucía Fraiese, Madeleine Clews and Connor Brown have been awarded a UWA Making a Difference Grant to fund a project titled ‘Language diversity and inclusion: A classroom toolkit for teachers’. Lucía, Madeleine and Connor are currently crafting a bespoke program on linguistic diversity and inclusion under the supervision of Dr Celeste Rodríguez Louro, which will be sponsored by Language Lab and offered online in semester 2, 2022.

Keynote presentations

Celeste Rodríguez Louro and Glenys Collard offered a keynote presentation at the Oxford World English Symposium. Oxford, England, 12-13 April 2022. The lecture is now available for viewing here: https://public.oed.com/world-englishes/oed-symposium-2022/#parallel_session_7

Celeste Rodríguez Louro offered an invited keynote, titled ‘Diversity is not a party, it is a fight’ at the Young Leaders Summit, Student Guild, The University of Western Australia, 22 April 2022. https://uwastudentguild.com/whats-on/young-leaders-council

Celeste Rodríguez Louro delivered a keynote presentation at the Nordic Sustainable Linguistics Group, Roskilde, Denmark, 23 May 2022. https://blogs.helsinki.fi/linguisticsandsustainability/

Celeste Rodríguez Louro and Glenys Collard offered an invited keynote presentation titled ‘Decolonising sociolinguistics: Australian Aboriginal English into the next decade’ at the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE) Summer School, Newcastle University, England, 4-8 July 2022 https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/islesummerschool2022/programme-temporary/

Research impact story

Dr Celeste Rodriguez Louro's and Glenys Collard's Research Impact Story is finally out! Curated by the talented Rosanna Marchesani from the Research Impact and Assessment Office at UWA, it collates Celeste's and Glenys' thoughts on working together, on decolonial research methods, and on how Aboriginal English yarning has kept First Nations worlds alive. Video soon to follow. https://researchimpact.uwa.edu.au/research-impact-stories/its-all-in-the-yarning/

Upcoming conference presentations

• Mitch Browne, Jacqui Cook, Amanda Hamilton-Hollaway and Jayden Macklin-Cordes. “Constituent order in subordinate clauses: A comparison of Mudburra, Warlmanpa, and Warriyangga”. 2022 Australian Languages Workshop. University of Queensland Moreton Bay Research Station, 8-10 July 2022.
• Celeste Rodríguez Louro and Glenys Collard. “Beyond description: Linguistic insights into the creation of Indigenous medical media”, Sociolinguistics Symposium 24, Ghent, Belgium, 13-16 July 2022.
• T. Mark Ellison & Luisa Miceli. “Is Convergence on a Phylogenetic Tree Evidence of a Tree-Like History?” 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Bucharest 1-5 August 2022.
• T. Mark Ellison, John Mansfield & Luisa Miceli. “Social proximity and language divergence”. 55th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Oxford 24–27 August 2022.
• T. Mark Ellison, Luisa Miceli & John Mansfield. “Lectal contact as a path to language speciation”. Joint Conference on Language Evolution, Kanazawa, 5-8 September, 2022.

Upcoming public lecture

Dr Celeste Rodríguez Louro will be offering a Public Lecture at WA Museum Boola Bardip on Sunday September 11, 2022.

Two to tango: Language as a gateway to championing diversity

Harvard-trained lawyer Vernā Myers has famously stated that “if diversity is getting invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance”. What role does language play in getting invited to the dance floor?

Join Dr Celeste Rodriguez Louro, Director of UWA’s Language Lab, to discuss how language, the ultimate social glue, can help you become a diversity champion. Learn about new gender pronouns in English, cross-cultural differences in communication, and how your accent may be stopping you from getting what you want. We can create safer places by understanding how language shapes our lives. But it does take two to tango.

Register here https://visit.museum.wa.gov.au/.../two-tango-language...

Radio

Since May 2022, Dr Celeste Rodríguez Louro has been presenting a weekly segment on language, diversity, and inclusion on The Agenda, RTR FM 92.1 radio. The program, named Language Lab, is also available as a podcast. Check it out here: https://rtrfm.com.au/tags/the-language-lab/

Internships

Our internship program is now well integrated within our Major sequence, and a growing number of students are choosing to include the internship unit in their Linguistics Major. Since 2020, 20 students have completed a Linguistics internship at a range of organisations, including Wangka Maya Language Centre, Bundiyarra Irra Wangga Language Centre, the WA Department of Education and the Berndt Museum. In semester 2 we add a new host organisation, Perth’s RTR FM, where a Linguistics and Media & Communication student will be working with Dr Celeste Rodríguez Louro and her producer on the Language Lab weekly program and podcast.

Celeste Rodríguez Louro

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News from Macquarie University

Fieldwork

Joe Blythe is compiling this ALS Newsletter in Warmun, in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. Joe and PhD candidate Caroline de Dear are conducting fieldwork on Gija as part of the ARC project Conversational Interaction in Aboriginal and Remote Australia. Caroline’s fieldwork is additionally funded by ALS’s Gerhardt Laves scholarship.

From left to right: Gija speakers Mabel Julie, Eileen Bray and Shirley Drill with Caroline de Dear.

Publications 

Anderson, S. R., Jocewicz, R., Kan, A., Zhu, J., Tzeng, S., & Litovsky, R. Y. (2022). Sound source localization patterns and bilateral cochlear implants: Age at onset of deafness effects. PloS one,17(2), e0263516. 

