http://hdl.handle.net/2123/92 2013-05-22T14:34:34Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/8803 Title: The Language of Clinical Empathy Authors: Watson, Olivia Abstract: This Honours thesis examines the language of clinical empathy in an attempt to broaden understanding of what constitutes effective communication in medicine. Linguistic theories of appraisal, affiliation and intonation are applied in a case study analysis of an expert interpersonal communicator, using recorded data from patient consultations. A new graded model of empathic responses is introduced, which uses linguistic criteria to categorise potential responses according to the degree of empathy conveyed. The appropriateness of the different response options is shown to be dependent on the context in which they are used, and this relationship is analysed sensitive to both ideational and attitudinal factors. This thesis extends existing work on affiliation to examine bonding in a professional context, and introduces the concept of 'empathic contours' where empathy develops over several conversational moves. It targets the difficulty in defining, and therefore teaching, interpersonal skills in medicine by proposing some systematic strategies for describing the language of expressions of empathy. In this way it offers the medical discipline a new framework for understanding and teaching empathic communication. 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7116 Title: Knowledge and Multisemiosis in Undergraduate Physics Authors: Doran, Yaegan Abstract: Physics is arguably the most fundamental of the sciences, yet many students disengage with it at a very early level. This thesis lays the groundwork to understanding why this is the case by using Systemic Functional theory to study how knowledge is conveyed to students within two undergraduate physics textbooks. Further to this, it uses Bernstein’s (1999) notion of ‘knowledge structure’ to describe the nature of knowledge within the discipline of physics itself. The thesis finds that mathematics and images work with written language to convey technical knowledge. Moreover, these semiotic resources can become technical, transcending the text to become part of the assumed knowledge of the field. Finally, it shows that mathematics in particular allows physics to integrate its various sub-fields and produce general theories that can be applied to real world. This thesis presents the first attempt using linguistic analysis at describing the nature of physics and how it is recontextualised for pedagogical purposes. As part of this, the thesis extends multiple theoretical frameworks including multimodality, theory of knowledge and genre theory. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7109 Title: Proceedings of the Australian Linguistic Society Conference 2008, held in Sydney: Editors’ introduction Authors: Peters, Pam; de Beuzeville, Louise 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7108 Title: Notes on contributors 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7107 Title: Transitivity Harmony in the Rawang Language of Northern Myanmar Authors: LaPolla, Randy Abstract: Among the Tibeto-Burman languages the importance of the marking of transitivity varies greatly, from transitivity not being a very useful concept at all to being extremely important to the understanding of the morphology of the language. In this paper an example of the latter type is discussed, the Rawang language of northern Myanmar (Burma). In this language all verbs are clearly distinguished (even in citation) in terms of transitivity by their morphology, and there are a number of different affixes for increasing or decreasing valency. A very interesting phenomenon related to the importance of transitivity differences that occurs in Rawang is the phenomenon of what I call “transitivity harmony”. All auxiliary verbs in this language are transitive, and when they appear with a transitive main verb, they simply follow that verb and the two verbs together take one set of transitive-marking morphology. If instead the main verb is intransitive, then the auxiliary verb must be made intransitive by the reflexive/middle voice suffix to harmonize with the intransitive verb. This pattern holds even when the main verb is overtly nominalized. Aside from establishing transitivity harmony as a typological phenomenon, this paper will also discuss some of the motivations for such a pattern of marking and its significance for understanding event profiling. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7106 Title: The erosion of Norman French dialect features: evidence from linguistic atlases Authors: Liddicoat, Anthony J. Abstract: This paper will investigate the replacement of one dialectal feature characteristic of bas normand (i.e. western Norman) – the evolutions of C+l – as attested in the Atlas linguistique de la France (ALF) (Edmont and Gilliéron, 1902-9; data collected in the 1890s) and the Atlas linguistique et ethnographique de la Normandie (ALEN) (Brasseur, 1981, 1984, 1997; data collected in the 1970s). These atlases show a gradual erosion of the Normand palatalised forms (Cj and Cʎ) by standard French forms (Cl). This process is not however a simple replacement of dialectal forms by non-dialectal forms but rather shows a “wave” of changes in which an earlier sound change ʎ > j is also involved. The process seems to involve a gradual reduction of the range of Cʎ in favour of Cj and of Cj in favour of Cl, with no cases of immediate replacement of Cʎ by Cl as a generalised pattern of sound change in particular local varieties. An analysis of the geographical distribution of particular words with etymological Cl further shows that the dialect atlases show relics of the passage of Cʎ to Cj and Cj to Cl which suggest a wider geographical distribution of each form. The analysis shows that in the context of convergent dialects, claiming a replacement of dialect features by standard language features is an oversimplification of the sound changes processes involved. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7099 Title: The Monash Corpus of Spoken Australian English Authors: Bradshaw, Julie; Burridge, Kate; Clyne, Michael Abstract: This paper takes stock of findings based on the Monash Corpus of Australian English. In 1996–97 members of the (then) Monash University Department of Linguistics embarked on the collection of a corpus in Victoria to facilitate the study of variation in phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon and discourse patterns. The largest part of the corpus was based on data from Year 10 students in ten schools selected according to socioeconomic status of locality and type of school (state, Catholic, independent including Greek Orthodox and Jewish; co-educational and single-sex, boys and girls). The data comprises two conversations per student with a stranger (including some citation reading), and two self-taped conversations, one with (usually) three generations of their family and one with same-age friends. The corpus has been used for research by colleagues and graduate students from LaTrobe, Melbourne, and Monash Universities. It has enabled some hitherto unidentified syntactic features of Australian English to be recognized (concord, articles, relative clauses). It has drawn attention to intergenerational change in certain vowels, to developments in /t/ tapping and glottalization, most especially in informal settings, to onset glottalization, and to the emergence and disappearance of ethnolects and the identification of their features. It has also been employed for studies of discourse quotatives, including comparisons with American, British and Canadian English. As yet, the corpus remains underutilized. For example, phonological analysis has concentrated on the interview data, and much could still be done on situational variation, particularly in families of migrant background. There is also scope for a new round of recordings to make the project a longitudinal one. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7098 Title: The treatment of reported speech Authors: Stirling, Lesley Abstract: Despite the substantial literature on reported speech, its treatment in structural and quantitative-distributional analyses of discourse has remained problematic. This article surveys and discusses a range of methodological issues created by the occurrence of embedded segments of direct reported speech in narrative discourse. Analysis of a personal experience narrative from the Australian language Ganalbingu is used as illustration. Stories like this include substantial passages of direct reported speech. Detailed investigation of such stories allows us to address questions such as: (i) what is the narrative function of these passages of direct speech and (ii) how is reference to characters mapped across the distinct deictic frames represented by the narrated action and the represented speech of participants within the story world? It is argued that any approach to discourse structure which is formal or quantitative in orientation will need to address such issues. The article concludes by formulating some open questions for investigation which tease out cognitive predictions and assumptions implicit in the ways in which direct speech has previously been handled. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7097 Title: “And I was like ‘ah yeah, what are they talking about?’” – The use of quotatives in New Zealand English Authors: Terraschke, Agnes Abstract: Research in recent years has shown that the use of quotatives such as say, think and be like is an important narrative tool in English interactions. These devices can be used to make a story more immediate and entertaining and to make the tone of a conversation more personal. The form be like in particular, being a relatively new quotative that is often associated with the speech of young women, has been found to work as a marker of informality. The interpersonal functions of quotatives as well as recent changes observed within quotative systems make them an interesting device to investigate, both in terms of gender differences as well as differences between varieties of English. This paper focuses on the uses of quotatives in New Zealand English, based on a corpus of roughly 5 hours of dyadic interactions between native New Zealand university students (same sex and mixed sex pairs). The study seeks to establish the quotative inventory of New Zealand English for this speaker group. The data is analysed in terms of the forms and frequencies of quotatives and gender differences, and the results are discussed in the context of similar studies conducted for other varieties of English. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7096 Title: Is there any Evidence of Rhoticity in Historical Australian English? Authors: Lonergan, John; Cox, Felicity Abstract: Australian English is traditionally regarded as having been non-rhotic throughout its history, but a recent study by Trudgill and Gordon (2006) has found rhoticity levels of 1% to 20% in audio recordings of six Australian men born near the end of the 19th century, suggesting that Australian English was once a rhotic dialect. The present study re-examines the three most rhotic speakers in the Trudgill and Gordon dataset, as well as archival recordings from an additional seven speakers, to further investigate the presence of rhoticity in Australian English around the turn of the 20th century. Approximately 30 minutes of audio interview data from each speaker was examined impressionistically for the presence of non-prevocalic /r/. Other postvocalic instances of /r/ were also identified in order to explore the relationship between non-prevocalic /r/, linking /r/ and intrusive /r/. On re-examination, the three subjects from Trudgill and Gordon (2006) were found to exhibit little or no rhoticity according to our criteria. Analysis of the additional seven speakers further weakens the argument for rhoticity in Australia at the end of the nineteenth century. Some speakers do, however, have traces of rhoticity, and only one shows consistent use of linking /r/. In this paper, we will explore the phonetic conditioning environments for the vestigial rhoticity in historical Australian English and will discuss some implications for phonological theory. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7095 Title: Universal quantification in children’s English Authors: Jensen, Britta; Notley, Anna; Stephen, Crain Abstract: Researchers since Inhelder and Piaget (1964) have replicated a curious finding. When using a picture-verification task (e.g., a picture of four elephants, three of them being ridden by boys), children have been shown to supply a non-adult answer in response to a question such as ‘Is every boy riding an elephant?’, e.g. ‘no, not that one’ (pointing to the extra elephant). The question we will address here is whether or not this response by children reflects a non-adult linguistic semantic representation of the meaning of the universal quantifier. Non-adult accounts of children’s interpretation of the universal quantifier (‘every’) suggest that children answer ‘no’ to questions like ‘Is every boy riding an elephant?’ because they may not initially interpret the subject set of ‘boys’ as the restrictor of every. By contrast, adult-like accounts of children’s interpretation of every maintain that children do correctly interpret the set of ‘boys’ as the restrictor of every in such sentences, suggesting that children’s non-adult responses can be eliminated by satisfying contextual demands on the use of the universal quantifier. In this paper, we present longitudinal data from 4 two-year-old children, children far younger than have previously been studied experimentally. We show that even from the earliest stages of language acquisition, so long as sentences are presented in felicitous discourse contexts, children’s interpretation of universal quantification appears adult-like. The data therefore support the adult-like accounts of children’s acquisition of universal quantification. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7094 Title: Designed ‘to be’ or ‘not to be’ complete? The status of the –te form in Japanese syntax for conversation Authors: Kawakatsu, Manabu Abstract: According to the conversation analytic model of turn taking, the essential element for turn organization is the recognition of a turn at talk as being possibly complete – at possible completions speaker change becomes a relevant next action. This paper will examine a corpus of naturally occurring Japanese language conversations collected from 20 recordings of casual conversations between 50 native speakers of Japanese recorded in Tokyo in 2007. It will argue that the –te form is an incomplete turn construction unit (TCU), but that it is designed to be incomplete and that there are action motivations for such a design. The incompleteness of –te forms is therefore not a problem of turn construction but an interactionally relevant. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/6770 Title: Children's Silences in Mareeba Aboriginal English Authors: Watts, Janet Abstract: This thesis examines the role of silence in conversations between teacher’s aides and 5-6 year old Indigenous Australian children at school. Recent studies of conversation among adult Aboriginal Australians have observed that a positive value is ascribed to silence, and that it is not percieved as indicating a breakdown in communication. Studies of Aboriginal children in school settings have similarly remarked on the prevalence of silence, observing that Indigenous students appear reticent to speak in certain types of classroom interaction. This thesis uses a Conversation Analysis approach to analyse in depth the role of silence in one-on-one conversations between young Indigenous children and teacher’s aides. These conversations were recorded in Mareeba in Far North Queensland, with children who speak varieties of Aboriginal English at home. Factors influencing the extent to which the children were silent in these conversations are considered. The results of this study are in line with previous research, in finding that factors such as the language variety spoken by the children, the structure of the discourse, and whether or not the interlocutor is Indigenous play a role in the extent to which the children are silent. 2009-11-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5839 Title: Author Profiling for English and Arabic Emails Authors: Estival, Dominique; Gaustad, Tanja; Hutchinson, Ben; Pham, Son Bao; Radford, Will Abstract: This paper reports on some aspects of a research project aimed at automating the analysis of texts for the purpose of author profiling and identification. The Text Attribution Tool (TAT) was developed for the purpose of language-independent author profiling and has now been trained on two email corpora, English and Arabic. The complete analysis provides probabilities for the author’s basic demographic traits (gender, age, geographic origin, level of education and native language) as well as for five psychometric traits. The prototype system also provides a probability of a match with other texts, whether from known or unknown authors. A very important part of the project was the data collection and we give an overview of the collection process as well as a detailed description of the corpus of email data which was collected. We describe the overall TAT system and its components before outlining the ways in which the email data is processed and analysed. Because Arabic presents particular challenges for NLP, this paper also describes more specifically the text processing components developed to handle Arabic emails. Finally, we describe the Machine Learning setup used to produce classifiers for the different author traits and we present the experimental results, which are promising for most traits examined. Description: Submitted for publication in 2008 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5837 Title: The Semantics of ja and ye: Semantic variation in Marathi motion verbs Authors: Ward, Nick Abstract: Ja and ye ('go' and 'come' respectively, from the Indian language Marathi) are first semantically examined as basic verbs of physical motion. Then instances which vary from this basic 'sense' of the words are analysed with respect to theories of polysemy via semantic extension (through metaphor and metonymy), and deixis. Some evidence is found to support theories of 'figurative' deixis, utilizing the concept of 'subjectivity' as a primary grounding