The irrelevance of scale and fixedness in landscape terms in two Australian languages
-
Clair Hill
Abstract
This article examines how the speakers of Manyjilyjarra (Great Sandy Desert) and Umpila/Kuuku Ya’u (Cape York Peninsula) linguistically categorize the landscape in which they live. Located on opposite sides of Australia, in highly contrasting arid inland and tropical coastal environments, the semantics of the landscape feature terminology in these two Australian languages have key similarities. Both lexical sets overwhelmingly classify the landscape with the use of abstract and general concepts of shape and material make-up. Together with a lack of specification of size or fixedness in this terminology, this presents intriguing issues for received conceptualizations of landscape in the geosciences and language sciences. This article finds that complex and recurrent interests in material make-up extend beyond landscape feature terminology in both languages and reveal possible cultural priorities underlying the semantic patterns.
Funding source: Australian Research Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: CE140100041
Funding source: Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Award Identifier / Grant number: MDP0133
Funding source: European Research Council
Award Identifier / Grant number: 263512
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Manyjilyjarra, Umpila, and Kuuku Ya’u speakers who taught me about their languages, and to the wider communities who supported this work. Andrew Turk was my collaborator on the Manyjilyjarra fieldwork and our discussions played a key role in the development of many ideas presented in this article. I would like to express my gratitude to the editors of this special issue, Alice Gaby, Bill Palmer, and Jonathon Lum, who provided detailed comments on this article. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. I presented a version of this analysis at the twelfth International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology (2017) and at a symposium at the University of Amsterdam (2016), and I thank members of the audience for useful comments on both occasions, especially Niclas Burenhult, Carolyn O’Meara, and David Nash.
-
Research funding: Work on this paper was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University (CE140100041). Fieldwork on Manyjilyjarra was supported by the European Research Council (ERC starting grant 263512) and by Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa. Fieldwork on Umpila/Kuuku Ya’u was supported by the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (MDP0133).
References
Battig, William & William Montague. 1968. Category norms for verbal items in 56 categories: A replication and extension of the Connecticut norms. Journal of Experimental Psychology 80(3:2). 1–46.10.1037/h0027577Suche in Google Scholar
Berlin, Bernt & Paul Kay. 1969. Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Bohnemeyer, Jurgen. 2011. Spatial frames of reference in Yucatec Maya: Referential promiscuity and task specificity. Language Sciences 33(6). 892–914. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2011.06.009.Suche in Google Scholar
Bromhead, Helen. 2011. Ethnogeographical categories in English and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara. Language Sciences 33(1). 58–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.07.004.Suche in Google Scholar
Bromhead, Helen. 2018. Landscape and culture: Cross-linguistic perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/clscc.9Suche in Google Scholar
Burenhult, Niclas (ed.). 2008. Language and landscape: Geographical ontology in cross-linguistic perspective. [Special issue]. Language Sciences 30(2–3).10.1016/j.langsci.2006.12.028Suche in Google Scholar
Burenhult, Niclas, Clair Hill, Juliette Huber, Saskia van Putten, Konrad Rybka & Lila San Roque. 2017. Forests: The cross-linguistic perspective. Geographica Helvetica 72. 455–464. https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-72-455-2017.Suche in Google Scholar
Burenhult, Niclas & Stephen C. Levinson. 2008. Language and landscape: A cross-linguistic perspective. Language Sciences 30(2–3). 135–150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2006.12.028.Suche in Google Scholar
Chase, Athol. 1980. Which way now? Tradition, continuity and change in a North Queensland Aboriginal community. Brisbane: University of Queensland PhD thesis.Suche in Google Scholar
Gaby, Alice & Ruth Singer. 2014. Semantics of Australian languages. In Harold Koch & Rachel Nordlinger (eds.), The languages and linguistics of Australia: A comprehensive guide, 295–327. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110279771.295Suche in Google Scholar
Hill, Clair. 2007–2010. Paman languages: Umpila, Kuuku Ya’u, Kaanju. Endangered Languages Archive. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0001-8CF4-F.Suche in Google Scholar
Hill, Clair. 2011. Named and unnamed spaces: Color, kin, and the environment in Umpila. Senses & Society 6. 57–67. https://doi.org/10.2752/174589311x12893982233759.Suche in Google Scholar
Hill, Clair & Andrew Turk. 2014–2016. Manyjilyjarra documentation [Dataset]. LACOLA project, Lund University Humanities Lab Corpus Server. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10050/00-0000-0000-0003-7BD5-A@view.Suche in Google Scholar
Hill, Clair & Andrew Turk. 2016. Manyjilyjarra: English pictorial dictionary of landscape terms. Newman: Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa.Suche in Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2008. Landscape, seascape and the ontology of places on Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea. Language Sciences 30. 256–290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2006.12.032.Suche in Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. & David Wilkins (eds.). 2006. Grammars of space: Explorations in cognitive diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486753Suche in Google Scholar
Lounsbury, Floyd. 1964. A formal account of the Crow- and Omaha-type kinship terminologies. New York: McGraw-Hill.Suche in Google Scholar
Mark, David & Andrew Turk. 2003. Landscape categories in Yindjibarndi: Ontology, environment, and language. In Werner Kuhn, Michael Worboys & Sabine Timpf (eds.), Spatial information theory: Foundations of geographic information science (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2825), 28–45. Berlin: Springer.10.1007/978-3-540-39923-0_3Suche in Google Scholar