Bruggeman, L., Millasseau, J., Yuen, I., & Demuth, K. (2021). The acquisition of acoustic cues to onset and coda voicing contrasts by pre-schoolers with hearing loss. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 64 (12), 4631-4648. doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00311

Davies, B. & Demuth, K. (2021). The role of phonology in morphological acquisition.  In Crepaldi, D. (Ed.), Linguistic Morphology in the Mind and Brain. Current Issues in the Psychology of Language. Routledge.

Demuth, K. (2021). How learners move from sound to morphology. In Papafragou, A., Trueswell, J. & Gleitman, L. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of The Mental Lexicon, (pp. 321-332: Oxford University Press.

Demuth, K. (2022). Managing acquisition data for developing large Sesotho, English and French corpora for CHILDES. In Berez-Kroeker, A. L., McDonnell, B., Koller, E. & Collister, L. B. (Eds.), The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management. MIT Press Open.

Loukatou, G., Scaff, C., Demuth, K., Cristia, A., & Havron, N. (2022). Child-directed and overheard input from different speakers in two distinct cultures. Journal of Child Language, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000921000623

Mealings, K. (2022). A Review of the Effect of Classroom Sound-Field Amplification on Children in Primary School. American Journal of Audiology, 1-17. 

Mealings, K. (2022). Classroom acoustics and cognition: A review of the effects of noise and reverberation on primary school children’s attention and memory. Building Acoustics. doi:10.1177/1351010X221104892 

Miles, K., Beechey, T., Best, V., & Buchholz, J. (2022). Measuring speech intelligibility and hearing-aid benefit using everyday conversational sentences in real-world environments. Frontiers in Neuroscience,16. 

Millasseau J., Bruggeman L., Yuen I., & Demuth K. (2022). The production of /s/-stop clusters by pre-schoolers with hearing loss. Journal of Child Language 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000922000228

Piller, Ingrid, Zhang, Jie, & Li, Jia. (2022). Peripheral multilingual scholars confronting epistemic exclusion in global academic knowledge production: a positive case study. Multilingua. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2022-0034 [available open access]

Tenedero, Pia Patricia P. (2022) Communication that Counts: Language Practice and Ideology in Globalized Accounting. Multilingual Matters. https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/?K=9781800416475

Torsh, Hanna Irving. "‘Maybe if you talk to her about it’: intensive mothering expectations and heritage language maintenance" Multilingua, vol. , no. , 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2021-0105

Wang, H-C, Li, L., Xu Rattanasone, N., Beyersmann, E., Demuth, K., Castles, A. (2022). Morphological effects on orthographic learning.  OSF.

Xu Rattanasone, N., & Demuth, K. (2022). Produced, but not ‘productive’: Mandarin-speaking pre-schoolers’ challenges acquiring L2 English plural morphology. 1-29. Journal of Child Language.

Xu Rattanasone, N., Yuen, I., Holt, R., & Demuth, K. (2021) Jellybeans... or Jelly, Beans...? 5-6-year-olds can identify the prosody of compounds but not lists. Journal of Child Language, 49 (3), 602-614. doi:10.1017/S0305000921000234

Yuen, I., Demuth, K., & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (2022). Planning of prosodic clitics in Australian English. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F

Conferences and workshops

Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association (ASFLA) Conference

Macquarie Linguistics is hosting the 2022 Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association (ASFLA) Conference to be held from 23-25 September with a one-day pre-conference institute on 22 September. Early bird registration is now open; for more information, visit our webpage. We are pleased to announce an exciting line-up of plenary speakers: Eszter Szenes from Central European University, Austria and Norwich University, USA; Michele Zappavigna from the University of New South Wales, Australia; and Alison Moore from the University of Wollongong, Australia. Speakers at the pre-conference institute include: David Rose, from the University of Sydney, who will present a workshop on “Analysing Pedagogic Register”; Elizabeth Thomson, from Charles Sturt University, will present “Building Resilience Using the Semiotics of Empathy”; and Najmeh Kheradparvar and Shoshana Dreyfus, from the University of Wollongong, who will present “How to Write ‘Accept with Revisions’ Peer Reviews”. For more information about the plenaries, workshops and registration, please visit the conference website: www.asfla2022.com. 

CLaS Eye-tracking Workshop 1: Eye-tracking methods and paradigms

On 17^th May 2022, Macquarie University's Centre for Language Sciences (CLaS) hosted a half-day hybrid workshop on eye-tracking, an increasingly popular experimental method for speech and language research. The workshop was aimed at beginners to eye-tracking and focused on methodological approaches and commonly-used paradigms. With over 130 registrants from around Australia and overseas, the workshop was well attended and received much positive feedback. A follow-up workshop, focusing on analytical approaches to eye-tracking data, will be held later in the year.  

New PhD Projects

The Child Language Lab and the Language Acquisition Lab have recently welcomed several new PhD students: Feng Xu, Andy Morrison and Zhu Xie. Feng is investigating the processing of Mandarin tones and intonation by children with cochlear implants. Andy's research will focus on children’s acquisition of subjective adjectives, such as 'tasty' and 'fun', where truth can vary depending on whose perspective is relevant. Zhu's project will investigate children's interpretation of sentences containing complex combinations of the words 'not', 'or', and ' every'. 

