This year’s conference will be at the University of Sydney from 29 November to 1 December. Like last, this will dovetail with the Congress of the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Our call for papers is currently open and submissions close on 13 August. I really encourage all members to put in an abstract (or two!), and to come along to the conference even if you’re not planning to present.

Executive:

The next 12 months is a period of change in the evolution of the ALS executive. A number of roles will be up for election at this year’s AGM, and I am proposing some changes to the executive structure. I strongly urge members to consider taking on executive roles and standing for election. This is an opportunity to serve linguists and linguistics in Australia, and to play a part in shaping the direction and priorities of our discipline nationally. Please get in touch with me for a chat if you might consider joining the executive.

An unusually large number roles will be open for election at this AGM, through a combination of the set 3 year period for some roles falling due, and some roles being vacated for various reasons. John Mansfield has recently stepped down as Secretary after outstanding service to the Society, in order to take up a post of assistant professor of anthropological linguistics in the University of Zurich’s Evolving Language research centre. Congratulations John, and thanks for all your hard work for the Society. This means the role of Secretary will need to be filled at the AGM. Celeste Rodriguez-Louro has stepped into the role in the meantime. Zhengdao Ye has moved into the role of Associate Secretary, replacing Joe Blythe, and that will need to be endorsed by the membership. And my move into the President’s shoes means the role of Vice President (Research Support) will need to be filled. The current term of editorship of AJL expires at the end of this year, but fortunately Jean Mulder has indicated she is willing to continue for another term if the membership agrees, and the other terms expiring and due for (re)election at the end of this year are the Vice President (Training and Development), Vice President (Engagement & Outreach), and Treasurer. Finally, I am proposing the creation of two new executive roles (and deletion of one), see below, which adds to the roles up for grabs! In short, most executive positions are up for (re)election this year.

I see this as an opportunity for renewal, and I strongly encourage early career members to consider coming on board and contribute to shaping ALS into the future.

Proposed restructuring:

At present ALS has no formal First Nations advisory mechanism. I’ve proposed to the executive that we establish a formal mechanism of some kind. To this end, I suggest we create a new role on the executive of Vice President (Indigenous), to play a central role in consulting on how best to develop this mechanism. Rather than ALS develop a model, I propose that the VP (Indigenous) consult Indigenous linguists, language centres, and other stakeholders to develop the best model. Perhaps this will be a dedicated ALS advisory board chaired by the VP, or a formal relationship with an existing Indigenous body with the VP having liaison responsibilities, or something else. The actual model will emerge from the consultation process. At this stage Jaky Troy has agreed to give some thought to this, as the only Indigenous member of the current executive. I would be very glad to hear any thoughts from members on this proposal and how best to proceed, particularly of course from First Nations members and bodies.

On a different note, over the last few years ALS has increasingly moved towards centralizing planning and management of the annual conference, to provide continuity and relieve local organizing committees of the need to plan from scratch or solicit advice from previous years’ organisers. This has included developing an ongoing program committee, regularizing the financial arrangements, and developing a conference planning handbook, among other things. So far this has been largely managed by Rob Mailhammer as Treasurer, along with some other members and previous organisers. The Treasurer role is itself already very time consuming. In my view responsibility for managing the central side of the conferences now needs a dedicated executive member, who can also add strategic planning across multiple years to management of the conferences, in particular since there is now a suggestion that ALS might reintroducing a biannual Linguistics Institute. For these reasons I’m also proposing a new role of VP (Conferences).

As it currently stands, the ALS executive has 3 Vice Presidents, with various portfolios. The two new VPs will increase the size of the executive, which is not in itself inherently desirable. However, I think they are an important move to strengthen the operation and footing of the Society. To compensate for this increase, I suggest we eliminate the role of Associate Treasurer. This position has no real ongoing responsibilities, other than stepping in if the Treasurer is unavailable, and as a succession plan as “treasurer in waiting”. I’ve suggested to the executive that the role of standby treasurer is taken on by whichever VP is willing to think about taking over as Treasurer when that next becomes vacant.

All of these proposals are suggestions that have been discussed by the executive, but are ultimately up to the membership to agree on, or not. At this stage I’m planning to put these forward at the next AGM for discussion and ratification or amendment by the membership, and in the meantime I encourage members to let me know their thoughts.

Funding:

Most of our funding and support schemes for the year have been finalized, including the Research Grants Scheme, the Jalwang, Gerhardt Laves, and Susan Kaldor Scholarships, and the Michael Clyne and Barb Kelly Prizes. These outcomes have been announced on the ALS website, but to recap:

This year saw the inaugural Barb Kelly Prize for an outstanding PhD thesis in any area of linguistics, named in honour of the late Barb Kelly. The inaugural winner was Sasha Wilmoth for the thesis The dynamics of contemporary Pitjantjatjara: An intergenerational study. The Michael Clyne Prize for the best PhD thesis on immigrant bilingualism and language contact was awarded to Van Tran for the thesis Vietnamese-Australian children's speech and language competence. The Jalwang Scholarship for developing community-oriented outcomes out of research was awarded to Tom Ennever to support the project Ngurra Kutjuwarra: On country together., and the Laves Scholarship supporting student fieldwork in Australia and the region went to David Felipe Guerrero-Beltran for the project Tense, aspect, and modality in Gu-jingaliya (Maningrida, Northern Australia). The Kaldor Scholarship supporting student participation in a summer school or the like was awarded to Ruby Mineur to attend a research internship in experimental evidence for prosodic planning at MPI for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen.

ALS Research Grants were awarded to Alex Bowen (Communication about criminal law and justice with NT Aboriginal defendants); Kate Charlwood (A linguistic description of contemporary Tiwi spoken by senior speakers); Laurits Stapput Knudsen (Landscape, cognition, and language: A fieldwork-based investigation of inter- and intracommunity variation in Wik Mungkan); Kirsty McDougall and Debbie Loakes (Investigating the interaction between voice quality and plosive production in Australian Englishes); and Tula Wynyard (Topics in Ritharrŋu-Wägilak Grammar).

ALS’s new publication support grant scheme will be advertised soon, so keep an eye out for it. The Indigenous Conference Travel Grant and Student Conference Travel Grant schemes will be advertised later in the year as the ALS conference approaches.

Donations:

Over the last few years ALS has expanded the range of support schemes it offers members, and we have had a number of enquiries from members about ways of contributing to some of these schemes through donations. We have now decided to provide the members with an opportunity to donate to two specific schemes: the Barb Kelly Prize for an outstanding PhD thesis, and the Jalwang Scholarship for developing community-oriented outcomes out of research. We have added a tab to the ALS website home page with this information.

We are in the process of applying for charitable status to allow donations to ALS to be tax deductable, but this requires some changes to the wording of our constitution to state our not for profit status, so we need to wait for the AGM for those changes to be ratified by members. For now, members are welcome to donate to either of these schemes by emailing the treasurer Rob Mailhammer at finance@als.asn.au.

Advocacy:

In July ALS contributed to a national review of research assessment practices. The Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) has been asked by the Chief Scientist to conduct a review aimed at modernising research assessment. This is quite welcome – I think most ALS members share a view that there’s a lot wrong with the way research is (and isn’t) assessed and measured in Australia. Hoping to representing the concerns of ALS members I contributed to a research sectors round table discussion organized by ACOLA. Rather than leave it at that, I put a call out to ALS members for input, and compiled a submission to ACOLA representing the feedback I got from members and one or two other stakeholder bodies.

Bill Palmer
President

News from the University of New England (UNE)

Linguistics Anniversary Event

At the end of 2022, UNE Linguistics celebrated its 35th year as a discipline. 2022 also marked 50 years since the first linguistics unit was taught (in English, by W.G. Hoddinott, the namesake and author of one of UNE’s key archival collections).

In honour of this milestone, we hosted a school morning tea, an afternoon of talks and a celebration dinner. Talks were given by current and former academic staff, former administrative staff and affiliates, as well as a previous student. We became a discipline at UNE in 1987 with the appointment of the late Steven Johnson, and it was a pleasure to have Steve’s wife, Gwen Johnson, join in the afternoon of talks. The talks were followed by an ‘open mic’ session, where many former students and staff shared an anecdote or two.

This picture shows Emeritus Professor Jeff Siegel presenting copies of some of the earlier correspondence packages.

School morning tea – with cake!

New unit offering

Arvind Iyengar successfully debuted the brand new subject LING381/LING581 Writing Systems of the World over the 2022-2023 summer. This is the first ever coursework subject dedicated to the upcoming discipline of grapholinguistics to be offered at any Australian university. It takes students through a wide range of typologically and sociolinguistically distinct writing systems, and also features UNE DECRA fellow Dr Piers Kelly’s award-winning research into Australian Indigenous message sticks. Nearly a hundred undergraduate and graduate students signed up from a variety of majors, including linguistics, languages, history, education and archaeology.

Recent Publications

Eades, Diana, Fraser, Helen, & Heydon, G. (2023). Forensic Linguistics in Australia: Origins, Progress and Prospects (Elements in Forensic Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781009168090

Ndhlovu, Finex. (2023) Unsettling Imperial Science: Centring Convivial Scholarship in Sociolinguistics. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.990

Schneider, Cindy (2023). English and Bislama in the Vanuatu Supreme Court: A shallow equality. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 29(2), 145–171. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.20899

Siegel, Jeff. (2023) A Grammar of Nama: A Papuan Language of Southern New Guinea. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111077017

Completing HDR students

After completing and submitting his doctoral research in record time, UNE HDR candidate Prashneel Goundar has now been admitted to the degree of PhD. His thesis, titled Writing Skills for Undergraduate Students in Fiji: Tackling Educational Inequalities, Facilitating Epistemic Access, received glowing reviews from three external examiners. His supervisors were A/Prof Finex Ndhlovu and Dr Arvind Iyengar. Congratulations, Dr Goundar!

And congratulations to Amanda Harper for the successful completion of their Masters thesis titled: Early Childhood Bilingual Acquisition in Multilingual Households: The Role of the Japanese-Speaking Parent in Facilitating English in the Home. Supervisor: Sally Dixon

Commencing HDR students

Edwin Chris Odhiambo – ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Political Governance in Kenya: Language, Social Justice, Access’, Supervisors: Finex Ndhlovu & Christina Kenny (UNE Sociology).

Abeer Alabdaly – ‘Illness Narratives: A Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID-19 Patients' Stories’, Supervisors: Finex Ndhlovu & Jane Ahlstrand (UNE Indonesian)

Victoria Norford - 'Student-to-Self Translanguaging in Heritage Language Education: Effects on Language Use, Learner Identity and Literacy', Supervisors: Finex Ndhlovu & Leonardo Veliz (UNE Education)

Claire Ramos – ‘Investigating the inclusivity and relevance of Australian public holidays’, Supervisors: Finex Ndhlovu & Jo Coghlan (UNE Sociology).

Tashi Dema – ‘Language-in-politics in Bhutan’, Supervisors: Arvind Iyengar & Christina Kenny (UNE Sociology).

Talks/Presentations

In July, Finex Ndhlovu presented a guest lecture titled ‘African Languages and African Studies – Theories, Debates and Controversies’ at the University of Bayreuth’s seminar series "The Changing African Idea of Africa and the Future of African Studies"

In July, Sally Dixon presented a talk titled ‘The Ipmangker Corpus from Central Australia’ at the Workshop on Language Corpora in Australia, hosted at ANU.

Sally Dixon

News from Charles Darwin University (CDU)

New staff

At the start of 2023 CDU welcomed James Bednall and Awni Etaywe to the positions of Lecturer in Linguistics. James joins CDU from Batchelor Institute, and has research/teaching interests centred around documentary and descriptive linguistics, and community-led language revitalisation and maintenance practices. Awni is a PhD graduate from UNSW Sydney and a forensic linguistics researcher in terrorism and digital deviance.

