LANGUAGE IN AUSTRALIA provides a comprehensive account of the present linguistic situation in Australia, primarily from a sociolinguistic perspective. The focus is mainly on description, and the chapters aim to provide a comprehensive overview and summary of what is known about Australia's languages as well as a guide to current areas of research interest. The volume is divided into five parts. The first four contain chapters dealing with Australia's indigenous and non-indigenous languages, and the fifth is devoted to public policy and social issues related to the languages of Australia. There are also sketches of each of the major language types in Australia. These include Aboriginal languages, pidgins and Creoles, Aboriginal English, and community languages such as Greek, Italian and Serbo-Croat. No other book offers such a broad survey of the language situation in Australia. Linguists as well as non-specialists will find in this volume, a companion to Language in the USA and Language in the British Isles, a guide and reference source to the linguistic heritage of Australia.
Language in Australia
Language in Australia
edited by SUZANNE ROMAINE Merton College, Oxford
The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge New York Port Chester Melbourne Sydney
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13,28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http ://wwwcambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1991 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1991 First paperback edition 2004 A catalogue recordfor this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Language in Australia, edited by Suzanne Romaine. 000 p. 00 cm. Includes index. ISBN 0 521 32786 5 hardback 1. Australia - Languages. 2. Socio-linguistics -Australia. I. Romaine, Suzanne. 1951P381.A78L35 1991 409.94-dc20 90-1844 CIP ISBN 0 521 32786 5 hardback ISBN 0 521 33983 9 paperback
Contents
List of illustrations List of tables Notes on contributors Preface A cknowledgemen ts Introduction
SUZANNE ROMAINE
Part I Aboriginal and Islander Languages 1
Overview of indigenous languages of Australia
page ix xi xiii xvii xix 1 25 27
MICHAEL WALSH
2
Language in Aboriginal Australia: social dialects in a geographic idiom PETER S U T T O N 3 Aboriginal English - an overview IAN G, MALCOLM
49 67
AND SUSAN KALDOR
4
Communicative strategies in Aboriginal English
84
DIANA EADES
5
Language and communication in Aboriginal land claim hearings
6
7
8
Warlpiri in the 80s: an overview of research into language variation and child language EDITH L. BAVIN AND TIM SHOPEN A sketch of Kalaw Kawaw Ya KEVIN FORD AND DANA OBER
Understanding language shift: a step towards language maintenance P A T R I C K MCCONVELL
Part II Pidgins and Creoles 9
Overview of the pidgin and Creole languages of Australia
94
HAROLD KOCH
PETER MUHLHAUSLER
104
118
143
157 159
viii
Contents
10 Queensland Kanaka English PETER M U H L H A U S L E R 11 Torres Strait creole ANNA S H N U K A L 12 Kriol - the creation of a new language
174 180 195
JOHN W. HARRIS
13 A sketch of the structure of Kriol
J O H N SANDEFUR
204
Part III Transplanted languages other than English
213
14 Overview of 'immigrant7 or community
215
languages
MICHAEL CLYNE
15 Dutch in Australia: perceptions of and attitudes towards transference and other language contact phenomena
228
ANNE PAUWELS
16 German and Dutch in Australia: structures and use
241
MICHAEL CLYNE
17 Modern Greek in Australia ANASTASIOS TAMIS 18 Language variety among Italians: anglicisation, attrition and attitudes
CAMILLA BETTONI
249 263
19 First generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland: language maintenance and language shift
270
JACQUES DOUCET
Part IV Varieties of Australian English
285
20
287
A survey of regional usage in the lexicon of Australian English
21 22
P A U L I N E BRYANT
Finding a place in Sydney: migrants and language change BARBARA M. H O R V A T H Gender differences in Australian English
304 318
ANNE PAUWELS
Part V Public policy and social issues
327
23 National language policy and planning: migrant
329
languages
24 25
ULDIS O Z O L I N S
Social class differences in the lexicon D A V I D Plain English: some sociolinguistic revelations
CORSON
349 363
ROBERT D. EAGLESON
References Index
373 401
Illustrations
Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1 8.1 8.2 13.1 17.1 17.2 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 24.1 24.2
24.3
Ergative and accusative marking in relation to the page 39 animacy hierarchy Competing case systems in Yidiny 39 Example of an Australian phonological inventory 41 Basic phonological inventory of a hypothetical 41 Australian language Gunaarlpelyu Expanded inventory of Gunaarlpelyu 41 Preliminary statement of genetic relationships, Wik 60 Group Model of language choice in bilingualism 151 Social arenas relevant to codeswitching at Daguragu 153 Phonemes of Kriol 205 Number of overseas-born Greek-Australians in Victoria 252 Evolution of modern Greek in Australia 260 The linguistic structure of the sociolects in the periphery 309 The linguistic structure of the sociolects in the core 310 Distribution of the social characteristics across the core 311 sociolects The sociolinguistic relationship between migrants and 316 their hosts: an intergenerational model Line graph illustrating group means recorded on the 355 measure by age and social group ( N = 129) Line graph illustrating group percentage means recorded 357 on the G-L instrument by age and social group. Descriptive task-oral language ( N = 129) Line graph illustrating group percentage means recorded 357 on the G-L instrument by age and social group. Explanatory task-oral language ( N = 129)
x
List of illustrations
24.4
24.5
Line graph illustrating group percentage means recorded on the G-L instrument by age and social group. Descriptive task-written language (N = 80) Line graph illustrating percentage means recorded on the G-L instrument by age and social group. Explanatory task-written language (N = 80)
358
Approximate location of languages referred to Major classifications of Australian languages The Wik region Clan countries Language associations by clan estate, Wik Region The Western Torres Strait, showing major dialect boundaries Torres Strait showing inhabited islands Regional distribution of Cheerio-Frankfurt etc. South-East regional distribution of Dink-Dinky-Donkey Slide
28 34 54 58 63
358
Maps 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 7.1 11.1 20.1 20.2 20.3
119 181 294 296 300
Tables
6.1 6.2
6.3 10.1 11.1 14.1
14.2 15.1 15.2 16.1 16.2 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 19.1 19.2
The traditional Warlpiri system for Bound Subject page 107 Pronouns The traditional Warlpiri system for Bound Subject 108 Pronouns, analysed into morphemes for person and number The forms most frequently used by young Warlpiri 109 speakers for Bound Subject Pronouns Number of male and female Melanesians in Queensland 176 Phonological inventory of TSC 186 Home use of languages other than English: total 217 numbers for first 14 community languages and Aboriginal languages 218 Percentage language shift 237 Contingency between the A-test and the Attitudinal test 237 Contingency between the B-test and the Attitudinal test Language shift in the first and second generations: 243 German and Dutch Percentage of syntactic transfers - proximity-motivated 247 or SVO generalisation Number of regular users of Modern Greek in Australia 250 by state Medium of communication normally used by second 252 generation claimants Number of students attending Modern Greek classes in 253 Australia Parental evaluation of the linguistic skills of their older 254 and younger children Attitudes towards language maintenance, by generation 255 Media variables 274 Written items 274
xii
List of tables
19.3 Printed items 19.4 Listening practices 19.5 Domains of language use 19.6 Dominance configuration 21.1 The phonetic variants of selected AE vowels 21.2 Percent distribution of vowel variants in the peripheral sociolects 21.3 Percent distribution of Anglo-Celtic speakers over the three varieties of AE 21.4 Percent distribution of Greek and Italian speakers over the three varieties of AE 21.5 Percent distribution of all ethnic groups across the four core sociolects 22.1 Gender and major differentiators of AE varieties
276 276 278 279 307 309 312 312 313 321
Notes on contributors
is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at La Trobe University. Since 1982 she has been doing research on Warlpiri, in particular, children's acquisition of the language.
EDITH BAVIN
CAMILLA BETTONI is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics in the Department of Italian at the University of Sydney. Her book, Italian in North Queensland (1981), is based on her extensive research on Italian in Australia. PAULINE BRYANT is a PhD student in Linguistics at the Australian National University. In addition to her research on regional variation, she has investigated intonation in Australian English.
CLYNEis Professor of Linguistics at Monash University. His books include Australia Talks (1976), Multilingual Australia (1982) and Australia - Meeting Place of Languages (1985).
MICHAEL
is in the Education Faculty at Massey University in New Zealand. His books include The Lexical Bar (1985), Oral Language Across the Curriculum, Language Policy Across the Curriculum and he is editor of Language and Education: An International Journal
DAVID CORSON
JACQUES DOUCET is Adviser in Education in the Department of Defence in France and has done research on Serbo-Croatian in Queensland. DIANA EADES is lecturing in Linguistics at the University of New England
and currently carrying out research on the use of Aboriginal English in legal interviews. is Associate Professor of Modern English Language at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Aboriginal English and the Child (with Susan Kaldor and Ian G. Malcolm, 1982) and Plain English and the Law. He is Special Adviser on Plain English to the Australian Government. ROBERT D. EAGLESON
xiv
Notes on contributors
KEVIN FORD is Principal Lecturer at the School of Australian Linguistics in Batchelor and is currently working on a dictionary of Kalaw Kawaw Ya/Kalaw Lagaw Ya. J O H N W . HARRIS is
now Director of the Zadock Institute for Christianity and Society in Canberra after having spent many years in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. His most recent book is One Blood: Aborigines Encounter 200 Years of Christianity. BARBARAM.HORVATHis Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Variation in Australian English: The Sociolects of Sydney (198 5). SUSAN KALDOR has recently retired from her position as Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of Western Australia. Her report, Languages for Western Australia, is a language policy document currently being implemented by the Western Australian Ministry of Education. HAROLD KOCH is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the Australian National University. His major research project is a descriptive and comparative study of the Kaytej language of Central Australia.
is Head of the Department of Language Studies in the Western Australian College of Advanced Education and collaborated with Susan Kaldor in a survey of Aboriginal children's English in Western Australia.
I A N G . MALCOLM
PATRICK McCONVELL is Lecturer in Anthropology at University College of the Northern Territories.
is Lecturer in General Linguistics at the University of Oxford and currently working at Bond University. He is the author of Pidgin and Creole linguistics (1986) and co-edited with Stephen Wurm the Handbook of Tok Pisin (1985). PETER MUHLHAUSLER
works for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in Townsville and is a speaker of Kalaw Kawaw Ya.
DANAOBER
ULDIS OZOLI NS is a Lecturer in the Department
of Language and Culture Studies at Victoria College in Melbourne. His research interests include language policy and education with particular reference to migrant languages in Australia.
PAUWELsis Director of the National Centre for Cross-Cultural Communication and Community Languages in the Professions at Monash University. She is the author of Immigrant Dialects and Language Maintenance in Australia (1986) and the editor of Women and Language in Australian and New Zealand Society (1987). ANNE
Notes on contributors
xv
S U Z A N N E ROMAINE is Merton Professor of English Language at the University of Oxford. Her books include The Language of Children and Adolescents (1984), Pidgin and Creole Languages (1988) and Bilingualism (1989).
is a translator with the Australian Aborigines and Islanders Branch of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, assigned since 1973 to the Kriol Bible translation project. He has published a language course on Kriol (with Joy Sandefur, 1981), a grammar of the language (1979) along with papers describing various aspects of the language.
J O H N SANDEFUR
ANNA SHNUKALis Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Queensland. Her description of Torres Strait Creole {Broken: An Introduction to the Creole Language of the Torres Strait) was published in 1989. PETER S U T T O N is Head of the Division of Anthropology at the South Australian Museum, in Adelaide. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in Aboriginal communities and has recently edited Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia (1988). TIMOTHY SHOPEN
is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the Australian
National University. ANASTASiosTAMisis Lecturer in Greek Studies at the Universities of La Trobe and Melbourne. His most recent books are Greeks in Australia (1988), The Immigration and Settlement of Greek Macedonians in Australia (1989) and Glossologia (1989). is Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Sydney. He is currently working on a general guide to Aboriginal languages (with Paul Black) and a reference grammar of Murrinh-Patha.