Joe Blythe

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News from Western Sydney University

PhD completions

Gloria Pino Escobar was conferred PhD, July 2022: Word learning and executive functions in preschool children: Bridging the gap between vocabulary acquisition and domain-general cognitive processes. (Supervisors: Prof Paola Escudero, A/Prof Mark Antoniou, Dr Laurence Bruggeman, Dr Alba Tuninetti & Dr Marina Kalashnikova)

Ying Liu graduated with PhD, April 2022: Cross-linguistic Influence of L2 on L1 in Late Chinese-English Bilinguals. (Supervisors: A/Prof Ruying Qi and A/Prof Bruno Di Biase)

Isriani Hardini graduated with PhD, April 2022: Lexical and Grammatical Development in English in Indonesian Kindergarten Children: Processability Theory and Developmentally Moderated Focus on Form (Supervisors: A/Prof Satomi Kawaguchi, Prof Carol Reid, A/Prof Bruno Di Biase)

Eliane Thiravong graduated with PhD, April 2022: The Development of Self-Identification in Chinese-Vietnamese Children in Australia: The Influence of Family Language Practices and Changing Social Environments (Supervisors: A/Prof Ruying Qi and A/Prof Bruno Di Biase)

Recent books / edited special issues

Special issue of Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 45:2 (2022), 'Translingual practices entangled with semiotized space and time', co-edited by Shaila Sultana (University of Dhaka) and Dariush Izadi (Western Sydney University), https://benjamins.com/catalog/aral.45.2

MARCS Conference Series: Speech Processing 

In memory of our beloved colleague, Distinguished Professor Anne Cutler, the MARCS Psycholinguistics Interest Group invites you to submit proposals for paper and poster presentations for the MARCS Conference Series 2022: Speech Processing.
Themes for this conference cover multidisciplinary approaches to speech processing, cross-language speech perception and production, phonetics and phonology, bilingualism, and communication disorders.

The conference will be held on Thursday 20 October 2022, at The MARCS Institute, 160 Hawkesbury Rd, WSU Westmead Campus. It will be sponsored by MARCS (registration is free!).

In addition to scientific talks, there will also be fun activities (Anne was known for taking the frivolity of the light-hearted competitions such as spectrogram reading very seriously indeed). Students and Early Career Researchers are particularly encouraged to attend. 

Submit your title and 150-word abstract by 20 September 2022 to m.antoniou@westernsydney.edu.au. 

Caroline Jones

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News from Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE)

Courses taught

BIITE in partnership with CDU continues to offer Languages and Linguistics major with a focus on Australian Indigenous context. In semester 2 (starting on 22nd of August 2022) we offer the following units as part of our Diploma of Arts and Bachelor of Arts:

• IAS268 Sounds and Sound Systems: Phonetics and Phonology (new in course from 2022)
• IAS165 Language in Society
• IAS264 Language Documentation Methods and Tools (unit title change 2022)
• IAS267 Languages in Contact
• IAS364 Dictionary Making
• IAS366 Language Centre Management

All courses are offered online for external students (cross-institutional enrolments possible). Our Indigenous students come to Batchelor campus for an intensive face-to-face delivery. For information on our Linguistics units, please get in touch with Paola Fischer (paola.fischer@batchelor.edu.au 08 8964 6028) or James Bednall (james.bednall@batchelor.edu.au 08 8964 7123).

Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics (CALL)

For information about CALL’s current and past project, visit our webpage: https://call.batchelor.edu.au/

Conferences

Australian Languages Workshop (ALW) Stradbroke Island 8th -10th July 2022

CALL has a delegation of Central Australian language speakers representing several language communities including Anmatyerr, Arrernte, Luritja, Warlpiri and Pertame, attending and presenting on projects at ALW this year. Very exciting too is the relaunch of the updated and expanded Indigenous handsign website, iltyem-iltyem.com, a partnership with UniMelb RUIL, the launch of the Warlpiri bilingual book, Ngulajuku, and the launch of Mangurr-jangu mirlamirlajinjikki Teaching and Learning with Pictures, a partnership with UQ.

Master-Apprentice Language Revival Conference 8^th -11^th August 2022

Batchelor's CALL is organising a Master-Apprentice language revival conference, open to Indigenous language groups across Australia who wish to learn how to create new fluent speakers using oral immersion sessions with Elders. This training will be run by grassroots Native American language revival experts, that developed this method and saw great successes within their own language communities. More information available here: https://www.pertameschool.org/map-conference

Top End Languages Forum

Batchelor Institute, Charles Darwin University and the University of Melbourne organised the Top End Languages Forum which was held at CDU campus on 6-7 June 2022. Coinciding with the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages, the forum brought together over 65 delegates from more than ten Aboriginal communities of the Top End region to discuss what they want for their languages by the end of the decade. More information on how event went here: https://www.batchelor.edu.au/portfolio/languages-forum-results-in-collaborative-statement-and-vision/

Photos from the Top End Languages Forum 2022

Presentations

• James Bednall (2022) Co-opting semantic case to express grammatical relations in Anindilyakwa. Symposium on Languages and Linguistics in honour of Jane Simpson. 30 June – 1 July 2022, Australian National University.
• Robyn Ober (2022) Slipping & Sliding through Indigenous Tertiary Educational Contexts as an Aboriginal English speaker. Native American Indigenous Studies Association. 31 May, University of Queensland.

