18. Language variation and change in a North Australian indigenous community
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Carmel O’Shannessy
Abstract
Speakers in a Warlpiri community in northern Australia are participants in a complex multilingual situation in which there has been a dramatic change in the last thirty years. Children, and adults under approximately age 30, now speak a new bilingual mixed language as the language of their everyday communication. The new language, Light Warlpiri, systematically combines elements from the variety of Warlpiri spoken in Lajamanu (Lajamanu Warlpiri) and Aboriginal English or Kriol (an English-lexified creole). Both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri are learned and spoken in the community. In both languages grammatical relations are indicated by an ergative-absolutive casemarking system on overt agents and a nominative-accusative system of bound pronouns, and both show variable word order. But in Light Warlpiri ergative case-marking is optional, and word order and pragmatic factors also contribute information about indicating agents. The study shows that there has been intergenerational change in the use of ergative case-marking in Warlpiri, with younger speakers using it on agents less often than older speakers. Both children and adults use ergative marking more often on agents that are postverbal, and children produce this pattern more frequently than adults do, which suggests that they are regularizing a pattern found in adult speech.
Abstract
Speakers in a Warlpiri community in northern Australia are participants in a complex multilingual situation in which there has been a dramatic change in the last thirty years. Children, and adults under approximately age 30, now speak a new bilingual mixed language as the language of their everyday communication. The new language, Light Warlpiri, systematically combines elements from the variety of Warlpiri spoken in Lajamanu (Lajamanu Warlpiri) and Aboriginal English or Kriol (an English-lexified creole). Both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri are learned and spoken in the community. In both languages grammatical relations are indicated by an ergative-absolutive casemarking system on overt agents and a nominative-accusative system of bound pronouns, and both show variable word order. But in Light Warlpiri ergative case-marking is optional, and word order and pragmatic factors also contribute information about indicating agents. The study shows that there has been intergenerational change in the use of ergative case-marking in Warlpiri, with younger speakers using it on agents less often than older speakers. Both children and adults use ergative marking more often on agents that are postverbal, and children produce this pattern more frequently than adults do, which suggests that they are regularizing a pattern found in adult speech.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
-
Introduction
- The lure of a distant horizon: Variation in indigenous minority languages 1
-
Part I. Variation in phonetics and phonology
- 1. The phonetic and phonological effects of obsolescence in Northern Paiute 23
- 2. Diglossia and monosyllabization in Eastern Cham: A sociolinguistic study 47
- 3. Affricates in Lleidatà: A sociophonetic case study 77
- 4. Sociolinguistic stratification and new dialect formation in a Canadian aboriginal community: Not so different after all? 109
- 5. The changing sound of the Māori language 129
- 6. Toward a study of language variation and change in Jonaz Chichimeco 153
- 7. A sociolinguistic sketch of vowel shifts in Kaqchikel: ATR-RTR parameters and redundancy markedness of syllabic nuclei in an Eastern Mayan language 173
- 8. Phonological features of attrition: The shift from Catalan to Spanish in Alicante 211
- 9. Sociophonetic variation in urban Ewe 229
- 10. Phonological variation in a Peruvian Quechua speech community 245
- 11. A tale of two diphthongs in an indigenous minority language: Yami of Taiwan 259
- 12. Phonological markedness, regional identity, and sex in Mayan: The fricativization of intervocalic /l/ 281
- 13. The pronunciation of /r/ in Frisian: A comparative study with Dutch and Town Frisian 299
-
Part II. Variation in syntax, morphology, and morphophonology
- 14. Language shift among the Mansi 321
- 15. Fine-grained morphophonological variation in Scottish Gaelic: Evidence from the Linguistic Survey of Scotland 347
- 16. Animacy in Bislama? Using quantitative methods to evaluate transfer of a substrate feature 369
- 17. The challenges of less commonly studied languages: Writing a sociogrammar of Faetar 397
- 18. Language variation and change in a North Australian indigenous community 419
- 19. Ethnicity, bilingualism and variable clitic marking in Bishnupriya Manipuri 441
- 20. Clan as a sociolinguistic variable: Three approaches to Sui clans 463
- 21. Language loss in spatial semantics: Dene Sųłiné 485
- Index 517
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
-
Introduction
- The lure of a distant horizon: Variation in indigenous minority languages 1
-
Part I. Variation in phonetics and phonology
- 1. The phonetic and phonological effects of obsolescence in Northern Paiute 23
- 2. Diglossia and monosyllabization in Eastern Cham: A sociolinguistic study 47
- 3. Affricates in Lleidatà: A sociophonetic case study 77
- 4. Sociolinguistic stratification and new dialect formation in a Canadian aboriginal community: Not so different after all? 109
- 5. The changing sound of the Māori language 129
- 6. Toward a study of language variation and change in Jonaz Chichimeco 153
- 7. A sociolinguistic sketch of vowel shifts in Kaqchikel: ATR-RTR parameters and redundancy markedness of syllabic nuclei in an Eastern Mayan language 173
- 8. Phonological features of attrition: The shift from Catalan to Spanish in Alicante 211
- 9. Sociophonetic variation in urban Ewe 229
- 10. Phonological variation in a Peruvian Quechua speech community 245
- 11. A tale of two diphthongs in an indigenous minority language: Yami of Taiwan 259
- 12. Phonological markedness, regional identity, and sex in Mayan: The fricativization of intervocalic /l/ 281
- 13. The pronunciation of /r/ in Frisian: A comparative study with Dutch and Town Frisian 299
-
Part II. Variation in syntax, morphology, and morphophonology
- 14. Language shift among the Mansi 321
- 15. Fine-grained morphophonological variation in Scottish Gaelic: Evidence from the Linguistic Survey of Scotland 347
- 16. Animacy in Bislama? Using quantitative methods to evaluate transfer of a substrate feature 369
- 17. The challenges of less commonly studied languages: Writing a sociogrammar of Faetar 397
- 18. Language variation and change in a North Australian indigenous community 419
- 19. Ethnicity, bilingualism and variable clitic marking in Bishnupriya Manipuri 441
- 20. Clan as a sociolinguistic variable: Three approaches to Sui clans 463
- 21. Language loss in spatial semantics: Dene Sųłiné 485
- Index 517