MICHAEL W A L S H
Preface
The impetus for this book came from the publication of Language in the USA (Ferguson and Heath 1981) and Language in the British Isles (Trudgill 1984). This volume is a companion and complement to these two. The purpose of Language in Australia is to provide a comprehensive account of the present linguistic situation in Australia, primarily from a sociolinguistic perspective. There are at present no other books which offer such a broad survey of the language situation in Australia, although there are now works which cover selected aspects of it, for example, Clyne (1976), a sample of studies on Australian English, migrant and Aboriginal languages, Clyne (1982) on the position of community languages, Clyne (1985) on language contact, Blair and Collins (1989) on varieties of Australian English, and the surveys of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages by Dixon and Blake (1979), Dixon (1980), Blake (1981), and Yallop (1982). These and other publications are, however, important indications of the recent considerable interest in the languages of Australia. This volume is divided into five parts. The first four contain chapters dealing with Australia's indigenous and non-indigenous languages and the fifth is devoted to public policy and social issues related to the languages of Australia. There are also sketches of each of the major language types in Australia. The chapters are mainly descriptive. They aim to provide a comprehensive overview and summary of what is known about Australia's languages as well as a guide to current areas of research interest. Throughout, the contributors pay special attention to issues arising from the sociohistorical situation in which Australia's languages and language varieties coexist. As in the other major English-speaking countries, English is a relative newcomer to a linguistic scene which was already very diverse and heterogeneous. Present-day Australians speak a wide range of languages making Australia, as Clyne (1985) suggests, a meeting place of languages. While most Australians are English monolinguals, as are the majority of Britons and Americans, the continent's original inhabitants
xviii
Preface
were largely multilingual and many still are today. The languages spoken by the descendants of the original inhabitants of Australia include the following: surviving Aboriginal languages, a Creole, for example, Kriol or Cape York Creole, Aboriginal English, and a variety of Australian English. There are also many other bilingual Australians who have settled more recently and still maintain knowledge of a language other than English, for example, Greek, Italian, German, Dutch, and Serbo-Croatian, to name only a few of the new 'community' languages dealt with in part III of this volume. The editors of both Language in the USA and Language in the British Isles lament the fact that many people are relatively uninformed about the language situation in their own countries. While it may seem tedious to repeat this complaint here, it is no less true of Australia than of Britain and the United States. This volume is dedicated to the spirit of linguistic and cultural diversity and the hope that non-specialists will also find in this volume an appreciation of the rich linguistic heritage of Australia.
Acknowledgements
My biggest debt is to Bruce Rigsby for his help in the planning and undertaking of this volume. Without his support and willingness to respond to my queries, I would not havefinishedit as easily. I also received much useful advice and assistance from Michael Clyne during the preparation of part III on transplanted languages other than English. I have also had a great deal of secretarial assistance from the English Faculty Office of the University of Oxford during the preparation of this book, which has made my task as editor smoother than might normally have been possible. I am very grateful to Caroline Johnston, who assisted me in the early stages, and to Sarah Barker and Jackie Wall for their help with the final stages. Sarah's willingness in particular to undertake the typing of seemingly endless revisions was responsible for seeing the project to completion sooner rather than later. I would also like to thank Penny Carter, Marion Smith and Judith Ayling at Cambridge University Press for their sustained interest in this project.
Introduction SUZANNE ROMAINE
Australia is a geographically isolated and largely English-speaking continent surrounded primarily by non-English-speaking neighbours (apart from New Zealand). The story of its languages presents an intriguing case study for sociolinguists. While most Australians today are English monolinguals, the English language is a recent arrival. The majority of the country's original inhabitants were largely multilingual and many still are. The chapters in this book give a comprehensive overview and summary of what is known about the sociolinguistic situation of Australia's major language varieties. In my introduction I aim to provide a sociohistorical background to the evolution of the major varieties of language now found on the Australian continent. One of the most interesting developments I attempt to trace is how a new ideology of pluralism arose in the 1970s in response to social and political changes. This was in direct opposition to the earlier 'White Australia' policy, which projected an image of an ideal Australia which was monocultural, monolingual and monoracial. I also document how Australian attitudes towards language and linguistic diversity have deep historical precedents in the cultural ideology of western Europe and are paralleled in the major Anglophone nations, particularly Britain and the United States. Oppressive policies towards linguistic minorities were practised by the British for a long time 'at home' and transplanted to new colonies elsewhere. Australia has, however, recently taken steps to ensure language maintenance and to foster the development of language skills. I offer a comparative perspective on language in the United States, Britain and Australia, and consider the question of whether Australia constitutes a speech community. Finally, I make some remarks about future developments.
2
SUZANNE ROMAINE
Languages in sociohistorical perspective
Upon its arrival in Australia as a transplanted language in the eighteenth century, English quickly assumed the status of dominant language. Of considerable interest in the Australian language community is the changing ecology of a situation in which different languages have come to coexist and influence each other. One major factor here is, of course, the continued spread of English worldwide and theriseof distinctively Australian English varieties. This has been significant in the decline in use of some native Aboriginal languages, and has resulted in the addition of new Englishbased varieties (i.e. pidgin, Creole and Aboriginal English) to the communicative repertoires of many rural and urban Aboriginal communities (see Sandefur, Harris, Shnukal, and Miihlhausler, chapter 10, this volume). For a time the Australian linguistic repertoire also included Melanesian and Polynesian languages, when some 60,000 Pacific Islanders were brought in to work on the plantations of Queensland. While they seem to have had little effect on the indigenous languages of Australia, the linguistic legacy of these people survived until recently in Queensland Kanaka English. This and other early non-European linguistic contacts in Australia resulting in new varieties of English are discussed by Miihlhausler, chapter 9, this volume). New contact situations have arisen through immigration and new language communities, such as Greek and Italian, have been established. As in both the United States and Britain, there are both 'new' and 'old' immigrant communities. Australia's Dutch connection, for instance, goes back to 1606, when William Jansz and his crew explored the waters around Cape York Peninsula. In the seventeenth century Australia was known as New Holland. This was more than 100 years before James Cook's Endeavour dropped anchor in Botany Bay. While Dutch exploration continued into the late eighteenth century, the Dutch never established a permanent settlement. The first Dutch to settle there were convicts transported from England (see Duyker 1987). Most Dutch immigration has been a postwar phenomenon of the 1950s and 1960s and today for various reasons, language maintenance is the weakest among this group (see Pauwels, chapter 15, and Clyne, chapter 16, this volume). Immigration has been a consistent theme in Australian history since 1788. Historians generally recognise three major immigrant waves of 1825-60, the 1880s and 1910-30 (see, e.g. Jupp 1966). Convict settlement was planned from London and entry to Australia was controlled to a degree never true for the Americas. Australia attracted few free migrants until the 1820s. From the 1830s anyone who was British (and also white, after 1901) could enter Australia. This remained true until the 1970s. The foundations of the 'Old Australian' population were laid between the 1820s
Introduction
3
and early 1860s. A leaflet distributed in the 1880s by the Agent-General for Queensland in order to attract English immigrants described Queensland as 'no foreign land, but only England over the water' (cited in The Canberra Times, 6 August 1988). The practice of free British entry was coupled with that of virtually free travel for approved immigrants from Britain and Ireland. This gave Australia discretionary choice of immigrants and thus served to maintain the ethnic (and sex) balance. Non-Europeans were rejected regardless of their culture or education. There was also a tendency to see non-British immigrants as unskilled and potential labourers or domestics, though by the 1950s it was apparent that more immigrants from southern Europe (excluded from the United States since the early 1920s) would tip the balance in their favour. A phobia about misegenation and a desire to protect the 'white race' were involved in the debate that resulted in The Federal Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. The term 'White Australia' was used in this context and gave its name unofficially to the policy which continued into the 1960s and for which Australia became notorious. Its underlying ethos was based on the assumption that immigrants would assimilate; non-European races were undesirable because they looked different and therefore could not assimilate. Even the Aboriginal population had been divided into those of mixed descent who were expected to assimilate and 'breed out' their black traits, and tribal Aborigines who were segregated and expected to die out anyway. 'White Australia' was used to fuel national consciousness. Its aim was to produce a homogeneous English-speaking Anglo-Saxon culture. By 1945 after the three immigrant waves of 1825-60, the 1880s and 1910-30, the basic character of the Australian population was established. In 1947 Australians were 99 per cent white and 90 per cent of British origin. Virtually all spoke English, as indicated in the 1933 Census, which was the first attempt in Australian history to obtain some statistics on language use. Thus, it appeared that the social engineering of the past 100 years had succeeded. Australia had become one of a handful of homogeneous societies. The next great wave of immigration between 1947 and 1972, the largest in all, was nevertheless unique in its acceptance of non-British settlers. The generation which introduced the postwar immigration policy had been brought up with the deeply rooted belief that the 'White Australia' policy was not only necessary, but highly desirable. It was seen as a noble ideal and a rationalisation for protecting labour conditions. White Australia was regarded as essential to nation building and was based on the assumption that the Australian 'race' consisted of peoples of European origin and was not to be mongrelised. Thus, the melting-pot metaphor of assimilation
4
SUZANNE ROMAINE
implied not a biological mixture of populations (or 'races'), but unity of institutions, society and culture. After the war, however, the metaphor of'populate or perish' was used to justify large-scale immigration. At a time of economic and industrial expansion more labour than could be drawn from the traditional pool of British migrants was required. Thus, the 'White Australia' policy was ended. The ideology behind 'White Australia' persisted, however, in attitudes towards language. One of the strongest expectations of these postwar immigrants was that they should speak English in public and various organisations passed resolutions designed to enforce this by law if necessary. Wartime restrictions on the untranslated use of foreign languages in broadcasts or newspapers remained in force until 1956 (see Clyne, chapter 14, and also Ozolins, this volume). Many of the attitudes are spelled out in a leaflet issued to new arrivals in 1948 by the Australian Government. It advised immigrants on how to get on with Australians and stressed assimilation. The end result was to occur on the 'day when fellow Australians stop looking at you because your manners or speech are different, you will know you have been accepted as one of the community'. It further warned that Australians are not used to hearing foreign languages. They are inclined to stare at persons whose speech is different. Some may laugh at you or make fun of your accent. Do not let this worry or annoy you. Also try to avoid using your hands when speaking because if you do this you will be conspicuous. Australian men never wear hair nets. They regard men who do as effeminate.. . . Learn the habits and customs of the Australians and you will quickly feel at home in your new homeland. The Canberra Times, 7 August 1988
Even as late as 1967 Bill Sneddon, then Minister for Immigration could state publicly: We must have a single culture - if immigration implied multi-cultural activities within Australian society, then it was not the type Australia wanted. I am quite determined we should have a monoculture, with everyone living in the same way, understanding each other, and sharing the same aspirations. We don't want pluralism. (Cited in Bullivant 1984: 44) Only ten years later though, these statements were to appear blatantly discriminatory. The egalitarian myth of Australia as a 'classless society' was used to justify the strong assimilationist ideology which persisted into the 1960s. The attitude was sink or swim. It was regarded as contrary to egalitarian views to provide special privileges or assistance of any kind. Few facilities
Introduction
5
to assist the integration of migrants in the socioeconomic and education system were provided until the 1970s (see Ozolins, this volume). Bullivant (1984: 53-4) notes that the education system was unwilling to assist teachers in their attempts to cope with the problems of immigrant children. This enabled information that ran counter to conformist official policies and ideologies to be suppressed and excluded from the public agenda. The control of information about the education system's inability to cope with increasing numbers of migrant children even extended to the failure to collect adequate information about the distribution of migrant pupils, their knowledge of English and their performance and psychological difficulties. This was justified by the Director General of Education in New South Wales in terms of the egalitarianism myth. He said: 'We deliberately refrain from collecting any statistics in regard to school pupils from overseas. Once they are enrolled in school, they are, from our point of view, Australian children' (Commonwealth Department of Immigration 1963: 21). In the 1970s governments of both political parties in Australia moved swiftly to replace outmoded attitudes. This included 'White Australia', which was officially ended with the passing of the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975. The new Minister of Immigration under the Whitlam Government scrapped the Department of Immigration's filing system which had been based on racial classification. The preference for the British ended, and in the early 1980s the Liberals also extended the principle of refugee admission to include Asians after 1975 in the wake of the fall of Saigon. In less than ten years Australia had adopted an immigration policy no longer based on national or racial origin. This shift in policy represented the most fundamental change since 1947 (and in some respects, even the 1830s). Australia no longer sought to be 'England over the water'. It no longer expected assimilation. Welfare work shifted from the mainstream Anglo-Australian organisations to volunteers and professionals from the various ethnic communities. The very recognition that there were ethnic communities in Australia marked a major turning point away from the search for a national identity based on cultural homogeneity. Australia had become in some respects more like Canada and the United States. Free citizens had the right to choose their language and a new society could be built on people from a variety of origins. The 1970s was the decade of multiculturalism. The official ideology is spelled out in Grassby (1973). The 1976 Census, which was the first to elicit data on the use of specific languages, reported that 12 per cent of the Australian population over the age offiveclaimed to use a language other than English. Among the languages spoken were some 75-100 migrant languages. The incidence of bilingualism varies from state to state as well as across ethnic groups (see Clyne, chapter 14, this volume).