Publications

Janine Oldfield (2022) Racing neoliberalism and remote Indigenous education in the Northern Territory of Australia: a critical analysis of contemporary Indigenous education language policy and practice, Language and Intercultural Communication, DOI: 10.1080/14708477.2022.2046018

Batchelor Press Language Projects

Animating elfabets

Kriol elfabet posters

The Kriol elfabet sound chart posters which Batchelor Press produced in association with the Ngukurr-based Meigim Kriol Strongbala program, have recently been given new animated life through a collaboration between the NT Music School and Ngukurr School. The three-minute animation draws on the poster’s visuals with children from Ngukurr School providing vocals against a funky soundtrack. A second video in the planning will include Ngukurr schoolchildren in the frame, and the NT Music School has also begun work towards an animation based on Batchelor Press’s Gulumerrdjin Madawa (Larrakia Animals) publication (2019).

The Kriol elfabet animation can be seen at: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AMfp8NsPZtvwmes&cid=B097BAA159D16B64&id=B097BAA159D16B64%21333&parId=root&o=OneUp

Bringing BIITE’s Art Collection to light

Batchelor Press was successful in securing funding from the Australia Council for the Arts to publish a substantive book on the Institute's Art Collection. Little known outside of the Institute, this Collection spans five decades and some 800-odd works, many of which are on display throughout the Batchelor and Alice Springs campuses. The Collection's significance is a measure not only of the calibre of the artists and works it represents but also of the cultural and community relationships therein. Although not strictly a language-based resource, the book will reflect the diverse languages and related concepts inherent within the art works through commissioned essays and a detailed glossary and artwork catalogue index. A chapter will also be dedicated to the Collection's relational potency, inviting past and present staff and students to narrate personal connections and stories around a particular work. The book is slated for publication March 2023.

CALL Collection

The CALL Collection is at Batchelor Institute Library, Batchelor Campus. If you are interested to know which Australian First Nations language materials and resources are in the collection, see the website callcollection@batchelor.edu.au. All titles are listed; only items with consent are accessible online. Physical copies of items are available (by request) to view at the Library. For queries, requests or offers of materials, contact the Special Collections Officer Karen Manton, Batchelor Institute Library (08) 8939 7103. The Collection welcomes connection with and queries/requests from language people, collections on Country, language centres and community language projects.

Paola Fischer

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News from the University of Melbourne

The Research Hub for Language in Forensic Evidence has been busy with research and other activities. We have been working hard on a feasibility study, figuring out the best way to create reliable transcripts of indistinct audio. This feasibility study uses very patient and talented participants who were largely recruited through the ALS newsletter! This task is difficult when we do not know the content, and the context is disputed or misleading (typical in forensic scenarios). We of course also have a strong interest in collaborating with colleagues on this topic. We are also engaged in ongoing work aiming for law reform to prevent police transcripts being given to the jury.  

The Hub recently ran a symposium called “Transcription in Legal Contexts: Problems and Solutions”, bringing together various researchers to talk about issues in this space. You can read about the symposium on our blog (and also read other recent blog posts at the same site) https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/language-forensics/a-blog-for-the-research-hub-for-language-in-forensic-evidence/news/  

We have also had some new publications this year. Debbie has had an article published in Frontiers in Communication called Does Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Have a Role in the Transcription of Indistinct Covert Recordings for Forensic Purposes? You can read it via the open-access link here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2022.803452/full  

Helen will also have a paper available in this journal soon, called “A framework for deciding how to create and evaluate transcripts for forensic and other purposes”. You can read the abstract at the following link, and the paper as soon as it is available:  https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2022.898410/abstract  

Finally, the Hub presented work at the SocioPhonAus conference in Brisbane on July 11 and 12. Debbie gave one of the keynote presentations called “Sociophonetics in Australian English: exploring social and regional variation” and Helen presented shared work about the connection between sociophonetics and forensics in a talk titled “Forensic Transcription: Raising new questions for sociophonetics research?”. 

Debbie Loakes

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News from the ANU

Publications

Inceoglu, Solène. (2021). Exploring the relationship between explicit instruction, pronunciation awareness, and the development of L2 French connected speech processes. Language Awareness, 30(4), 336–354.

Inceoglu, Solène. (2022). Language experience and subjective word familiarity on the multimodal perception of non-native vowels. Language and Speech, 65(1), 173–192. 

Martin, I. A., & Inceoglu, Solène. (2022). The laboratory, the classroom, and online: What works in each context. In J. M. Levis, T. M. Derwing, & S. Sonsaat-Hegelheimer (Eds.), Second language pronunciation: Bridging the gap between research and teaching (pp. 254–272). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

O’Shannessy, Carmel, Rose, Marlkirdi N., Johnson, Elaine N., White, Gracie N. (2022). ‘I Could Still Be Myself as a Warlpiri Person’: How Bilingual Education Achieves Community Development Aims. In: Hill, D., Ameka, F.K. (eds) Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1_7  (The volume: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93522-1)

Welcoming new staff

We are delighted to have Rosey Billington join us on a continuing appointment in Linguistics. Rosey works at the intersection of experimental phonetics and language documentation, with a particular focus on languages of the Pacific, Africa, and Australia. Rosey completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne, and then was awarded a CoEDL Post-Doc, for which she worked in the University of Melbourne Phonetics Laboratory and the Research Unit for Indigenous Language with a focus on languages of central Vanuatu. At ANU she looks forward to continuing to scale up phonetic research on under-described spoken languages and typologically uncommon sound patterns.