Courses taught

CDU continues to offer a Languages and Linguistics major with a focus on Australian First Nations language contexts, in the Diploma of Arts and Bachelor of Arts. All units are offered online for external students (cross-institutional enrolments possible), and First Nations students have the option to enrol in short 6-week semesters that include a one-week face-to-face workshop held at the Darwin Casuarina Campus. For information about these offerings, please get in touch with James Bednall (james.bednall@cdu.edu.au).

CDU also offers postgraduate opportunities to study Applied Linguistics through a TESOL major in the Master of Education, Graduate Diploma of Specialist Education and Graduate Certificate of Specialist Education. All units are offered both online and face-to-face. For information about these offerings, please get in touch with Andrew Pollard (andrew.pollard@cdu.edu.au) or Raelke Grimmer (raelke.grimmer@cdu.edu.au).

Current and upcoming projects

Nicole Curtin and Steven Bird are undertaking a research and evaluation project called ‘Language Parties: Language revitalisation through storytelling’ at the Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University. Language Parties are multilingual storytelling events involving speakers of Indigenous and immigrant languages in front of audiences composed mainly of the western monolingual minority. “Language Parties create awareness of Indigenous languages and get people excited to engage with Indigenous languages in a different way than they think that they can” – Bobbie Chew Bigby (Cherokee storyteller, Broome Language Party). Steven and Angelina Joshua will share their experiences of Language Parties at the PULiiMA conference, in Darwin 23-25 August. To learn more about the Language Party format, or to find out about how to host an event, please visit https://www.languageparty.org.

Cris Edmonds-Wathen is CI on the CSFP-funded project ‘Mathematics in Indigenous languages’, working with James Bednall, along with University of Melbourne collaborators Sasha Wilmoth and Kate Charlwood. The project is working with three language communities/schools to develop early primary mathematics teaching sequences in their languages: Pitjantjatjara (Areyonga School), Anindilyakwa (Groote Eylandt Bickerton Island Primary College Aboriginal Corporation (GEBIPCAC)) and Tiwi (Murrupurtiyanuwu Catholic Primary School). In 2023 Cris and James have made two trips to Groote Eylandt for the project in April and June, Cris and Sasha have made two trips to Areyonga in Feb/March and May, and Cris has made two trips to Bathurst Island in April and May.

Awni Etaywe has contributed a new chapter, on the morality of digital deviance and cyber incitement to hatred and violence, which will be featured in the upcoming Routledge International Handbook of Online Deviance.

Awni Etaywe is currently co-editing a special issue on the semiotics of peace, compassion and empathy, in collaboration with a team of Australian linguists leading the Peace, Compassion and Empathy-Special Interest Group. The special issue will be published in the journal Language, Context and Text, special issue 6.1, in 2024.

Nicola Rolls, Brenda Muthamuluwuy, Yasunori Hayashi, Michaela Spencer, Gawura Wanambi and Michael Christie have been awarded a Rainmaker Startup grant ($24,000) on ‘Design, implementation and evaluation of a holistic, both-ways model for delivering VET on country to East Arnhem Indigenous students’.

Publications

Bednall, James. 2023. ‘Tense and aspect’ in C. Bowern (ed.) The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages (pp. 378-391). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780198824978.003.0032

Bednall, James. 2023. ‘Modality and mood’ in C. Bowern (ed.) The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages (pp. 392-410). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780198824978.003.0033

Etaywe, Awni, & Michele Zappavigna. 2023. The role of social affiliation in incitement: A social semiotic approach to far-right terrorists’ incitement to violence. Language in Society, 1-26. doi:10.1017/S0047404523000404

Presentations

Edmonds-Wathen, Cris. 2023. Identifying and Developing Mathematics in Australian Indigenous Languages: A Functional Typological Approach. 45th Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Newcastle, NSW, 2-6 July 2023.
Edmonds-Wathen, Cris. 2023. Mathematical Expression in Indigenous Languages: Different Solutions to Common Problems. Seminar at Mathematical Sciences Institute, ANU, Canberra, 20 July 2023.
Rolls, Nicola. 2023. Keynote presentation: Building students “character” in our digital, online learning era: combining the what and the how. International Conference of Character Education and Digital Learning, 3^rd Anniversary, CeL-KODELN, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 11 March 2023.
Wilmoth, Sasha & Cris Edmonds-Wathen. 2023. Developing a Pitjantjatjara mathematics curriculum at Areyonga School. Australian Languages Workshop, Richmond, NSW, 21-23 July 2023.

HDR completions

Congratulations to Nicole Curtin, who was awarded her PhD in May for her thesis ‘Moving forward while looking back: Exploring reconciliation pathways through Indigenous knowledge sharing in tourism’, supervised by Steven Bird, Ruth Wallace and Tracy Woodroffe.

Visitors

CDU hosted visiting PhD student David Felipe Guerrero Beltran from the Université Paris Cité for 3-months, April-June. David Felipe’s project looks at the linguistic expression of time in Gu-jingaliya, a language of Maningrida. During his visit he gave a TELC seminar on ‘Conjugational classes and tense ‘underspecification’ in Gu-jingaliya’.

Top End Linguistic Circle (TELC)

Linguists and language practitioners visiting Darwin are welcome any time to present at the Top End Linguistic Circle, which meets occasionally throughout the year. Get in touch with the committee at topendlingcircle@gmail.com or sign up to the mailing list to stay updated.

Top End Language Lab (TELL)

PhD opportunities are currently available on the topic of ‘sustaining Indigenous language use in northern Australia’, in partnership with a local language organisation (e.g. language centre, art centre, ranger program). Research will feature Indigenous leadership, codesign, action research, social exchange. Contact Steven Bird (steven.bird@cdu.edu.au) for further information, or see https://language-lab.cdu.edu.au/study/

James Bednall

News from Monash University

We’re thrilled to announce the following successful grants:

Gaby, Alice. 2023. Australian Research Council, Mid-Career Industry Fellowship, IM230100544 Unlocking the archive: reuniting Indigenous languages and their communities (with Industry Partner Living Languages).

Vaughan, Jill 2023. ELDP Major Documentation Project Grant, Showing stories: ancestral narratives in the artistic practice of north-central Arnhem Land (awarded to Jill Vaughan and the Bininj Kunwok Regional Language Centre to document practices relating to traditional and emerging artistic endeavours of the Maningrida region), beginning 2024.

Publications for early 2023:

Burke, I & Kate Burridge 2023. From a bit of processed cheese to a bit of a car accident and a little bit of “oh really” — the journey of Australian English a bit (of)  Journal of Pragmatics 209: 15-30.

Burridge, Kate 2023. Prescription and taboo — Australia’s sensitivity towards American influence In Joan C. Beal, Morana Lukač and Robin Straaijer (eds) Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Prescriptivism. London: Routledge; pp. 246-263.

Gaby, Alice R. & Shoulson Oliver. 2023. Pronouns. In Claire Bowern (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages, 268–277. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198824978.003.0024 (also available here)

Gaby, Alice R. 2023. Reflexives and reciprocals. In Claire Bowern (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages, 360–377. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198824978.003.0031 (also available here)

John Bradley & Alice R. Gaby. 2023. Gender-based language differences. In Claire Bowern (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages, 628–636. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198824978.003.0053 (also available here)

Musgrave, Simon & Kate Burridge 2023. Irish Influence on Australian English, in Oxford Handbook of Irish English edited by Raymond Hickey, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 544-562.

Vaughan, Jill. 2023. Multilingualism. In C. Bowern (ed), Handbook of Australian Languages. Oxford University Press.

Theses conferred during this time:

Bahhari, Abdulwdood 2023. Teaching Arabic in the Diaspora PhD Thesis. Melbourne: Monash University.

Poulton, Tom. 2023. The Linguistic Representation of Olfactory Experiences. PhD Thesis. Melbourne: Monash University.

Congratulations to Abdulwdood and Tom

Conversation pieces from early 2023:

Burridge, Kate & Howie Manns Brekkies, barbies, mozzies: why do Aussies shorten so many words?

Howie Manns, Izzy Burke, Kate Burridge, Simon Musgrave From ‘technicolour yawn’ to ‘draining the dragon’: how Barry Humphries breathed new life into Australian slang

News from Sign Language research at Monash:

It now has its own website, bringing together our many and varied projects in the area.

Recent grants include funding from the Victorian Deaf Education Institute to add over 1000 signs to Signbank.

As part of Deafblind Awareness Week, we launched our global report on the training support workers and interpreters receive in how to communicate with Deafblind people. Authored by Louisa Willoughby, Jim Hlavac and Eleanore Hunter, the report can be downloaded here.

News from the Monash slang researchers:

The group (Howie, Simon, Kate, Izzy, Keith, Dylan) ran a successful workshop (“People’s poetry”, “dustbin language” and everywhere in between — the ins and outs of English slanguage) at the conference for the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE-7) held at the University of Queensland 19-23 June 2023. Our sincere thanks to Martin Schweinberger — our workshop would not have happened without his tremendous work in organizing the conference. Our thanks too to Amanda Laugesen, Carolin Krafzik and Madeleine Clews for their wonderful presentations.

Blogs on slanguage written by members of the group can be read here.

Kate Burridge

News from Macquarie University

HDR News

Congratulations to our recent PhD and MRes graduates.

Jones, Ashleigh. (2023). Cross-Modal Enactment in Bilingual Auslan/English Conversational Narratives. Master of Research, Macquarie University. (Supervised by Joe Blythe, Della Goswell and Francesco Possemato).

Abrahams, Rosanne. (2023) Investigating Language Processing Efficiency in Preschoolers and School-aged Children with Hearing Loss. PhD dissertation, Macquarie University (Supervised by Katherine Demuth, Titia Benders, Nan Xu Rattanasone and Rebecca Holt).

Recent Publications

Barnes, S., Bransby-Bell, J., Gallagher-Beverley, Z., Mullay, J., McNeil, R. & Taylor, C., (2023). Verbosity, traumatic brain injury, and conversation: a preliminary investigation. Aphasiology. 37, 1, p. 1-24.

Blythe, J., Hamdani, F., & Barnes, S. (2023). Tactile engagement of prospective next speakers in Indonesian multiparty conversation. Language in Society. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404523000441

Blythe, J., & Mushin, I. (2023). Discourse and social interaction. In C. Bowern (Ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages (pp. 538–547). Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198824978.003.0045

Brookman, R., Kalashnikova, M., Levickis, P., Conti, J., Xu Rattanasone, N., Grant, K-A., Demuth, K., & Burnham, D. (2023). Effects of maternal depression on maternal responsiveness and infants' expressive language abilities. PLoS ONE, 18(1), 1-20. [e0277762]. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277762

Coretta, S., Casillas, J.V., Roettger, T.B., … Proctor, M., et al. (2023). Multidimensional signals and analytic flexibility: Estimating degrees of freedom in human speech analyses. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 3(6): 25152459231162567. https://doi.org/10.1177/25152459231162567

Dahmen, J., & Blythe, J. (2022). Calibrating recipiency through pronominal reference. Interactional Linguistics, 2(2), 190–224. https://doi.org/10.1075/il.22005.dah

Davies, B., & Demuth, K. (2023). The role of phonology in morphological acquisition. In D. Crepaldi (Ed.), Linguistic morphology in the mind and brain (pp. 184-198). (Current Issues in the Psychology of Language). Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003159759-13

Davies, B., Holt, R., & Demuth, K. (2023). Children with hearing loss can use subject–verb agreement to predict during spoken language processing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 226, 1-11. [105545]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105545

Demuth, K., Moloi, F., Matlosa, L., & Johnson, M. (2023). Uncovering the development of linguistic knowledge in lesser studied languages. Journal of Child Language, 50(3), 518–521. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000922000691

Harvey, M., San, N., Proctor, M., Panther, F., & Turpin, M. (2023). The Kaytetye segmental inventory. Australian Journal of Linguistics. 1-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2023.2218270

Holt, R., Bruggeman, L., & Demuth, K. (2023). Effects of hearing loss and audio-visual cues on children's speech processing speed. Speech Communication, 146, 11-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2022.11.003

Kofod, F., Bray, E., Peters, R., Blythe, J., & Crane, A. (2022). Gija Dictionary. Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press.