6
SUZANNE ROMAINE
Multiculturalism, language attitudes and language policy in an Aboriginal perspective It is against this sociohistorical background that recent claims made in the 1980s to the effect that Australia had become the most multicultural country in the world have to be understood, and more importantly, that the place of the Aboriginal population in the newly formed multicultural Australian speech community needs to be evaluated. White Australia celebrated its Bicentennial in 1988, yet even in 1967 voting rights were not given by all states to Aboriginal Australians. The Aborigines were also not counted in the Australian census until 1971. Before then, the Bureau of Census and Statistics adopted a very narrow interpretation of Section 127 of the Federal Constitution, which stated: I n reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth . . . aboriginal natives shall not be counted' (Yarwood and Knowling 1982: 258-9). The very early dealings between the British settlers and the Aboriginal population were at worst violent, and at best, assimilative in nature. Following the first settlement by whites the Aboriginal population was reduced from an estimated total of 250,000 in 1788 to a low point of 66,099 in 1933 (Smith 1980: 2-3, 10-55). Hughes (1988: 120) describes what happened to the Aboriginal population of Tasmania, which was all but exterminated within less than 75 years of white settlement, as the only true genocide in English colonial history (see, however, my remarks on internal colonialism below). The way to survive was to become like the whites, as is made clear in an address made by the Governor of South Australia in 1835: 'Black man, we wish to make you happy. But you cannot be happy unless you imitate white men. Build huts, wear clothes and be useful. . . love God . . . love white men . . . learn to speak English' (Broome 1982: 27). After the Second World War assimilation was adopted as the official policy towards Aborigines. This followed decades of attempted segregation in special reserves of land not required by European settlers. Here they 'were to be restrained for both their own protection and the racial purity of the broader community' (Stevens 1970: 371). The new policy of assimilation, as spelled out in 1961 at the Native Welfare Conference, was grounded in the hope of achieving a homogeneous society. Thus, Rowley (1972: 399): The policy of assimilation means that all Aborigines and part-Aborigines are expected eventually to attain the same manner of living as other Australians and to live as members of a single Australian community enjoying the same rights and privileges, accepting the same responsibilities, observing the same customs and influenced by the same beliefs, as other Australians. The Labor Government under Whitlam, elected in 1972, had also promised liberalised attitudes towards Aborigines. One of its first tasks was
Introduction 1 to establish an advisory group on the teaching of Australian languages in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. As in the United States, however, the early programmes of bilingual education were assimilationist and taught Aboriginal languages only as an aid to the acquisition of English. Decisions regarding the teaching of Australian languages were made entirely or largely by outsiders. Bourke's (1980) evaluation of bilingual schools in the Northern Territory seriously questioned the rationale behind these bilingual programmes. He observed (1980: 72) that Pre-schools are being run on European lines and the programmes appear to be based on deficit theory. Some teachers even said that the children were deprived of the experiences necessary to develop their intellect. Taking these little children away from their families where they have the security to develop their language and social mores, to place them in schools where everything is different, including values and acceptable behavior patterns, is confusing. The child's intellectual and social development may even be curtailed. In the Northern Territory today the 17 bilingual programmes in operation all remain transitional (Fesl 1988: 154). Although Queensland is the state with the largest population of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, only two bilingual programmes have been implemented. Aboriginal awareness of the need to take steps to maintain traditional languages began to be articulated in the late 1970s (see Fesl 1988: chapter 11). Among the important trends are the establishment of independent Aboriginal schools, for example, at Yipirinya in Central Australia, the formation of a national body to campaign for Australian language rights, and the establishment of Aboriginal radio and television. In 1985 the House of Representatives Select Committee on Aboriginal Education recommended government support for independent schools. It has become increasingly possible for Aboriginal people to argue their own case through agencies such as the Institute for Aboriginal Development, the National Aboriginal Education Committee, The Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies, The Aboriginal Languages Association, and community controlled language centres, for example, the Kimberley Language Centre in Broome. A National Aboriginal and Islander Broadcasting Association was also established (see Walsh, this volume). Although Aborigines had remained separate from immigrant groups represented by the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council of Australia, it is obvious that both these groups had common linguistic and other goals to be pursued. When the Senate Standing Committee was charged in 1982 with the development and implementation of a coordinated language plan for Australia, they made 16 positive recommendations for Australian languages. Among the most important was that Aboriginal people be guaranteed the major role in decision making relating to language issues.
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However, little or no action was taken to implement these recommendations. The Lo Bianco report (1987) on the National Language Policy reaffirmed the importance of Aboriginal involvement, but without consultation with the Aboriginal community, it proposed a three-year National Aboriginal Languages Project to be managed within the Commonwealth Education portfolio.
Language and public policy in Australia
Throughout most of Australia's history language policy at government level was ad hoc and unofficial. It was only after the 1960s that it became official and coherent. The movement to set up a national language policy is so far unprecedented in the major Anglophone countries like Britain and the US. Thus, issues concerning language planning, public policy and education are at the moment of considerable interest and significance. Ferguson and Heath (1981) note the paradox in prescriptive attitudes towards language in the English-speaking world and the general opposition to setting up a language academy or some other regulatory body. Most nations spell out in their constitutions which languages have official status for particular purposes. No government of the major Anglophone nations has ever felt the need to declare English as its official language because English has served effectively as a de facto rather than de jure official language. Australia is the first of the major English-speaking countries to formulate an explicit language policy. Australia has also taken a number of important issues related to language use on board, for example, plain English (see Eagleson, this volume). While this movement has taken hold in other English-speaking countries such as Britain (where the Plain English Movement celebrated its tenth anniversary in July 1989) and the United States, and elsewhere, for example, Finland, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, it is possible that Australia is in the vanguard of new developments. Eagleson, who is the Federal government's adviser on Plain English and adviser to the Victoria Law Reform Commission, has been instrumental in this enterprise (see chapter 25, this volume). The Australian Government has now introduced a plain language policy and Victoria launched an extensive investigation into the language of legislation. In October 1988 the Federal Government issued its Style Manual, the 'bible' for the public service, which contained a chapter by Anne Pauwels on non-sexist language (see also chapter 22, this volume) especially commissioned from the Office of the Status of Women. It describes four major aspects of sexism in English and advises writers to be careful in their portrayal of men and women. Corson's chapter discusses the implications
Introduction 9 of inequality in another area of language usage, namely, social class differences in the ability to use and comprehend specialist vocabulary needed for mastery of certain school subjects. The Minister for Employment, Education and Training, John Dawkins, also announced in June 1989 the Federal Government's plans for the formation of the Languages Institute of Australia (LI A) to see through the full implementation of the National Policy on Languages. Over one million dollars has been allocated to the institute in thefirstyear. The LI A will have a central secretariate based in Melbourne and bases initially in tertiary institutions in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, but would eventually have teaching and curriculum centres in all major Australian cities. The LIA's aims are to improve the skills of school and tertiary students as well as the wider community. The activities of the institute will be wide ranging, and include, for example three research and development programmes. One of these will be a language testing unit through the University of Melbourne and the Brisbane College of Advanced Education to assess levels of language skills. This will be used for testing standards of English among migrants seeking a particular occupation. Monash University (also in Melbourne) will be the site of a study of language and society to assess language problems of groups such as migrants and the deaf. At the University of Sydney there will be a second language acquisition programme. In addition, Queensland University in Brisbane will have a national data base of language skill information and will look at computer assisted teaching methods. The Australian Advisory Council on Languages and Multicultural Education (AACLAME) has been asked by the Minister to coordinate a review of language in higher education. This review will now become a project of the new LIA. The Bicentennial Year, 1988, also saw the publication of the Australian National Dictionary, the result of ten-years labour by Ransom. Its appearance nearly a century after the first Australian dictionary (Morris 1898) constitutes a landmark in Australian lexicography. Until recently Australian lexis had been represented only in British and American International Dictionaries. The first Australian dictionary to present a comprehensive word list in which all the pronunciations, spellings and definitions are taken from Australian English usage is The Macquarie Dictionary (Delbridge et al 1981). A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms by Wilkes (1978) covers the more colloquial element in Australian English which was not extensively treated in The Macquarie Dictionary. As Delbridge (1990: 69) points out, Morris revealed a colonial attitude when he declared that 'Australian English meant all new words and new uses of words that have been added to the English language by reason of the fact that those who speak English have taken up their abode in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand'. In contrasting this venture with that of
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Noah Webster's in the United States, Delbridge (1990: 69) quotes the following from Webster's Dissertations on the English Language (1789): As an independent nation our honour requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard. For the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language is on the decline. But if it were not so, she is at too great a distance to be our model and to instruct us in the principles of our language. This linguistic declaration of independence is unparalleled in Australia until the appearance of Baker's (1945) The Australian Language, whose title confidently asserted the autonomy of Australian English in the same way that Mencken's (1919) The American Language had attempted to do for American English. Baker (1945: 11) wrote: we need some better starting point than Murray's Dictionary. We have to work out the problem from the viewpoint of Australia, not from the viewpoint of England and of the judgements she passed upon our language because she did not know it as well as we do. The 1940s also saw the initiation of Mitchell's studies of the Australian English accent in sociohistorical perspective. While Mitchell (1946) declared that there was nothing 'wrong' with Australian speech, his comparison of the Australian accent with that of educated southern British English was for some an unpleasant reminder of the extent to which Australian English deviated from RP (received pronunciation), as described by Jones and other English phoneticians. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, created in 1932, subsequently recommended Jones' (1917) norms. However, in 1941 its chairman revealed that only two out of 450 applicants for the position of announcer could be selected. Most of those recognised as suitable were Englishmen. Due to Mitchell's influence so-called 'educated Australian speech' (which Mitchell later termed 'cultivated') was subsequently adopted as the style for national broadcasting. This variety of Australian speech, while distinctively Australian, was still close to RP, and quite different from the variety which Mitchell termed 'Broad Australian'. A cultivated accent is no longer essential for the ABC. Since 1983 it has required only 'acceptable styles of educated speech' (see Leitner 1984), and now all questions concerning pronunciation, style and usage are referred to an Australian Dictionary, not a British one. The Australian National Dictionary confines itself to the meanings which words have in the Australian context, for example, boring refers to drilling for water. Australian English is a variety of English in which government servants are public rather than civil, where Moscow is a pawn shop and you can have one moral at a time rather than a whole set of them. All in all Ransom and his compilers list 10,000 distinctive contributions to the
Introduction
11
English language. Many of these distinctive elements of vocabulary reflect the contribution of Aboriginal languages, for example, dyin - 'woman' (from the first language of the Daruk people in the north and west of Sydney) has given Australian English the word gin. There is also a rich mining terminology and diminutives. When the revised edition of The MacquarieDictionary appeared in 1985, it included 1,000 headwords and phrases which had not appeared in the earlier edition. Some of these new items have a purely Australian origin, for example, koori, the Aboriginal word by which some Aborigines now prefer to be known, and gub/gubba, the Aboriginal derogatory term for a white person. Others reflect the presence of other cultures in Australia, for example, doner kebab. Most, however, are words of British stock, for example, privatisation. American words have been present in Australian English since 1850 and even more have been taken in recently, for example, to rip off, and some replace former British ones, for example, French fries instead of chips Pelbridge 1990: 74). Other distinctive Australian usages are being investigated by Bryant (this volume), and in 1985 the first computer corpus of Australian English began to be compiled. This will allow some interesting comparisons to be made between Australian, British and American usages as the latter two varieties already have corpora, that is, The Brown Corpus of American English and LOB (London/Oslo Bergen) corpus of British English. In the same year as The Australian National Dictionary appeared the Australian Bicentennial edition of the Good News Bible (1988) was published. The American Bible Society had gone to some trouble in its original Good News Bible (1976) to avoid regional peculiarities in English usage. Although this was to a large degree successful, a need was felt for a British English version, which came out in the same year. Standard Australian English is not sufficiently different from either British or American standard usage to require significant changes, but nevertheless there is about one alteration per chapter. In some cases decisions were made simply to retain an American or British item according to Australian usage, for example, American rooster and store (where the British English version has cock and shop), and British English afterwards and burnt (where the American English version has afterward and burned). Among the entirely new items of vocabulary, grammar and spelling are the following: British and American field, which is little used in Australia, becomes variously land, paddock or pastures, shorn is substituted for sheared and measurements are given in metric units. The British edition also uses metric units but seems less at ease with them (cf. American ten pounds, British five kilogrammes and Australian five kilos, see Tulloch 1989). The upsurge of interest in, rather than embarrassment at, Australian English is another indication of the new status of Australian English and a
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decided move away from what Phillips (1950) called the 'cultural cringe'. This is reflected in the publication of serious scholarly studies of social and regional varieties such as Horvath (1985) as well as in popular media. Horvath's chapter in this volume shows how norms have changed. Formerly, the only acceptable standard was an external prestige form, that is, RP (received pronunciation) or 'cultivated Australian'. Now it has become much more acceptable to speak with an Australian accent, as long as it is not too broad. As far as the popular press is concerned, the results of a recent contest held by the Sunday Mail (22 January 1989), for example, reveal that 'there are more Ozerisms [a term coined by the newspaper for Australian sayings, metaphors and similes] to the square metre in Queensland than mangoes in the mud after a summer storm'.
