Linguistics – Page 23 – Endangered Languages and Cultures

Congratulations

5 February 201129 September 2006 by admin

Running a bit late on this post, but, congratulations to Stan Grant Senior on being awarded the 2006 Deadly for “Outstanding Acheivement in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education”, for his work on Wiradjuri language revival. And of course, congratulations too to all the other recipients!

HCSNet Summer School 2006

5 February 201129 September 2006 by admin

Registration for the Human Communication Sciences Network SummerFest06 (Nov 27th – Dec 1st) opens today. There looks to be an interesting line up of courses. I’m hoping I can head along to the courses on Bayesian Networks and Markov Models and Statistics for Linguistics amongst others. I heard that Trevor Johnston’s course on sign languages … Read more

invitation… to the launch of the Yuwaalaraay-Gamilaraay Language Programs resources

5 February 201124 September 2006 by Jane Simpson

To all our readers who’ll be in the Tamworth area (New South Wales) on Friday 20 October, 2006. Remember the post on the excellent new Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay resources?
Well this is your chance to admire the resources, and to see performances from the kids learning the Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay languages. John Giacon passes on this invitation.

Non-intrusive video taping or spying on your informants?

5 February 201122 September 2006 by admin

(Following a previous post and a reply from Claire at Anggarrgoon)
Is it possible to reduce the intrusiveness of video taping someone?
Before I launch into this… let me just say: “flashing lights and ethical alarm bells!”. What I’m going to talk about is the paradox of fully informing your informants that you’re going film them, and then trying your hardest to seem like you’re not there!

Noongar, Native Title, Linguistic evidence: a small celebration before the night

5 February 201121 September 2006 by Jane Simpson

The cause for celebration is Justice Murray Wilcox’s finding that Noongar people have ‘native title’ to certain parts of the Perth Metropolitan area (Federal Court (Bennell v State of Western Australia [2006] FCA 1243), Perth, 19 SEPTEMBER 2006).
The pursuit of native title (like the Snark) has cost heaps and caused much grief. But when native title is recognised, it’s great, and when the value of linguistic evidence in determining it is recognised, this is also great. Wilcox’s findings have lots of interesting things to say about Noongar language, what the claimants said, and the expert linguistic evidence provided by PARADISEC’s Nick Thieberger.

Media Cannibals

5 February 201119 September 2006 by admin

Media watch devoted their entire episode on the 18th of September to analysis of this embarrassing stoush between channel 7 and channel 9. Until next monday, you can view this week’s Media Watch online, the transcripts should be up for a bit longer than that.
Perhaps my only criticism on the Media Watch coverage is that they focused mostly on the content of the fight between the two channels, but didn’t look so much at how ridiculously improbable the scenario was. I guess a follow up on this Paul Raffaele character, and a real discussion of life and hardships of people living in Papua (AIDS springs to mind…amongst many other issues), is content for a real news show rather than a show that critiques the media…
incidentally…I love the title “why 7 ate 9”

Market value of ‘Aboriginal’ words

5 February 201119 September 2006 by Jane Simpson

Diverting myself from contemplation of pronouns, I was led via the Indigenous alert (you get this by e-mailing library.research AT facs.gov.au) to a story on a spa in Queensland where the writer was testing

“Lowana from Li’Tya, a range of products and treatments which draw inspiration from indigenous Australian culture”

‘Lowana’ caught my attention, since I have been idling around with the etymology of lubra, which takes in Oyster Bay Tasmanian lowana ‘woman’. HO, I thought, a Tasmanian enterprise perhaps. ‘Woman’ I thought, good name for spa consumers. ‘Lowana’ – fits English speakers’ sense of euphony. So I went further to Spa care from the Australian Dreamtime. My machine was instantly taken over by a buzzing drone-pipe, but I fought on (with the help of the volume control), wading through the piccies of cute painted-up people, in search of WORDS..

“First Contact” experience?

5 February 201115 September 2006 by admin

With a language group that has 10,200 hits on google and a definition in wikipedia! Hmmm… Bill Foley, from the Linguistic Department here at Sydney Uni did an interview this afternoon and will be on channel seven’s news tonight commenting on the disgraceful “Wa-Wa” scandal.

Making journalists accountable – rules of evidence and the right to silence?

5 February 201115 September 2006 by Jane Simpson

Today’s Australian has the linguist Frances Kofod’s moving obituary for a Gija painter and law man, Hector Jandany. This is the good side of the Australian‘s coverage of Indigenous affairs. The bad side however has come to the fore this week.

Language in Australia and New Zealand?

5 February 201113 September 2006 by admin

a post from Nick Thieberger
David Nash just alerted me to http://www.mouton-online.com/ausbib.php which is promisingly called: ‘Language in Australia and New Zealand’, and, for a mere 248 euros would seem to be an indispensible aid to the Australasian linguist. I popped in and got a guest logon which they generously (but perhaps ill-advisedly) offer for free. It seems to be a bibliographic listing (but in the days of Google Scholar and other such resources it may already be redundant?). I put in the name of my favourite Aboriginal language, Warnman, and got zero hits. Curious I thought.