Rattanasone, N. X. & Demuth, K. (2023). Produced, but not 'productive': Mandarin-speaking pre-schoolers' challenges acquiring L2 English plural morphology. Journal of Child Language. 50, 3, p. 581–609.

Rossi, G., Dingemanse, M., Floyd, S., Baranova, J., Blythe, J., Kendrick, K. H., Zinken, J., & Enfield, N. J. (2023). Shared cross-cultural principles underlie human prosocial behavior at the smallest scale. Scientific Reports, 13(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30580-5

Tang, P., Yuen, I., Demuth, K., & Xu Rattanasone, N. (2023). The acquisition of contrastive focus during online sentence-comprehension by children learning Mandarin Chinese. Developmental Psychology, 59(5), 845-861. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001498

Wang, H-C., Li, L., Xu Rattanasone, N., Demuth, K., & Castles, A. (2023). Morphological effects on orthographic learning in monolingual English-speaking and bilingual Chinese-English-speaking children. Scientific Studies of Reading. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2023.2217965

Workshops and conferences

International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14)

During the last week of June, the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University Hosted the 14^th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14), the biennial international conference in bi/multilingualism. A total of 292 in-person and 282 online delegates from all over the globe attended the 5-day conference and various workshops. The program included a multidisciplinary field of presentations on acquisition, neuro-plasticity/linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics as well as clinical and applied streams on education and translation and interpreting. The conference dinner was held at the NSW Art Gallery where members of the Macquarie University Organisational committee posed with international keynotes including ECR keynotes for a picture at the end of a wonderful event.

Keynote speakers and the organisers at the ISB 14conference dinner

International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE 7)

A team from Macquarie University lead by Emeritus Professor Pam Peters organised a workshop at the recent meeting of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE 7) in Brisbane, 19-22 June. The workshop theme was 'Lexical Variation within World Englishes' and presentations included:

Loy Lising & Pam Peters. Discourse markers in Philippine Englishes
Pam Peters & Tobias Bernaisch. Indian and Sri Lankan English
Adam Smith. Changing attitudes to immigration in Australia – key terms in parliamentary and newspaper discourse

International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA2023)

Several members of the research group Conversation Analysis in Sydney (CAIS) recently attended the sixth International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA2023), held in Brisbane at the University of Queensland. Scott Barnes delivered a preconference workshop (Exploring asymmetries in communicative competence using conversation analysis). As did Joe Blythe and Francesco Possemato (Preparing field data for conversation analysis). Joe Blythe delivered the final plenary, Pointing (it out). Other presentations by CAIS members included:

Ashleigh Jones. Modality switching in Auslan/English multiparty CODA conversations
Josua Dahmen. Choosing the right code: Doing reported speech in a multilingual community
Scott Barnes. On the role of "uh(m)" in organising turn-constructional units in multi-unit turns-at-talk
Scott Barnes, Kati Pajo, Suzanne Beeke, Steven Bloch, Katie Ekberg, Leena Tuomiranta, Seija Pekkala. Acquired communication disabilities and repair organisation: Exploring the effects of sensory, motor, and cognitive impairments on repair roles, repair solutions, and attendant activities
Francesco Possemato & Jeff Higginbotham. Time, Temporality and Composition Delay in Interactions Involving Augmentative and Alternative Communication Devices
Daniela Panico & Francesco Possemato. Making language choice relevant in bilingual conversation

Gija Dictionary Launched

On the 3rd of May the community of Warmun came together to launch the Gija Dictionary. Over 40 years in the making, the dictionary, compiled by Frances Kofod, Eileen Bray, Rusty Peters, Joe Blythe and Anna Crane, contains contributions from more that eighty people. The festivities included joonba performances, and much feasting – including a Gija Dictionary cake (see below).

A Joonba performance

Eileen Bray prepares to cut the Gija Dictionary cake.

Co-authors Frances Kofod, Eileen Bray and Joe Blythe. Photographs are by Sarah Duguid, courtesy of the Malarngawoon PBC.

Joe Blythe

News from the University of Wollongong

Languages & Linguistics at UOW

Our discipline group appointed two new Scholarly Teaching Fellows, one in Spanish, Dr Catherine Seaton, whose research interests include Spanish migrant literature in Australia with a focus on migratory grief; and one in Mandarin, Dr Lynne Li, whose research covers learning styles, cultures, creativity in language education.

We also have one new Career Development Fellow in English Language and Linguistics, Lilian Ariztimuño, whose research focuses on language, paralanguage and education from a Systemic Functional Semiotics perspective. In particular, she is focuses on the contribution of phonology and paralanguage to oral communication in the expression of emotion.

Dr Alfie Herrero de Haro (Spanish) is seconded to the University of Granada, Spain from 2023 to 2026, having been awarded a prestigious grant by the Spanish national research academy to research and produce an interactive atlas of accents in Andalucía.

Dr Xiaoping Gao has won the 2023 UOW Vice Chancellor’s OCTAL Teaching award, which reflects years of dedication to teaching in the discipline of Chinese.

Publications

S. Dreyfus (2023) ‘From the personal and private to the community and public: Adapting Sydney School pedagogy to train support workers of people with intellectual disability’. Language, Context & Text: The social semiotics forum. 5(1). pp. 108-123. https://doi.org/10.1075/langct.00044.dre

Moore, A.R., Karimi, N., Kanazaki, R., Lukin, A., Ng, W., Williams, A-J., Pipicella, J. and Connor, S.J. (2023) Health communication research informs inflammatory bowel disease practice and research: A narrative review. Crohn’s & Colitis 360. https://doi.org/10.1093/crocol/otad021. Appeared 26 April 2023.

Sidis, A. E., Bøe, T., Karlsson, B., Lidbom, P., Moore, A., Pickard, Deane, F. (2023). In defence of loose ends: Psychotherapy process research in the real world. Frontiers in Psychology 69, Special issue on Open Dialogue around the World. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2023.101011. Appeared April 2023.

Research Funding

Alison Moore and Mehrdad Amirghasemi represent UOW on the multidisciplinary "Sharing early insights for more resilient communities" project. Funding: Australian Government Agricultural Innovation Hubs Program $733,995. UOW component $74,000 for 2023. Dr Dragana Stosic (PhD Maquarie 2021) is employed as Research Assistant on the UOW component, which concerns social media indicators of individual and community resilience.

Conferences

In November this year, UOW will host the Australian Applied Linguistics Conference (https://alaa.net.au/Conference/ALAA-Conferenceand) and the Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference (https://www.asfla2023.net/)

Visitors

English Language and Linguistics at UOW was very pleased to host Visiting A/Prof Daniel Lees Fryer from the Department of Languages, Literature, and Culture at Østfold University College. Daniel worked with Alison Moore on their forthcoming edited volume with Routledge, 'Social Semiotics and the Animal Other', and presented work on related projects to our IDEAS Research Network seminar series and other fora. Daniel's confronting but at times hilarious paper at the Sydney Friday SFL seminar series drew on his 2022 paper "#AllCatsAreBeautiful: ambient affiliation and the visual-verbal representation and appreciation of cats in online subversive discourses." Discourse & Society33 (1):3-33.

Shoshana Dreyfus

News from the University of Melbourne

New staff

A big welcome to Sasha Wilmoth, who has taken up a 2-year position with us as Lecturer in Linguistics.

We are also excited to hear that Lu Yu, who was appointed as Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and ESL at the end of 2022 has just received her visa and will be able to join us to take up her position very soon.

Congratulations

Sasha Wilmoth was awarded the inaugural Barb Kelly Prize for the most outstanding postgraduate research thesis in any area of linguistics. Sasha’s thesis titled The dynamics of contemporary Pitjantjatjara: An intergenerational study is available for download here. We thank the ALS for instituting this prize in honour of our much-loved and dearly-missed colleague.

PhD student Tula Wynyward has been awarded the prestigious John Mulvaney Fellowship from the Australian Academy of the Humanities for her PhD research on Ritharrŋu, Wägilak and Maḏarrpa languages in the Northern Territory. You can read about Tula’s research here.

Thomas Watson and Bill Forshaw (RUIL) have been successful with grants for Gangulu language work through the FLA Priority Language Support Program ($20,000) and Indigenous Languages and Arts Program ($99,900). These grants will support development of a Gangulu Plants and Animals Guide and a larger Gangulu Learner's guide and Dictionary. Thomas and a number of other Gangulu people were also accepted to participate in Paper & Talk later this year at AIATSIS. The Dhudhuroa Language Team Bill has been supporting was also successful in their application to the FLA Priority Language Support Program ($20,000). This grant will support the creation of language resources in Dhudhuroa.

Rikke Bundgaard-Nielsen, Carmel O’Shannessy and co-authors’ article about Warlpiri baby talk was published as the lead story in The Conversation on the 27th of June.

Activities and Events

Nick Thieberger attended the Vanuatu languages conference in Port Vila in July and gave three presentations. He helped run a training session with more than 40 ni-Vanuatu participants together with Mandana Seyfeddinipur from the ELDP.

The recent newsletter from the Research Unit for Indigenous Language is packed with our stories and activities and is available here. To stay up to date with our ongoing news and events see our website and follow us on Facebook and Twitter @indiglang.

Call for PhD student

The Research Hub for Language in Forensic Evidence is pleased to seek expressions of interest for a funded PhD scholarship to commence at the end of Feb 2024. Expressions of interest are invited from both Australia and overseas. The overseas deadline has officially passed but we can still consider a late EOI - so if you know someone interested or have any questions please contact Helen Fraser <helen.fraser@unimelb.edu.au> to discuss. The domestic deadline is 20 August (with some flexibility by prior arrangement). IMPORTANT - this deadline is for the EOI only. A full application process will be needed for short-listed candidates.

Brief details below - full information (including links to Melbourne PhD application process) and link to EOI form can be found here.

The Hub looks forward to hearing from interested candidates!

Funded PhD scholarship opportunity BRIEF DETAILS

The Research Hub for Language in Forensic Evidence is pleased to invite Expressions of Interest for a PhD related to forensic transcription – the science and practice of providing reliable transcripts to assist the courts in understanding poor-quality forensic audio (in English or other languages) used as evidence in criminal trials. Forensic transcription is a new and evolving interdisciplinary field, and PhD Proposals are invited from students with any of a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds – e.g. linguistics (broadly defined), criminal law, cognitive science, forensic science, digital forensics – so long as the project focuses squarely on forensic transcription, and aligns with the research directions of the Hub. The successful applicant will be embedded in the Research Hub for Language in Forensic Evidence within the School of Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts. https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/opportunity/1086-language-in-forensic-evidence

Rachel Nordinger

News from the University of Newcastle

Guest visits

From 21-23 June, the University of Newcastle hosted two guests from the University of Mannheim, Germany. Wintai Tsehaye and Nadine Zürn, from the Research Unit "Emerging Grammars in Language Contact Situations: A Comparative Approach", presented their works:

Wintai Tsehaye, Tatiana Pashkova, Hannah Lee, Erica Conti, Shanley Allen, Oliver Bunk, Rosemarie Tracy, Syntax on the edge: The role of register in syntactic variation at sentence peripheries in language contact
Mareike Keller & Nadine Zürn, Collocations, variation, and register-specificity - a study of German heritage speakers

From 3-7 April, the University of Newcastle hosted Pauline Welby, from Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, Laboratoire Parole et Langage, and the Université de la Nouvelle Calédonie. Welby presented a seminar titled Learning second language words from hearing them and from reading them: Insights from recent studies… and from my 8-year-old son.

HDR updates

Jiawen Huo has been awarded a PhD scholarship by China Scholarship Council and will be joining the University of Newcastle linguistics department on campus in October.

Conferences and talks

The University of Newcastle was well represented internationally over the Winter teaching break.