Australia in the English-speaking world: a comparative perspective With the publication of this volume we are now in a position to make comparisons across three of the major English-speaking countries of the world, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Though it is tempting to cite the many parallels, particularly between the United States and Australia, it is important to recognise that each of the three countries has unique patterns of language use, despite the social (but not historical) priority of English. Ironically, the outcome of the American Revolution (as it is known in the United States, or the War of Independence in Britain) of 1775-83 was instrumental in the convict settlement of Australia. While the war was in progress convicted criminals awaited transportation, but when the war was lost, the British Government had to look elsewhere to get rid of its convicts. In July 1786 it was decided to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay. In addition to English, the United States has a number of indigenous languages spoken by the original inhabitants of the North American continent and many new languages brought by successive and continuing waves of immigration. Britain also shows a similar profile of old and new linguistic minorities. While American English is remarkably uniform compared to British English, Ferguson and Heath (1981: xxv) observe that the language situation in Australia is probably the closest parallel to that of the USA: English dominant, Aboriginal languages, and the languages of varied immigrant groups. But Australia has no counterpart to Spanish, the roles of colonial and immigrant languages are much less salient there than in the USA, and the nature of the social dialect variation in Australian English is quite different from that in American English. Much of this is true. Australia has no counterpart to Spanish, which is second in importance to English in the United States not only by virtue of
Introduction 13
number of speakers, but also because of the special political relationship between Puerto Rico and Mexico and the United States. While the roles of colonial languages and immigrant languages are undoubtedly different, it would be unfair to say they are much less salient. Firstly, with regard to colonial languages, Ferguson and Heath have in mind remnants of colonial Spanish and French. While Australia does not have direct counterparts to these (even though there are old Australian communities), colonialism produced a range of pidgin and Creole languages, some of which exist today and play important roles in Aboriginal speech repertoires. The United States and Britain have Creoles too, though in Britain they are mainly recent phenomena associated with postwar immigration from the Caribbean. It is interesting that Spanish, which is the largest minority language in the United States, has not assumed a major role in Australia, where Italian speakers comprise the largest non-English speaking ethnic group. The fact that Spanish has been comparatively better maintained in the United States than Italian is at least partly due to the fact that Spanish is an important international language with a great deal more homogeneity than Italian, which is virtually confined to its European homeland, where usage is extremely diverse and still in competition with regional dialects (see Bettoni, this volume). It is tempting to dwell on the similarities, linguistic and otherwise, between Australia, Britain and the United States. However, there are also many differences. The United States revolted against England and Australia did not. All Australia's major institutions of parliament, bureauocracy, education, etc., and even common language are modelled on British lines. A strong sentimental attachment to what many regarded as 'the home country' persisted for a long time. Against this, however, emerged the great Australian myth of the egalitarian classless society and along with it the belief that social class stratification was not reflected in language. While Australian social class structure permits more mobility than the British system and Australian English is in some respects more uniform than British English, both of these assumptions about classless in society and language are without empirical foundation (see, e.g. Encel 1970 on society and Horvath 1985 on language). Despite its strong links with the Commonwealth, since World War II and the entry of Britain into the European Economic Community, Australia has turned its attention more to the role it plays in the Pacific socioeconomic community. Earlier in their history the three countries, but in particular the United States and Australia, employed the melting-pot metaphor about ethnicity, which suggested that over time ethnicity and other primordial identifications would decline in importance and be absorbed or assimilated within the mainstream culture. This metaphor was employed 4at home' in Britain too, with regard to both indigenous minorities and newer ones arriving
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from the 50s onwards from former colonies. The 'melting pot', of course, assumes the dominance of the mainstream culture and implicitly promotes its continued hegemony. As far as language was concerned, the policy was a laissez-faire one: English did not need to be taught, because children would 'pick it up' as needed. There was never any question though that the dominant language was the only viable one. The antipathy to multiculturalism and multilingualism runs deep in the ethos of all three nations, though in Australia the signs are perhaps more promising of a reversal. For instance, President Theodore Roosevelt in 1918 said: We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people as Americans, of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house and we have room for but one loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people. (cited in Bikales 1985) Attitudes in the United States in the 1980s, several decades after the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, have not in many respects progressed beyond this, despite the passing of the Bilingual Education Act in 1968. However, as Fishman (1981: 518) points out, this was an act against bilingualism rather than for it. In any case, public opinion turned against bilingualism and there has been pressure to curb bilingual education programmes and other facilities. President Ronald Reagan condemned the maintenance of languages other than English as 'un-American' and declared that 'it is absolutely wrong and against American concept to have a bilingual education program that is now openly, admittedly dedicated to preserving their native language and never getting them adequate in English so that they can go out into the job market' (New York Times, 3 March 1981). In 1983 he cut the Federal budget for bilingual education. Bullivant (1984: 68) has also remarked on the resentment among AngloAustralians of the amount of Federal money being spent on ethnic schools. In 1986 there were government cuts to multicultural education. Today in the United States more recent manifestations of these negative attitudes towards bilingualism can be found in the efforts of a group called US English, founded by ex-Senator Hayakawa to lobby for a constitutional amendment which would make English the official language of the United States. The English Language Act was passed in California and other states, which makes English the official language for public use. US English also seeks to repeal laws mandating multilingual ballots and voting materials. It welcomes members who agree that English is and must remain the only language of the people of the United States. A similar group in Canada called APEC (Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada) has as its motto: 'One language unites, two divide'.
Introduction
15
Historically speaking, Australian attitudes towards multilingualism have been no less tolerant than those of their English-speaking compatriots in the United States and Britain. Antipathy towards bilingualism is often motivated by fear that bilinguals are using the other language to talk about secret things, as can be seen in this extract from a letter written to the Sydney Morning Herald (13 February 1981): Nothing annoys me more than two or more 'ethnics'jabbering away in their native language in the company of English-speaking people, particularly in a work environment. Is it really too much to ask them to observe simple politeness by refraining from resorting to their native language in the company of Englishspeaking persons? For some time now English monolinguals have been in a powerful position at home and abroad to impose their perspective on others as the only publicly valid one. Nevertheless, all three nations have within recent years replaced this image with pluralistic metaphors which depict ethnic differences as enriching forces to the mainstream society. There are few social scientists today who would claim that 'melting pot' accurately describes the outcome of ethnic contact in the past or what should happen in the future (see, e.g. Glazer and Moynihan 1963, and Gleason 1984). There is little evidence in any of these countries to suggest that ethnic ties are weakening. Instead they are being preserved, though perhaps in subtle ways or renewed in others. The emergence of language varieties such as Kriol and Aboriginal English as symbols of Aboriginal identity is a good example. Although for some speakers, these varieties replace the use of traditional languages, it by no means implies that an Aboriginal identity has been lost (see Harris, Sandefur, and Kaldor and Malcolm, this volume). Just because the visible signs of an ethnic identity, such as distinctive dress, language and food, may fade, this does not mean that ethnicity has faded. Just because a group has lost its language does not mean it has lost its culture or ethnic vitality. It simply takes on a new manifestation: new resources are deployed in the expression of the ethnicity. Among those resources may be new languages or varieties, or transfer of communicative practices from the old language to a new one (see Eades, this volume). The role which a distinctive and traditional language plays in validating a group's identity both for in-group and out-group members varies. The belief that having one's own language is criterial for ethnic distinctiveness may be used by a state and its mainstream population to deny the legitimacy of claims to special status and land rights made by groups who have shifted from their indigenous languages to the language of the majority. Such is the case in Tasmania, for instance, where the surviving mixed-race descendants of the Aboriginal population numbering around
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2,500 find themselves treated as non-persons by the conservative white population. The State Government recognises neither the ethnic identity of the survivors nor any of their claims to ancestral territory or sacred sites. As identity shifts, members often hold multiple identities which are not well described by labels such as Italian-Australian, Greek-Australian, etc. Within such labelled entities there are often many subgroups, each with their own linguistic and other allegiances, but who present a common, for example, 'Italian' or 'Greek' identity to outsiders. Cities whose census figures show them to be heterogeneous often turn out to consist of relatively homogeneous sub-cultures. Some ethnic communities and subsections of them may be more 'in step' with and even contribute to the linguistic evolution of the mainstream variety of English than others, as Horvath (this volume) shows. Because ethnicity transcends biological relations, it is cued socially through the use of symbolic cultural messages about in-group and out-group membership, as in code-switching (see McConvell, this volume). Another common thread in attitudes towards languages shared by the three major English-speaking countries is what Milroy and Milroy (1985) call the 'complaint tradition', that is, complaints about the supposed incorrect use of English. Milroy and Milroy trace its history back to medieval times. Ferguson and Heath (1981: xxvii) also note that many Americans have strong convictions that there is a correct way to speak and write English, even if they are not always sure what it is. They are often apologetic about their own pronunciation, grammar, and choice of words, and they approve the criticisms which appear in editorials, public speeches, and popular books against current low standards' in English. American insecurity is notorious. Quite possibly no other nation buys so many style manuals and how-to-improve your language books in proportion to the population.
While I have no precise comparative statistics, my impression is that concern for standards of 'correct English' is no less a public passion in Australia and the UK than in the United States. In 1989, Prince Charles angered school teachers by complaining that his staff could not write or speak English properly. A few weeks previously The Times Higher Education Suplement carried a front-page article in which several Oxford professors complained about the low standards of English used by students at Oxford University and suggested the possibility of introducing remedial instruction in English grammar. This comes interestingly in the wake of a government inquiry into the teaching of English chaired by Brian Cox and recommendations for tolerance of pupils' local varieties of English while stressing the need for Standard English for particular purposes as part of a new National Curriculum. An examination of the daily press will reveal that the complaint tradition is thriving in the UK and Australia too.
Introduction
17
A look at Australian media reveals a similar complaint tradition. Australian newspapers, like British ones, have complained not only about the inadequacies of local forms of English, but also about the increasing use of Americanisms. A recent editorial in the Sunday Mail (22 January 1989) claims that Australian speech is 'far away the worst in the English-speaking world'. Statements such as these echo those expressed by commentators on Australian English from the earliest days of its history. Thus, William Churchill, a member of the American Philological Society, who visited Australia in 1911 described Australian speech as 'the most brutal maltreatment that has ever been inflicted on the mother tongue of the great English-speaking nations' (cited in Delbridge 1990: 67). The Sunday Mail article, for instance, singles out as good examples of speech certain actors whose 'accents were and never could be anything but Australian (and heaven forbid that they should be)'. These he calls cultivated, but from what is said, they are clearly not imitations of RP. However, he singles out for criticism prominent individuals such as the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, who is described as a brilliant fellow. No dolt gets to be a Rhodes Scholar and Prime Minister of Australia. Keating is no slouch. But would you allow them to make announcements in a lift? 'level three, four, foive . . . kay? ay? kay . . . sem, ayte, noine, . . . goan deown . . .' Merciful heavens. The lingual laziness which caused people to make noises like Hawke and Keating is pretty well endemic to both radio and television . . . it's been years since the Nine Network cricket commentators . . . spoke anything but pure pidgin. The author naively suggests that 'bad speech' could be corrected in a couple of generations by elocution classes in the schools. Interestingly, given the spate of attacks on Americanisms, he says he wishes Australians could be taught to copy North American forms of speech. Although most Australians have learned at school to take an anti-American stance in language, especially in spelling, Delbridge (1990: 73) observes that by mid1985 six of Australia's major urban newspapers used the American -or spellings for British -our ones, for example, color/colour. These cases may be signs of a greater tolerance for American English. Concern for correctness and purity is also found in some of Australia's new migrant language communities (just as it is in Britain, see Chana and Romaine 1984), where the threat of increased borrowing from English and code-switching are sometimes seen as undesirable developments. Conflicts arise between what Haugen (1977) calls 'rhetorical and communicative norms'. The former belong to a highly codified standard language, while the latter show a great deal of variability and may deviate considerably, particularly in immigrant communities undergoing language shift (see, e.g. Tamis, this volume, on conflict in the Greek community).