Retiring staff

Jane Simpson has now joined the Emeritus faculty of ANU, after her retirement last month. Although we know that Jane will continue to be actively engaged, we will feel this shift in her role very strongly. As well as being anoutstanding linguist with incredibly vast knowledge, Jane has unparalleled energy, enthusiasm, and will to get things done. On top of that, she is the most generous of colleagues, and an incredible mentor and supporter of other academics, and in particular, of junior and of minority-language linguists.

After graduating with a PhD in Linguistics from MIT, and working in a range of linguistics roles, Jane was at the University of Sydney 1989-2011. As well as making a substantial impact to teaching and learning, Jane undertook research in a range of contexts including the Central Land Council, the Barkly Region Aboriginal Language Centre, NT, and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands. She was co-leader of two Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition projects, and students on these projects are now leading innovative research on Indigenous Australian languages.

Jane joined ANU in 2011, as the Professor of Indigenous Linguistics. In this role she instituted the teaching of Indigenous languages at ANU, and was influential in the development of the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages. She has been committed to informing policy and was key in the development of the National Indigenous Languages Report (2018-2019) and OECD Working Papers on Early Childhood Education and Learning in Indigenous Languages (2019-2020). And, of course, she has been a driving force behind the successes of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, as Deputy Director.

A symposium on Languages and Linguistics in honour of her retirement was held at ANU on June 30 & July 1, organised by Carmel O’Shannessy, Denise Angelo and James Gray. Participants were in person and online, and 20 talks on topics related to Jane's diverse research interests were given. Colleagues and students praised Jane's contributions to their learning and careers and to their excitement about languages and linguistics.

We wish her the very best for an (active!) retirement.

Job announcements

Two Postdoctoral Research Fellows, School of Culture, History and Language, ANU.

Applications close 7 Aug 2022

These positions are part of a collaborative project with the Defence Science and Technology Group that aims to compile enriched language resources for the three Pacific creole languages – Tok Pisin (PNG), Solomon Pijin (Solomon Islands) and Bislama (Vanuatu) – to develop automatic language processing tools.

One position is focused on computational resource building:  https://jobs.anu.edu.au/cw/en/job/544905/postdoctoral-research-fellow 

Another position will involve fieldwork and has a documentation focus:

https://jobs.anu.edu.au/cw/en/job/544913/postdoctoral-research-fellow

To enquire about this opportunity, please contact Dr Danielle Barth Danielle.Barth@anu.edu.au or bethwyn.evans@anu.edu.au

New PhD

Congratulations to Emma Browne (ANU) on the successful examination of her Linguistics HDR thesis! Title: "Linguistic Innovation and Continuity: Teaching in and of Warlpiri Language at Yuendumu School". The thesis examiners described Emma's research as "exceptional", "outstanding" and a "tour de force". The research provides new insights into teacher-student interactions in Warlpiri classrooms. Congratulations Emma! 

Research updates

The Little Kids' Word List was launched in Alice Springs, on May 25combined with a workshop for stakeholders. The Little Kids' Word List is a unique, interactive, online app for tracking children's language development in Eastern & Central Arrernte, Western Arrarnta, Warlpiri and English. It was developed as part of the ARC Future Fellowship project of Carmel O'Shannessy, with collaborators Vanessa Davis and Denise Foster (Tangentyere Research Hub) and Alice Nelson and Jessie Bartlett (Red Dust Role Models).

*Ketyeye akweke angkentye akaltye-irreme | Kurdu-kurdu kuja kalu yimi pina-jarrimi 

https://mywordlist.app/app/little-kids-word-list 

https://little-kids-learning-languages.net/ 

Outreach

Carmel O'Shannessy worked with staff at Lajamanu CEC, NT, on strategies for teaching Warlpiri and English to Light Warlpiri speakers.  

Talks

Carmel O'Shannessy and Vanessa Davis presented to the Central Land Council, NT, about the Little Kids Word List.  

Catherine Travis

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News from James Cook University’s Language and Culture Research Centre 

International Colloquia, Roundtable Discussions, and Rotating Workshops 

The LCRC has continued its series of linguistics meetings which began in September 2021. These colloquia, roundtable discussions, and internal workshops as further the LCRC’s mission to foster cutting-edge research and improve international visibility for LCRC scholars. The 2022 meetings have been a great success, and international colloquia have been scheduled for the remainder of 2022.

International colloquia series 

For our colloquia series, we invite scholars from around the world to present on theoretical linguistics topics, especially those related to endangered languages. These meetings are open to LCRC staff and students, overseas adjunct faculty, and interested scholars anywhere in the world. All LCRC colloquia are held simultaneously via Zoom and in person on campus for local JCU attendees. 

Roundtable discussion series  

The LCRC’s roundtable discussions are held by LCRC staff, students, adjuncts, and invited guests. At these meetings, presenters give talks on active research. These meetings are less formal than the colloquia, and attendees are encouraged to provide feedback. The roundtable discussions are open to LCRC staff, students, adjuncts, and those who are invited to attend. All meetings are held both on campus in person and via Zoom. 

Rotating workshop series 

The workshops are informal gatherings where LCRC staff or students present on an active research project. Participants give updates on their ongoing work, present analytical problems, or other discoveries of interest. Presenters share their ideas and receive feedback from colleagues. Workshops are solely in-person gatherings and are only open to LCRC staff and students and any who are invited to attend. 

Details can be found at: https://www.jcu.edu.au/language-and-culture-research-centre/news-and-events/workshops and further information can be obtained by contacting neil.alexander.walker<at>gmail.com.