Catriona Malau presented at the Vanuatu Languages Conference, 10-14 July, at National University Vanuatu, with a talk titled Contact-induced change in Imere (Vanuatu) kinterms. Malau also produced a documentary film about Imere wedding traditions, titled Teaavagaraga na Jowi go Marina 'Jowi and Marina's Wedding'. It is available to view online here.

Jaime Hunt and Sacha Davis presented a guest talk at the University of New England’s monthly Language Talks Seminar on the project German as a heritage language in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley (co-authored by Sacha Davis).

Kiwako Ito delivered a series of invited talks at Waseda University (Tokyo), Kitakyushu City University (Kokura), Notre Dame Seishin University (Okayama) and Yokohama National University (Yokohama).

Jayden Macklin-Cordes presented a lunchtime research talk at the Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey, on bridging the study of macro-scale linguistic evolution and micro-scale mechanisms of language change. Macklin-Cordes also delivered a careers talk to graduate students at the CNRS Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, Université Lyon 2.

Conference proceedings

Libert, Alan Reed. 2023. On the Use of the Indefinite Tense in the Artificial Language Oz. In Osman Erkmen and Gulnaz Gafurova (eds.) 10th International Zeugma Conference on Scientific Research Full Texts Book, IKSAD, Ankara.

Jayden Macklin-Cordes

News from the University of Western Australia

New roles

Celeste Rodríguez Louro has stepped in as Chair and Major Coordinator of the Linguistics Discipline for the period 2023-2025. She is also Director of Language Lab which has been operating successfully since 1 July 2022.

Celeste Rodríguez Louro has stepped in as Secretary of the Australian Linguistic Society (ALS) until December 2023. Elections will take place at the 2023 Annual General Meeting (to be held during the 2023 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society in Sydney). If you or anyone you know would like to be the next ALS Secretary, please consider nominating.

Welcome

Welcome back to Prof. Clint Bracknell who has recently returned to Nyungar boodja (Nyungar country) and who is our newest Language Lab member. https://www.uwa.edu.au/schools/Research/The-Language-Lab

HDR Student Updates

PhD candidate Connor Brown is currently working on the final edits of his PhD thesis which investigates the semantics/pragmatics of tense and aspect in the Kriol variety spoken in Kununurra, WA. Earlier this year he relocated to Kununurra, so he is completing these edits from the field with much-appreciated input from speakers. He plans to submit his thesis in the next few months.

PhD candidate Madeleine Clews is looking forward to working with Jessica Kruk tutoring LING2008 How Language Shapes Society. Madeleine will also focus on writing up materials based on a series of papers she presented at the at 7th Meeting of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE7) conference in Brisbane last June.

PhD candidate Lucía Fraiese has been collecting data for her sociolinguistic ethnography of First Nations youth in a boarding school. She has recently shared the details of her growing corpus at the Workshop of Language Corpora in Australia organised by Catherine Travis and Li Nguyen and held online on 3 July 2023.

Staff news

Amanda Hamilton-Hollaway is looking forward to another busy teaching semester. She will be coordinating LING3007 The Linguistics of Australian Indigenous Languages and will be sharing the teaching of LING1002 Language as a Cognitive System with Luisa Miceli.

Amanda Hamilton-Hollaway has been supervising undergraduate linguistics student Ewan O'Brien for a winter research internship. Ewan has joined Amanda and Celeste Rodríguez Louro on their newly funded project ‘Decolonizing the Introductory Linguistics Curriculum’.

Amanda Hamilton-Hollaway will travel to the University of Queensland in August for her third and final PhD presentation in preparation for her thesis submission later this year.

Celeste Rodríguez Louro and Glenys Collard offered an invited presentation, titled ‘The Yarning Corpus: Aboriginal English in Southwest Western Australia’ at the Workshop of Language Corpora in Australia organised by Catherine Travis and Li Nguyen and held online on 3 July 2023.

Grants

Celeste Rodríguez Louro and Amanda Hamilton-Hollaway have been awarded a highly competitive MLA Humanities Innovation Grant (AUD $4,300) to advance their project titled ‘Decolonizing the Introductory Linguistics Curriculum’. The success rate in this round was 12.5%. The selection committee was impressed by the project’s innovative and collaborative nature and its potential to positively affect interest in the social sciences and the humanities. This project will be further supported by a $15,000 contribution from UWA’s School of Social Sciences.

Publications

Ennever, Tom. & Browne, Mitchell. (2023). Cross-Referencing of Non-Subject Arguments in Pama-Nyungan Languages. Australian Journal of Linguistics 43: 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2023.2217412.

Hamilton-Hollaway, Amanda. (2023). Code-switching. In C. Bowern (Ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages (pp. 645–655). Oxford University Press.

Meakins, Felicity, Osgarby, David, Ennever, Tom, Browne, Mitchell, & Hamilton-Hollaway, Amanda. (2023). Ngumpin-Yapa Languages. In C. Bowern (Ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages (pp. 918–932). Oxford University Press.

Kruk, Jessica., & Robertson, W. C. (2023). An annotated interview with Beastwars: Language, identity and place in New Zealand metal. Perfect Beat, 22(1), 5–21. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.23746

Roche, G., Hammine, M., Hernandez, J. F. C., & Kruk, Jessica. (2023). The politics of fear and the suppression of Indigenous language activism in Asia: Prospects for the United Nations’ Decade of Indigenous Languages. State Crime Journal, 12, 29–50. https://doi.org/10.13169/statecrime.12.1.0029

Miceli, Luisa & Claire Bowern. (2023). Australian languages and interdisciplinary approaches to the past. In Claire Bowern (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages (Oxford Guides to the World’s Languages), Chapter 5. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Rodríguez Louro, Celeste, Glenys Collard, Madeleine Clews & Matt Hunt Gardner (Forthcoming in 2023). Quotation in earlier and contemporary Australian Aboriginal English. Language Variation and Change 35 (2).

Rodríguez Louro, Celeste, Glenys Collard & Troy Reynolds (Forthcoming in 2023). Australian Aboriginal English. In Biewer, C. & Burridge, K. (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopaedia of World Englishes. London: Wiley Blackwell.

Rodríguez Louro, Celeste & Lucía Fraiese (Forthcoming in 2024). South to North: Diversity as an academic asset. In Dovchin, S., Dobinson, T., McAlinden, M. & Gong, Q. (Eds.), Linguistic diversity and discrimination: Autoethnographies from women in Academia. London: Routledge.

Rodríguez Louro, Celeste, Glenys Collard & Madeleine Clews. (Forthcoming in 2025). Australian Aboriginal English. In Hickey, R. (Ed.), The New Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume VI: English in Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Pacific. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ward, Ingrid, Maïa Ponsonnet, Luisa Miceli, Emilie Dotte-Sarout & Jason Rustandi (Forthcoming in 2023). How Linguistic data can inform archaeological investigations: An Australian pilot study around combustion features. Open Archaeology.

Internships program

The UWA Linguistics Internship Program continues to thrive. From 2023, all Linguistics Honours students will take an Honours-level internship unit. Currently Honours student Jason Rustandi is in Bulman, completing a placement with MIMAL Land Management, working on various language-related projects.

Media and outreach

Language Lab, our weekly segment on RTRFM radio, has reached over 50 episodes! Amanda Hamilton-Hollaway has recently joined Celeste Rodríguez Louro as a presenter every third Thursday from 9:40 to 10:00 am (Perth time). The program is also available online https://rtrfm.com.au/tags/the-language-lab/.

Forthcoming conference presentations

Celeste Rodríguez Louro and Glenys Collard have been invited to present a workshop titled ‘Working together to reduce inequality’ at the 32nd Australian Cardiovascular Health and Rehabilitation Association’s Annual Scientific Meeting. Perth, Western Australia, July 31-August 2, 2023. Celeste and Glenys will talk about their decolonial methods and collaborative work producing culturally sensitive medical media for First Nations communities.

Celeste Rodríguez Louro will present a paper titled ‘The proof is in the pudding: Barb’s stories as impetus for social justice’ at the upcoming Symposium in honour of Barbara Kelly organised by The University of Melbourne.

Invitations

Celeste Rodríguez Louro has been invited to join the organising committee for a Symposium in honour of her late supervisor Barbara Kelly. The organising committee is chaired by Maria Karidakis (Melbourne University). The event will be held at The University of Melbourne on 27 October 2023. Invitations will go out to those closest to Barb Kelly but online attendance will be open to all.

Celeste Rodríguez Louro has accepted an invitation to join the Discourse Pragmatic Variation and Change Research Network, chaired by Chloé Diskin-Holdaway (Melbourne University), http://www.dipvac.org/steering-committee.html.

Celeste Rodríguez Louro has accepted an invitation to join the Local Organising Committee for Methods in Dialectology XVIII, chaired by James Walker (La Trobe University). This conference will be held in Melbourne in mid-2024.

Forthcoming workshop

Celeste Rodríguez Louro is organising, with Catherine Travis (ANU) and James Walker (La Trobe), Language Variation and Change Australia 6 (LVC-A 6). LVC-A is a biennial meeting of scholars interested in the quantitative study of linguistic variability situated in its social context. LVC-A started a decade ago and has been held every two years ever since. LVC-A 6 proposes to bring together the latest research on language variation and change currently being conducted in Australia and the region. We invite abstracts for work that presents analyses that utilise viable statistical methods and interpret and explain results with reference to (socio)linguistic theory. Abstracts are due through the 2023 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society website. Please tick ‘LVC-A 6’ before submission. Abstracts not accepted for LVC-A 6 will be forwarded to the general conference for consideration.

UWA Linguistics Seminar Series, Semester 2, 2023

Seminar presentations will take place online, free of charge, through the following link:

https://uwa.zoom.us/j/6038975685?pwd=MEVGbE50dkFvT2M4NDl6YWFqL1pzdz09

Password: 250801

For queries, and to express an interest in presenting in the series, please contact Dr Celeste Rodríguez Louro on celeste.rodriguezlouro@uwa.edu.au

Date	Time	Title	Speaker	Affiliation
10/08/23	1:00	Large Language Models	Daniel Midgley	Because Language
24/08/23	1:00	Five reasons to do language documentation: Data from Nama (Southern New Guinea)	Jeff Siegel	The University of New England
7/09/23	1:00	The maintenance of complexity in Pitjantjatjara	Sasha Wilmoth	The University of Melbourne
21/09/23	1:00	Stop contrast acquisition in child Kriol: Evidence of stable transmission of phonology post Creole formation	Rikke Bundgaard-Nielsen	The University of Melbourne
05/10/23	1:00	Having an argument: Subject and object marking in modern Mudburra	Amanda Hamilton-Hollaway	The University of Queensland / The University of Western Australia

A photo collage of PhD candidate Lucia Fraise’s activities during her sociolinguistic fieldwork at a First Nations boarding school.

Celeste Rodríguez Louro

News from RMIT Language Studies/Applied Linguistics

Welcome

Welcome to Maho Fukuno who joined RMIT in February as Lecturer in the Japanese Program. Maho is an applied linguist whose research interests lie in the interdisciplinary field of translation studies, intercultural communication and language pedagogy. Her PhD explored translators’ personal journeys and the human and moral aspects of their practice in public service (community) translation, focussing particularly on the moral negotiations and personal, value-based decision-making engaged in by individual translators in their practice.

We also welcome Gillian Darcy who joined the Languages team as Lecturer in July 2023. With a background in teaching applied linguistics, intercultural communication, global mobility, and Spanish, Gillian is an applied linguist whose current research interests connect memory studies and the Catalan-speaking areas of Spain. Her PhD explored the role that language and other factors play in determining the distinct Valencian identity, both within the Spanish devolution and that of the Catalan Countries, due largely to a shared history and language.

Farewell

The Global and Language Studies team farewells Chantal Crozet as she heads off on long service leave and then into retirement. Chantal joined RMIT from the ANU in 2014 and took up the position as Head of French Studies. Chantal will continue as Honorary Fellow and we look forward to continuing to work with her in that role.