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The Australian 'speech community9 in global perspective
A number of the contributors raise the notion of 'speech community', a term which has caused considerable discussion and little agreement (see, e.g. Romaine 1982). Some, like Labov (1966), have stressed the sharing of both ways of speaking and attitudes towards them as defining criteria for membership in the same community. In what sense can Australia (or indeed, any country) be considered a speech community? The nation-state is usually taken to be a highly relevant unit of macro-sociolinguistic analysis, as this and the two companion volumes (Ferguson and Heath 1981 and Trudgill 1984) and many other studies of societal bilingualism (e.g. the papers in Fishman 1978) attest. It is clearly an artificial unit in many respects since there are about 30 times as many languages as there are countries. This means that most contain a proportion of bilinguals, who do not necessarily share the same speech patterns, let alone attitudes towards them. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the notions we have of a language and speech community are very much artefacts of European models of the world. Sutton and Walsh in their chapters show how social networks and linguistic communities do not overlap in the Aboriginal view of language. Different speakers of what a linguist would call one language may belong to geographically and politically distinct networks and have little contact. In order to make sense of the fact that people claim ownership of languages they never use, one has to understand traditional patterns of socioterritorial segmentation and communication networks along with marriage patterns, residence rights, etc. Thus, there is a major difference between the spatial distribution of languages when mapped according to their association with land-owning groups and when mapped according to their actual usage by members of land-owning groups. We can only speculate about how languages and patterns of language use would have evolved on the Australian continent without the intervention of British colonialism. The process by which inequalities in the distribution of land and other resources that must be shared by coexisting groups are transformed into the familiar hallmarks of linguistic inequality is possibly peculiarly western. The coming of Europeans to many parts of the New World imposed a western pattern of sociolinguistic stratification in which knowledge of the coloniser's language became both prestigious and essential. There can be no doubt that the spread of a few western metropolitan languages such as English, French and Spanish has not only drastically reduced the number of languages in the world, but also reshaped the structures of those that survive. These western European languages have themselves become more alike through borrowing. These factors have
Introduction 19 irrevocably altered the linguistic ecology of the globe. While they suggest an overall decline in linguistic diversity, these centripetal trends are continually being counterbalanced by the creation of new languages and varieties such as we have seen in Australia with the development of Kriol, new varieties of English, and new varieties of migrant languages. There is no evidence to indicate that English is becoming more uniform, either within the main Anglophone countries or elsewhere, given the continual increase in the number of second language speakers, who are continually creating new Englishes such as Aboriginal English. The chapters in part III show that there is little uniformity in the community languages. Australia provides linguists with a chance to observe the comparative effects of contact between English and other languages in a variety of situations, though virtually no attention has been paid to contact between Aboriginal languages. Much also remains to be done on the varieties of English spoken by migrants. I have tried, however, to trace commonalities of attitude towards language use which characterise the Anglophone majority element of the major English-speaking countries. The ethos of'one language-one state', although a significant force in the major English-speaking countries is, however, a more general European phenomenon, and not specifically Anglophone. It is no accident that modern linguistic theory, which has its origins in European structuralism, takes the monolingual in a homogeneous speech community as its starting point in dealing with basic analytical problems such as the construction of grammars and the nature of competence. In Europe it has generally been the case that language differences have been associated with distinguishable territories, and later the nation-states occupying those territories. Because of the identification of national entities with distinguishable territories, heterogeneity has tended to be limited to the frontiers and was for that reason local and peripheral, for example, the Basques in Spain and France, and the Celtic 'fringe' in the British Isles and France. Thus, 25 out of 36 of the European countries are officially unilingual. In most of them, however, there are minorities (both indigenous and non-indigenous), whose languages do not have the same rights as those granted to the official languages. The marginalisation of the languages and cultures of the European states can be seen as a form of 'internal colonialism' leading to political domination of the periphery and to its economic exploitation by a 'core' (see e.g. Hechter 1975). Most of the European countries have practised exclusionist policies with regard to their own indigenous minorities as well as to immigrants. At various stages in their history most of these nations have felt that minority groups were threats to the cohesion of the state and have therefore tried to eradicate both the speakers and their languages (see Romaine 1989).
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Dorian (1981: 16-17, 38) notes that as early as the fourteenth century Scotland was described in terms of two opposing peoples. In his 1387 account of Scotland John of Fordun depicts the Lowlanders as 'of domestic and civilized habits, trusty, patient and urbane, decent in their attire, affable and peaceful'. The Gaels, however, are characterised as a 'savage and untamed nation, rude and independent, given to rapine, easeloving . . . hostile to the English people and language . . . and exceedingly cruel'. These attitudes were used to justify the Highland Clearances of 1800-50 (forcible evictions of tenants, referred to euphemistically as 'improvements') and to anglicise Scotland. Dorian (1981: 37) also cites the analogy drawn by one historian between the fate of the Highlanders and Aborigines at the hands of the English. Thus, Fairhurst (1964: 2): Undoubtedly the population was moved very much against its will, from lands its forbears had cultivated from time immemorial, without redress and with no right of appeal; inevitably ugly incidents would occur in these circumstances, though there was no organized resistance. The operation seems more reminiscent of the treatment meted out to the primitive Aborigines of a remote colonial area in that
period. At least one sociologist (Greeley 1989: 3) has pointed out that the British occupation of Ireland for four centuries was certainly as 'imperialistic and colonialist as anything the great powers have done anywhere in the world; and if the word genocide cannot be applied to British policy in Ireland, then it has little legitimate use'. He goes on to say that 'the "troubles" in Northern Ireland are a residue of the genocidal 17th century English policy of replacing the "savage" Irish Catholic natives with plantations of Protestant "settlers"'. In many ways the implicit 'language policy' pursued by the British in Australia (and later by Australian governments) was very similar to the one pursued by the British Government at home with its own indigenous minorities. The custom of separating Aboriginal children from their parents in order to educate them in English had an earlier precedent in the United Kingdom in the Statutes of Iona dating from 1609 (see Romaine and Dorian 1981). The Statutes had the express purpose of separating Highland children from their native Gaelic language and culture and educating them in English in the Lowlands, where they would learn not only the dominant language, but would do so in an environment where their own culture was seen as barbaric. The Statutes may well be one of the first instances of legislation in the English-speaking world designed to promote linguistic and cultural assimilation. They required 'everie gentilman or yeaman within the said Illandis to put his eldest son (or daughter) to the scuillis on the lawland, and interteny and bring thame up thair untill they may be able sufficientlie to speik, reid and wryte Inglische.
Introduction
21
Once colonial expansion began, these attitudes were applied to other settings in the conviction that the English language was inherently superior to all other languages. One of the most extreme statements of British linguistic chauvanism is Macaulay's Minute on Education of 1835. He was a member of the Supreme Council of India and was involved in the debate over the medium of instruction in Indian schools. With regard to the question of what language should be used, he observed: The claims of our language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands preeminent even among languages of the W e s t . . . It may safely be said that the literature now extant in that language is of greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together . . . The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared with our own. (cited in Sharp 1920: 110)
The arrogance of these claims is outrageous by any standard, but seems even more strikingly so in the Indian context, where languages such as Sanskrit have high literary traditions much older than those of any of the European languages. The fact that Aboriginal languages had no written form but only oral tradition no doubt made it easier for Europeans to dismiss them as 'primitive' languages, and even today a popular view persists that these languages have only a few hundred words in their vocabulary (see Walsh, this volume). A similar stigma was later attached to some of the varieties of English acquired by Aboriginal people; namely, they were seen as unable to speak anything but a corrupted version of English. These myths about the primitiveness and inadequacy of Aboriginal languages were used to justify a policy of eradicating them. In a similar way it was easy for Europeans to dismiss Aboriginal claims to land which was seen by European eyes as uncultivated and therefore up for grabs. The battle for land rights continues today (see Koch, this volume). In much more recent history, when foreign workers came to some of the nations of Europe, they were expected to assimilate and it was not for some time that a 'language problem' was acknowledged. Even now acceptance of multiculturalism and multilingualism in some of the member states of the European Economic Community has not progressed very far in spite of the acceptance of the 1977 Council of Europe directive on the education of migrant workers (77/486/EEC), which enjoins member states to teach the mother tongue of the country of origin to the children of migrant workers and to provide tuition in the language of the host state. The British and other European colonisers carried this ideology with them along with their language to the societies of New World, many of which were already multilingual. It is against this cultural legacy that the marginalisation of the American Indians and the Australian Aborigines in
22
SUZANNE ROMAINE
the newly emergent and largely monolingual Anglophone speech communities of the New World must be seen. It is a cultural fact that no Anglophone nation anywhere has exhibited enthusiasm for any kind of bilingualism other than transitional. Only in South Africa, where English speakers are in themselves a numerical but elite minority have they accepted bilingualism, and it is an asymmetrical bilingualism in which Afrikaans speakers are more likely to be bilingual in English than vice versa. Given this emphasis, it is perhaps inevitable that bilingualism has been regarded as inherently problematic and that it represents an undesirable mode of organisation for a speech community and the individual. It has not been until very recently that real prospects for largescale language maintenance have been possible in any of the major Anglophone countries. As Fishman (1981: 517) notes (in speaking of the United States), language shift has been 'quintessential^ replacive. English as a second language has become English as a first language and the latter, in turn, has become English as an only language.' It is impossible to judge at the moment what effect present policies of multiculturalism and attitudes towards language skills in public policy will have on the ecology of Australia's languages. The recent National Agenda for a multicultural Australia foreshadows a possible Multiculturalism Bill which both declares English the national language and protects the rights of other languages. Many sociologists and political scientists are sceptical about multiculturalism. Lepervanche (1980:25), for instance, says that the historical evolution of ideologies of pluralism in Australia can be interpreted as 4a series of ideological transformations in the recreation of hegemony'. The latest is multiculturalism. Bullivant (1984) detects bandwagonism and educational faddism in the new multicultural ideology. He notes that the Australian education system has repeatedly seized on educational philosophies and ideologies from overseas, particularly from the United States and Britain, some years after these policies were current, and then later abandoned them when they proved unsuccessful. Multiculturalism may be doomed to follow a similar fate. Bullivant also (1984: 71) observes that reliance on a naive form of cultural pluralism cannot alleviate the discrimination felt by minority groups. Structural and institutional pluralism must accompany it, but this will be resisted as much as possible by the dominant majority. One alternative is for ethnic groups to set up their own institutions, such as the Aboriginal schools discussed above. In general, though, such moves are regarded by the government as risky and not to be tolerated. The Australian Population and Immigration Council and the Australian Ethnic Affairs Council has stated (1979: 4) that: A major cause for concern is whether the creation of a network of ethnic organizations and the formalization of group differences will adversely affect
Introduction
23
national unity. . . This is a delicate subject, but also a crucial one. It would certainly be legitimate for Government in a multicultural society to prevent the formation of divisive institutions that threatened national security. A more recent warning by the Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs went even further in emphasising the government's obligation to maintain control over threats to what it called the 'core' (a euphemism for dominant) culture (1982: 30): Inevitably there will be clashes between the core culture and elements of the minority cultures making up our society. . . However, where clashes occur, the core culture must prevail until it is modified by consensus or by appropriate authoritative action. However, in some cases of conflict, such as human rights and freedoms, society and governments should be insistent that the core culture prevail without modification. In such situations the Council would envisage the rejection of the offending element of the inconsistent culture. How far can the development of pluralist institutional structures go without leading to a complete separateness from the wider society? Activists for Aboriginal rights such as Marcia Langton do not accept assimilation as a viable way of surviving. She says (1981: 16-22): We have rejected the notion that we are assimilating into the European population and adopting white life styles. We are exploring our own Aboriginality and are finding that the white social scientists cannot accept our own view of ourselves . . . Aboriginal 'society' and 'culture' must be seen as 'complete, integrated and consistent systems relevant to their members - not merely as a truncated (or castrated) version of any other socio-cultural system'. It is all too easy to assume that cultural pluralism is unreservedly a good thing (Edwards 1981: 33). Some of the premises on which this assumption is based rely on static and simplistic conceptions of culture, society and ethnicity. Pluralism does not always foster the acceptance of other groups and their lifestyles if the groups are segregated. As we have seen, the general climate of tolerance of diversity has not been great in any of the Anglophone countries. At the same time, however, many 'small' languages are experiencing revival just at a time when they seem to be at the point of no return (see Fishman et al. 1985). The future
In so far as each language embodies a world view which is to some extent unique, linguistic diversity is to be encouraged. This is one important reason for taking positive steps towards language maintenance in Australia and elsewhere. Language maintenance contributes to both society and intellectual life. The richness of grammatical structure displayed in traditional Aboriginal languages has attracted the interest of both
24
SUZANNE ROMAINE
descriptive and theoretical linguists. As far as theoretical linguistics is concerned, the problems posed by languages such as Warlpiri and Guugu Yimidhirr for mainstream universalist models of grammatical structure, which are based to a large extent on the standard varieties of European languages, especially English, are instructive. If, for example, Hale (1983) is right in claiming that the syntactic structure of Warlpiri is nonconfigurational, this entails assuming that alleged universals such as the Xbar convention are suspended in languages like these, or that phrase structure is derivative. Likewise, if Levinson's (1987) account of anaphora in Guugu Yimidhirr is valid, then Chomsky has over-grammaticised what must have an intrinsically pragmatic content by virtue of basing his Binding Principles primarily on English, which has a very different system of anaphora. These brief examples show how our understanding of human language is enhanced by studying Aboriginal languages. Australia is a country which can no longer aspire to be a 'melting pot'. The language policy engenders hope that language maintenance is now recognised as being in the public interest. It is imperative for all of us to recognise languages as important natural resources that must be cultivated and not squandered. Despite the present-day linguistic diversity in Australia, we must not forget the many languages which have died nor those that are under threat today.
