Understanding communication about advance care planning across the lifespan. This project aims to understand how people communicate about advance care planning for children, adolescents, and adults. This project expects to generate new knowledge by using leading social scientific and linguistic methods to analyse real-world advance care planning conversations and documents. Expected outcomes include detailed knowledge about challenges people encounter in these conversations and how to manage the ....Understanding communication about advance care planning across the lifespan. This project aims to understand how people communicate about advance care planning for children, adolescents, and adults. This project expects to generate new knowledge by using leading social scientific and linguistic methods to analyse real-world advance care planning conversations and documents. Expected outcomes include detailed knowledge about challenges people encounter in these conversations and how to manage these challenges. Over 170,000 Australians die each year, most from serious illness. This project should provide significant benefits to future initiatives for enhancing communication about advance care planning, especially in relation to young Australians, older Australians, and Australians with disabilities.Read moreRead less
Pseudo grains and adaptiveness in the Eastern Himalayas. Providing enough food for a growing planet and changing is one of the key challenges humanity must face in coming decades. Our research aims to contribute solutions to this problem by researching the domestication history and spread of two crops that are important to the eastern Himalayas: buckwheat and job's tears. We will use ethnolinguistic methodologies to document the current uses of these crops, and then incorporate archaeological, a ....Pseudo grains and adaptiveness in the Eastern Himalayas. Providing enough food for a growing planet and changing is one of the key challenges humanity must face in coming decades. Our research aims to contribute solutions to this problem by researching the domestication history and spread of two crops that are important to the eastern Himalayas: buckwheat and job's tears. We will use ethnolinguistic methodologies to document the current uses of these crops, and then incorporate archaeological, and genetic methodologies to determine whether or not the eastern Himalayas have been centres of domestication for these crops. The outcomes will include ethnolinguistic documentation, timing of domestication, and training in the relevant indigenous communities.Read moreRead less
Landscape, language and culture in Indigenous Australia. This project aims to determine how culture and social diversity interact with landscape in representing physical space in the minds and grammars of speakers of Australian Indigenous languages. The project will conduct the first Australia-wide survey of Indigenous spatial description correlated with landscape, and the first large-scale investigation of diversity in spatial behaviour among individuals within communities. The findings are exp ....Landscape, language and culture in Indigenous Australia. This project aims to determine how culture and social diversity interact with landscape in representing physical space in the minds and grammars of speakers of Australian Indigenous languages. The project will conduct the first Australia-wide survey of Indigenous spatial description correlated with landscape, and the first large-scale investigation of diversity in spatial behaviour among individuals within communities. The findings are expected to inform crucial debates on the formative role of landscape in language, and advance our knowledge of human spatial cognition. It will collect completely new experimental and natural data in six endangered languages, with significant benefits for the maintenance of Indigenous languages and cultures.Read moreRead less
Waves of words: mapping and modeling Australia’s Pacific ties. This project aims to determine the extent and nature of ancient contact relationships between first peoples of Australia and the Pacific by exploring linguistic interactions. The project will use complementary sets of methods and expects to discover what kinds of social configurations underlie different linguistic outcomes in language contact situations. This will improve our understanding of the relationship between language change ....Waves of words: mapping and modeling Australia’s Pacific ties. This project aims to determine the extent and nature of ancient contact relationships between first peoples of Australia and the Pacific by exploring linguistic interactions. The project will use complementary sets of methods and expects to discover what kinds of social configurations underlie different linguistic outcomes in language contact situations. This will improve our understanding of the relationship between language change and socio-cultural change, which will have significant impact on linguistic and anthropological theory.Read moreRead less
When do gestures become linguistic? Understanding the gesture-language interface through a corpusbased study of pointing signs in signed languages. This project will use corpus-based and experimental studies to compare pointing signs in three sign languages with pointing gestures used by hearing non-signers in order to answer the question: What relationship do gestures have to language? It will help us understand how pointing works as part of a sign language system, and how it is used as co-spee ....When do gestures become linguistic? Understanding the gesture-language interface through a corpusbased study of pointing signs in signed languages. This project will use corpus-based and experimental studies to compare pointing signs in three sign languages with pointing gestures used by hearing non-signers in order to answer the question: What relationship do gestures have to language? It will help us understand how pointing works as part of a sign language system, and how it is used as co-speech gesture. Both spoken languages and sign languages make use of pointing, and thus it represents a unique case study for the investigation of the relationship between gesture and language. This project will provide a distinctive contribution to our knowledge about the relationship between language and other aspects of human communication. Read moreRead less