Mark, David, Andrew Turk & David Stea. 2007. Progress on Yindjibarndi ethnophysiography. In Stephan Winter, Duckham Matt, Lars Kulik & Ben Kuipers (eds.), Spatial information theory (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4736), 1–19. Berlin: Springer.10.1007/978-3-540-74788-8_1Suche in Google Scholar
Mark, David, Andrew Turk, Niclas Burenhult & David Stea (eds.). 2011. Landscape in language: Transdisciplinary perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/clu.4Suche in Google Scholar
Mark, David, Barry Smith & Barbara Tversky. 1999. Ontology and geographic objects: An empirical study of cognitive categorization. In Christian Freksa & David M. Mark (eds.), Spatial information theory: Cognitive and computational foundations of geographic information science (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1661), 283–298. Berlin: Springer.10.1007/3-540-48384-5_19Suche in Google Scholar
Nash, David. 1983–1984. Warlpiri topography classification. Yuendumu: Warlpiri Literature Production Centre.Suche in Google Scholar
O’Connor, Loretta & Peter C. Kroefges. 2008. The land remembers: Landscape terms and place names in Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, Mexico. Language Sciences 30. 291–315.10.1016/j.langsci.2006.12.007Suche in Google Scholar
O’Meara, Carolyn & Jurgen Bohnemeyer. 2008. Complex landscape terms in Seri. Language Sciences 30. 312–335.10.1016/j.langsci.2006.12.006Suche in Google Scholar
O’Meara, Carolyn, Niclas Burenhult, Mikael Rothstein & Sercombe Peter. 2020. Representing space and place: Hunter-gatherer perspectives. Hunter Gatherer Research 4(3). 287–309.10.3828/hgr.2018.19Suche in Google Scholar
Palmer, Bill. 2015. Topography in language: Absolute frame of reference and the topographic correspondence hypothesis. In Busser Rik de & LaPolla Randy (eds.), Language structure and environment, 179–226. London: John Benjamins.10.1075/clscc.6.08palSuche in Google Scholar
Palmer, Bill, Jonathon Lum, Jonathan Schlossberg & Alice Gaby. 2017. How does the environment shape spatial language? Evidence for sociotopography. Linguistic Typology 21(3). 457–491. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2017-0011.Suche in Google Scholar
van Putten, Saskia, Carolyn O’Meara, Flurina Wartmann, Joanna Yager, Julia Villette, Claudia Mazzuca, Claudia Bieling, Niclas Burenhult, Purves Ross & Asifa Majid. 2020. Conceptualisations of landscape differ across European languages. PLoS One 15(10). e0239858. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239858.Suche in Google Scholar
Riemer, Nicholas. 2005. The semantics of polysemy: Reading meaning in English and Warlpiri. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110197556Suche in Google Scholar
Smith, Barry & David Mark. 2001. Geographical categories: An ontological investigation. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 15(7). 591–612. https://doi.org/10.1080/13658810110061199.Suche in Google Scholar
Thomson, Donald. 1933. The hero cult, initiation and totemism on Cape York. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 63. 453–537. https://doi.org/10.2307/2843801.Suche in Google Scholar
Walsh, Fiona. 2008. To hunt and to hold: Martu Aboriginal people’s uses and knowledge of their country, with implications for co-management in Karlamilyi (Rudall River) National Park and the Great Sandy Desert, Western Australia. Perth: University of Western Australia PhD thesis.Suche in Google Scholar
Wilkins, David. 1989. Mparntwe Arrernte (Aranda): Studies in the structure and semantics of grammar. Canberra: Australian National University PhD thesis.Suche in Google Scholar
Youn, Hyejin, Logan Sutton, Eric Smith, Cristopher Moore, Jon F. Wilkins, Ian Maddieson, William Croft & Tanmoy Bhattacharya. 2016. On the universal structure of human lexical semantics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113(7). 1766–1771. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1520752113.Suche in Google Scholar
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Diversity in representing space within and between language communities
- A quantitative approach to sociotopography in Austronesian languages
- Directionals, topography, and cultural construals of landscape in Lamaholot
- A socially anchored approach to spatial language in Kalaallisut
- River-based and egocentric spatial orientation in Yine
- Geocentric directional systems in Australia: a typology
- The irrelevance of scale and fixedness in landscape terms in two Australian languages
- Changes in spatial frames of reference use in Iwaidja in different intergenerational contexts
- Cross-generational differences in linguistic and cognitive spatial frames of reference in Negev Arabic
- Sociotopography meets Dialectology: the case of Aquilan
- Conflation of spatial reference frames in deaf community sign languages
- Linguistic spatial reference systems across domains: How people talk about space in sailing, dancing, and other specialist areas
- The influence of language, culture, and environment on the use of spatial referencing in a multilingual context: Taiwan as a test case
- Reference frames in language and cognition: cross-population mismatches
- From the field into the lab: causal approaches to the evolution of spatial language
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Diversity in representing space within and between language communities
- A quantitative approach to sociotopography in Austronesian languages
- Directionals, topography, and cultural construals of landscape in Lamaholot
- A socially anchored approach to spatial language in Kalaallisut
- River-based and egocentric spatial orientation in Yine
- Geocentric directional systems in Australia: a typology
- The irrelevance of scale and fixedness in landscape terms in two Australian languages
- Changes in spatial frames of reference use in Iwaidja in different intergenerational contexts
- Cross-generational differences in linguistic and cognitive spatial frames of reference in Negev Arabic
- Sociotopography meets Dialectology: the case of Aquilan
- Conflation of spatial reference frames in deaf community sign languages
- Linguistic spatial reference systems across domains: How people talk about space in sailing, dancing, and other specialist areas
- The influence of language, culture, and environment on the use of spatial referencing in a multilingual context: Taiwan as a test case
- Reference frames in language and cognition: cross-population mismatches
- From the field into the lab: causal approaches to the evolution of spatial language