New Courses 

JCU has begun offering its new major for the BA: Languages and Linguistics. In the first term of 2022, JCU offered its first-ever Tok Pisin course, which was taught by Dr Neil Alexander Walker. During the second term of 2022, Dr Walker will offer the first-ever comprehensive phonetics subject at JCU (“Sounds of the World’s Languages”), and Dr Nathan White will teach Anthropological Linguistics, which will be offered as an annually for the first time this year. More details can be found here: https://www.jcu.edu.au/course-and-subject-handbook/courses/undergraduate-courses/majors-and-minors/ba-languages-and-linguistics-major 

Social media 

The LCRC is on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/LCRCatJCU) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/LCRC_JCU).

 2022 LCRC Colloquia Presentations 

• Are You My Mother? Learning to Discern Who’s Who Within a Universal Kinship System by Joe Blythe of Macquarie University (February 2022)
• Community Identity and Kununurra Kriol Orthography by Knut Olawsky of the Mirima Dawang Woorlab-Gerring Language and Culture Centre (March 2022)
• Obsolescence or Diachronic Change? Embracing Variation in Linguistic Analysis by Daniel Hieber (April 2022)
• On the Relationship Between the Arawakan and Arawan Families of South America: A (So Far) Unwritten Chapter in Western Amazonian Language History by Fernando O. de Carvalho of the Federal University of Amapá (May 2022)
• Reconstructing Diversity: The Marañón River Basin in North Peru by Simon Overall of the University of Otago (June 2022)
• Kurandje: Between Linguistic Areas by Lameen Souag of the LACITO Laboratory, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (July 2022)

News and Events

The first half of 2022 was a productive for the LCRC. Robert Bradshaw finished his doctoral thesis, a grammar of Doromu-Koki, and is now Dr Bradshaw!

Publications and Presentations

Ciucci, Luca 2022. The healing words of the Ayoreo. In Anne Storch & R. M. W. Dixon (eds.), The art of language. Leiden: Brill. 251-267.

Ciucci, Luca 2021. Zamucoan ethnonymy in the 18th century and the etymology of Ayoreo. Journal de la Société des Américanistes 107, 2. 77-114. Available at https://journals.openedition.org/jsa/19809

Rafi Abu Saleh Mohammad and Morgan Anne-Marie (2022) Linguistic ecology of Bangladeshi higher education: a translanguaging perspective. Teaching in Higher Education, 27 (4). pp. 512-529.

Rafi Abu Saleh Mohammad and Morgan Anne-Marie (in press) Translanguaging

as a transformative act in a reading classroom: perspectives from a Bangladeshi private university. Journal of Language, Identity & Education.

Rafi Abu Saleh Mohammad and Morgan Anne-Marie (in press) A pedagogical perspective on the connection between translingual practices and transcultural dispositions in an Anthropology classroom in Bangladesh. International Journal of Multilingualism.

Walker, Neil Alexander. 2022. Building a bridge: Creating a pidgin for Indigenous language revitalization. Invited virtual presentation, Macquarie University, Australia, February 25.

White, Nathan M. (in press). The Hmong Medical Corpus: a biomedical corpus for a minority language. Language Resources and Evaluation.

Alex Walker

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News from the Language and Communication Research Hub (Jawun Research Centre), Central Queensland University

Staff news

Professor Alexandra Aikhenvald accepted her appointment as a regular Professor within the Jawun Research Centre (starting 28 March 2022). She will be giving plenary addresses ‘Multilingual ecologies in real time: migrations and transformations in a hotspot of linguistic diversity’ (Thematic Panel ‘Multilingual ecologies in a comparative perspective’),'In with the new: how do technological advances affect minority languages of Amazonia and New Guinea'? (General session), both at the 51^st Poznań Linguistic Meeting PLM2022 (September 2022),‘Dizque,dizque, dizque: the development of evidentials in Amazonian varieties of Portuguese and Spanish in the light of language contact (Workshop on Evidentiality in Romance languages, University of Alcalá (Madrid, Spain), October 2022), and a number of invited talks on Amazonian languages planned in April-May 2023. She is conducting a reading-based course on gender and classifiers for graduate students in the Department of Linguistics at Pavia, Italy. Following the transferral of the ARC DP ‘The integration of language and society’ to Central Queensland University, intensive work continues within the project by the Chief Investigators Alexandra Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon and Nerida Jarkey.

Dr Pema Wangdi has started his part-time appointment at the Jawun Research Centre as a Research Fellow within the project, working on various aspects of Brokpa and other Bhutanese languages and their interrelationships with the societal categories.

Dr Brigitta Flick started her appointment at the Jawun Research Centre as a Publication Officer within the project.

Christoph Holz, a PhD student at CIHER (CQU), is working towards completing his PhD thesis ‘A grammar of Tiang, a language of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea’. His supervisory committee are: Alexandra Aikhenvald, Bob Dixon, Miriam Ham, Janya McCalman, and Michael Wood. He is planning to undertake a fieldtrip to New Ireland, PNG, later this year.

Yann LeMoullec, a PhD student at LACITO (Paris), with Professor Dr Isabelle Bril and Alexandra Aikhenvald as his supervisors, is currently undertaking a lengthy fieldtrip to Morobe Province, PNG. He is working on a grammar of Angaataha, an Angan language, keeping in touch with his supervisors via Whatsapp.