force in our construction of meaning. Subjectivity is also implicated in the dominant mechanism of semantic shift by 'result' metonymy, wherein the word designating the event is semantically narrowed to designate only the result or outcome of the event. In discussing semantic extension through metaphor, the fundamental problem of distinguishing metaphorical from literal meaning is addressed, and 'image schemas' are invoked in the analysis of ja and ye. Data are chiefly from books on Ayurveda, and hence largely focus on the use of the ja and ye with reference to the human body. Description: Supervised by William Foley 2010-02-04T22:11:25Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5836 Title: Typing friendship into being: vocatives in Facebook wall-to-wall conversations Authors: Walkley, Amelia Abstract: Individuals may write themselves, their communities and their friendships into being on social network sites (Sundén 2003) (boyd 2008). That is, they write themselves into being by providing information about themselves in the form of personal profiles; they write their communities into being by setting up groups with which to connect with like-minded people; and they write their friendships into being by displaying contact lists and through continual interaction with their friends online. Since communication is key to the upkeep of friendship ties, a linguistic perspective has the potential to expand on the idea of writing friendship into being through a consideration of the ‘writing’ itself. The Facebook wall-to-wall conversation is a new means of computer-mediated communication and may be conceptualised as a way of typing friendship into being. Facebook ‘Friends’ write on each other’s ‘profile walls’ in turn, and in doing so they augment the interpersonal connection between them that originated offline by undertaking strategies of positive face enhancement in tandem. As semi-synchronous, semi-public dialogues in plain text, the wall-to-wall conversation is exclusive to two Facebook users as active participants, but visible to a special public of their mutual Facebook Friends. This thesis considers the type, semantic form, sentence position, orthography and pragmatic function of vocatives in a corpus of Facebook wall-to-wall conversations engaged in by students from the University of Sydney, Australia and from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. The vocatives are examined qualitatively through a lens of (Im)Politeness theory, drawing from Brown and Levinson (1987), Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1992; 2002) and Culpeper (1996; 2008) with a focus on positive politeness, mock deference and mock impoliteness. The joint engagement in creativity, playfulness and humour with regards to the formation and exchange of vocatives is attested in both the Australian English and the Swiss French corpora. Description: Supervisors: Caroline Lipovsky (French Studies), Jane Simpson (Linguistics) 2010-02-03T04:53:25Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5797 Title: Non-predicating adjectives: a semantic account Authors: de Zwaan, Alan Abstract: This thesis provides a semantic account of non-predication in the adjectives of English. Particular attention is paid to adjectives that are only non-predicating when they modify certain types of nouns; both agentive nouns and degree nouns are decomposed semantically into two distinct semantic elements, one of which consists of the referent (referential element) and another which consists of either an action associated with the noun or a quality already expressed by it (non-referential element). The other main focus of the thesis is denominal adjectives which have a structure like that of modifying nouns and which are differentiated from regular quality attributing adjectives via their semantic structure that does not express a single quality. The semantics of regular predicating adjectives is discussed, and it is found that predication requires an adjective to attribute a quality directly to the noun referent. Adjectives which have a function that does not meet this description are then restricted to the attributive (prenominal position). It is suggested that the prenominal position allows for a greater variety of semantic behaviours due to the relationship between the two phrasal elements not being made explicit. Description: Supervised by Nick Riemer 2010-01-13T22:06:05Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5796 Title: The Grammar of Nouns and Verbs in Whitesands, an Oceanic Language of Southern Vanuatu Authors: Hammond, Jeremy Abstract: Whitesands is an under-described language of southern Vanuatu, and this thesis presents Whitesands-specific data based on primary in-situ field research. The thesis addresses the distinction of noun and verb word classes in the language. It claims that current linguistic syntax theory cannot account for the argument structure of canonical object-denoting roots. It is shown that there are distinct lexical noun and verb classes in Whitesands but this is only a weak dichotomy. Stronger is the NP and VP distinction, and this is achieved by employing a new theoretical approach that proposes functional categories and their selection of complements as crucial tests of distinction. This approach contrasts with previous analyses of parts of speech in Oceanic languages and cross-linguistically. It ultimately explains many of the syntactic phenomena seen in the language family, including the above argument assignment dilemma, the alienable possession of nouns with classifiers and also the nominalisation processes. Description: Supervised by Bill Foley and Jane Simpson 2010-01-13T22:05:54Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5794 Title: How Warumungu people express new concepts Authors: Simpson, Jane Abstract: This article describes strategies used by Warumungu speakers to create new words and ways of expressing new concepts, in the context of multilingual society in which speakers of Indigenous Australian languages view language as a property. The strategies include borrowing, onomatopoeia, compounding, derivation, extension of existing words, including polysemous extensions such as actual/potential and container/contained 1985-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5385 Title: Negative Evidence in Linguistics: The case of Wagiman Complex Predicates Authors: Wilson, Aidan Abstract: In this thesis I will justify the use of negative forms of evidence as a permissible means of analysing grammatical constructions. I do this by presenting a test case, a grammatical construction that is not entirely understood, and attempting to understand and explain further aspects of it by appealing to negative forms of evidence. The constructions that form the object of this investigation are complex predicates in the Wagiman language. It will be necessary first, to provide a detailed explanation of Wagiman complex predicates; the elements that comprise them, the way those elements combine and the limitations that hold on them. Following that, negative evidence of the combinations that are possible and combinations that are impossible will provide the means by which to identify the constraints that limit complex predicates. 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5335 Title: Loanword Adaptation: A study of some Australian Aboriginal Languages Authors: McManus, Hope Abstract: This thesis is a case study of some aspects of the adaptation of English words in several Australian Aboriginal languages, including Martu Wangka, Gamilaraay and Warlpiri. I frame my analysis within Smith’s (to appear) source-similarity model of loanword adaptation. This model exploits loanword-specific faithfulness constraints that impose maximal similarity between the perceived source form and its corresponding loan. Using this model, I show that the conflict of the relevant prosodic markedness constraints and loanword-specific faithfulness constraints drives adaptation. Vowel epenthesis, the most frequent adaptation strategy, allows the recoverability of a maximal amount of information about the source form and ensures that the loan conforms to the constraints of language-internal phonological grammar. Less frequent strategies including deletion and substitution occur in a restricted environment. The essence of the present analysis is minimal violation, a principle that governs loanword adaptation as well as other areas of phonology. Description: Supervised by Toni Borowsky 2009-08-10T10:59:35Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/4989 Title: Moving along the grammaticalisation path: Locative and Allative marking of non-finite clauses and secondary predications in Australian languages Authors: McConvell, Patrick; Simpson, Jane Abstract: This paper examines three grammaticalised instances of local case-marking in Indigenous languages of northern Central Australia, coded as follows: (AN) Allative expressing object control on NP’s - the use of allative instead of locative in the meaning of ‘locative’ in a secondary predication where the subject of that predication has the same reference as an object or oblique in the main predication; (LS) Locative marked subordination the use of locative case-marking on the verb and other elements to mark types of non-finite subordinate