Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE170100493
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$350,000.00
Summary
Aboriginal English in the global city: Minorities and language change. This project aims to document patterns of variation and change in metropolitan Aboriginal English. Since colonisation, English has encroached on Australian languages, and Aboriginal English has emerged as a powerful carrier of ethnic identity. The project will quantitatively study how Aboriginal English storytelling functions cross-generationally, and whether global linguistic innovations are apparent. Exploring these dynamic ....Aboriginal English in the global city: Minorities and language change. This project aims to document patterns of variation and change in metropolitan Aboriginal English. Since colonisation, English has encroached on Australian languages, and Aboriginal English has emerged as a powerful carrier of ethnic identity. The project will quantitatively study how Aboriginal English storytelling functions cross-generationally, and whether global linguistic innovations are apparent. Exploring these dynamics is key to understanding language change in minority urban communities, and to refining educational programs to suit the needs of Indigenous children and youth. The project expects to inform the implementation of cross-cultural teaching programmes in Australia, helping teachers and curriculum developers to design materials, and to empower Indigenous Australians by documenting how Aboriginal English is changing.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE240100719
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$449,308.00
Summary
Interpreting services for Australian Aboriginal languages . This project aims to investigate interpreting practice with First Nations Peoples. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of healthcare interpreting using an ethnographic and micro-analytical approach to actual in situ interpreter mediated interactions. Expected outcomes include enhanced capacity to improve interpreter service delivery for First Nations Peoples via the development of resources for best-practice commu ....Interpreting services for Australian Aboriginal languages . This project aims to investigate interpreting practice with First Nations Peoples. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of healthcare interpreting using an ethnographic and micro-analytical approach to actual in situ interpreter mediated interactions. Expected outcomes include enhanced capacity to improve interpreter service delivery for First Nations Peoples via the development of resources for best-practice communication in plain language and Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in Western Australia. This should provide significant benefits such as improving First Nations Peoples’ wellbeing and interpreter and practitioner health literacy, as well as enabling governing bodies to finetune multilingual policies.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE160100216
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$345,000.00
Summary
Emotions, language and culture in Arnhem Land (Katherine region). This project aims to increase our understanding of emotional language and cultural practices about emotions among Indigenous Australian groups. Emotion is a fundamental human experience, yet different languages provide very different ways of talking about it. What are the consequences of this? Are these differences culturally constrained? Might differences in the grammar of a language influence the way its speakers express emotion ....Emotions, language and culture in Arnhem Land (Katherine region). This project aims to increase our understanding of emotional language and cultural practices about emotions among Indigenous Australian groups. Emotion is a fundamental human experience, yet different languages provide very different ways of talking about it. What are the consequences of this? Are these differences culturally constrained? Might differences in the grammar of a language influence the way its speakers express emotions, or even the way they experience emotions? This project seeks to describe and compare the way emotions are expressed in five Aboriginal languages of Arnhem Land. Four of these languages are endangered and the project will also provide the urgent documentation needed to preserve them.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130100399
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
He's not heavy, he's my brother: the acquisition of kinship terminology in a morphologically complex Australian language. Murrinh-Patha is one of the few Australian indigenous languages still being acquired by children. This project investigates how children acquire the grammar and lexicon of kinship. It will inform our understanding of how children gain social competence and learn complex kin-based grammars. It will help to maintain this and other indigenous languages.
