Abstract:While there is increasing international interest in approaching language analysis with the prism of repertoire, research on repertoire on the Australian continent is still very much in the shadow of “traditional” language-centric documentary work. This paper will explore the question of how users of Australian, English-lexified contact varieties exploit their multilingual repertoires to achieve local, conversation–organizational ends. Drawing upon a corpus of video recordings from Ipmangker, a Central Australi… Show more
This paper explores Alyawarr English, a new contact language spoken in Ipmangker, a remote Alyawarr community of
Central Australia. Focusing on language use by children and drawing on a corpus of 50+ hrs of naturalistic video recordings,
several aspects of Alyawarr English are examined in detail. The analysis centres on the origins of nominal and verbal morphology,
with comparison to the patterns of replication evidenced in other new Australian contact languages. This reveals that children’s
Alyawarr English has several points of symmetry with these languages. Nominal inflectional morphology is primarily derived from
Alyawarr sources. Verb morphology is primarily derived from Kriol/English sources. The lexicon is derived from both Kriol/English
and Alyawarr sources. Variation between morphology of Alyawarr and Kriol/English sources is also considered in each domain, to
further elucidate what gets replicated and why in the ongoing development of new Australian contact languages.
This paper explores Alyawarr English, a new contact language spoken in Ipmangker, a remote Alyawarr community of
Central Australia. Focusing on language use by children and drawing on a corpus of 50+ hrs of naturalistic video recordings,
several aspects of Alyawarr English are examined in detail. The analysis centres on the origins of nominal and verbal morphology,
with comparison to the patterns of replication evidenced in other new Australian contact languages. This reveals that children’s
Alyawarr English has several points of symmetry with these languages. Nominal inflectional morphology is primarily derived from
Alyawarr sources. Verb morphology is primarily derived from Kriol/English sources. The lexicon is derived from both Kriol/English
and Alyawarr sources. Variation between morphology of Alyawarr and Kriol/English sources is also considered in each domain, to
further elucidate what gets replicated and why in the ongoing development of new Australian contact languages.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.