clauses; (AS) Allative marked subordination expressing object control, combining features of A and LS, usually where LS is also present. The different distributions of these properties are plotted in a number of Central and northern Australian languages to provide a picture of current distribution and hypotheses about the origin of these constructions. The hypothesis proposed here is that the AN construction arose in a group of Pama-Nyungan languages in a restricted area of North-central Australia and partially overlapped with the presence of the LS construction in a wider grouping of Pama-Nyungan languages. This cooccurrence produced the AS construction, which subsequently diffused to a few neighbouring languages, including some Non-Pama-Nyungan languages. Both AN and AS can be called grammaticalisation since they depart from the semantic functions of the locational cases to mark control phenomena between predications. The marking of subordinate clauses by local cases, and particularly locative case, is relatively common cross-linguistically outside Australia and arguably maintains some cognitive metaphorical link with static location and motion, perhaps primarily through the near-universal ‘space=time’ metaphor. In AN, we see a much rarer development in which the metaphorical link between the concrete local meaning and the grammatical function is attenuated, although the possibility that AN involves ‘fictive motion’ as in Finnic languages is discussed. Description: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the PIONIER Workshop on Locative Case, 25-–26 August 2008, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands 2009-05-19T00:23:21Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/4025 Title: Ngarluma as a W* language Authors: Simpson, Jane Abstract: An account of the morpho-syntax of Ngarluma, an Australian language spoken in the Pilbara, is given based on Kenneth Hale's fieldnotes together with Carl von Brandenstein's published texts. The analysis uses the W* framework proposed by Kenneth Hale, to describe the free word order, discontinuous phrases, valence-changing suffixes, case system and use of case to indicate identity of controllers. Description: The paper was typewritten with handwritten labels and diagrams, and has faded badly. It was submitted as a generals paper in 1981. Some of the data and analysis were cited in later literature. 2009-01-26T22:10:52Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2255 Title: Prepositions and preverbs in Hellenistic Greek Authors: Budd, Noella Abstract: This thesis traces the history of usage of a group of words (‘P-words’) that were adverbial particles in Proto-Indo-European and became in Greek, as in many other IE languages, both prepositions and verbal prefixes. It adopts a corpus-linguistic approach which, when allied with a suitable statistical method and a theoretical framework for analysis of syntactic change (grammaticalisation), allows for the detection and sometimes the explanation of trends in usage which may be invisible to a general reader. However, this method relies on the availability of suitably tagged texts for analysis; such tagging exists for the New Testament, the basis of the statistical analyses of this study, and a few other documents of roughly the same period of Greek, but not for large portions of text from other periods. The finding of this paper is that the method is reliable and likely to produce interesting results once diachronic comparisons and same-period genre and register comparisons become possible with the production of standardised grammatical tagging of texts, a program that is being pursued in New Testament studies and has potential for much wider use in Greek linguistics. Description: The thesis was supervised by Jane Simpson, with Vrasidas Karalis (Department of Modern Greek). 2008-03-14T05:48:13Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2237 Title: A Longitudinal Study of Ngarrindjeri Authors: Bannister, Corinne Abstract: This thesis aims to follow the changes that occur in Ngarrindjeri, a language from South Australia, over a period of 130 years. Over this period of time the speakers underwent great social and cultural change, with the settlement of white people, and the language changed from being a vibrant living language to one where only a few lexical items can be remembered. Particular attention is given to the syntactic changes, with a focus on case, the pronominal system and the antipassive function. A range of sources have been used; however Meyer’s grammar from 1843 and the Berndt texts, recorded in the 1940s, plus the accompanying analysis provided by Cerin (1994), receive the main focus because they are the most extensive descriptions of the language. The other sources are used when necessary to fill in the gaps. Chapter one introduces the language and the source material. It also discusses general concepts in language attrition. Chapter two deals with nominal morphology, with a particular focus on how the cases have changed. It also contains some reanalysis of the forms, which differs slightly from previous analyses. Chapter three address the pronominal morphology and identifies and explains discrepancies among the sources. This chapter contains information on the personal pronouns, reflexive pronouns and also a small section on how the pronominal system influenced a change in word order. Chapter four addresses the antipassive in Ngarrindjeri. Previous work on the antipassive has been scarce, so firstly this chapter establishes the form of the antipassive. Next it identifies the semantic uses of the construction. Finally, there is an investigation into the existence of a syntactic antipassive and the type of pivots that may also exist. Description: Supervisor: Jane Simpson 2008-02-25T23:01:41Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2181 Title: Psychotic victims: Risk, compassion and blame in mental health discourses Authors: Moore, Rose Abstract: Recent theories of evaluative language, such as Appraisal theory, aim to use fine-grained qualitative analysis to look at the way social reality is constructed and reflected in text, and how we are aligned through the use of evaluative resources in text. This thesis uses Appraisal theory to look at the way the identity of people with psychotic illness is constructed in a corpus of recent broadsheet feature articles on the topic of schizophrenia, and how we - as readers and members of society- are positioned to perceive people who have psychotic illness. It also looks at the way that the roles and responsibilities of institutions such as the court and prison system, the mental health system and government are evaluated, and outlines the strategies which are used to construe people with psychotic illness as victims, both of their illness and of social institutions. These findings are in direct contrast to much of the previous research on representations of psychotic illness in the media, which has predominantly found that people with psychotic illness are portrayed as violent and a danger to society. This thesis contributes to a growing body of literature which uses Appraisal theory to identify evaluative patterns in text and add to our understanding of how meaning is made. It also describes patterns of evaluation with regard to certain groups of people (those with psychotic illness, their families, and institutions such as the government, health system and prison system) which appear to mark changing attitudes towards psychotic illness. Description: The thesis was supervised by James Martin. 2008-01-10T22:19:34Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1919 Title: Spatial Reference in Momu Authors: Blake, Fiona Abstract: Spatial reference - how we communicate notions such as location, motion and direction - is an important area of current research. Recent studies involving detailed analysis of geographically and typologically diverse languages have uncovered extensive and unexpected variation in the means languages utilise to encode spatial relations. This thesis aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about the cross-linguistic representation of the spatial domain. It is an analysis of fieldwork data which was collected for a preliminary investigation into the spatial reference system of Momu (also known as Fas), a Kwomtari language spoken in the West Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. The analysis focuses on descriptions of static location, motion and the use of frames of reference. In Momu, all basic locative, directional and motion verbs are deictically anchored, such that there are few expressions of spatial reference that do not obligatorily require deictic specification. This thesis demonstrates the particular attention Momu pays to the specification of deixis across all major sub-areas of the spatial domain. Description: This honours thesis was submitted in June 2007, and was supervised by William Foley. 