The new voice of Multicultural Australian English. This project aims to generate an integrated and inclusive model of Australian-English, through phonetic analysis of the spoken language used by adolescents from a range of ethnic backgrounds. Australia is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world yet the complex relationship between speech production and cultural diversity is largely unknown in 21st century multicultural Australia. This project aims to establish how adolescents f ....The new voice of Multicultural Australian English. This project aims to generate an integrated and inclusive model of Australian-English, through phonetic analysis of the spoken language used by adolescents from a range of ethnic backgrounds. Australia is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world yet the complex relationship between speech production and cultural diversity is largely unknown in 21st century multicultural Australia. This project aims to establish how adolescents from different ethnicities use speech patterns to symbolically express their diverse sociocultural identities. The project expects to inform sociophonetic theories of variation, ethnicity, and identity, providing a framework for supporting sociocultural cohesion in Australia. Read moreRead less
The effect of sound change on children's speech in community diversity. This project aims to explain how children's speech processing adapts to cultural and linguistic diversity and how such adaptation may seed sound change in language. Using acoustic and articulatory (ultrasound) methods, the project intends to explain how children rapidly and authentically acquire the intricately nuanced accents of their communities. The project aims to advance theories of language variation and change by prov ....The effect of sound change on children's speech in community diversity. This project aims to explain how children's speech processing adapts to cultural and linguistic diversity and how such adaptation may seed sound change in language. Using acoustic and articulatory (ultrasound) methods, the project intends to explain how children rapidly and authentically acquire the intricately nuanced accents of their communities. The project aims to advance theories of language variation and change by providing new insights into the forces that shape the sounds of language. An understanding of how children's speech patterns develop and ultimately converge to local norms has implications for the social integration of second language learning children and refugee/asylum seekers, and for clinical and speech technology applications for children.Read moreRead less
ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. Language is central to human existence and to the flow of information. The Centre will address the most critical questions about language: How do languages evolve? How different can languages be? How do our brains acquire and process them? How can technologies deal with the complexity and enormous variability of language in its central role in human information processing? What can Australia do to increase its linguistic abilities at a time ....ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. Language is central to human existence and to the flow of information. The Centre will address the most critical questions about language: How do languages evolve? How different can languages be? How do our brains acquire and process them? How can technologies deal with the complexity and enormous variability of language in its central role in human information processing? What can Australia do to increase its linguistic abilities at a time of increasingly multilingual demands in trade and information? The Centre will also secure language heritage, develop new language technologies, connect policy with indigenous and migrant communities, and build strategies to help 1st and 2nd language learning and those isolated by language difficulties.Read moreRead less
Language typology and cognitive effects of language learning. This project aims to map, in older adults and preschool-age children, the extent and nature of cognitive benefit from training in a foreign language. Learning a language is recognised to be beneficial in various ways, but this project investigates whether it matters which language one learns. The project will compare the resulting cognitive changes to language learners across different languages to test whether the benefit is uniquely ....Language typology and cognitive effects of language learning. This project aims to map, in older adults and preschool-age children, the extent and nature of cognitive benefit from training in a foreign language. Learning a language is recognised to be beneficial in various ways, but this project investigates whether it matters which language one learns. The project will compare the resulting cognitive changes to language learners across different languages to test whether the benefit is uniquely effective. It will also gauge whether these changes occur when learning is easier in childhood compared to when it is harder later in life. The project findings will inform the development of linguistic, social, and educational programs to optimise cognitive function both for childhood development and healthy ageing, especially in Australia where second language acquisition is lower compared to other countries.Read moreRead less
Are super-complex words represented like sentences in speakers' minds? This project aims to examine speakers' knowledge of super-complex words in the remote Australian language Wubuy. The project will provide a crucial test of current theories of language processing and linguistic typology via experimental work on the Indigenous language Wubuy, a language that defies the perceived fundamental distinction between words and phrases. This will have significant benefit to Indigenous language mainten ....Are super-complex words represented like sentences in speakers' minds? This project aims to examine speakers' knowledge of super-complex words in the remote Australian language Wubuy. The project will provide a crucial test of current theories of language processing and linguistic typology via experimental work on the Indigenous language Wubuy, a language that defies the perceived fundamental distinction between words and phrases. This will have significant benefit to Indigenous language maintenance and revitalisation efforts and thus help improve Indigenous education outcomes and reinforce cultural pride.Read moreRead less