Recent publications

Dam, H. Thuy. 2023. (PhD candidate.) Visualising Third Culture Kids’ identity through language portraits: the case of Vietnamese sojourner children in Australia. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2023.2225488

Ducasse, Ana Maria and Brown, Annie. 2023. Rhetorical relations in university students’ presentations. Journal of English for Academic Purposes Vol 63, 101251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2023.101251

De St. Léger, D. and Mullan, Kerry. 2023. Rééquilibrage? A Geo-Semiotic Analysis of Noumea’s Main City Square as Case Study. Australian Journal of French Studies 60(3), 319-336.

Yoshida, Maki. 2023. Representations of gender and sexual orientation over three editions of a Japanese language learning textbook series. Gender and Language, 17(2), 198–221. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.23358

Conference presentations

Thuy H. Dam. 2023. (PhD candidate.) Parenting Third Culture Kids – The case of Vietnamese sojourner families in Australia: Mismatches between East and West. International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14), Macquarie University, June.
Kerry Mullan (in absentia) with Shima Moallemi (Utrecht University), Chantal Claudel (Université Paris Nanterre), Els Tobback (Universiteit Antwerpen) and Nicolas Ruytenbeek (KU Leuven). Co-convenor of panel ‘Politeness and impoliteness in French and in comparison with other languages’, International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), Brussels, July.
Kerry Mullan and Jing Qi. Co-convenors of panel ‘Community Diversity and Global Mindedness: Community Languages Schools in Australia’, International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14), Macquarie University, June.
Kerry Mullan, Jing Qi, Chantal Crozet, Thuy Dam and Hoa Do (La Trobe University). ‘Conceptualizing Global Mindedness in Community Languages School’, International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14), Macquarie University, June.
Kerry Mullan. ‘French-Australian Relations: Une Entente Glaciale Revisited’. ISFAR Symposium, New Perspectives in French-Australian Studies, RMIT University, April.
Hiroko Ohashi. Culture as a tool for identity work: an exploration of L2 Japanese learners’ autobiographic accounts. IPRA, Brussels, July.

HDR completions / milestones

The following students successfully passed their Confirmation of Candidature in May 2023:

Edoardo Brunetti: 'An investigation into the relationship between regional language speakers and the language policy and planning process in contemporary France' (supervisors Kerry Mullan and Alexis Bergantz)

Zichen Zhao: ‘Female Images in the English Translations of Shui Hu Zhuan’ (supervisors Jindan Ni, Kerry Mullan and Jing Qi)

Collaborative project

Community Banashi: Stories of place from Australia and Japan

Community Banashi is a creative film series project that recently concluded, that involved the collaboration between RMIT University and Kochi University in Japan, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia-Japan Foundation. The project involved students’ creative storytelling of their locales and the creation of short films that were directed and filmed by primary school students across Australia and Japan, supported by mentorship of film practitioners and educational experts. Participating schools spanned diverse locations in Australia and Japan, (Garrthalala Homelands School in Garrthalala, Northern Territory, Australia and Kagami Shogakkoo in Kochi, Japan) offering compelling stories of places through the eyes of children. The films and project website aim to foster deeper cross-cultural connection and collaboration via the currency of language. The project was led by Dr Naomi Wilks-Smith from RMIT’s School of Education and Dr Li Ping Thong from School of Design. It also involved collaboration with Hiroko Ohashi and Maho Fukuno from Global and Language Studies, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, who facilitated the Japanese to English translations of the Japanese film with their students that were used as film subtitles. The Japanese partners from Kochi University were Professor Darren Lingley and Sean Burgoine and students from Kochi University created the English to Japanese translations for the Australian film subtitles.

The films can be viewed from the project website which also includes more information about the project and a collection of photos.

Kerry Mullan

News from La Trobe University

Professor Marija Tabain has been re-elected as Editor for the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, for a second four-year term.

David Bradley is continuing his role as President of the Comité International Permanent des Linguistes until September 2024 and continuing as editor of the journal Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area (John Benjamins). He’s giving a plenary at the 14th International Conference on Evolutionary Linguistics in Hong Kong 3-5 August, and a different one at the 56th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics in Bangkok 8-11 October.

Also, La Trobe University will be hosting the 6th Forum on Englishes in Australia on 22 September : https://sites.google.com/view/auseng/

James Walker

News from Western Sydney University

Publications

Dovchin, S., & Izadi, D. (2023). Normativities of languaging from the Global South: The social media discourse. Discourse, Context & Media, 53, 1-9.

Dryden, S. & Izadi, D. (2023). The small things of the Global South: Exploring the use of social media through translingualism. Discourse, Context & Media, 52, 1-9.

Izadi, D. (2023). Exploring the phenomenology of shopping as social practice: An inquiry into the multimodal and linguistic repertoires in markets in Sydney, In G. Rasmussen & T. van Leeuwen (Eds.), Multimodality and social interaction in online and offline shopping (pp. 13-37). London: Routledge.

Sherwood, S., Shaw, J., Kawahara, S., Mailhammer, R. & Antoniou, M. (2023). Variation, gender and perception: the social meaning of Japanese linguistic variables. Linguistics, 61(4), 959-995.

Susilo, A., Yang, P., & Qi, R. (2023). Developing critical intercultural awareness through video clip-assisted intercultural learning tasks. Higher Education Pedagogies, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23752696.2023.2235337

Robert Mailhammer

News from Griffith University

Publications

Goddard, Cliff, Wierzbicka, Anna and Ye, Zhengdao. 2023. “Ch 3: The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach”. In Handbook of Cognitive Semantics, Vol I, edited by Fuyin Thomas Li. Leiden: Brill. [ISBN: 978-90-04-46820-7]

Heinrichs, Danielle H., Gail Hager, Brittany A. McCormack & Natalie Lazaroo (2023). “Blurring English language binaries: a decolonial analysis of multilingualism with(in) EAL/D education”. Changing English, 30:3, 286-300.

Stollznow, Karen. 2023. Missed Conceptions: How we make sense of infertility. Broadleaf Books. [ISBN-10: 150648526X]

Conference organisation

Cliff Goddard, Lauren Sadow (Aarhus U, Denmark) and Zhengdao Ye (ANU) co-organised “NSM-Con2023: Semantics, applied”. The conference was held online across two days and many timezones, 22-23rd June 2023.

Susana Eisenchlas and Andrea Schalley co-organised two events at the International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14) (Macquarie University, June 26-30): (i) a symposium on social and affective factors in home language management and development, (ii) a workshop on quantitative approaches to the study of intergenerational language transmission.

Conference presentations

Bergamaschi, Lissara. 2023. “‘Hey, Saudade, we need to talk’: A semantic exploration of ‘saudade’ in Brazilian Sertanejo songs”. NSM-Con2023, 22 June 2023.
Bromhead, Helen. 2023. “The applied semantics of climate” [speed talk]. NSM-Con23, 23 June 2023.
Diget, Ida Stevia. 2023. “Towards ‘best practice’ application of minimal language: Identifying the STEPs”. NSM-Con2023, 23 June 2023.
Eisenchlas, Susana and Andrea Schalley. 2023. “To transmit or not to transmit? That is the question in multilingual families”. 14th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14), 26-30 June 2023, Macquarie University, Sydney.
Eisenchlas, Susana and Andrea Schalley. 2023. “Social and affective factors influencing home language transmission – A quantitative approach”. 14th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14), 26-30 June 2023, Macquarie University, Sydney.
Goddard, Cliff and Anna Wierzbicka. 2023. “What is ‘Art’”? NSM-Con2023, 22 June 2023.
Kazmaly, Alena. "Bilingual Personality Testing: How Much do Words Matter?”. 14th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14), 26-30 June 2023, Macquarie University, Sydney.
Liu, Yuanmeng. 2023. “Posture-Verb constructions in Mandarin Chinese: A case study of 坐 ‘sit’” [speed talk]. NSM-Con2023, 22 June 2023.
Mašková, Stephanie. 2023. “Icescape terms in Kalaallisut-Danish”. NSM-Con2023, 23 June 2023.
Shoecraft, Kelly. 2023. “Imaginary Worlds: Plurilingual children's use of unique linguistic repertoires to negotiate meaning.” 14th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14), 26-30 June 2023, Macquarie University, Sydney.
Shoecraft, Kelly. 2023. “Bilingual Education in an Australian Context. Exploring the development of children's plurilingual identities in an innovative curriculum project.” 14th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB14), 26-30 June 2023, Macquarie University, Sydney.

Visiting scholars

A/Prof. Carsten Levisen (Roskilde University) visited Griffith for 3 weeks in May-June, for intensive collaboration with Cliff Goddard. They finsihed a paper on the contrastive metapragmatics of sarcasm in English and Danish. Carsten also gave a Visiting Scholar seminar titled “Green and wild: The language and landscape of Danish hopes and dreams”, and participated in NSM Lab (Griffith).

Outreach and engagement

Susana Eisenchlas continues her involvement with the Forever 5 programs run by the local and state libraries. She delivered a webinar on the benefits of bilingualism for librarians at the State Library of Queensland for librarians (March 14) and a workshop for parents and carers at the Banyo Library (May 20).

This blogpost by Jacqeline Ewart appeared in May, about Helen Bromhead’s work on disaster messaging.

“Langwich” Podcast is a language and linguistics podcast, organised by Griffith students Lissara Bergamaschi, Isabella Schulz, and Raiã Pinhati. 12+ episodes have been published and already it’s attracted more than 1000 downloads. Here’s an online article about it.

Other

Dr. Mingyan Hu was appointed in April as ongoing Lecturer in TESOL and Mandarin Chinese. She has a Masters in applied linguistics, and PhD in transnational higher education policy.

Danielle Heinrichs went on a research trip to Europe from mid-June to late July. In June she visited colleagues and gave seminars at Leipzig University (14 June: “Alternative Affects and Language”) and at Regensburg University (28 June: “(Un)standard Deviations in Language Learners' Practices: Kiezdeutsch and Aboriginal English”). Her plan for July was attend and present at AILA World Congress in Lyon, France. More on this, next Newsletter.

NSM Labs, semi-regular seminars on semantic work-in-progress, continue to be held at Griffith, as do parallel NSM Labs at ANU and at Aarhus and Roskilde Universities, Denmark. See Twitter: @nsmlab and @NSM_LAB_denmark.

Michael Manahan (U. Philippines Dilman) won the Bert Peeters Prize for the Best Student Essay in NSM Semantics, for his paper titled “Sakit Unpacked”.

Cliff Goddard

News from the University of New South Wales

HDR updates

Three new PhD student join UNSW Linguistics:

Farhanis Ahmad Fadil (topic: Malay morphosyntax), supervised by Debra Aarons and Mengistu Amberber.
Muhammad Hakiki (topic: Pedagogical translanguaging in EFL classrooms in supporting local language maintenance: A case study of an Indonesian University), supervised by, Aniko Hatoss and Andy Gao.
Mohammed Alkathiri (topic: Family language policy in Saudi Sojourner families residing in Australia), supervised by Aniko Hatoss and Clair Hill

Publications

Arellano, R., & Hatoss, A. 2023. Caught between a bilingual policy and monolingual English practices in Chile: Opportunities and challenges of translanguaging. In K. Raza, D. Reynolds, & C. Coombe (Eds.), Handbook of Multilingual TESOL in Practice (pp. 191-206): Springer.

Hale S; Lim J; Martschuk N; Goodman-Delahunty J. 2023. 'Note-taking in court interpreting: Interpreter perceptions and practices in a simulated trial', The International Journal for Translation & Interpreting Research, 15, pp. 1 21. http://dx.doi.org/10.12807/ti.115201.2023.a01

Hatoss, A. 2023. Everyday multilingualism: Linguistic landscapes as practice and pedagogy. London/New York: Routledge.

Hatoss, A. 2023. 'Like the virus just brings out the worst in people': Positioning and identity in student narratives during the Covid-19 outbreak in Australia. Discourse & Society.