2007-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1726 Title: Gender and codemixing in Hong Kong Authors: Wong, Kwok-Lan Jamie Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship of gender and codemixing behaviour in Hong Kong. Data were obtained through the use of a questionnaire and a language diary experiment from 10 young women and 10 young men who had just joined the workforce. It was found that educated young women in Hong Kong are more likely to codemix (Cantonese sentence with English words or phrases) than their male counterparts. However, this difference shown up in the sex grouping could not be said to be a pure gender difference. Rather, this difference seemed to be difference among the females themselves. By looking into the historical and cultural background of Hong Kong, the researcher suggested that Hong Kong young women’s higher use of mixed code nowadays was caused by their desire to dissociate themselves from the traditional role of women in the Chinese culture. Furthermore, it was found that young women working in a more competitive environment would codemix more than those working in a less competitive environment. The findings in this paper confirm the constructionsts’ view that the construction of gender is interwoven with other social constructions of identity in a complex way, so that it is important for researchers interested in gender and language use to look into the cultural and historical background of a speech community instead of focusing solely on the differences shown up in sex groupings. Description: Honours thesis, Department of Linguistics, supervisors Dr Ahmar Mahboob and Dr Toni Borowsky 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1725 Title: Cyclic syllabification and a first cycle rule of vowel-rounding in some dialects of Australian English Authors: Simpson, Jane Abstract: A discussion of the realisation of /l/ in Australian English, and of the quality of back vowels preceding the /l/, especially in Cultivated Adelaide English. A technical solution making use of cyclic syllabification is proposed, and evidence from /r/ insertion is adduced. Description: This is an unpublished term-paper (March 1980) forming part of Simpson's doctoral course-work at the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It has been cited in the phonological literature. 1980-03-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1105 Title: The diachronic evolution of directional constructions in Mandarin Authors: McElvenny, James Abstract: This thesis investigates the diachronic evolution of directional constructions found in Mandarin and other modern varieties of Chinese. What I call directional constructions are usually called 'directional complements' in most work on Chinese grammar. They consist of a series of particles and their associated syntactic constructions. The particles follow after verbs and typically indicate a direction of motion associated with the event expressed by a verb. For example, in the sentence 'ta zouchulai' 'He walks out hither', the verb 'zou' 'walk' expresses the action of walking and the directional particle 'chulai' indicates that the action is performed going from inside to outside and in the direction of the speaker. Directional particles can also have a variety of abstract senses that are derived from their basic directional senses through metaphor. I trace the diachronic evolution of the directional particles and their associated syntactic constructions from their origins as independent verbs in various syntactic constructions in pre-Qin varieties of Chinese up to their present state in Modern Mandarin. I identify the various formal and functional properties of the constructions at each stage in the history of the language and show how these properties change from one stage to another. I also investigate the factors that condition these changes. My research is based on a corpus of vernacular texts that cover each period in the development of the constructions from pre-Qin times up to the present. I present my analysis of each stage in the development of the constructions within the Construction Grammar framework. 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/274 Title: Emphatic Repetition in Spoken Arabic Authors: Rieschild, Verna Robertson Abstract: This paper identifies and explains Arabic emphatic repetition in ethnographic interviews against the general backdrop of an understanding of non-pragmatically motivated repetition in Spoken Arabic. It also considers the basic linguistic resources for expressing intensity in the lexicon and syntax and the significance of repetition as one of these resources. The latter part of the paper explains how these resources are drawn on in interaction and what other types of spontaneous immediate emphatic repetition occur. This approach allows for a nuanced interpretation of the salience of emphatic repetition in this spoken Arabic genre. The discussion contributes to our general understanding of the essence of repetition that allows it to be used as a productive interactive resource. 2006-03-09T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/140 Title: Resultatives Authors: Simpson, Jane Abstract: This paper looks at the syntactic and semantic conditions in English on resultative attributes, which describe the state of an entity resulting from the action denoted by the main predicate. It is argued that these entities are expressed as the objects of transitive verbs, and the subject of intransitive unaccusative verbs. A fake object construction is required for a resultative to describe the state of an entity expressed as the subject of an intransitive unergative verb or an indefinite object-deleting verb. 1983-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/139 Title: Topic and focus in Ngardi Authors: Honeyman, Tom Abstract: This paper examines the discourse pragmatics of the non- configurational (free word order) Australian language Ngardi. Ngardi is a Ngumbin language spoken by a small number of people east of the Kimberleys. I examine Topic and Focus in equational sentences and question forms gathered from transcripts of card games played by Ngardi speakers. I examine this data from the Information Structure perspective as defined by Lambrecht (1994) and include some discussion of Choi's (2001) NEW and PROM binary features. I conclude that a range of constituents to the left of the obligatory pronominal clitics are conditioned by discourse pragmatic factors. Description: This is an Honours thesis based on field data and grammatical analysis collected by Lee Cataldi with help from Tjama Napanangka. The supervisors were William Foley and Jane Simpson. 2005-10-21T05:46:25Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/138 Title: Challenges and Prospect of Maintaining Rongga: an Ethnographic Report Authors: Arka, I Wayan Abstract: Changes in the ‘ecology of languages’ after the independence of Indonesia have resulted in changes in the social, cultural and economic settings. These changes in turn have affected the well-being of indigenous languages and cultures right across the Indonesian archipelago. This has particularly been the case in the last thirty years under the harsh campaign of Indonesianisation through the rhetoric of pembangunan (development) in the New Order era of Soeharto’s regime. Smaller indigenous languages such as Rongga, a minority language on the island of Flores, are particularly vulnerable. 2005-10-20T22:54:45Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/115 Title: Acknowledging Strong Ties between Utterances in Talk: Connections through 'Right' as a Response Token Authors: Gardner, Rod Abstract: Right is a response token in English that has been little studied. Its main uses in Australian English (and British English) are different from North American Englishes. The data used for this study was primarily a dietetic interview at an Australian hospital of 46 minutes, which was fully transcribed. A larger corpus of Australian, British and American data supplemented this core data set. The distinctiveness of the Australian/British use is to acknowledge that the talk to which it is responding is in a strong dependent relationship with some prior talk. This is most typically a rhetorical relationship (cf. Mann, Matthiessen and Thompson, 1992) such as one of contrast, expansion/exemplification or of cause and effect, though other rhetorical relationships have been found. Right is also used to acknowledge citations of some talk from earlier in the interaction. This study adds to our understanding of the common set of response tokens in English, which include Uh huh/Mm hm, Mm, Yeah/Yes, Oh, Okay and Alright. It has emerged that each of these is used in distinctive, if complex ways, dependent most crucially on their prosodic shape, their sequential placement and the timing of the utterance. The wider significance of the study of such tokens is that they are amongst the few vocalizations in talk that reveal the stance of a listening participant (at that point in the talk). 2005-10-10T07:00:25Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/113 Title: The Case of the Object in Early Estonian and Finnish Texts Authors: Lees, Aet Abstract: The case of the object in Balto-Finnic languages alternates between accusative and partitive. In modern Finnish the accusative case is used more frequently than in Estonian. The present study looks at the usage in older texts, using a section of Bible translations in southern Estonian (1686), northern Estonian (1739) and Finnish (1642) as well as additional material in Estonian. In old Finnish the proportion of partitive objects was similar to modern Finnish, except for personal pronouns, which were predominantly partitive. The modern accusative case forms of the personal pronouns were introduced into the standard language in the 19th century. In southern Estonian the majority of objects were in the partitive case. In northern Estonian plural objects were often accusative (the plural accusative being homonymous with the nominative) and singular objects partitive. In many instances the opposite case has been used in a revised version of this translation, prepared in 1938. Possible reasons for the differences in development will be considered. 