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| Title: | Language contact and children's bilingual acquisition: learning a mixed language and Warlpiri in northern Australia |
| Authors: | O'Shannessy, Carmel Therese |
| Keywords: | language contact
bilingual acquisition
Warlpiri
child language acquisition
language variation
mixed languages
ergative case-marking |
| Issue Date: | 26-Nov-2006 |
| Publisher: | University of Sydney.
Department of Linguistics |
| Abstract: | This dissertation documents the emergence of a new language, Light Warlpiri, in the multilingual community of Lajamanu in northern Australia. It then examines the acquisition of Light Warlpiri language, and of the heritage language, Lajamanu Warlpiri, by children. Light Warlpiri has arisen from contact between Lajamanu Warlpiri (a Pama-Nyungan language), Kriol (an English-based creole), and varieties of English. It is a Mixed Language, meaning that none of its source languages can be considered to be the sole parent language. Most verbs and the verbal
morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol, while most nouns and the nominal morphology are from Warlpiri.
The language input to children is complex. Adults older than about thirty speak Lajamanu Warlpiri and code-switch into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Younger adults, the parents of the current cohort of
children, speak Light Warlpiri and code-switch into Lajamanu Warlpiri and into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, the
two main input languages to children, both indicate A arguments with
ergative case-marking (and they share one allomorph of the marker),
but Lajamanu Warlpiri includes the marker much more consistently than Light
Warlpiri. Word order is variable in both languages. Children learn
both languages from birth, but they target Light Warlpiri as the
language of their everyday interactions, and they speak it almost
exclusively until four to six years of age.
Adults and children show similar patterns of ergative marking and
word order in Light Warlpiri. But differences between age groups are
found in ergative marking in Lajamanu Warlpiri - for the oldest group of
adults, ergative marking is obligatory, but for younger adults and
children, it is not.
Determining when children differentiate between two input languages
has been a major goal in the study of bilingual acquisition. The two languages in this study share lexical and grammatical properties, making distinctions between them quite
subtle. Both adults and children distribute ergative marking
differently in the two languages, but show similar word order
patterns in both. However the children show a stronger correlation
between ergative marking and word order patterns than do the adults,
suggesting that they are spearheading processes of language change.
In their comprehension of sentences in both Lajamanu Warlpiri
and Light Warlpiri, adults use a case-marking strategy to
identify the A argument (i.e. N+erg = A argument, N-erg = O argument). The children are not adult-like
in using this strategy at age 5, when they also used a word order
strategy, but they gradually move towards being adult-like with
increased age. |
| Description: | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1303 |
| Appears in Collections: | Sydney Digital Theses
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