Hatoss, A. 2023. Shifting ecologies of family language planning: Hungarian Australian families during COVID-19. Current Issues in Language Planning, 1-21. doi:10.1080/14664208.2023.2205793

Napier J; Hale S, 2023, 'Exploring mixed methods in interpreting research', in Zwischenberger C; Reithofer K; Rennert S (ed.), Introducing New Hypertexts on Interpreting (Studies): A tribute to Franz Pöchhacker, John Benjamins, pp. 22 - 43, http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/btl.160.02nap

Conference presentation

Hatoss, A. 2023. Hungarian as a heritage language in Australia: A parental survey about family language policy and wellbeing. AILA Congress, Lyon, 18 July, 2023.

Fieldwork

Prof Ludmila Stern and colleagues visited Darwin and Katherine and Wadeye in April-May carrying out court observations and completing interviews with judicial officers, interpreters and legal professionals as part of ARC Linkage project Judicial Officers working with interpreters: Implications for access to justice. The trip was supported by the Aboriginal Interpreter Service (AIS). The trip enabled the research team to focus on judicial officers’ and lawyers’ interactions with interpreters in Aboriginal languages (languages observed included Burarra, Djambarrapuingu, East Side Kriol, Kriol/Gurindji, Murrinh Patha, Ngarinyman, and Yolngu Matha), and their modus operandi inside and outside court when interpreters are present.

Grants and community engagement

The Gujaga Foundation in partnership with UNSW linguistics student Dimitri Karadarevic have been awarded an ILA grant – with other members of UNSW linguistics, Clair Hill and Mengistu Amberber, sitting on the project advisory team. The project will develop accessible educational materials and support learning of complex aspects of Dharawal grammar within the Dharawal Language Program.

Clair Hill

News from the University of Technology Sydney

Laura Smith-Khan gave a presentation (remotely) as part of a plenary panel, ‘Transdisciplinary Approach to Forensic Linguistics’, at the 16th Biennial Conference of the International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguistics, held at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila. A blog post version is available here: Intercultural communication in migration law practice – Language on the Move

Alexandra Grey published ‘Communicative Justice and Covid-19: Australia‘s pandemic response and international guidance’ Sydney Law Review https://www.sydney.edu.au/law/our-research/sydney-law-review.html

Alexandra Grey gave a webinar to the Linguistic Justice Society on Linguistics Inclusion and Good Governance in Multilingual Australia. The webinar is available on JLS’s YouTube channel.

Alexandra Grey

News from the University of Sydney

Visiting scholar

Dr. Miyuki Tani has begun a year-long research visit to Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Dr. Tani teaches in the Faculty of Law at Chuo University in Tokyo. She is conducting comparative research on English and Japanese grammar and their relation to cognition and culture.

The main focus of her research is to observe differences in the 'fashions of speaking' used by English and Japanese speakers, and to identify differences in the tendencies of the speakers of the two languages to construe the situation. She writes: “I believe that language structure is motivated by the society and culture in which the language is spoken, and I hope to consider the relationship between language, society and culture from a variety of perspectives during my stay in Australia.”

Dr. Tani can be contacted here: miyuki.akiyama@sydney.edu.au

Postdoc updates

Dr Manuel González Pérez has started a two-year Postdoctoral Research Associate position in Linguistics at USYD, with funding from ELDP. He specializes in language documentation and description. His research interests revolve around Tibeto-Burman languages, social cognition and fieldwork methods. In particular, he is interested in holistic, multimodally-enriched documentation of the grammar and vocabulary of Ngwi languages of Yunnan Province of China, especially Phola, a minoritised language spoken in Wadie Township of Yuanjiang County. His ELDP-funded research project will involve the production of a multimodally enriched grammar and lexicon of Phola and four dedicated linguistic corpora. The first corpus will be a cross-sectional compilation of Phola language materials. The second corpus will constitute the first ever batch of field data from neighbouring varieties closely related to Phola. The third corpus will constitute an innovative database of naturalistic demonstrative usage in various social and ecological settings. The fourth and final corpus will provide the first-ever database of researcher-speaker interactions and will serve as a basis for research on language documentation methods.

Fieldwork with Phola speakers, Yunnan Province, China.

Sydney Corpus Lab

The Sydney Corpus Lab (headed by Monika Bednarek) was pleased to host international visiting scholar Prof Martin Luginbühl (University of Basel, Switzerland) in June. This semester, the lab has also featured both online and in-person guest lectures on various corpus linguistic topics – presented by A/Prof Annabelle Lukin (Macquarie University), Dr Peter Crosthwaite (University of Queensland), A/Prof Helen Caple (University of New South Wales), Prof Maite Taboada (Simon Fraser University, Canada), Dr Luke Collins (Lancaster University, UK), Gavin Brookes (Lancaster University, UK), and Prof Monika Bednarek (University of Sydney). For all future events, you can subscribe to the lab’s mailing list here.

Recent blog posts on the lab’s site can be found here and include interviews with leading corpus linguists.

The Sydney Corpus Lab, together with the Sydney Informatics Hub and Paradisec, is continuing its collaboration on ARDC projects led by the University of Queensland: the Australian Text Analytics Platform (ATAP) and the Language Data Commons of Australia. Further information about these projects is available at the websites: https://www.atap.edu.au and https://www.ldaca.edu.au/ or you can subscribe to their newsletter. As part of this collaboration, Monika Bednarek (University of Sydney), Martin Schweinberger (University of Queensland) and Peter Crosthwaite (University of Queensland) recently co-organised a workshop on Challenges and New Directions in English Corpus Linguistics in Australia at the 7th meeting of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE 7) in Brisbane.

Grant

Sunny Boy Mahboob helped establish a new grant (drawing on subaltern and CREDIBLE work): “The Office of the Research Coordinator of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Mindanao State University Main Campus in Marawi City is happy to announce that it has awarded the Ahmar Mahboob Grant for Substance Abuse Rehabilitation to Iligan City Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Center (ICDTRC) today, March 29, 2023.”

Publications

Monika Bednarek has had a new book published on US and Australian television dialogue, which uses the techniques of corpus linguistics and is informed by sociolinguistics, stylistics, and pragmatics.

Bednarek, M. (2023). Language and Characterisation in Television Series. A Corpus-informed Approach to the Construction of Social Identity in the Media. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (Studies in Corpus Linguistics 106)

Monika also published these articles:

Bednarek, M. & C. Bray (2023) Trialling corpus search techniques for identifying person-first and identity-first language. Applied Corpus Linguistics 3/1 [100046]: 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acorp.2023.100046

Potts, A., Bednarek, M. & A. Watharow (2023) Super, social, medical: Person-first and identity-first representations of disabled people in Australian newspapers, 2000–2019. Discourse & Society 34/4: 405-428. https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265231156504

Sunny Boy Mahboob published an entry in Oxford Bibliographies with Aurelie Mallet on ‘Positive Discourse Analysis’:

Mallet, Aurelie, and Ahmar Mahboob. “Positive Discourse Analysis.” In Oxford Bibliographies: Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 2023.

Nick Enfield published an article in Nature Scientific Reports on a team comparative study of request-like actions (‘recruitments’) across diverse cultures, showing that at the smallest scale of human interaction, prosocial behavior follows cross-culturally shared principles:

Rossi, Giovanni, Mark Dingemanse, Simeon Floyd, Julija Baranova, Joe Blythe, Kobin H. Kendrick, Jörg Zinken, and Enfield, N. J. (2023). Shared Cross-Cultural Principles Underlie Human Prosocial Behavior at the Smallest Scale. Nature Scientific Reports 13.1: 6057. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30580-5

Here is a blog post about the study by one of the authors, Mark Dingemanse:

https://ideophone.org/at-the-smallest-scale-of-human-interaction-prosocial-behavior-follows-cross-culturally-shared-principles/

Nick Enfield’s survey of the Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia is now published in paperback: https://www.cambridge.org/9781108700214

For a 20% discount, enter the code LING3123 at the checkout

Nick Enfield

News from the Language and Communication Research Hub Centre for Indigenous Health Equity Research Central Queensland University

Congratulations

Congratulations to Dr Christoph Holz whose PhD thesis ‘A comprehensive grammar of Tiang’ completed within the Jawun Research Centre (with supervisors Alexandra Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon, Janya McCalman, and Michael Wood) has been approved by examiners without any amendments!

Staff news

Professor Alexandra Aikhenvald continues her busy schedule, with a number of invited talks in March-July 2023. She has finalised a paperback edition of the fundamental Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality (hardback 2018, Oxford University Press). She is finalising her comprehensive monograph A guide to gender and classifiers (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), in addition to working on a comprehensive grammar of Yalaku, a Ndu language of Papua New Guinea. Thanks to the presence of the internet connection access to WhatsApp in Brazilian Amazonia, she continues her work with the extant speakers of the Wamiarikune dialect of Tariana in Iauaretê and São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Amazonas, Brazil), working closely together with the Tariana communities in providing materials for the Tariana school Enu Irine Idakini in Iauaretê. She continues her collaboration and interaction with the Yalaku and Manambu communities in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. She continues her work as a member of the Expert Committee for the World Atlas of Languages (WAL) at UNESCO. Her recent plenary presentations (via zoom) are:

‘Language loss and language gain across centuries: a view from Arawak languages’, 1er Encuentro Internacional de pueblos, Lenguas y culturas Arawak, Universidad de la Guajira Shikii Ekirajia Pülee Wajira, 1 May 2023.
‘The world through the prism of language: noun categorization devices and the ecology of language’. Sociedad Argentina de Estudios Lingüísticos, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, 3 May 2023.
‘Hidden landscapes and the images of the 'unseen': from north-west Amazonia to the Middle Sepik region of New Guinea’, Hidden, Sacred and Magical Semiotic Landscapes: Interdisciplinary Perspectives/Verborgene, heilige und magische semiotische Landschaften: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (organized by Hermann Schefers, Hirut Woldemariam, and Anne Storch). Kloster Lorsch (Germany), 19-21.07.2023.

Full text of this paper is available here.

Professor R. M. W. (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 and terminology within the framework of Indigenous Engagement and First Nations’ Research at CQUniversity, as a priority within the Jawun Research Centre. An unusual feature of the Dyirbal language situation was the use of Jalnguy, the special avoidance style (nicknamed ‘Mother-in-law language’). This has the same phonology and grammar as the everyday style of speech, but entirely different lexicon. Dixon has published some information about Jalnguy in a number of places over the years. He is now pulling everything together into a book-length comprehensive account.

He presented the following paper (by zoom)

‘The eternal and the ephemeral’, Hidden, Sacred and Magical Semiotic Landscapes: Interdisciplinary Perspectives/Verborgene, heilige und magische semiotische Landschaften: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (organized by Hermann Schefers, Hirut Woldemariam, and Anne Storch). Kloster Lorsch (Germany), 19-21.07.2023.

Dr Brigitta Flick continues working at the Jawun Research Centre as a Publication Officer within the research projects of the Centre.

Dr Christoph Holz, a recent PhD graduate of the Jawun Research Centre, organized a launch of a Taanuaa: Tiang Picture Book and Pini: Tiang Story Book in late March 2023 in New Ireland (Djaul), which was very well attended and received. A brief report is at Islander publishes books in his own language – The National. Christoph will shortly be appointed Adjunct Fellow in the Jawun Centre.

Yann LeMoullec, a PhD student at LACITO (Paris), with Professor Dr Isabelle Bril and Alexandra Aikhenvald as his supervisors, is currently working on a comprehensive study of gender and other grammatical topics in Angaataha, an Angan language.

Dr Pema Wangdi, an expert in Brokpa and other Bhutanese languages, has been awarded an Adjunct appointment in the Centre.

