Carmel O’Shannessy published the book chapter, “Language variation and change in a north Australian indigenous community.” In James N.. Stanford and Dennis R. Preston (eds) Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages, Amsterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins pp419 – 439

Abstract:
A new mixed language, Light Warlpiri, has arisen in a remote community in northern Australia, systematically combining elments of Warlpiri (mostly nouns and nominal morphology) and Aboriginal English or Kriol (mostly verbs and verbal morphology). Grammatical relations are indicated in the two source languages by differing systems – Warlpiri uses case-marking in an ergative-absolutive system and AE/Kriol uses
SVO word order. Both systems operate in Light Warlpiri to some extent. Ergative marking is variably applied to A arguments and word order is mostly SVO, but also varies. Both adults and children use the ergative marker quantitatively differently in each language, and children are adult-like in how often they apply it in the two languages. But children mark postverbal agents ergatively more often than adults to. In doing so the children are regularizing a pattern found in adult speech.

Carmel O’Shannessey’s paper (co-authored with Felicity Meakins) has appeared as an e-print in Lingua

Article title: Ordering arguments about: Word order and discourse motivations in the development and use of the ergative marker in two Australian mixed languages
Abstract:
Light Warlpiri and Gurindji Kriol are mixed languages which are spoken in northern Australia. They systematically mix the lexicon and morpho-syntax of a traditional Australian language (Warlpiri and Gurindji) and an Australian contact variety (Kriol), bringing systems from the source languages into functional competition. With respect to argument disambiguation, both Warlpiri and Gurindji use a case marking system, whereas Kriol relies on word order. These two systems of argument marking came into contact and competition in the formation of the mixed languages. The result has been the emergence of word order as the dominant system of argument disambiguation in the mixed language, the optionality of the ergative marker, and a shift in the function of the ergative marker to accord discourse prominence to the agentivity of a nominal.

Lauren Squires presented her paper, Voicing ‘Sexy Text’: TV News Representations of the Detroit Text Messaging Scandal at the Language in the (New) Media conference in Seattle, Sept. 2-5.

Abstract:

The print media have tended to represent computer‐mediated communication, including text messaging, in a negative light and as a youth‐based practice (cf. Thurlow 2003, 2006; Crystal 2008). Yet as CMC’s use continues to expand, so does its media representation. This paper addresses the representation of text messaging as practiced by adults, through a case study of TV news coverage of text messages. In 2008, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick resigned after thousands of text messages implicated him in a range of offenses, including an affair with his Chief of Staff. Messages sent by the Mayor and other city employees became the centerpiece of local public and political discourse about the events, variously named “text‐gate,” “text messaging scandal,” and “sexy text scandal.” The scandal thus compelled local media to talk about particular adults’ text messaging practices and to represent the language used therein. This case affords an exploration of how text messaging is represented in non‐youth contexts, and moreover of how TV broadcasts use multiple modalities as representational resources when “translating” texts for a TV audience. The data comprise over 100 instances of text messages that are read aloud by TV news anchors in scandal coverage, from three Detroit stations. In analyzing how the fundamentally visual language of the text messages is represented through both visual and oral modalities, several representational variables at different levels of language and discourse structure will be discussed, including:

1) replication (the messages’ reproduction on‐screen and aloud);

2) intonation (the messages’ intonational marking);

3) organization (the messages’ sequential presentation);

4) framing (the messages’ introductions).

Preliminary analysis shows that in general, the act of texting is represented as ordinarily conversational, involving rapid back‐and‐forth exchange between two participants. However, the language used within texting is represented through a “read speech” style, and broadcasters gloss stereotypical “CMC” lexical items (e.g., lol) into standard language or omit them altogether. Hence, while the broadcasters’ presentation treats the fact of these messages’ transmission through text as generally unremarkable, novel features or uses of the medium tend to be either metalinguistically highlighted or erased.

An interview with Carmel O’Shannessy will air on the Australian television program 4 corners on Sept. 14.  She was interviewed about bilingual education in the Northern Territory of Australia.

Anna Babel’s paper, “”Dizque”, evidentiality and stance in Valley Spanish” has been accepted for publication at Language in Society.  The paper explores evidentials in Andean Spanish and shows the importance of the differential usage of evidentials for various social goals and within and across individual speakers.  This paper is a revision of Anna’s Qualifying Research Paper.

Congratulations, Anna!

Lauren Squires presented a paper at the Expanding Literacy Studies conference at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH.

‘Books: not really my style’: Representing presumed literacies in online discourse

This paper discusses the use of literacy products in online profiles by taking literacy practices as one aspect of perrsonal style. I discuss ways in which literacy is presumed, packaged, and claimed through the interface, suggesting that literacy products serve as a symbolic link between virtual and non-virtual cultural practice

Lauren was also on the Conference Committee that organized the event.

Andries Coetzee  taught a course on “Variation in gradience in phonology” at the 19th Linguistics Institute of the Associação Brasileira de Lingüística (abbreviated as ABRALIN, “Brazilian Association of Linguistics”) at the UFPB ( Universidade Federal da Paraíba, “Federal University of Paraiba”) in João Pessoa,  March 2-4.

From Andries

The class was attended by about 30 people, both graduate students and professors. There was a good mix in the class of phonologists and sociolinguists of the variationist ilk, which made for very interesting and productive in class discussions. I was pleasantly surprised to see how active the phonology research community is in Brazil, and I have learned a lot from my interactions
with both faculty and students in the class.

Julie Boland and Robin Queen received a Faculty Research Award jointly from the Office for the Vice President for Research and the LSA Dean’s Office for their work on exploring the relationship between grammatical and natural gender in both implicit and explicit discrimination tasks.

Two Linguistics faculty will be teaching courses at the 2009 LSA Summer Institute.

Carmel O’Shannessey will be teaching  LSA 216:  Linguistic effects of language attrition and shift

The course will explore changes that take place within languages and speech communities when the dynamics of language use changes, so that languages spoken less often come to be spoken more often, and others come to be spoken less often. We will examine the linguistic processes occurring in use of the languages from which speakers are shifting and those to which they are shifting, including creation of new mixed languages or varieties. We will examine the interplay of language learning and attrition through individuals’ dynamic use of first and second languages in these complex situations.

Sally Thomason will be teaching LSA 212:  Language contact and language change

Because language contact is a fact of life for most of the world’s people, it is hardly surprising that it often plays a major role in language change. This course will begin with a brief survey of historical, social, and political settings of language contact, to provide background for the main focus of the course: contact-induced language change. Among the topics that will be covered are social and linguistic predictors for the effects of language contact (together with a discussion of why they can never be expected to yield deterministic predictions); the effects of contact-induced language change on the structure of the receiving language; criteria for establishing contact as a cause of language change; mechanisms of contact-induced change; linguistic areas as a special problem for the study of contact and change; mixed languages (pidgins, creoles, and bilingual mixed languages); and contact-induced changes in some (not all) dying languages.

Chris Odato has received a Graduate Student Research Award from the Institute for Research on Women and Gender for work on his dissertation.

Congratulations, Chris!