https://hdl.handle.net/2123/6860 2026-06-05T20:49:57Z 2026-06-05T20:49:57Z Peters, Pam de Beuzeville, Louise https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7109 2026-05-12T06:32:09Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

Proceedings of the Australian Linguistic Society Conference 2008, held in Sydney: Editors’ introduction Peters, Pam; de Beuzeville, Louise

2010-01-01T00:00:00Z LaPolla, Randy https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7107 2026-05-12T06:32:02Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

Transitivity Harmony in the Rawang Language of Northern Myanmar LaPolla, Randy 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 Liddicoat, Anthony J. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7106 2026-05-12T06:32:01Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

The erosion of Norman French dialect features: evidence from linguistic atlases Liddicoat, Anthony J. 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 https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7108 2026-05-12T06:32:05Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

Notes on contributors

2010-01-01T00:00:00Z Lonergan, John Cox, Felicity https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7096 2026-05-12T06:32:08Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

Is there any Evidence of Rhoticity in Historical Australian English? Lonergan, John; Cox, Felicity 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 Terraschke, Agnes https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7097 2026-05-12T06:32:04Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

“And I was like ‘ah yeah, what are they talking about?’” – The use of quotatives in New Zealand English Terraschke, Agnes 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 Stirling, Lesley https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7098 2026-05-12T06:32:03Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

The treatment of reported speech Stirling, Lesley 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 Bradshaw, Julie Burridge, Kate Clyne, Michael https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7099 2026-05-12T06:32:04Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

The Monash Corpus of Spoken Australian English Bradshaw, Julie; Burridge, Kate; Clyne, Michael 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 Jensen, Britta Notley, Anna Stephen, Crain https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7095 2026-05-12T06:32:06Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

Universal quantification in children’s English Jensen, Britta; Notley, Anna; Stephen, Crain 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 Kawakatsu, Manabu https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7094 2026-05-12T06:32:06Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

Designed ‘to be’ or ‘not to be’ complete? The status of the –te form in Japanese syntax for conversation Kawakatsu, Manabu 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