2005-10-10T07:00:25Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/114 Title: Second Position Clitic Phenomena in North-Central Australia: Some Pragmatic Considerations Authors: Mushin, Ilana Abstract: Second position phenomena in North-central Australia: some pragmatic considerations. This paper presents a cross-linguistic investigation of the discourse-pragmatics of second position clitic attachment in seven languages of North-central Australia. The presence of (obligatory) pronominal enclitics constitutes an areal feature of Central-Northern Australian languages, from Western Australia to the Queensland Border. In some languages enclitics are described as primarily attaching to verbs (eg. Western Desert), others to the first ‘constituent’ (eg. Warlpiri). In many of these languages, pronominal clitics combine with tense, aspect and/or mood markers to form ‘clitic complexes’ (or ‘auxiliaries’), which may in turn have fixed clausal positions (eg. Warlpiri, Wambaya). Most investigations of clitic complexes have focussed on their formal properties, especially the range of phenomena that may function as clitic hosts, and the implications of different patterns of clitic attachment for syntactic description (eg. Simpson & Withgott 1986, McConvell 1980, 1996, Laughren 2002). While much of this work acknowledges that pragmatics plays a role in what motivates patterns of clitic attachment, these studies tend to go no further than to assign a label ‘focus’ to that which attracts the clitic complex. Here I explore what is meant by ‘focus’ by closely examining and comparing pragmatic relationships between the clitic complex and its host in the discourse of a number of languages. Such cross-linguistic work not only provides evidence for the pragmatic sensitivities of clitic complexes synchonically, but it also provides evidence for variations in their grammaticalisation status in individual languages. 2005-10-10T07:00:25Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/111 Title: The Cross-Linguistic Function of Obligatory 'do'-Periphrasis Authors: Jäger, Andreas Abstract: The aim of this paper is to give a descriptive account of the range of functions that can be associated with obligatory ‘do’-periphrasis cross-linguistically based on a sample of 80 languages. A preliminary typological discussion of the cross-linguistic properties of this phenomenon can be found in Van der Auwera (1999). Section 2 discusses crosslinguistically identifiable criteria for ‘do’-periphrasis. In section 3 some examples are provided to show that the range of functions associated with obligatory periphrasis is limited and can be accounted for in terms of a four-way typology. Section 4 compares obligatory ‘do’-periphrasis with cases of optional use of ‘do’-periphrasis in languages outside the sample. Since languages with optional ‘do’-periphrasis often allow similar functional associations, it is proposed that the functional types argued for in this paper represent domains in which ‘do’-periphrasis is likely to become grammaticalized. 2005-10-10T07:00:24Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/110 Title: Setting the Scene: A Comparative Study of the '-te aru' Construction and the Attributive Passive in Japanese Authors: Jarkey, Nerida; Iwashita, Mami Abstract: Broadly speaking, the ‘-te aru’ construction and the ‘attributive passive’ construction in Japanese are both de-transitivized, stative constructions that serve to set the scene for the ongoing discourse. In many cases, the constructions can be substituted for one another, and native speakers often find it difficult to identify a clear difference in meaning between the two. Previous research on these constructions, however, has ignored their functional similarities, and has attempted to explain their uses quite separately. In this paper we identify and account for the basic functions of these two constructions, as well as their similarities and their differences. We start by considering them in the context of a far more widely discussed, and more frequently used, derived stative construction in Japanese, a construction that involves an intransitive rather than a transitive verb root. We go on to consider examples of these two de-transitivized stative constructions, starting with cases in which they seem to be virtually interchangeable, and then refining our understanding of their functions by considering cases in which they cannot be substituted for one another. Our basic findings relate to the degree of semantic transitivity of the two constructions. Although the -te aru construction has previously been characterized as describing perfect aspect, and as not allowing an overt Actor (Martin 1975, Miyagawa 1988 and Hasegawa 1996), when we compare it with the ‘attributive passive’, we find that it is comparatively the more transitive, and thus more agentive of the two. The ‘attributive passive’, on the other hand, is highly objective and stative. Nevertheless, the fact that the verb root in this construction, as in the -te aru construction, is transitive rather than intransitive means that the relevance of an Actor to the state described can still be detected. 2005-10-10T07:00:24Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/112 Title: The Domain of Phonological Processes Authors: Baker, Brett Abstract: In many Australian languages, stress rules appear to apply to every suffix independently, before they are subjected to word-level phrasing (1). This pattern is difficult to account for whether we derive it in Lexical Phonology (e.g. Poser 1986) or in Optimality Theory (e.g. Pensalfini 2000), since we cannot derive it by applying stress rules to incrementally larger domains which include the stem. The problem appears to lie with our assumptions about how words are built up, and how they are subjected to phonological processes. The usual assumption about word structure is that it is built up in layers from the root, like an onion. In phonology, rules are assumed to apply to domains which minimally include the root. They cannot apply to affixal domains without the root. Here, I defend an alternative view of word structure: one based on adjacent, rather than nested, domains. In this model, outputs from the lexicon are independently subjected to rules of metrical stress assignment, as in (2). The domain of metrical stress is therefore not the (grammatical/distributional) word, but each productive morpheme within the word. Note that syllabification must be applied to the whole form rather than the individual parts, since some affixes apparently begin in clusters. However, we need to allow for inter-word syllabification anyway because of other word sandhi and word syllabification effects. One example of such a pattern applying to word-initial geminates has been described for Swiss German (Kraehenmann 2001). Similar patterns are found in Oceanic languages such as Leti (Hume, Muller & van Engelenhoven 1997). One sidebranch of phonology did investigate the possibility of domains external to the root: ‘prosodic phonology’ (e.g. Nespor & Vogel 1986). This theory was developed in part as an account of 'bracketing paradoxes', where the prosodic structure did not seem to reflect the morphological derivation of a word. The Australian patterns are amenable to a prosodic phonology account. However, prosodic phonology is a declarative model — anything can be potentially declared to be a prosodic domain — and hence over-generates patterns. The model argued for here makes a stronger and more constrained claim: only morphemes which on independent grounds can be shown to be elements of the lexicon may constitute a domain for phonological processes. 