Visiting scholar in 2023

Professor Chia-jung Pan (PhD James Cook University, 2012) is Professor of Linguistics at the Center for Linguistic Sciences of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing Normal University, China. During the research visit as a visiting Professor at Jawun Research Centre in Central Queensland University from 18^th of May to 7^th of July in 2023, Chia-Jung Pan actively participated in the seminars organised by Alexandra Aikhenvald at the Jawun Research Centre, and discussed several typologically intriguing topics with Alexandra Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon on a weekly basis, and benefited tremendously from their insightful and inspiring comments and suggestions. In addition to seminars and discussions, Chia-Jung Pan revised two monographs “A Grammar of Saaroa, An Austronesian Language of Taiwan” in English and “Tsou, A Language spoken in Chiayi County, Taiwan” in Chinese. He also drafted a research article “Taiwanese Southern Min” and a short monograph “Grammatical Evidentials in Formosan Languages: A Typological and Theoretical Study ”. His appointment as an Adjunct Professor at the Jawun Centre is in progress.

Seminar Series (Communication, Health, and Social and Cultural Well-being)

When: Wednesdays, 3pm – 5 pm Qld time

Where: face-to-face CQUniversity, CBD Cairns, Corner Abbott Street and Shield Street, or via zoom (link): Meeting ID: 860 1028 3291; Passcode: 528985

Information on the series can be found here and on facebook.

Program

Wednesday 2 August 3pm - 5 pm

‘Indigenous Research Workshop – Principles, Protocols, Power’

Presenter: Professor Yvonne Cadet-James (JCU/CQU)

Abstract:

This workshop aims to:

outline the historical context of Indigenous research reform in Australia

highlight relevant literature from Indigenous scholars which has shaped research

deconstruct Indigenous and Indigenist research and methodologies

challenge tokenistic approaches to Indigenous research

define research benefit, impact and translation in the Indigenous research space

Identify useful guidelines and resources for those working in the field of Indigenous research.

Wednesday 6 September 3pm – 5 pm – Celebrating the International Indigenous Literacy Day (7 September)

‘Linguistic Challenges in Kaurna Language Reclamation’

Presenter: Assoc.Prof Rob Amery (University of Adelaide)

Abstract:

Efforts to reclaim and reintroduce Kaurna, the original language of the Adelaide Plains, began in 1989. Kaurna was a ‘sleeping’ language last spoken on an everyday basis in the 19^th century. There were no sound recordings, but there were reasonable written records, especially those recorded by German missionaries Clamor Schürmann and Christian Teichelmann. Documentation of 19^th century Kaurna has provided a firm foundation upon which to rebuild and develop a modern revival language, capable of serving the needs of emerging speakers of Kaurna in the 21^st century. This presentation will explore the many linguistic challenges encountered along the way that manifest themselves in every linguistic subsystem: phonological, lexical, grammatical, semantic and so on.

Wednesday 4 October 3pm-5pm

‘Kidnapping and violence in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea’

Presenter: Dr Michael Wood (CQU/JCU)

Abstract:

This presentation is about recent developments in kidnapping in PNG. It will outline some of the often spectacular raids enacted largely by Huli into the lowland communities of the Western Province and Southern Highland Province. I will present some ideas on how kidnapping for ransom is a key part of the economics of such raids and then consider how we might understand how kidnapping is experienced by the perpetrators, victims and other actors. Having outlined some of the causes of the recent violence maybe we can start to talk about possible solutions?

Wednesday 1 November 3pm-5pm

Presenter: Professor Adrian Miller

Topic TBA

For further information contact Professor Alexandra Aikhenvald (Sasha) at a.aikhenvald@cqu.edu.au phone: 0400 305 315

Alexandra (Sasha) Aikhenvald

News from the ANU

HDR News

Congratulations to Charlotte van Tongeren (supervisor: Nick Evans) and Elena Sheard (supervisor: Catherine Travis) whose PhD degrees were conferred recently. Charlotte’s thesis was entitled A grammar of Suki and Elena’s thesis was entitled ‘Explaining language change over the lifespan: A panel and trend analysis of Australian English’.

CHL/CAP Linguistics welcomes Keira Mullan, who will be working on a grammatical description of Simeulue under the supervision of Wayan Arka.

Naijing Liu (supervisor Wayan Arka) submitted her thesis in June. Her thesis, entitled Lexical and prosodic phonology: a case of Tsum, Nepal, investigates the sound system of the underdocumented Tibeto-Burman language Tsum and the ways that the phonology of Tsum interacts with the linguistic domains of morphonology, syntax, and pragmatics. It showcases how grammatical and pragmatic information in Tsum are expressed through the usage of a complex sound system, based on extensive data collected during fieldtrips in Tsum Valley and Kathmandu, Nepal.

Wendi Xue (supervisor Zhengdao Ye) also submitted her thesis in June. Her thesis, entitled Uncle-type Kinship Terms in Sinitic Languages: An NSM-based Semantic Typological Approach, examines the under-explored uncle-type kinship terms in 34 Chinese varieties from all 13 Sinitic groups, using an integrated NSM-based semantic typological approach. It semantically explicates all collected Sinitic uncle terms, scrutinizes their onomasiological and semasiological typologies, and inspects related aspects such as their distribution patterns and diachronic evolution. The research presents a panoramic lexical and typological picture of Chinese uncle terms, expands data on Sinitic kinship terminology, uncovers the intricacies of uncle terms, and provides deeper insights into the semantics, typology, history, and culture of Chinese kinship as well as Chinese linguaculture in general.

Henry Leslie-O’Neill has been accepted via a competitive process to take part in the IQMR Residential Program at Syracuse University, New York, June 19^th – 30^th 2023, representing the College of Arts and Social Sciences. Congratulations to Henry and to supervisor Carmel O’Shannessy!

Elena Sheard has taken up a post-doctoral position at the NZ Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour at the University of Canterbury, working with Jen Hay on the project “Do patterns of covariation in speech carry social meaning”. We wish her the best of luck!

Publications

Bunny Nabarula†, Jessie Cooper Napangarti†, Donald Graham Jupurrula†, Norah Graham Napanangka†, Jimmy Newcastle Japaljarri†, Susannah Nelson Nakamarra†, Bessie Graham Nakamarra†, Daisy Weston Nakamarra†, Colin Freddie Japaljarri†, Lena Freddie Nakamarra†, Lucy Morrison Nakamarra†, Lady Benson Napangarti†, Penny Kelly Napaljarri, Elizabeth Newcastle, Penny Williams Namakili, William Graham Jakamarra, Louie Martin Nakamarra†, Gladys Brown Nungarrayi, Selina Grant Nungarrayi, Vanessa Williams Ngampin, Jill Foster Namakili†, Dick Foster Jangala, David Nash and Glenn Wightman. Warlmanpa plants and animals. Aboriginal biocultural knowledge from Tanami desert country, central Australia. NT Botanical Bulletin No. 55. Tennant Creek: Papulu Apparr-Kari Aboriginal Corporation / Palmerston: NT Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security. 256pp. ISBN 978-1-74350-335-5

Evans, Nicholas & Alexandra Marley. 2023. The Gunwinyguan Languages. In Claire Bowern (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 781-795.

Giacon, John and Harold Koch. 2023. Philological methods for Australian languages. In Claire Bowern (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter 8, pp. 65-76.

Hemmings, Charlotte, I Wayan Arka & Engga Zakaria Sangian & Dendi Wijaya & Mary Dalrymple. 2023. Challenges in Enggano Orthography Development. Language Documentation and Description 23(1): 4, 1–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd.329

Hodge, Gabrielle, Danielle Barth & Laruen W Reed. (2023). Auslan and Matukar Panau: A modality-agnostic look at quotatives. Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication No. 12 Social Cognition Parallax Corpus (SCOPIC). 85-125. https://hdl.handle.net/10125/24744

Koch, Harold. 2023. Conjugation classes. In Claire Bowern (ed.), The Oxford Guide to Australian languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter 27, pp 309-318.

Muradoglu, S., Suominen, H., and Evans, N. (May, 2023). A Quest for Paradigm Coverage: The Story of Nen. In Proceedings of the Second Workshop on NLP Applications to Field Linguistics, pages 74–85, Dubrovnik, Croatia. Association for Computational Linguistics.

Muradoglu, S., and Hulden, M. (July, 2023). Do transformer models do phonology like a linguist?. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2023, pages 8529–8537, Toronto, Canada. Association for Computational Linguistics.

Nash, David. 2023. Kurangara in Queensland?: a critique of Duncan-Kemp’s account. Oceania 93.1,41—56. http:doi.org/10.1002/ocea.5361

Passmore, Samuel, Wolfgang Barth; Simon Greenhill; Kyla Quinn; Catherine Sheard; Paraskevi Argyriou; Joshua Birchall; Claire Bowern; Jasmine Calladine; Angarika Deb; Anouk Diederen; Niklas P. Metsäranta; Jo Hickey-Hall; Terhi Honkola; Alice Mitchell; Lucy Poole; Péter Rácz; Sean Roberts; Robert Ross; Ewan Thomas-Colquhoun; Nicholas D Evans; Fiona M Jordan. 2023. Kinbank: a global database of kinship terminology. PLoS ONE

Skirgård, Hedvig, Hannah J Haynie, Damián E Blasi, Harald Hammarström, Jeremy Collins, Jay J Latarche, Jakob Lesage, Tobias Weber, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Sam Passmore, Angela Chira, Luke Maurits, Russell Dinnage, Michael Dunn, Ger Reesink, Ruth Singer, Claire Bowern, Patience L Epps, Jane Hill, Outi Vesakoski, Martine Robbeets, Noor Karolin Abbas, Daniel Auer, Nancy A Bakker, Giulia Barbos, Robert D Borges, Swintha Danielsen, Luise Dorenbusch, Ella Dorn, John Elliott, Giada Falcone, Jana Fischer, Yustinus Ghanggo Ate, Hannah Gibson, Hans-Philipp Göbel, Jemima A Goodall, Victoria Gruner, Andrew Harvey, Rebekah Hayes, Leonard Heer, Roberto E Herrera Miranda, Nataliia Hübler, Biu H Huntington-Rainey, Jessica K Ivani, Marilen Johns, Erika Just, Eri Kashima, Carolina Kipf, Janina V Klingenberg, Nikita König, Aikaterina Koti, Richard GA Kowalik, Olga Krasnoukhova, Nora LM Lindvall, Mandy Lorenzen, Hannah Lutzenberger, Tânia RA Martins, Celia Mata German, Suzanne van der Meer, Jaime Montoya Samamé, Michael Müller, Saliha Muradoglu, Kelsey Neely, Johanna Nickel, Miina Norvik, Cheryl Akinyi Oluoch, Jesse Peacock, India OC Pearey, Naomi Peck, Stephanie Petit, Sören Pieper, Mariana Poblete, Daniel Prestipino, Linda Raabe, Amna Raja, Janis Reimringer, Sydney C Rey, Julia Rizaew, Eloisa Ruppert, Kim K Salmon, Jill Sammet, Rhiannon Schembri, Lars Schlabbach, Frederick WP Schmidt, Amalia Skilton, Wikaliler Daniel Smith, Hilário de Sousa, Kristin Sverredal, Daniel Valle, Javier Vera, Judith Voß, Tim Witte, Henry Wu, Stephanie Yam, Jingting Ye, Maisie Yong, Tessa Yuditha, Roberto Zariquiey, Robert Forkel, Nicholas Evans, Stephen C Levinson, Martin Haspelmath, Simon J Greenhill, Quentin Atkinson, Russell D Gray(2023). Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances, 9(16). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adg6175

Rikke L. Bundgaard-Nielsen, Carmel O’Shannessy, Yizhou Wang, Alice Nelson, Jessie Bartlett and Vanessa Davis. 2023. Two-part vowel modifications in Child Directed Speech in Warlpiri may enhance child attention to speech and scaffold noun acquisition. Phonetica. https://doi.org/10.1515/phon-2022-0039

Rikke, L. Bundgaard-Nielson, Alice Nelson, Carmel O’Shannessy, Jessie Barlett and Vanessa Davis. 2023. A new study of Warlpiri language shows how ‘baby talk’ helps little kids learn to speak. The Conversation (June 27).

Wierzbicka, Anna, “The Semantics of Eucharistic Miracles”. Cognitive Semantics 9 (2023), 193 -226.