Professor Rosita Henry, a major expert in anthropology of New Guinea and Northern Australia, and Cassy Nancarrow, an expert in First Nations’ languages education and curriculum development, have been awarded Adjunct appointments at the Centre.

Visiting Fellows in 2022

Professor Heronides Moura (PhD 1996, Unicamp, Brazil), Professor of linguistics at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil), an expert on Portuguese and Romance linguistics is currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Jawun Research Centre. He will be in Cairns until mid-October 2022, working on ‘Conceptualization and depiction of COVID through language, in particular metaphors of COVID within their social and linguistic context’. This project will draw on and support our academic experience and study in the field of indigenous knowledge and linguistic diversity. During his stay, Heronides will take part in numerous events, including the Multidisciplinary Panel 'Well-being, communication, and language: the First Nations' perspective'. A brief description of Heronides’ research plans while with us at Jawun Research Centre is at  https://www.cqu.edu.au/cquninews/stories/research-category/2022-research/visiting-professor-to-study-covid-through-language

Remote fieldwork and community engagement

The COVID-19 crisis has made travel and face-to-face fieldwork very hard. Thanks for the presence of the internet connection access to WhatsApp in Brazilian Amazonia,

Alexandra Aikhenvald has been able to conduct fieldwork with the extant speakers of the Wamiarikune dialect of Tariana in Iauaretê and São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Amazonas, Brazil), with a special focus on exploring patterns of talking about disease and well-being, and discovering new grammatical and lexical patterns emerging in talking about COVID-19. She is working closely together with the Tariana communities in providing materials for the Tariana school Enu Irine Idakini in Iauaretê. She continues her collaboration with the Yalaku and Manambu communities in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea.

Bob Dixon is continuing his on-going engagement with the Dyirbal-speaking communities of North Queensland and with the descendants of the Yidinji speakers. He is providing information and advice on introducing original Dyirbal language concepts within the framework of Indigenous Engagement and First Nations’ Research at CQUniversity and Jawun Research Centre.

As part and parcel of his engagement with the Tiang-speaking community, Chris Holz (a PhD scholar at Jawun) was awarded the funding of $9,950 by the Centre for Indigenous Health Equity Research, to support the publication of two educational books, created in collaboration with local Tiang authors from Djaul published by Education Projects International (www.education-projects.com), a company with a focus on educational projects in Papua New Guinea. These two books were published in 2022 and are being distributed in the Tiang community in New Ireland:

Taanuaa: Tiang Picture Book is a collection of 40 photos taken on Djaul that give a snapshot of the culture and life of the Tiang community as of the present day and show the beauty of their home island. Each photo is accompanied by cultural and environmental notes.

Pini: Tiang Story Book is a collection of 31 traditional and modern stories, riddles, and songs from Djaul.

A special event – the Launch of a Festschrift for Alexandra Aikhenvald

On 1 June, Professor Anne Storch (University of Cologne) and Professor R. M. W. Dixon organized a launch for the following book, in honour of Alexandra Aikhenvald:

The Art of Language, Series Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture, Volume: 32. Editors: Anne Storch and R.M.W. Dixon, 2022

This book contributes to opening up disciplinary knowledge and offering connections between different approaches to language in contemporary linguistics. Rather than focusing on a particular single methodology or theoretical assumption, the volume presents part of the wealth of linguistic knowledge as an intertwined project, which combines numerous practices, positionalities and perspectives. The editors believe¸ together with the contributors to this volume¸ that it is a crucial and timely task to emphasize the relevance of linguistic knowledge on power, hospitality, social class, marginalization, mobility, history, secrecy, the structures of discourse, and the construction of meaning, as knowledge that needs to be brought together – as it is brought together in personal discussions, conversations and encounters. To work along traces of linguistic connectivity, marginalized narratives, in and on lesser studied (often stigmatized) language practices and to shed light on the tasks of linguistics in making diverse knowledges transparent—this offers spaces for critical discussion on the ethics of linguistics, its challenges, contributions and tasks. These are the approaches that are characteristic for the work of Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, to whom this book is dedicated. See here for details: https://brill.com/view/title/61860?language=en

A new landmark book forthcoming

R. M. W. Dixon’s landmark 1972 grammar of the Dyirbal language of North Queensland is one of the best-known and most widely cited language descriptions in the history of linguistics. In the fifty years since its publication, Dixon has continued his detailed work on the language, extending and refining the descriptions in light of more recent theoretical advances. The resulting A New Grammar of Dyirbal offers a comprehensive contemporary grammar of the language, reanalysed in myriad ways and drawing on an extensive corpus of texts. Among its many new features are further discussion of the applicative/causative derivation; a fresh focus on the role of the pervasive ‘pivot’, the syntactic linking of S and O functions; a detailed account of the two antipassives and their semantic contrast and phonological conditioning; and an extended account of relative clauses. The volume is accompanied by a companion website hosting the full set of textual data on which the grammar is based, as well as a thesaurus/dictionary of the language’s nouns, adjectives, and verbs across its ten dialects of Dyirbal.

Special event: 'Well-being, communication, and language: the First Nations' perspective'

14 September 2-4 pm, Jawun Research Centre (CQU Cairns) or via zoom

Language - and the traditional knowledge embedded in it – play a crucial role in the dynamics of good health, defined by the World Health Organization as 'physical, mental, and social well-being'. Language and communication are instrumental in conceptualising health, illness, and recovery, and in recognizing, describing, assessing, and proposing prevention and treatment for every kind of ailment. The attitudes to physical, mental, and social well-being and the nature of communicating them change across generations, and especially so as a consequence of a pandemic, such as COVID 19.