Reconstructing Australia’s linguistic past: Are all Australian languages related to one another? This project addresses a central question about Australia’s past. Are all the languages of Australia related, deriving from a common source language: Proto-Australian. The project will examine the implications of a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer for analyses of Australian prehistory, and for general analyses of human prehistory. The project involves extensive documentation of an endangered language Yanyuwa, ....Reconstructing Australia’s linguistic past: Are all Australian languages related to one another? This project addresses a central question about Australia’s past. Are all the languages of Australia related, deriving from a common source language: Proto-Australian. The project will examine the implications of a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer for analyses of Australian prehistory, and for general analyses of human prehistory. The project involves extensive documentation of an endangered language Yanyuwa, because of the significance of Yanyuwa data in deciding between a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer. The project will provide a descriptive grammar of Yanyuwa, a book evaluating the Proto-Australian hypothesis, and articles discussing the significance of the success or failure of the hypothesis for theories of the general human past.Read moreRead less
Talking knowledge, doing learning: the early years. An enduring problem in Indigenous schooling is the discrepancy in outcomes compared to mainstream children, but little is known about one crucial factor: the role of Indigenous ways of speaking and their ways of engaging with knowledge and learning. This ground-breaking project aims to compare preparatory school students in two urban settings: a mainstream school and a school with high Indigenous enrolments. The project also seeks to examine le ....Talking knowledge, doing learning: the early years. An enduring problem in Indigenous schooling is the discrepancy in outcomes compared to mainstream children, but little is known about one crucial factor: the role of Indigenous ways of speaking and their ways of engaging with knowledge and learning. This ground-breaking project aims to compare preparatory school students in two urban settings: a mainstream school and a school with high Indigenous enrolments. The project also seeks to examine learning in children's homes to establish how the flow of knowledge is managed in Indigenous and mainstream families. By investigating these four settings, it is expected to provide important evidence for understanding how language and cultural ways of knowing contribute to the discrepancy in schooling outcomes.Read moreRead less
Trilingual language contact in an Indigenous community. The linguistic cradle of many Aboriginal children in remote Australia is a multilingual setting involving considerable mixing between languages. Children bring this linguistic background to the task of learning English. This project is the first investigation of a trilingual Indigenous community, Elliott (Northern Territory), where children grow up hearing Jingulu, Mudburra and Kriol. It aims to examine how people at Elliott manage multiple ....Trilingual language contact in an Indigenous community. The linguistic cradle of many Aboriginal children in remote Australia is a multilingual setting involving considerable mixing between languages. Children bring this linguistic background to the task of learning English. This project is the first investigation of a trilingual Indigenous community, Elliott (Northern Territory), where children grow up hearing Jingulu, Mudburra and Kriol. It aims to examine how people at Elliott manage multiple languages and how these languages have changed through mixing processes such as creolisation and code-switching. Exploring this dynamic language ecology is crucial to tailoring educational programs to suit the needs of Aboriginal children. It is expected to place Australia at the forefront of studies of complex language change.Read moreRead less
Something old, something new: Indigenous languages since colonisation. This project aims to undertake an extensive survey of colonial language change in Australia. English has changed the linguistic landscape of Indigenous Australia profoundly. Of the 300 languages spoken at first contact, only 18 remain strong. In their place is a complex array of restructured varieties, Kriol dialects and fusions of traditional languages with English. The project aims to develop new methodologies for investiga ....Something old, something new: Indigenous languages since colonisation. This project aims to undertake an extensive survey of colonial language change in Australia. English has changed the linguistic landscape of Indigenous Australia profoundly. Of the 300 languages spoken at first contact, only 18 remain strong. In their place is a complex array of restructured varieties, Kriol dialects and fusions of traditional languages with English. The project aims to develop new methodologies for investigating and predicting the mechanisms of change across languages and generations of speakers. The expected outcomes of the project include recognising new ways of speaking and providing Indigenous communities with guiding principles for language revitalisation. This will place Australia at the forefront of studies of language change.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE140100854
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$374,560.00
Summary
Out of the Mouths of Babes: The Role of Indigenous Children in Language Change. Over the last 225 years, English has left an indelible footprint on the linguistic landscape of Australia. Many Indigenous languages now learnt by children have undergone restructuring under the influence of English. One of these languages is Gurindji. This project is the first diachronic investigation of cross-generational language change in an Indigenous language. It examines the linguistic input Gurindji children ....Out of the Mouths of Babes: The Role of Indigenous Children in Language Change. Over the last 225 years, English has left an indelible footprint on the linguistic landscape of Australia. Many Indigenous languages now learnt by children have undergone restructuring under the influence of English. One of these languages is Gurindji. This project is the first diachronic investigation of cross-generational language change in an Indigenous language. It examines the linguistic input Gurindji children received from their caregivers as infants and charts its influence on their subsequent language use. Exploring these changes is crucial to understanding language shift and to tailoring educational programs to suit the needs of Indigenous children. It will place Australia at the forefront of studies of complex language change.Read moreRead less
The building blocks of language: Words in Central Australian languages. This project seeks to model the structure of words and phrases in three indigenous languages of of central Australia: Anmatyerr, Kaytetye, and Warumungu. The project will advance our understanding of the different ways that words and phrases function as the building blocks of language: how words vary in complexity, and the different ways that they combine to generate higher levels of linguistc structure. The project will pre ....The building blocks of language: Words in Central Australian languages. This project seeks to model the structure of words and phrases in three indigenous languages of of central Australia: Anmatyerr, Kaytetye, and Warumungu. The project will advance our understanding of the different ways that words and phrases function as the building blocks of language: how words vary in complexity, and the different ways that they combine to generate higher levels of linguistc structure. The project will preserve Indigenous language heritage and contribute to Indigenous cultural maintenance, a significant factor in advancing Indigenous well-being. The project will generate new insights into language structure that will advance linguistic theory, and inform language teaching and speech processing technologies.Read moreRead less