Marlyse Baptista, along with Viviane Deprez, gave an invited lecture at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique lab on “Structures Formelles du Language”, Groupe de Recherche sur les Grammaires Creoles. June 16, 2008. Paris, France.
View the abstract.
Carmel O’Shannessy is in Lajamanu working on a grant from the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Program (hosted at SOAS) and Janganpa Association, a Warlpiri association. She’s documenting traditional Warlpiri songs. The songs form narratives, in which ancestral beings travel across the country. The songs use some words that are used in spoken Warlpiri and many that are not, and the grammar is completely different from spoken Warlpiri. The phonology appears to be the same.
In addition she’s collecting data on Light Warlpiri and code-switching by Warlpiri speakers who don’t speak Light Warlpiri.
Carmel O’Shannessy gave a keynote address at the 16th annual Symposium about Language and Society - Austin, held at the University of Texas Austin, April 11-13.
Abstract:
A new mixed language, Light Warlpiri, has emerged in a remote community in northern Australia. It is spoken by children and young adults in the multilingual community of Lajamanu and has developed within the last 30 years. Most verbs and the verbal morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol (AE/Kriol), while most nominal morphology is from Lajamanu Warlpiri (the variety of Warlpiri spoken in Lajamanu community). Nouns are drawn from both types of source language. An innovative auxiliary system has developed which draws on, but is not the same as, the systems in the source languages. But the system for indicating grammatical functions draws directly on the two typologically different source languages. Lajamanu Warlpiri uses case-marking in an ergative-absolutive system while AE/Kriol uses word order (SVO) in a nominative-accusative system. In Light Warlpiri these two systems meet.
The language ecology in the community is complex, and code-switching between languages is very common. Children growing up in the community learn the new language, Light Warlpiri, as their primary language, and also learn Lajamanu Warlpiri in their early years. Their learning situation raises the question of how they deal with very mixed input - to what extent do they show adult-like variation and patterning in the grammatical systems of each language? The study uses production and comprehension data to examine the children’s use of word order and ergative case-marking in each language.
Brook Hefright has received a Fullbright Fellowship to conduct fieldwork on language contact and ethnic identity among the Bai people of Yunan Province, China.
Congratulations Brook!!
Sally Thomason gave a plenary address, entitled “Can language contact lead to dramatic and rapid morphosyntactic change?”, at the Cambridge University conference Continuity and Change in Grammar.
If you are interested in the answer to the plenary question, please contact Sally.
Sally Thomason gave a plenary talk at the annual meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft. The conference was held in Bamberg from Feb. 27-29.
Abstract
Does Language Contact Simplify Grammars?
In recent years the old notion that extensive language contact
tends to lead to overall simplification of linguistic structure has
attracted a new set of adherents, among them Peter Trudgill and John
McWhorter. English is frequently cited as an example of a language
that has undergone dramatic simplification as a result of language
contact, both in the transition from Old English to Middle English
and in the emergence of a variety of Englishes all over the world.
In this paper I will argue that extensive language contact does not
lead predictably to overall grammatical simplification, and that
English does not present a historical picture of simplification,
whether due to language contact or to internally-motivated change.
My main examples will come from contact situations that primarily
involve hunter-gatherer communities whose languages have not been
standardized, although they often display considerable dialectal
variation. I have too little information to assess Trudgill’s claim
that `low-contact languages’ tend to remain complex, but I will argue
against his claim that `high-contact languages’ tend to become less
complex. (more…)
Carmel O’Shannessy gave a colloquium at the University of Indiana on Feb. 1 entitled, “Language contact and acquisition: A new mixed language in northern Australia.
Abstract:
A new mixed language, Light Warlpiri, has emerged in a remote community in northern Australia. It is spoken by children and young adults in the multilingual community of Lajamanu and has developed within the last 30 years. Light Warlpiri is a verb-noun mixed language, meaning that it cannot be traced to a sole parent language, and that its verbal and nominal components tend to come from different source languages. Most verbs and the verbal morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol (AE/Kriol), while most nominal morphology is from Lajamanu Warlpiri (the variety of Warlpiri spoken in Lajamanu community). Nouns are drawn from both types of source language. An innovative auxiliary system has developed which draws on, but is not the same as, the systems in the source languages. But the system for indicating grammatical functions draws directly on the typologically different source languages. Lajamanu Warlpiri uses case-marking in an ergative-absolutive system while AE/Kriol uses word order (SVO) in a nominative-accusative system. In Light Warlpiri these two systems meet and are in functional competition. The structure of Light Warlpiri, and code-switching patterns of older speakers in the community, provide empirical evidence that languages of this type can arise from alternational code-switching practices.The language ecology in the community is complex, and code-switching between languages is very common. The complex contact situation, in which there is also rapid change, raises the question of how much variation there is in how grammatical functions are indicated within each of the two main languages spoken, and how children deal with the mixed input they receive. Analyses show that adults and children who speak both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri distribute ergative marking differently in each language - they use it more often in Lajamanu Warlpiri and less often in Light Warlpiri. Children produce more regular patterns of interaction between case-marking and word order than adults do, suggesting that they are active agents of language change.
Noun Phrases in Creole Languages: A Multi-faceted Approach
From the publisher
This volume offers a thorough examination of the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discourse properties of noun phrases in a wide variety of creole (and non-creole) languages including Cape Verdean Creole, Santome, Papiamentu, Guinea-Bissau Creole, Mindanao Chabacano, Réunionnais Creole, Lesser Antillean, Haitian Creole, Mauritian Creole, Seychellois, Sranan, Jamaican Creole, Berbice Dutch Creole and African American English. Comparative studies also consider the determiner systems of Middle and Modern French, European Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Ewe, Fon and Gun. This compilation of 16 chapters brings together descriptive, theoretical, diachronic and synchronic studies that focus on the structure and interpretation of bare nouns in creoles. The contributions demonstrate the variety and complex nature of determiner systems in creoles and their widespread use of bare nouns in comparison to their source languages. This volume is evidence of the relevance of creole languages to theories of language creation, language change and linguistic theory in general.
Carmel O’Shannessy has been invited to teach a course at the 2009 LSA Institute to be held in Berkeley, CA. The course will be on the Linguistic Effects of Language Attrition.
Carmel O’Shannessey and Sally Thomason attended the “Variations et changements morphosyntaxiques en situation de contacts de langues” workshop in Paris, Sept. 20-25.
Carmel presented “The emergence of a new mixed language in Australia”
and as reported by an unbiased and anonymous observer, “…if the workshop attendees had voted on which data-rich paper had the clearest and most elegant presentation of data and analyses, Carmel’s would have won hands down.”
Sally presented “On internally- and externally-motivated morphosyntactic change in contact situations (and how to tell which is which)”