2005-10-10T07:00:24Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/109 Title: New and Traditional Values in Contemporary Russian: Natural Semantic Metalanguage in Cross-Cultural Semantics Authors: Gladkova, Anna Abstract: Changes in value system of a society can find reflection in the semantic structure of a language. These differences can be studied on the basis of semantic comparison of value words – those that become a source of borrowing and words revealing traditional values. Contemporary Russian is characterized by introduction of several words from English that incorporate social values. This research was done on the basis of comparison of two pairs of words of this kind: to tolerate and empathy in English and their counterparts 'terpet’' and 'co_uvstvie' in Russian. Often words like 'tolerantnost’ (from to tolerate) and 'empatija' (from empathy) are treated as synonyms of those words of traditional Russian values. A detailed semantic analysis proves that these words in different languages incorporate different social attitudes as they are based on different background knowledge. This kind of semantic analysis requires a very sharp tool that is able to reveal these kinds of differences. The suggested semantic investigation was done with the help of Natural Semantic Metalanguage, which uses about 60 semantic primes, ruled by “grammar of combinability”. Using this method it becomes possible to explicate complicated semantic notions in a language free from cultural stereotypes. The studied words 'terpet’' and tolerate, 'co_uvstvie' and empathy have incorporated in their meanings different cultural attitudes, which nations have elaborated through ages. Tolerate and 'terpet’', empathy and 'co_uvstvie' being very close in the dimension they describe or deal with differ mainly in the background value knowledge that members of the society share. It means that semantic descriptions of value words are determined by the “background understanding” of the society or the community they function in. Value words give directions for behaving, but they are based on value assumptions of the society they function in. These assumptions become part of the semantic explication. A detailed semantic analysis of close pairs of words was able to reveal a more “rational” character of tolerate and empathy and a more “emotional” character of 'terpet’' and 'co_uvstvie'. Tolerate and possesses a more “social” character, and 'terpet’' has a more “private” character. Tolerate and empathy are more “outgoing, active, extraverted” while 'terpet’' and 'co_uvstvie' are more “passive, introverted”. These differences are very important revelations of cultural attitudes. 2005-10-10T07:00:24Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/107 Title: Distinguishing Prosodic Word and Phonological Word in Warlpiri: Prosodic Constituency in Morphologically Complex Words Authors: Pentland, Christina; Laughren, Mary Abstract: Observations that the phonological word in Warlpiri does not map onto a single constituent in prosodic structure leads us to posit a three-way distinction between prosodic word (PWd), phonological word (PhonWd) and phonological phrase (PPh) in order to account for prosodic constituency in morphologically complex words. We will present evidence that stress is assigned at the level of the PWd, while accent is assigned at the level of the PPh. The PhonWd is the domain for the application of non-prosodic rules governing the distribution of articulatory gestures, e.g. regressive vowel harmony and suffixal allomorphy. Physical correlates of both stress and accent will be discussed. Nash (1986) defines the phonological word in Warlpiri as the domain of stress, vowel harmony and suffixal allomorphy; however, evidence of mismatches between the domains relevant for the application of stress, vowel harmony rules and case allomorphy in complex structures suggests that the PhonWd is distinct from both the PWd and the PPh. For example, regressive vowel harmony triggered by the PAST suffix /-rnu/ is blocked at the boundary between the preverb and verb in the string /pirri-kuju-rnu/ ‘scatter-throw-PAST’, which is defined by Nash (1986) as a single stress domain, thus indicating that the stress and vowel harmony domains are distinct. On the other hand, the nominal compound /wati-wiri-rli/ (lit. man-big-ERG) ‘big group of men’, while exhibiting the same stress pattern as the verbal compound /pirri-kujurnu/, is also the domain which determines suffixal allomorphy: compare with /wati wiri-ngki/ (lit. man big-ERG)‘a big man’. In the compound /wati-wiri-rli/ the morphemes /wati/ and /wiri/ are both PWds, and the compound itself is a PhonWd. In the phrase /wati wiri-ngki/, however, both constituent PWds are distinct PhonWds which combine to create a PPh. Furthermore, complex verbs may contain a consonant-final preverb which does not qualify as a PhonWd (no final vowel), although it does satisfy the requirements to qualify as a PWd (it contains a minimum of two moras or vowels), e.g. /jaarl-kujurnu/ ‘in the way throw-PAST’. While the inflected verb /kujurnu/ constitutes both a PWd and a PhonWd (representing the stress domain and vowel harmony domain respectively), the preverbs /pirri/ and /jaarl/ only constitute PWds which combine with the inflected verb to create a PPh. 2005-10-10T07:00:23Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/106 Title: Reflexive - Middle and Reciprocal - Middle Continua in Romanian Authors: Calude, Andreea S Abstract: In Romanian, the middle marker se is employed to encode five distinct situation types: reflexive, reciprocal, (medio-)passive, inchoative and impersonal. The principal aim of the present research is to identify the relationships among the different uses of the marker and to put forward explanations for them within a cognitive framework. The discussion presented is limited to the semantic properties of middles. This work provides an insight into Romanian itself, as well as a contribution to theoretical accounts of middle systems in general. Following theories developed by Faltz (1985), Geniusien? (1987), Haiman (1983), Kemmer (1993), Maldonado (1992) and Manney (2000), a synchronic account of the Romanian Middle Domain is given. Our findings show that the semantic property of low elaboration of events (introduced by Kemmer 1993) constitutes the common denominator among the different uses explored. For instance, the Romanian middle construction: (1) Copilul se piapt?n?. child MIDDLE brushes ‘The child brushes (her/his hair).’ involves low elaboration since the event expressed exhibits relatively low distinguishability of participants, the Patient is backgrounded, and the verb (se piept?na ‘brush one’s hair’) denotes what is typically a self-directed event. One innovative aspect of the research concerns the uncovering of formal and semantic continua between certain Romanian middles situation types, namely natural reflexives and natural reciprocals, and their non-middle counterparts (prototypical reflexives and prototypical reciprocals, respectively). This sheds light on the interaction between the various middle categories comprising the Middle Domain for the case of Romanian and raises several open questions regarding middle systems cross-linguistically, such as: do any other middle systems exhibit continua among their middle categories, and, if so, which middle types are they and are these the same as the ones found in Romanian? 2005-10-10T07:00:23Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/108 Title: Frs. Herman Nekes and Ernest Worms' Dictionary of Australian Languages, Part III of 'Australian Languages' (1953) Authors: McGregor, William B Abstract: Frs. Herman Nekes and Ernest Worms’ monumental Australian languages consists of five parts, of which three are dictionaries. These account for the bulk of the work, some 775 of 1067 pages, the remainder being about two-thirds grammar and one third texts. Part III, Dictionary native languages — English (a paradigmatic syntax) has some 630 typescript pages, amounting to over 9,000 headwords, in a range of Australian languages, with particular focus on those of the Dampier Land peninsular and nearby areas, most of which are represented by 1,500-2,000 entries. This is a singular document, both in conceptualisation, and because it presents some of the only extant information on various moribund and almost moribund languages (e.g. Jabirrjabirr, Nimanburru). The structure of the dictionary will be described both at the macro-level of organisation and contents (lexeme selection) and the micro-level of entry format; these will be linked to the authorsÂ’ notions of morphology, syntax, semantics, and etymology. The dictionary will be situated in relation to contemporary lexicography, and will be evaluated in terms of the quality of scholarship it represents, and its significance to modern concerns. 2005-10-10T07:00:23Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/103 Title: Signalling Plurality in Learner English Authors: McIlwain, Jillian; Peterson, Peter Abstract: Noun plurals in the conversational English of French and Polish adult learners of English have been analysed using descriptive and conceptual approaches. The data was collected over a period of eighteen months, during which time all learners showed some development in the signaling of plurality. However, the development followed different paths for different learners. Some showed increasing proficiency in the use of the regular plural morpheme in obligatory contexts, while others developed new structures for signaling plurality. None of the learners relied on the plural morpheme as the sole means of expressing noun plurality, and particular linguistic contexts were found to influence the use of plural markers. The findings of the current study are interpreted as supporting the symbolic approach to morphology and morpheme acquisition. 