Development of a Learner’s Grammar for Paakantyi

Abstract

Paakantyi is an Indigenous language group from western New South Wales. Although classified as critically endangered, Paakantyi is undergoing an active process of renewal, with a number of initiatives underway. There is, however, an acknowledged need for more accessible resources to support teachers and learners in their language renewal efforts. Community demand, combined with the substantial language documentation and grammatical analysis that has already been done, makes Paakantyi an ideal target for a learner's grammar, the creation of which is the focus of this project. The first section of this thesis is a dissertation providing background information relating to the Paakantyi people and their language; a summary of Paakantyi language documentation and renewal activities; and a description of the processes undergone in creating the learner's grammar. The second and most substantial component of this thesis is the learner's grammar itself, which is based on Luise Hercus' 1982 book The Bāgandji Language. The framework of the learner's grammar was created by summarising grammatical descriptions in The Bāgandji Language and supplementing these with examples and additional information taken from more recent resources. Summaries of key concepts have been added to the end of each section so that the reader can easily refer to these without re-reading the longer text. The terminology used has been simplified so that the grammar can be read and understood by non-specialists. In some cases, detailed explanations have been added to Hercus' examples so that complex grammatical processes can be more readily understood by learners. In addition, the orthography of all Paakantyi lexical items used in grammatical descriptions and example sentences has been updated to conform to that currently used by the Paakantyi community.