Parti Aboriginal and Islander languages
Overview of indigenous languages of Australia MICHAEL WALSH
1.1 Indigenous languages of Australia and their speakers
The term 'Australian languages' can be used to refer to the indigenous languages of Australia including the languages of the Western Torres Strait and, perhaps, Tasmania. Most of the land mass including offshore islands through territorial affiliations has been linked to speakers of an indigenous language variety. Australia therefore contrasts with nearby Papua New Guinea, where significant areas of land have been uninhabited and unaffiliated with language groups (Wurm and Hattori 1981). Australian languages are both numerous and diverse (see map 1.1). It has been estimated that around 250 distinct languages were spoken at the time of the first (significant) European contact in the late eighteenth century. Usually each language would have a number of dialects so that the total number of named varieties would have run to many hundreds (see e.g. Sutton, this volume). These varieties were spoken by a population of around 300,000 according to estimates generally accepted until fairly recently. However, Butlin (1983) suggests that previous estimates did not sufficiently allow for the devastating effects of introduced diseases such as smallpox: he therefore proposes an original population of around 900,000. A population of this size requires a rethinking of views on the relationship between language varieties and their speakers. Either there were many more distinct linguistic varieties atfirstcontact or there was a much larger population for each variety (3-4,000 on average for each distinct language). While the detailed study of dialectal and sociolectal differentiation in Australia has scarcely begun, we can be confident that quite small populations, say, 30-40 people, maintained distinctive linguistic varieties recognisably different in terms of their labels, their vocabulary and their rules for appropriate use in social interaction (see Sutton 1978, and this volume). If we assume a fairly homogeneous distribution of language variety-to-population across the continent, then it would follow that the linguistic diversity of the original population would have been prodigious.
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Overview of indigenous languages of Australia
29
Key. A single number is used for each language; the location of dialects is shown only for Margany, Wemba-Wemba and Western Desert. Adnyamadhanha 128 Alawa 100 Alyawarra 84 Andegerebina 83 Anguthimri 5 Anindilyakwa 105 Anmatjera 85 Arabana 132 Aranda 82 Arandic sbgp. 82-6 Atampaya 3 Awabakat 49 Awngthim 5 Baagandji 72 Balyku 150 Banjalang 42 Banyjima 150 Baraba-Baraba 68d Bardi 140 Bariman Gutinhma 14 Bidyara 40c Biri 36 Biyaygirri 33 Bunaba 126 Bungandij 71 Burarra 109 Burduna 151 Daly River sbgp. 119-21 Darkinyung 50 Dhalandji 151 Dharawal 52 Dharuk 51 Dhuduroa 59 Dhurga 55 Dhuwala Dhuwa! 107
Diyari 129 Djapu 107 Djaru 138 Djiga 278c 108 Djingjli 97 Dyangadi 47 Dyirbal 30 Dyirringany 56 Eastern Torres Straits language 2 Gabi 38 Gad an g 48 Gamilaraay 61 Garadyari 143 Garawa 93 Gariyarra 148 Girramay 30 Gog-Nar 24 Gugada 133i Gugu-Badhun 32 Gugu-Wara 21 Gugu-Yalanji 22 Gulnay 30 Gumbaynggir 45 Gunbalang 115 Gundungura 53 Gunggari 40d Gunggay 29 Gungoragone 112 Gunibidji 111 Gunwinygu 114 Gunwinygu subgp. 113-15 Gtinya 40b Gupapuynu 107 Gureng-Gureng 37 Gurindji 137 Gurrama 147
Guugu Yimidhirr 23 Guwa81 Guwamu 40e Jab Wurrung 68e Jabugay 28 Jaitmathang 59 Jaja Wurrung 68f Jirrbal 30 Jirru 30 Kaititj 86 Kala Lagaw Langgus 1 Kalkatungu 89 Keramin 74 Kitja 127 Koko-Bera 19 Kolijon 69 Kukatj 26 Kuku-Thaypan 18 Kunggari 80 Kurnu 72 Kurtjar 25 Kuuku-Ya'u 9 Kuurn Kopan Noot 70 Lama-Lama 17 Lardil 95 Linngithigh 7 Luritja 133a Madhi-Madhi 68b Malak-Malak 120 Malyangapa 78 Mamu 30 Mangala 142 Mangarayi 99 Mantjiltjara 133c Mara 101 Maranunggu 121 Margany 40a
Marie subgp. 32, 36, 40,81 Maung 116 Mbabaram 27 Mbara 31 Mbiywom 8 Mpalitjanh 4 Mudbura 137 Muk-Thang 60 Murawari 41 Murrinh-Patha Nakara 110 Ngaanyatjara 133e Ngajan 30 Ngaliwuru 123 Ngamini 131 Ngandi 103 Nganyaywana 46 Ngarigo 54 Ngarla 145 Ngarluma 148 Ngarndji 98 Ngawun 35 Ngayarda subgp. 145-50 Ngayawung 76 Ngiyambaa 63 Nhanda 154 Nhuwala 149 North Kimberley sbgp. 124-5 Northern Paman sbgp. 3-8 Ntra'ngith 5 Nunggubuyu 104 Nyamal 146 Nyanganyatjara 133g Nyangatyatjara 133h
Nyangumarda 144 Nyawaygi 34 Nyigina 141 Nyungal 22 Nyungar 155 Olgolo 20 Oykangand 16 Pallanganmiddang 58 Peek Whurrong 70 Pintupi 133d Pitjan(tja)tjara 133f Pitta-Pitta 87 Rembarrnga 113 Ritharrju 106 Tanganekald 77 Thargari 152 Thawa 57 Tiwi 118 Tyeraity 119 Umbuygamu 13 Umpila 9 Ungarinyin 125 Uradhi 3 Waga 39 Wagaman 22 Wakoora 22 Walmatjari 139 WWambaya 92 Wangaaybuwan 63 Wangganguru 132 Wangkumara 79 Wari 30 Warlmanpa 136 Warlpiri 135 Warluwarra 90 Warndarang 102 Warnman 134
Warrgamay 33 Warumungu 91 Warungu 32 Wathawurrung 67 Wemba-Wemba 68a Wergaia 68c Western Desert 133 Western Torres Straits language 1 Wik-Me'nh 12 Wik-Muminh 11 Wik-Munkan 10 Wiradhuri 62 Worora 124 Wuywurrung 66 Yabula-Yabuia 64 Yadhaykenu 3 Yalarnnga 88 Yandruwanhtha 130 Yanyuwa 96 Yaralde 77 Yawuru (Yauor) 141 Yaygir 44 Yidiny 29 Yinggarda 153 Yinwum 6 Yinyjibarnrdi 147 Yir-Yoront 15 Yitha-Yitha 73 Yiwaja 117 Yolnu sbgp. 106-8 Yota-Yota 65 Yugambal 43 Yukulta 94 Yulbarija 133b Yuwaaliyaay 61 Yuyu 75
30
MICHAEL WALSH
Today many Australian languages are under threat. A variety of factors have contributed to their decline (see, e.g. McConvell, this volume). Some languages have died simply because their speakers have died. In other instances the languages are dying 4by inches': the essential link between generations of speakers has been broken (probably irretrievably) and now the language is losing not only its grammatical complexity and lexical richness but also its full range of functions in social interaction (see also Bavin and Shopen, this volume). It seems that as many as 50 languages have become extinct over the last 200 years. Perhaps 130 languages have less than 50 speakers and only remain in limited use by older speakers (Yallop 1982: 30). This leaves just 70 or so languages with viable communities of speakers and of these only about 25 have 250 or more speakers. Even apparently 'healthy' languages are subject to rapid shift. Evans (1987), for example, reports that the Kaiadilt of Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria have no fluent speakers under 45 years of age. Younger speakers retain active command of a small range of vocabulary but speak Kaiadilt with varying degrees of fluency. Varieties of English have taken over within 40 years of significant white contact. The variety of English will depend on the speaker's age, sex and background (in terms of education, work experience, etc.) as well as situation. Elsewhere indigenous lingue franche have emerged as a common means of communication for a community or region. A lingua franca can also contribute to language shift. At Wadeye (on the west coast of the Northern Territory) from 1935 missionaries brought together speakers of a number of mutually unintelligible languages. Over the past 50 years MurrinhPatha (see language number 122 in map 1.1) has become the lingua franca for the area and is now used as the medium for the local bilingual education programme. Younger inhabitants of Wadeye are nearly all fluent in M urrinh-Patha but have differing degrees of fluency in the language(s) of their parents. There are some indications that children are using their parents languages less than the lingua franca, Murrinh-Patha. The most widespread lingua franca in northern Australia is Kriol (see Harris, and Sandefur, this volume), an English-based Creole used among numerous Aboriginal groups who formerly spoke quite different Aboriginal languages. Kriol varies over the vast area in which it is used by having an input from the local Aboriginal language in a particular area. Nevertheless, Kriol is largely intelligible over this whole area. 1.2
Early studies of Australian languages
The earliest known study of an Australian language dates to 1770, when Captain James Cook along with his exploration contingent was delayed at
Overview of indigenous languages of Australia
31
a remote place on the east coast of Australia. Appropriately enough, this site in northern Queensland is near modern day Cooktown. A number of his party recorded vocabulary from the local inhabitants including a word for a strange hopping animal, which has passed into English as kangaroo, perhaps thefirstloan word from an Aboriginal language and very likely the best known. Other explorers took down wordlists but it was the focused zeal of missionaries that yielded the most detailed early accounts of Australian languages. One such was Edward Threlkeld who established a mission from 1825 at Lake Macquarie about 70 miles north of Sydney. In attempting to translate scripture into the local language, Awabakal (see language number 49 in map 1.1), Threlkeld was obliged to enter deeply into the language, producing a grammar and spelling book as well as gospel translations. Such missionary work was usually fairly short term and in any case not widespread. A small but significant number of amateur scholars cast the net wider. The most ambitious project of this kind was carried out by E.M. Curr, who had been a sheep farmer in Victoria in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Curr sent out questionnaires all over the country - to policemen, squatters, surveyors, magistrates, postmasters - to settlers of all kinds including missionaries. In this way Curr collected together hundreds of vocabularies published in a four-volume work (1886-7). To put this achievement in perspective it should be borne in mind that nothing approaching the size and scope of this work had been produced in the first 100 years of settlement and it was a long time before something of its magnitude was to appear in the second century. Often contributions to Curr amounted to 100 words or less. Tragically, this constitutes the bulk of our knowledge for some languages no longer in active use, for example, Pallanganmiddang spoken around Tangambalanga just to the east of Wodonga in Victoria (see language number 58 on Map 1.1). Curr's nationwide survey made more apparent the connections among Australian languages: languages spoken great distances apart shared vocabulary which was either identical or similar enough to be recognisable. In general, there was a pattern of indifference towards Aboriginal languages and their study. Capell (1971) distinguishes two periods of research: 'scientific' (from the 1930s onwards), and, 'pre-scientific' (prior to the 1930s). The history of research can also be seen as cyclical: an initial period of fairly widespread enthusiasm and concern for Aboriginal people followed by an age of indifference interrupted from time to time by renewed interest from amateurs or missionaries, finally to end with the onset of professional scholars in the 1960s (Dixon 1980: 12). Either scenario indicates long periods when virtually nothing was recorded for the majority of Australian languages. The last 30 years have seen a tremendous increase in the quantity and
32
MICHAEL WALSH
quality of research on Australian languages, though a few individuals produced good work prior to the 1960s, Capell, for example, notable among them. However, it is only from the 1960s that the institutional framework within Australia was able to foster research in a widespread way. In the late 1950s the Summer Institute of Linguistics established an Australian branch and began placing teams of linguists to study languages for literacy and teaching Bible translation. In 1961 the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies was founded and soon became the most important source for research funds. In 1965 the first autonomous department of linguistics was set up at Monash University and others have followed. Prior to this linguistics was treated as part of some 'kindred' discipline: Modern Languages; English; Anthropology etc. Anthropology had also been late to emerge as a separate discipline (1926 at the University of Sydney), but even then its intellectual heritage was from Britain so that linguistics for a long time maintained a fairly marginal status within anthropology (Henson 1974). Over the last 15 years increasing emphasis has been directed towards the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the study of their own languages. In 1974 the School of Australian linguistics was established near Darwin. This institution seeks to train native speakers in techniques of linguistic analysis and applied linguistics to enable them to return to their own communities as literacy workers, translators, interpreters and key participants in bilingual education programmes (see also 1.10 below). As far as theoretical research is concerned, during the 1980s Aborigines have been actively involved as co-researchers in lexicographic projects at the Institute for Aboriginal Development and through the Lexicon Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is this kind of collaborative research which presents the greatest promise for indepth analysis of Australian languages in the future. With the aid of intuition and introspection on the part of Aboriginal people, linguists can produce better descriptions. 1.3
Classification
The first comprehensive classification of Australian languages was published by Schmidt (1919). On the basis of similarities of grammar and vocabulary he set up a grouping of 'southern languages' which differed from 'northern languages'. Schmidt worked totally from materials gathered by others and these materials were often both meagre and poor in quality. Nevertheless, the careful compilation and comparison of early sources by Schmidt remains a valuable sourcebook for later attempts at classification. The next major classification was proposed by Capell (1956), who divided languages into two groups: prefixing and suffixing. In fact, the