Presentations

Nicholas Evans, Wayan Arka, Danielle Barth, Henrik Bergqvist, Christian Döhler, Sonja Gipper, Dolgor Guntsetseg, Yukinori Kimoto, Dominique Knuchel, Hitomi Ōno, Eka Pratiwi, Saskia van Putten, Alan Rumsey, Andrea Schalley, Stefan Schnell, Asako Shiohara, Elena Skribnik, & Yanti. How universal is complementation? A naturalistic cross-corpus study. Paper presented at conference 'Naturally occurring data in and beyond linguistic typology', Università di Bologna, May 18-19, 2023

Warlpiri Encyclopaedic Dictionary

The Warlpiri Encyclopaedic Dictionary was launched at Yuendumu on 8 March by nine senior Warlpiri people. During that week Carmel O'Shannessy and Mary Laughren (chief compiler) led a workshop for Warlpiri educators about using the dictionary. Jane Simpson and David Nash (co-compilers) also participated.

https://theconversation.com/six-decades-210-warlpiri-speakers-and-11-000-words-how-a-groundbreaking-first-nations-dictionary-was-made-205019

Grant

Danielle Barth won a grant from the College of Asia and the Pacific (CAP) at the ANU for $10,000: TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and language presence.

NSMLab@anu

NSMLab@anu runs regular hybrid lab sessions for local and international participants. In April, in collaboration with the NSMLab@Denmark, the Lab held an in-person Semantics Symposium on Language and Life. Anna Wierzbicka gave a featured talk on ‘Explaining Gig Ideas with NSM’ and Carsten Levisen (Roskilde University) gave a keynote speech on ‘The Liveliness of Language’. Other presenters and their papers are: Deborah Hill (University of Canberra), ‘Garen “field/garden”, a Green Keyword in Solomon Island Pijin’; Yuko Asano-Cavanagh (Curtin University), ‘Wabi-Sabi: on Japanese Aesthetics and Visual Semantics’; Emma Rao (ANU), ‘Tianyuan: A Semantic Exploration into a Chinese Way of Life’; Zhengdao Ye, ‘The Semantics and Morphosyntax of ‘My home’ and ‘My family’ in English, Mandarin and Shanghai Wu’. Two roundtables, organised by Sophia Waters from the University of New England and Carsten Levisen, were also held: ‘The Green Round Table: Environmental Language and Life’ and ‘The Life Writing Round Table: Multilingual perspectives’.

Wayan Arka and Zhengdao Ye

6th International Conference on Conversation Analysis

From June 26^th until July 2^nd, UQ was host to the largest gathering of Conversation Analysts since 2018. It was a truly international and interdisciplinary affair with 350 participants from 54 different countries, working and studying in a diversity of areas including Sociology, Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Education, Psychology, Anthropology, and Medicine.

There was something for everyone with papers on the organisation of touching, tasting and eyebrow-raising; the management of risk; talking about death; the vulnerability of the ‘self’; and the formation of actions such as suggestions, requests – all based on analyses of recorded in situ real time social interactions.

For linguists, CA provides methods and findings to situate language in how people accomplish intersubjectivity and social connectedness, and to understand language as part of multimodal action formation. A wonderful illustration of this came from Associate Professor Joe Blythe (Macquarie University)’s plenary talk, dedicated to Adam Kendon, on how pointing coordinates with language in referential practices.

The in-person event was a fabulous success, with many participants reporting not only that this was the best ICCA conference but it was the best conference they had ever attended!

This success was largely thanks to the Linguist-laden organising committee - including Ilana Mushin (Chair), Rod Gardner (Deputy Chair), Lara Weinglass and Michael Haugh – and the steady hand of professional conference organisers, ICMSA. Our fabulous team of student volunteers – the ‘yellow elves’ – largely featured UQ undergraduate and postgraduate students in Linguistics and Applied Lingustics.

The 7^th ICCA conference will be held at the University of Alberta, Canada in June 2026.

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Ilana Mushin

Research Fellowship Opportunities

Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia – First Nations Research Fellowships

Under the 2023-4 LIEF project (LE230100079) the Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia (TLCMap) invites expressions of interest from First Nations PhD students for research fellowships. Two $10,000 Fellowships are offered, and will run from 1 October 2023 to 31 March 2024.

As TLCMap aims to map the meaning and cultural value of locations on the Australian continent, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander involvement and collaboration is essential. One of the avenues for this partnership is a Fellowship scheme for Indigenous PhD students, a key part of the LIEF project. This will provide collaborative opportunities for the development team to learn from Indigenous researchers, and for the Indigenous Fellows to steer development and use TLCMap systems for projects of their own choosing. This is an opportunity for TLCMap to benefit from genuine collaborative input, and for experimentation and skill-building on the part of the Fellows. Proposals for work under the scheme can be broad-brush and exploratory, and assistance will be provided with technical aspects of digital mapping. Expressions of interest are open to applicants from any humanities and social science discipline, including linguistics. The Fellowships are open to confirmed PhD candidates at any Australian University who identify as Aboriginal or as Torres Strait Islanders.

Expressions of interest should be sent to the project academic lead, Professor Hugh Craig (hugh.craig@newcastle.edu.au ) by 15 September 2023. The outcome of the selection process will be announced in late September. Expressions of interest should include: name, institution and email address; name of principal supervisor and confirmation that this supervisor has approved the candidate’s participation in the Fellowship scheme; a declaration of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander identity; a declaration that the applicant is a confirmed PhD candidate; a paragraph on the applicant’s PhD topic; and a paragraph with ideas for possible work under the scheme, which may be highly speculative at this stage.

Applicants should familiarise themselves with the capabilities of the TLCMap platform (tlcmap.org). A good place to start is the Guides page (https://tlcmap.org/help/guides/). Anyone contemplating an expression of interest is invited to email Hugh Craig at hugh.craig@newcastle.edu.au as soon as possible to discuss eligibility, possibilities for research using the TLCMap platform, and potential synergies between TLCMap and the applicant’s own research.

Full details of the scheme were recently circulated to ALS members in a separate email.

Forthcoming Events

Australex 2023

WHEN: Wednesday 16 August to Friday 18 August 2023

WHERE: Alice Springs

The Program is available here.

Michael Walsh

Annual Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

The University of Sydney 29 November – 1 December 2023

Call for papers

We invite abstracts for papers for presentation at the Annual Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society held at The University of Sydney from 29 November until 1 December 2023. The conference will be held in person. We welcome papers on all aspects of linguistics.

Please submit an abstract of your paper, maximum one A4 page of text, including title. The abstract may also include an additional A4 page of examples, figures, tables and references. Each abstract should be in a single file in Word (*.dox, *.docx) or PDF (*.pdf), in 12-point font with 2cm on all margins. On the additional page, 10-point font may be used. The abstract must be anonymous and should not include any author names or affiliations.

Abstracts should be submitted online via the ALS 2023 EasyChair website (if you don’t have an EasyChair account you will have to create one): https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=als2023

Deadline for abstracts: 13 August 2023
Notification of acceptance: 11 September 2023

As part of the EasyChair online submission form, you will be asked to supply author name(s) and affiliation(s), presentation title, keywords and topics, your preferred presentation type (oral or poster presentation) and which thematic session, if any, you would like to present within. You will also need to upload your abstract as an anonymous Word or PDF file.

All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously with feedback given to the author(s).

Abstract Review Criteria

Each abstract will be double-blind reviewed. The reviewers will consider the degree to which each abstract: situates the study within its research context and demonstrates a clear theoretical, methodological and/or practical contribution to the field; coherently articulates its topic and objectives; outlines the data being analysed and how it will be analysed; and is of potential interest to an ALS audience.

For further information and updates please see the ALS website or send an email to the ALS2023 Conference team: conf@als.asn.au.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 25

Ordinariness and Innovation

Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia

24-27 June 2024

As a premier gathering of international sociolinguists, the biennial Sociolinguistics Symposium has emerged as a unique and innovative forum to develop and exchange new ideas, broaden the scope of the discipline, and create new academic networks. From its beginnings as a small meeting of UK-based academics in 1976, it has grown into the largest sociolinguistic conference in the world.

The 25th Sociolinguistics Symposium (SS25) – the conference’s first appearance in Australia, on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja [Perth land of Noongar people] – explores diverse manifestations of Ordinariness and Innovation.

Innovation in language practice is increasingly celebrated, at times even romanticised – however this inadvertently invents the linguistic Other through exoticising the ordinary epistemologies of language. Conversely, through a contemplating of what ordinariness entails or how it is imposed, the complex natures of communities, patterns, and hierarchies are often interrogated. Continued explorations of Ordinariness or Innovation across ecologies, landscapes, platforms, modalities, pedagogies, disability and neurodiverse cultures are required to further critical assessments for theory and application. Considerations of languages on the periphery – Indigenous and migrant, minority and endangered – including engagement with everyday policy and practice, and development of innovative technologies, are particularly timely, in light of the UN’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL 2022-2032).

SS25 invites abstracts for papers, colloquia or posters addressing the conference theme, as well as other contributions focusing on current and innovative themes and theoretical challenges in sociolinguistic enquiry. Please see further details here.

Sender Dovchin

The 21^st International Congress of Linguistics (ICL)

The 21st International Congress of Linguists (ICL) will be held from 8 to 14 September 2024 in Poznan. We invite (i) abstracts for Sections and Focus streams, and (ii) Workshop proposals. Sections will take place on Monday and Tuesday (9–10 September), Focus streams on Wednesday (11 September), and Workshops on Thursday and Friday (12–13 September).

(i) Sections and Focus streams

Abstracts should clearly state the research question(s), approach, method, data, and (expected) results. They should not display the names of the presenters, nor their affiliations or addresses, or any other information that could reveal their authorship. They should contain the title, five keywords, and a text between 300 and 400 words (including examples, excluding references).

Abstracts will be submitted via Easychair. Submission of abstracts will start 1 October 2023. The corresponding link will be provided. The deadline for abstract submission will be 8 January 2024 (12.00 PM CET).

Authors may apply, upon abstract submission, for a presentation or a poster. Presentations will be organized in 30 minute slots (20 min. presentation, 7 min. discussion, 3 min. room change). Posters are always displayed during one full day. Separate time slots will be included in the program in which participants can discuss with the poster presenters.

Each abstract will be reviewed anonymously by two reviewers (section/focus stream/workshop convenor + external reviewer). Notification of acceptance will be 15 April 2024.

The topics of Sections and Focus streams, which will be held at ICL 2024 are the following:

Sections

Historical Linguistics (convenor: John Charles Smith)
Evolutionary Linguistics (convenor: George van Driem)
Linguistic diversity, Language Contact and Areal Typology (convenor: TBC)
Phonetics, Phonology and Phonetic Typology (convenor: Marzena Żygis)
Morphology, Syntax and Morphosyntactic Typology

(convenors: Anne Abeillé & Jong-Bok Kim)

INTERSPEECH 2026

We are excited to share the news with you that the Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association (ASSTA) has won the bid to host INTERSPEECH in Sydney in 2026. This is incredibly exciting and a wonderful opportunity to bring this prestigious conference back to Australasia to showcase the ground-breaking research we are doing in our region.

An official announcement has been made by the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) and the statement italicised below has been included in the March ISCApad newsletter.

The Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association is honoured to have been selected to host INTERSPEECH 2026. Our theme of Diversity & Equity – Speaking Together strongly reflects Sydney and our broader region. Sydney is Oceania’s largest city and is also its most linguistically diverse: more than 300 different languages are spoken and 40% of Sydneysiders speak a language other than English at home. Consistent with the goals of ISCA “to promote, in an international world-wide context, activities and exchanges in all fields related to speech communication science and technology”, INTERSPEECH Sydney will highlight the diversity of research in our field with a firm focus on equity and inclusivity. Recognising the importance of multi-dimensional approaches to speech, INTERSPEECH 2026 will foster greater interdisciplinarity to better inform current and future work on speech science and technology. We look forward to welcoming all to Sydney!

Felicity Cox

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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