The panel discussion will bring together experts in medicine and public health, linguistics, anthropology, history, and indigenous studies, in order to enhance a productive partnership between health professionals and patients/communities from various backgrounds, based on mutual respect and linguistic and cultural understanding, with special focus on the conceptualization and attitudes to well-being and disease among First Nations.

The Panel will be chaired, and facilitated, by Professor Adrian Miller, Member of the Jirrbal nation, Deputy Vice-President Indigenous Engagement, BHP Chair in Indigenous Engagement and Director of Jawun Research Centre. The Panel will feature the following presenters: Dr Vicki Saunders, Prof Yvonne Cadet-James, Prof Heronides Moura, Prof Sue McGinty, Prof Sasha Aikhenvald. The expert discussants will be Prof Janya McCalman, Prof Bob Dixon, Prof Rosita Henry, Assoc Prof Michael Walsh, Assoc Prof Robert Amery. All the panel participants will be presenting in a face-to-face mode in CQUniversity (Cairns CBD). A zoom connection will be available for expert discussants and out-of-town participants.

The panel discussion will be followed by a celebration of a recently signed Memorandum of Understanding between CQU and the Tropical Brain and Mind Research Foundation, represented by Professor Sue McGinty, Member of the Board of the Foundation and Professor at JCU.

Further information will be available shortly. Any questions should be sent to a.aikhenvald@cqu.edu.au.

Jawun Research Centre’s seminar series

This multidisciplinary seminar series aims to create a hub centered in Jawun Research Centre. It is intended for researchers at CQU, across Queensland and all over the world, as a forum to share their research findings and establish potential synergies, leading to joint grant applications and partnerships that endeavour to advance knowledge in various disciplines. Seminars take place on Wednesdays, 3pm – 5 pm Qld time, face-to-face in room 2.26, CQUniversity, CBD Cairns, Corner Abbott Street and Shield Street, or via zoom: and via Zoom - https://cqu.zoom.us/j/88387629550?pwd=b1hsb2E0MjdkWUs0RGl2WS8vOWNSUT09#success), passcode: 253748

Information on the seminar series can be seen here https://www.cqu.edu.au/research/organisations/jawun-research-centre/about-us 

Program

• 29 June, Prof Heronides Moura. ‘Covid-19 in Brazil: what metaphors reveal’
• 27 July, A/Prof Simon Foale. ‘Elinor Ostrom’s common property theory as a vehicle for contemporary forms of global environmental managerialism’
• 10 August, Dr Vicki Saunders and Dr Sarah Woodland. ‘Listening for the sounds of wellbeing on Country’
• 24 August, Dr Kearrin Sims. ‘Belt and Roads Initiative as cognitive empire: Epistemic violence, ethnonationalism and alternative imaginaries in Zomian highlands’
• 7 September, Discussion panel ‘Maintenance, revival, and reclamation of the Dyirbal language’ chaired by Professor Adrian Miller, Director of Jawun Research Centre and DVC Indigenous Engagement, CQU
• 21 September, Dr Pema Wangdi. ‘Honorific language of the Brokpa people in Bhutan’
• 5 October, Prof Chris Doran. ‘Evaluation of the Australian Government’s Investment in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Primary Health Care through the Indigenous Australians’ Health Programme (IAHP)’
• 19 October, Dr Françoise Daquin. ‘Origins and diversity of the French language and its dialects’ ‘
• 2 November, Dr Anna Hayes. ‘China's policies and the Belt and Roads Initiative, in the light of Chinese expansion’
• 16 November, Prof Roianne West. TBA
• 30 November, Prof Stephen Torre. TBA

New books published and forthcoming

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Forthcoming. A guide to gender and classifiers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, ed. Forthcoming (2022). Classifiers in cross-linguistic perspective. Special issue of Asian Languages and Linguistics

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Robert L. Bradshaw, Luca Ciucci and Pema Wangdi (eds). Forthcoming 2023. Celebrating Indigenous Voice: legends and narratives in languages of the Tropics. Berling: De Gruyter.

Dixon, R. M. W. Forthcoming 2022. A new grammar of Dyirbal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Holz, Christoph. 2022. Taanuaa: Tiang Picture Book. Educations Project International.

Holz, Christoph. 2022. Pini: Tiang Story Book. Educations Project International.

Sarvasy, Hannah S. and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds). Forthcoming. Clause-chaining in the languages of the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Storch, Anne and R. M. W. Dixon (eds). 2022. The art of language. Leiden: Brill.

Alexandra (Sasha) Aikhenvald

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About ALS

The Australian Linguistic Society is the national organization for linguists and linguistics in Australia. Its primary goal is to further interest in and support for linguistics research and teaching in Australia. Further information about the Society is available by clicking here.

The ALS Newsletter is issued three times per year, in March, July and October. Information for the Newsletter should be sent to the Editor, Joe Blythe (alsonline-at-als.asn.au) by the end of the first week of March, July or October. There is a list of people who are automatically advised that it is time to contribute material; if you wish to be added to that list, send Joe an email.

Membership of ALS includes free subscription to the Australian Journal of Linguistics, which publishes four issues per year. Members are entitled to present papers at the annual conference. ALS membership is handled through the ALS website https://als.asn.au/.

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