Overview of indigenous languages of Australia
33
terms are somewhat misleading since the prefixing languages have suffixes as well. The classification is motivated mainly by typological considerations but there is still a good deal of overlap with Schmidt's northern-southern division. Hale (1964) put forward the third major classification, and was able to show that some of the supposed differences found in some languages in Central Australia and Cape York could be attributed to fairly recent historical change. Some of Schmidt's northern division was thus shown to group with languages in the south. Hale named this new grouping PamaNyungan after words for 'man' at the geographical extremities of the country: pama in Cape York and nyungar in the south-west of Western Australia. This Pama-Nyungan 'family' covers over four-fifths of the continent and shows considerable typological similarity. Map 1.2 shows the major classification schemes for Australian languages (after Dixon 1980: 20). The remaining fifth or so of the Australian landmass is an area of extraordinary linguistic diversity in terms of the number of different languages as well as in typological variation. Quite a few of these languages have been treated as language-isolates while the others tend to fall into small groupings of between two and a dozen languages (see Yallop 1982: 27-54, for a survey of languages giving their locations, classification and the numbers of speakers of the more populous varieties). According to the lexicostatistically based classification presented by O'Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin (1966), the non-Pama-Nyungan languages can be grouped into some 20 or so 'families' on a par with the geographically widespread Pama-Nyungan 'family'. This classification is not without its problems. To start with, the materials available for many of the non-Pama-Nyungan languages were fairly meagre at the time the classification was proposed. Relying merely on lexicostatistical counts can be misleading, as later research taking grammatical information into account has shown. Some scholars (e.g. Blake 1988) have now begun to question the traditional make-up of Pama-Nyungan. One can still accept Hale's basic split into Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan languages on typological grounds but in terms of genetic relationship neither set of languages can be shown to have a genetic unity. Most linguists agree that nearly all Australian languages derive from a common ancestor, proto-Australian. The task ahead is to build up a clearer picture of the nature of proto-Australian (Dixon 1970, 1980:225ff.) and to reassess language groupings on the basis of careful consideration of all the available sources for each language. A long-term project devoted to the latter aim is in progress at the Australian National University under Dixon's direction.
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Overview of indigenous languages of Australia 1.4
35
Relations with languages outside Australia
Many have speculated about possible connections between Australian languages and other languages of the world. During the nineteenth century links were proposed with Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) and Papuan languages. Others suggested connections with African and Dravidian languages. The Dravidian proposal has some superficial appeal. There are some similarities in broad typological terms for morphology and syntax while the phonology shows surprising similarities. Like Australian languages (see 1.7 below), many Dravidian languages have a six-place nasalstop system with essentially the same points of articulation. Some physical anthropologists have also drawn attention to the striking physical resemblance between southern Indians and northern Aborigines (Abbie 1970: 216 ff.). In addition, some Aborigines travelling in India have been struck by the apparent similarities between Dravidian and Aboriginal languages. In fact, the proposed connection does not stand up to close scrutiny. A careful investigation turns up no more than chance resemblance without any sound basis on which a credible genetic connection could be built. A connection with Papua New Guinea seems likely given its proximity to the Australian mainland but this too proves to be groundless. The Torres Strait Islands between Queensland and Papua New Guinea form an island link between the two landmasses. The northernmost islands are in sight of the Papua New Guinea coastline. However, the islands divide up into two quite distinct types: Miriam, a Papuan language spoken in the east and Kala Lagaw Ya, an Australian language spoken in the west. Kala Lagaw Ya shows some unusual features for an Australian language such as the presence of/s/ and /z/ (perhaps borrowed from the language cloSe to the east in which fricatives are an expected feature), but it is otherwise clearly of the Australian type in terms of grammatical features (see Ford and Ober, this volume and Comrie 1981). Whatever the situation may have been in the past, from our present vantage point, the Australian language family is linguistically isolated. There may have been sister languages to proto-Australian somewhere in South-east Asia, but even if there had been, any genetic trace would have gradually eroded away by inevitable change in the daughter languages. People have been in Australia for at least 40,000 years (and much longer periods have been suggested). We know through archaeological work that there has been more than one influx of people of which the most recent happened about 4,000 years ago when the dingo (wild dog) was brought into Australia. Even if the ancestry of present day Aboriginal languages goes back only 4,000 years, it is unlikely that careful study could establish links with
36
MICHAEL WALSH
languages outside. In the absence of written records it would have been well nigh impossible to establish connections among some of the more distant members of the Indo-European family which derive from the ancestor language, proto-Indo-European, spoken around 5,000 years ago. We have written records for Indo-European languages which go back thousands of years. For Australian languages the greatest time depth for any language is a little over 200 years. But there are numerous other possible scenarios - also equally unprovable. The language(s) that came in with the dingo may have been absorbed, or displaced by existing languages and thus have disappeared without a trace. If that were so, proto-Australian would have to be older than 4,000 years but how much older is very hard to say: whether it took over from existing languages at some unspecified time in the past, or, whether it has withstood all encroachments and goes back in a continuous line for tens of thousands of years. Given our present state of archaeological knowledge, it is hard to disprove most claims about suggested invasions and migrations in the past. In more recent times there is growing evidence of contact with Austronesian languages from Indonesia. From towards the end of the seventeenth century traders from around what is today southern Sulawesi visited the shores of northern Australia to collect and process a muchprized commodity variously known as trepang, bech-de-mer or seacucumber. These Macassan traders set up seasonal camps staying on the northern Australian coast for months at a time and mingling with the local Aboriginal population. It even seems that some Aborigines travelled back to Indonesia with the boat crews, returning to Australia on later trading expeditions. This contact is demonstrated linguistically by a sizeable stock of Austronesian words in some Aboriginal languages of north-east Arnhem land (Walker and Zorc 1981). In addition, it may be that a Macassan-based pidgin developed for use not only between Aborigines and the boat crews but also for casual contact between Aborigines along the coast who did not have a language in common (Urry and Walsh 1981). 1.5
Language names
The names for forms of speech in Aboriginal Australia vary in interesting and perplexing ways. There are often numerous named varieties within a small area (see Sutton, this volume). This is one reason why it is not so easy to give precise estimates for the number of languages. Consider some of the names for language varieties that can be found around Wadeye (formerly Port Keats), a remote settlement of around 1,500 people on the west coast of the Northern Territory. The lingua franca for the area is Murrinh-Patha but a number of other languages are in use: Marri-Ngarr, Marri-Djabin,
Overview of indigenous languages of Australia
37
Magiti-Ge, Djamindjung. Murrinh-Patha is itself made up of three dialects: Murrinh-Kura; Murrinh-Diminin and Murrinh-Patha. In addition a particular individual can have an array of'language' labels such as the following: Murrinh-Kura Murrinh-Diminin Murrinh-Patha Murrinh-Thitay Murrinh-Yidiyi Murrinh-Kale Murrinh-Bathuk Murrinh-Kimul
'water language' 'gravel language' 'good language' 'sugarbag language' 'Port Keats language' 'mother('s) language' 'Bathuk language' 'Kimul language'
The same person may be heard to refer to Murrinh-Yuwan and Garama. The puzzle for the investigator is to determine which of these labels are simply alternates (in some sense) and which are clearly distinct forms of speech for the purposes of making estimates of numbers of 'languages', speakers, and so on. All these labels are descriptive in some way. The first two describe the nature of the speech designated. Murrinh-Kura, for instance, is regarded as 'light' and 'clear', while Murrinh-Diminin has been described as 'a bit rough'. Murrinh-Thitay refers to the sugarbag (a kind of wild honey) totem and is thereby an appropriate label for the speech of an individual who has that as one of his totems (in the same way, there are other designations such as Murrinh-Tek - 'black cockatoo language', Murrinh-Thinmel - 'seagull language', etc.). Murrinh-Yidiyi identifies the form of speech in terms of its main centre of population, Yidiyi, the Murrinh-Patha name for the township. Murrinh-Kale refers to the fact that the speaker's primary linguistic affiliation is shared by his mother (not something that can automatically be assumed in a community where there is such a mix of different languages). The last two examples refer to place-names in the Murrinh-Patha-speaking area. Bathuk is an important locality for the sugarbag totem and Kimul, a coastal site where the township was formerly located. This leaves only two labels unexplained: Murrinh-Yuwan and Garama. The former is the Murrinh-Patha name for its southerly linguistic neighbour, Djamindjung, while Garama is the Djamindjung name for its linguistic neighbour to the north, Murrinh-Patha. I have dwelt on the explanation of these names at some length precisely because the norm is to have no explanation at all, simply a bewildering array of names in which it is not at all clear whether one name is a hyponym of another, an approximate synonym or something quite separate. This has significant implications for the classification of languages in Australia. Elsewhere in Australia language names can reveal something of the nature
38
MICHAEL WALSH
of the language being referred to. In parts of central Australia, for instance, there are a number of related varieties which form part of the Western Desert language (a dialect chain spread over a vast area of some 500,000 square miles). These varieties include: Pitjantjatjara; Yankuntjatjara; Ngaanyatjara and Nyanganyatjara. Each name has a common suffix, -tjara - 'having'. Thus, Pitjantjatjara
Grammatical characteristics
Case systems in Australian languages have excited much interest. Many Australian languages have ergative case marking, whereby the subject of a transitive sentence is given a special ergative marking which distinguishes it from the two other major grammatical functions: the (direct) object of a transitive sentence, and, the subject of an intransitive sentence. The marking for these two functions is called absolutive. These expressions in Murrinh-Patha (Northern Territory) provide examples: kardu-re were-0 bam-0-lele man-ERG dog-ABS 3sGSUBJ-3sGOBj-bite 'man bites dog' were-re kardu-0 bam-0-lele dog-ERG man-ABS 3sGSUBJ-3sGOBJ-bite 'dog bites man' kardu-0 dim-bebe man-ABS 3sGSUBj-vomit 'man vomits' Here kardu - 'man' receives ergative marking in the first sentence when it functions as transitive subject and has absolutive marking when it appears as object in the second sentence and has intransitive subject in the third. This contrasts with languages such as English where the three major grammatical functions are partitioned into two grammatical forms usually called nominative and accusative. In so-called nominative-accusative languages the subject, whether transitive or intransitive, is given one marking, while the object receives another. Some Australian languages consistently exhibit case marking of this kind, while many Australian languages have a mixture of ergative-absolutive and nominative-accusative systems. This mixing can be of two kinds: within the noun phrase, or across
Overview of indigenous languages of Australia 1,2
39
3 kin/personal
ERG <
<
<
Figure 1.1 Ergative and accusative marking in relation to the animacy hierarchy 1,2
3
kin/personal
<
ERG ACC >
<
human <
animate <
inanimate <
>
