40 years ago in Adelaide I didn’t even know the name of the people whose country was officially invaded on 28 December 1836. Last Christmas walking in the city, I saw:
Linguistics
FollowThe ‘wombat’ trail
How English acquired the word wombat is another story which began in early Sydney, after dingo (1788) and before boomerang (1820s). The way that the form and denotation of wombat came together for the colonists is notable for its convolutions, and for the record we have of some of the twists along the way.
The intriguing story of the European discovery of the common wombat Vombatus ursinus was assembled recently by museum specialists Pigott and Jessop, focussing on how “the Governor’s wombat” comes to be in Newcastle upon Tyne. There was a string of coincidences, with one sequence leading to general adoption of the word wombat for this marsupial. It spread also through the genus Vombatus (É. Geoffroy 1803) (with the synonym Wombatus (Desmarest 1804)) which was an early incorporation of an Australian word into a biological genus name — and through Family Vombatidae (Burnett 1829), up to Suborder Vombatiformes (Burnett 1830) and superfamily Vombatoidea (Archer 1984).
✝ Geoffrey Noel O’Grady 1928-2008
I was sad to learn that Geoffrey O’Grady [1] has died – on 28th December at home in Victoria, British Columbia. He was a fine linguist, who documented Australian languages (Nyangumarta most extensively), wrote the report with Ken Hale that started bilingual education in the Northern Territory, and loved with a great passion the work … Read more
Brand new day for the Darkinyung language
Late in the nineteenth century, probably on the left bank of the Hawkesbury River, Tilly Clarke and Annie Barber took the trouble to teach a surveyor, Robert H. Mathews, something of their language, Darkinyung. He wrote down words, sentences and phrases in his No. 7 notebook, and published a little about it. The notebook is preserved among his papers in the National Library of Australia. This is the main surviving written source for the Darkinyung language.
On Monday 15 December, at the Ourimbah campus of Newcastle University, the Darkinyung Language Group launched Darkinyung grammar and dictionary: revitalising a language from historical sources, by Caroline Jones. It’s another terrific Muurrbay/Many Rivers product. At the launch, Darkinyung people were centre-stage, but celebrating too were Wiradjuri, Gamilaraay, Gumbaynggirr, non-Aboriginal people, and the staff of Muurrbay and Many Rivers who made the publication possible.
How to import a basic transcript into ELAN
The problem: you have text files and audio files, but the text files are not aligned to the audio files.
I imagine there are a few readers out there who have transcriptions of audio files that never made it past an utterance per line text file. This is a post for you, if you’d like to know how to import and time-align those files in ELAN.
Sunlight through the clouds
[Updated with pictures – 21/11/08, 25/11/08, 30/11/08 ]
Three excellent books were launched yesterday, on a misty rainy day in the area of Nyambaga (Nambucca Heads). Long may they float, and God bless all who read them, buy them and review them.
They are:
- Gumbaynggirr dictionary and learner’s grammar = Gumbaynggirr bijaarr jandaygam, ngaawa gugaarrigam, by Steve Morelli, Nambucca Heads, N.S.W. : Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative, 2008.
- Barriyala – Let’s work : Gumbaynggirr language student workbook, by Julie Long.
Nambucca Heads, N.S.W. : Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-Operative, 2007. - and the most significant general reference work on Indigenous intellectual traditions published in a long time, A handbook of Aboriginal languages of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, by James Wafer, and Amanda Lissarrague with a chapter by Jean Harkins. Nambucca Heads, N.S.W. Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-Operative, 2008.
You can order the books from Muurrbay. More about the books below, but now to the launch.
Photo from Muurrbay: L-R Aunty Vilma Moylan, Aunty Jessie Williams, Uncle Ken Walker
“Thank you for supporting us as a people, and keep the spirit alive eh?” That’s how the Master of Ceremonies, and Chairman of Muurrbay, Uncle Ken Walker ended a cheerful, joking, rousing morning’s celebration of Gumbaynggirr language survival and revival. When you have 200 people to help launch three books, everything connects.
Sydney Language –mb– ~ –m– and dingo
Update: The contents of this post have been incorporated in the paper ‘Dawes’ Law generalised: cluster simplification in the coastal dialect of the Sydney Language’, published in 2011 in Indigenous languages and social identity: Papers in honour of Michael Walsh. Pacific Linguistics 626, pp.159-178.
Aspects of the Sydney Language are a perennial fascination. Last month recent events prompted me to look into the etymology of boomerang. In recent weeks the gripping SBS documentary First Australians first episode (available as a 227MB MPEG4) took us to the early days of Sydney. And now I’ve noticed what I think is an unreported sound correspondence, as I’ve become more familiar with sources on the Sydney Language.
Duelling languages
I began writing this post, appropriately enough it turns out, in Thessaloniki’s Makedonia airport on my way back to London after an international conference on Language documentation and tradition with a special interest in the Kalasha of the Hindu Kush valleys, Himalayas. The conference ran from 7th to 9th November and included five plenary talks, over 30 papers, three workshops, and several ethnographic films made last summer in Pakistan. It was attended from researchers from around the world, including blog contributor Ana Kondic, as well as five Kalashas from north-west Pakistan.
Update on Australianist Workshop in Manchester, 12-13 Dec 2008 – Eva Schultze-Berndt
[from Eva Schultze-Berndt, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, University of Manchester]
This is to remind you of the upcoming Australianist workshop at the University of Manchester. As the interest seems to be high and 12 December was a better date for some participants, the workshop will start on Friday 12 December around noon and continue for all or most of the day on Saturday 13 December.
So far I received two abstracts (thank you!). I still welcome abstracts on the theme of “Prosody and information structure” but it looks as if many contributions will be on other topics, so feel free to offer a presentation on any topic of interest to Australianists (and possibly others!).
Please let me know as soon as possible if you are interested in presenting, or just attending as a participant. If you would like to present a paper, please send me a title and abstract ASAP. I will then get back to you with a preliminary program and accommodation information by the end of October.
I’m looking forward to seeing many of you in Manchester soon.
Eva Schultze-Berndt
E-mail: eva.schultze-berndt AT manchester.ac.uk
Kartiya, kartipa – Barry Alpher
[From our kartiya in Washington, Barry Alpher]
In a query to David Nash’s posting (4 October) on munanga ‘white person’ in languages of Arnhem Land, Joe Blythe asks “So what about kartiya [the term for ‘white person’ in a number of Ngumpin-Yapa languages]? Any ideas?”
Here are a couple.
At least three languages attest kartiya: Walmajarri, Gurindji, and Warlpiri (in the form kardiya). Mudburra attests kardiba in the same meaning, and Gurindji attests kartipa as a variant of kartiya. (Note that in view of the Gurindji change *rt > r [Pat McConvell, pers. comm.; see under *kartu below], both of these Gurindji variants must be reckoned as loans.)