2005-10-10T07:00:22Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/105 Title: Processing Grammatical Functions of Mandarin Locative Structures Authors: Charters, A. Helen Abstract: Pienemann (1989) argues that transfer of information from a Verb to its Subject, is more demanding than transfer within Nominal phrases because the former combines information from separate ‘iterations’ of conceptual structure, and the latter does not. I use data from a longitudinal study of Mandarin SLA to argue that, in fact GF assignment is a more significant contributor to processing demands than any conceptual separation of the Subject and verb. The evidence comes from possessive, locative and relative clause structures. Under Pienemann's account, the first two, which are purely nominal structures, should emerge earlier than RCs, where a GF must be transferred across a VP boundary. In fact, de-marked possessives and intransitive RCs are among the first nominal structures to emerge whereas de-marked locatives and transitive RCs emerge much later, even given intensive instruction (Zhang, 2002). If Pienemann’s basic premise is correct, and emergence times reflect processing demands, then the purely nominal locatives involve processing demands comparable to those of transitive RCs. I argue that the relevant factor is argument structure, and the information transfer involved in the assignment of GFs, not lexical category or conceptual divisions. 2005-10-10T07:00:22Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/104 Title: Acoustic Analysis of Maori: Historical Data Authors: Maclagan, Margaret; Harlow, Ray; King, Jeanette; Keegan, Peter; Watson, Catherine Abstract: We present initial results of an acoustic analysis of the vowel system of a native speaker of Maori, RTH, who was born in 1885. RTH was recorded in 1947 by the Mobile Disc Recording Unit of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service and the tape forms part of the Mobile Unit (MU) Archive at the University of Canterbury. RTH speaks in Maori and translates his material into English, though the English contains sections of whakapapa (genealogy) which are almost pure Maori. In this paper, we compare analyses of his vowel system when he is speaking in Maori and in English and also when he is using Maori words during his translations into English. RTH would have learnt his Maori at a time when influence from English was minimal. This analysis is therefore the first step in providing a reference acoustic analysis for the Maori language and for establishing the long-term influence of English on the pronunciation of Maori and vice versa. The analysis of RTH will be combined with an analysis of the other Maori speakers included in the MU archive together with other first language Maori speakers born in the late nineteenth century. 2005-10-10T07:00:22Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/102 Title: Liquids: Laterals and Rhotics or Much More? Authors: Ballard, Elaine; Starks, Donna Abstract: In phonology the classic division within the sonorant consonants is between nasal and liquid. Nasals by the nature of their articulation are easy to define and have generated a substantial literature (Cohn 1993, Piggott 1992, Huffman & Krakow 1993 among many others). Liquids are by contrast more difficult to define, demonstrate greater phonetic variability and there is far less literature on this class of segments,(Dixon 1972, Bhat 1975, Walsh Dickey 1997). This paper explores whether liquids can be defined both phonologically and phonetically and explores the link between representation and realisation of these sounds. In our discussion, we pay particular attention to the category “liquid” considering recent work on liquids (Walsh Dickey,1997 ) and how they elucidate our understanding of sonorants. We also present our own data from Woods Cree, an Algonquian language spoken in Canada. The data from this language raises interesting issues concerning potential mismatches between phonetics and phonology. This language traditionally lacks a liquid in its phonemic inventory and has clear evidence for a voiced dental fricative patterning as a non-nasal sonorant. Our findings suggest that non -nasal sonorant consonants need not be restricted to liquids and propose a number of possibilities as to the categorisation of these segments. We end our paper with a number of research questions that need to be addressed; In phonology the classic division within the sonorant consonants is between nasal and liquid. Nasals by the nature of their articulation are easy to define and have generated a substantial literature (Cohn 1993, Piggott 1992, Huffman & Krakow 1993 among many others). Liquids are by contrast more difficult to define, demonstrate greater phonetic variability and there is far less literature on this class of segments,(Dixon 1972, Bhat 1975, Walsh Dickey 1997). This paper explores whether liquids can be defined both phonologically and phonetically and explores the link between representation and realisation of these sounds. In our discussion, we pay particular attention to the category "liquid" considering recent work on liquids (Walsh Dickey,1997 ) and how they elucidate our understanding of sonorants. We also present our own data from Woods Cree, an Algonquian language spoken in Canada. The data from this language raises interesting issues concerning potential mismatches between phonetics and phonology. This language traditionally lacks a liquid in its phonemic inventory and has clear evidence for a voiced dental fricative patterning as a non-nasal sonorant. Our findings suggest that non -nasal sonorant consonants need not be restricted to liquids and propose a number of possibilities as to the categorisation of these segments. We end our paper with a number of research questions that need to be addressed; n phonology the classic division within the sonorant consonants is between nasal and liquid. Nasals by the nature of their articulation are easy to define and have generated a substantial literature (Cohn 1993, Piggott 1992, Huffman & Krakow 1993 among many others). Liquids are by contrast more difficult to define, demonstrate greater phonetic variability and there is far less literature on this class of segments,(Dixon 1972, Bhat 1975, Walsh Dickey 1997). This paper explores whether liquids can be defined both phonologically and phonetically and explores the link between representation and realisation of these sounds. In our discussion, we pay particular attention to the category “liquid” considering recent work on liquids (Walsh Dickey,1997 ) and how they elucidate our understanding of sonorants. We also present our own data from Woods Cree, an Algonquian language spoken in Canada. The data from this language raises interesting issues concerning potential mismatches between phonetics and phonology. This language traditionally lacks a liquid in its phonemic inventory and has clear evidence for a voiced dental fricative patterning as a non-nasal sonorant. Our findings suggest that non -nasal sonorant consonants need not be restricted to liquids and propose a number of possibilities as to the categorisation of these segments. We end our paper with a number of research questions that need to be addressed 2005-10-10T07:00:22Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/101 Title: Exclamative Clauses: A Corpus-based Account Authors: Collins, Peter Abstract: This paper aims to complement the accounts of exclamative clauses presented in both the large reference grammars of English (e.g. Quirk et al. 1985; Biber et al. 1999; Huddleston and Pullum 2002), and in the more theoretically-oriented literature (e.g. Elliott 1974; Michaelis and Lambrecht 1996; and Zanuttini and Portner 2003).by providing a comprehensive description of their structural and semantic properties. Findings are reported from an empirical study of exclamative clauses in English, based on a 9,600,000-word collection of written and spoken corpora which yielded 2061 tokens. Although writers sometimes accept sentences of the type "Is syntax easy!, They were so rude!, The things he eats! ", and "It's amazing how calm he is!" as exclamatives, it will be argued that the class must be restricted to constructions with an initial exclamative phrase containing "what" (as modifier) or "how" (as modifier or adjunct), insofar as it is only in these that the illocutionary force of exclamatory statement has been grammaticalised. A number of tendencies are revealed by the corpus-interrogation, including: the occurrence of ambiguity resulting from the structural similarity between exclamative and interrogative clauses, especially in the case of subordinate exclamatives; the reduction of exclamative clauses - particularly "what"-exclamatives - to just the exclamative phrase; and, the relative favouring of how-exclamatives in formal, written discourse. 2005-10-10T07:00:21Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/100 Title: Interpersonal Relationships in Japanese and Australian Women's Magazines: A Case Study Authors: Kawashima, Kumiko Abstract: Women’s magazines have been a focus of research in various disciplines, and such research has made use of different methodologies as well as taking diverse approaches. This paper analyses texts selected from an Australian women’s magazine 'Cleo' and its Japanese equivalent 'With' by using Systemic Functional Linguistics as a core methodology. The texts were chosen from topic areas such as love relationships, finance and diet/exercises, and all take forms of advice giving. The lexico-grammatical analysis of the texts focused on investigation of the ways these texts construct the relationship between the writer and the reader, which has revealed interesting features in the Japanese texts that did not appear in the English texts. 2005-10-10T07:00:21Z