Figure 1.2 Competing case systems in Yidiny phrasal categories. The latter is exemplified in the Murrinh-Patha expressions above, where the noun phrase, kardu, is marked in the ergativeabsolutive pattern but elsewhere, in verbs, the major grammatical functions are signalled again this time in a nominative-accusative way. But many languages show a split according to the nature of the noun phrase itself. Some nominal expressions take the ergative-absolutive marking while others take nominative-accusative. Silverstein (1976a) has claimed that such splits operate according to a hierarchy of animacy starting with pronouns in the first and second person and passing through third-person pronouns, proper nouns (including kin terms and personal names), nouns with human reference, nouns with reference to animates, and eventually to inanimates, as in figure 1.1. Figure 1.1 shows that when there are both kinds of marking, accusative marking will 'progress' from the left hand side of the spectrum towards the right, while ergative marking will favour nouns over pronouns. There is a fairly obvious motivation to this hierarchy: entities to the left tend to control entities to the right. Yidiny from north Queensland (Dixon 1980: 290; see language number 29 on map 1) provides one example of the two 'competing' case systems, as in figure 1.2. Note that there is an 'overlap', whereby third-person pronouns (with human reference) are at once ergative-absolutive and nominative-accusative. This means that each of the three core syntactic functions is separately marked. A major point of difference between Pama-Nyungan and non-PamaNyungan languages is the density of information presented in the verb form. Non-Pama-Nyungan languages pack an astonishing amount of information into a single verb form and to this extent are reminiscent of polysynthetic languages like Inuit (Eskimo). Consider, for instance, a single verb form from Murrinh-Patha: punnungamkawunkumawinhatdangathanintha
40
MICHAEL WALSH
which can be translated as They few already ran away from them two males'. As in Eskimo, the verb form stands for a whole sentence, the word consisting of a verb root 'run away' bounded by prefixes and suffixes: punnungamka-wunku-ma-winhat-dangatha-nintha they few Subject-they two Object-from-run away-already-two male. By contrast, a Pama-Nyungan language such as Yirr-Yoront, spoken on the west coast of Cape York (see language number 15 on map 1.1), spreads the information over a number of separate words, as in the English rendering: pilin
morrmaq
kana
lunhn-1
pam
they
several
already
run-PAST person
puluwanh-miy them two-from
One more example illustrates the difference: Murrinh-Patha: kardithurrulkthaydeyidadha kardi-thurrulk-thay-deyida-dha 3 sg. suBj-foam-mouth-again-iMPERF '(s)he was foaming at the mouth again' Compare Yirr-Yoront: thei kawnpoq thaw larllnh ungh again foam mouth was coming out his Agglutination is a matter of degree in Australian languages. All demonstrate agglutination to some extent since derivational morphology is strikingly rich across Australia, but non-Pama-Nyungan languages usually mark the major participants involved in the action of the verb as prefixes on the verb. So a language like Murrinh-Patha must mark the subject of the verb as a pronominal prefix and may mark other participants as pronominal prefixes such as direct object, beneficiary or an 'affected person' as in The truck stopped ON HIM'. If body-part terms and adverbial expressions are incorporated, then verb forms will become quite lengthy. Space precludes giving more than these brief examples of the range of grammatical characteristics in Australian languages (for more details, see Blake 1987, Dixon 1980, and Yallop 1982). 1.7
Phonological characteristics
Phonological systems are remarkably predictable in Australian languages. For example, if one were given a name for some hypothetical linguistic group as GUNAARLPELYU one could guess fairly accurately that the phonemic inventory would look like that set out in figure 1.3.
Overview of indigenous languages of Australia p
t
b m
d n 1
w
rr
rt rd rn rl r
k g ng
ty dy ny ly y
41
aa
Figure 1.3 Example of an Australian phonological inventory
rl
ly
Figure 1.4 Basic phonological inventory of a hypothetical Australian language GUNAARLPELYU p
b m w
t d n 1 rr
rt rd rn rl r
ty dy ny ly y
k g ng
Figure 1.5 Expanded inventory of GUNAARLPELYU
(where the digraphs rt, rd, etc., represent retroflex sounds; ty, dy, etc., a laminal series; rr, an alveolar flap or trill; r, a semi-retroflex continuant; 'doubled' vowels: ee, aa, etc., indicate length). This inventory has a number of features quite typical of Australian languages: for each stop, there is a corresponding nasal; two semi-vowels, a labiovelar w and a palatal y; two r-sounds; relatively few separate vowel qualities. As for most Australian languages there are no phonemic fricatives. What is less typical is the voicing distinction in stops. Just a few languages have a phonemic distinction of voicing in stops, but those that do realise the distinction for all places of articulation. It is instructive now to see how we can predict a phonemic inventory on the basis of one word. The hypothetical language label, GUNAARLPELYU, initially provides the basic inventory in figure 1.4. The method assumes that the language name has been phonemically faithfully recorded. In Australian languages the presence of/rl/ and /ly/ implies the presence of/rn/ and /ny/ (although the reverse need not be true) and since all Australian languages have the peripheral nasals, /m/ and /ng/, we can assumefiveplaces of articulation in stops. The presence of/p/, /g/ and jnj indicates that we have three series of stops: voiceless and voiced oral, as well as nasal. Since all Australian languages have /w/ and /y/, we can add these to the inventory without further comment. All but three or four languages have two /r/-sounds, so it is reasonable to propose /r/ and /rr/ for the inventory. This yields the inventory in figure 1.5.
42
MICHAEL WALSH
Finally, for vowels, the norm is to distinguish just three vowel qualities: /i/, /a/, and /u/ with each vocalic phoneme showing considerable allophonic variation). A good number of the non-Pama-Nyungan languages have a five vowel system, while some have four: /i/, /e/, /a/, and /u/. About half of Australia's languages show a distinction in length which expands the basic three vowel pattern to six: /i/, /ii/, /a/, /aa/, /u/, and /uu/. Returning to the hypothetical GUNAARLPELYU we can see three vowels represented: /u/, /aa/, and /e/. Although there is no /i/ given, we can infer its existence from the fact that all known present day Australian languages have this vowel: in the same way we can assume short /a/ as well. Finally, since Australian vowel systems tend to have either all vowels short, or, to have a long vowel for each short counterpart, we can posit an eight-vowel system as shown in the original inventory in figure 1.3. It is an open question whether there might be a fifth vowel quality, /o/, with its long counterpart, /oo/, to give a tenvowel system. What emerges from these implicational relationships is a largely accurate account of the phonemic inventory on the basis of minimal data. Of course this exercise has been somewhat contrived and some actually occurring language names like Mamu would not be very revealing at all. However, to the extent that the exercise is valid, it leaves just three areas of uncertainty: there may be a second laminal series (so that laminodentals would be phonemically distinct from laminopalatals rather than being allophonic variants as in GUNAARLPELYU, which we assume because it is very common for laminals to behave in this way (see also Dixon 1970)); there may be a fifth vowel quality, /o/; and there may be any number of atypical phonological features. But even these atypical features can be shown to have arisen from a regular system through phonological change. The phonological system of proto-Australian is thought to have had a simple four-place stop system (with a predictable array of other consonants as outlined above) (Dixon 1980: 158). In some Cape York languages fricatives such as /?, 6, y, appear but it is clear that these are the lenited reflexes of corresponding stops from an earlier stage of linguistic development. In the same way most languages with a phonemically distinctive glottal stop can be shown to have derived it from an earlier /g/ (for details of phonological change, see Dixon 1980: 195-219, and for phonological systems and their phonotactics, see Dixon 1980: 125-94, and Busby 1980). 1.8 Vocabulary Dixon (1980: 2) has suggested that 'Australian languages probably each have a vocabulary consisting of at least 10,000 lexical words- nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on'. Nothing approaching a comprehensive dictionary for Australian languages has yet been published. This is due in part to the
Overview of indigenous languages of Australia
43
difficulty of getting access to passive vocabulary, which by its very nature is not in constant use. In cultures where writing is a very recent innovation there is little or no body of literature to search through for words that fail to 'pop up' in the course of the linguist's investigations. Where a researcher has focused on a particular semantic domain intensively over a long period it becomes apparent that the lexical resources of Aboriginal languages are very rich indeed: a good example of this can be seen in the very detailed account of ethnobotany and ethnozoology among the Anindhilyakwa of Groote Eylandt (Waddy 1988; Levitt 1981). Despite this lexical richness, it has been a popular stereotype among Europeans that Australian languages have only a few hundred words. Indeed, the layman does not always recognise that there is more than one language spoken by Aboriginal Australians. Other areas of elaboration in the lexicon in Aboriginal languages include directional terminology, body parts and terms for kin. In Murrinh-Patha, for example, there are various terms for an individual according to which of his/her kin is deceased: kardu mikmunurr widow(er) kardu kurli person who has lost a son/daughter; person who has lost a child kardu thayikurta person who has lost a brother/sister; person who has lost a sibling kardu minarrthi person who has lost a father/mother; person who has lost a parent Only the first term has a direct counterpart in English. Even the word orphan does not exactly coincide with kardu minarrthi since orphan has a rather specialised meaning which requires that both parents be deceased and that the person described as an orphan should not have reached maturity. Particular words often have a range of meaning which does not closely coincide with anything in English. Again Murrinh-Patha can provide an example in the expression pilukwilukmam - 'firm, hard, reluctant, tight, tough'. This may be combined with other words as follows: kardu piluwilukmam 'reluctant person' kura (tap) piluwilukmam 'tight tap' ku piluwilukmam 'tough meat' mi piluwilukmam 'stale, hard bread/damper' putek piluwilukmam 'firm ground' nat piluwilukmam 'tight nut' In these examples some loan words can be seen, for example, tap from tap and nat from nut. Often body-part terms are extended to allow for
44
MICHAEL WALSH
new concepts: the propellor of a boat becomes 'teeth'; the wheel of a car becomes 'foot'; the bowl of a (smoking-) pipe becomes 'head'. In the same way existing terms in the language are pressed into service for introduced notions, so the Murrinh-Patha term for 'dragonfly' is used for 'helicopter'. The Murrinh-Patha word for 'policeman', ku birlmalu, can be glossed as 'non-Aboriginal person with something shining on his forehead'. Birlmalu includes a suffix -lu which refers to 'forehead' while birlmam is a quasiverbal form 'is shining'. The whole expression refers to the metal badge at the front of the policeman's hat. This badge features a kangaroo as its central emblem in the Northern Territory Police Force. In Murrinh-Patha each noun may appear with a noun-class marker which assigns that noun to a class of nouns on semantic grounds: kardu for (Aboriginal) people and a number of terms referring to people such as agegrades; ku for all other animates (including snakes, fish, bandicoots and non-Aboriginal people!), their products (e.g. wild honey- from bees which are naturally members of the &w-class) and some body-parts; mi for plants; thu for offensive weapons (e.g. thu kuragadha - 'fighting boomerang'), etc. with some ten classes in all. The presence of noun-classes has interest far beyond this immediate problem since it throws some light on the way people categorise the world around them through language. Indeed, Lakoff (1987) refers to one such noun categorisation scheme in a North Queensland language, Dyirbal (see language number 30 on map 1.1), which links women, fire and dangerous things (among others). One of the more intriguing areas of study of meaning is the internal structure of the lexicon. One way in which semantic relations within a language become apparent is in the use of generic terms whereby a whole range of phenomena in the environment will be grouped under a class label such as 'tree, mammal, fish, etc.'. Detailed work such as the study of flora and fauna terms on Groote Eylandt mentioned above reveals that Aboriginal ways of dividing up the world do not necessarily coincide with the views of western science but nevertheless have equal validity. For some Australian languages the internal structure of the lexicon, usually largely implicit, is made explicit through auxiliary 'languages'. A good example can be found in Guugu-Yimidhirr (see language number 23 on map 1.1), where there is a form of speech used among certain kin called the 'brother-in-law language'. Strictly speaking, this is not a separate language but rather a style of speech with the same grammar as everyday Guugu-Yimidhirr, but quite different vocabulary. These styles of speech are often referred to as avoidance styles or respect styles because their use is restricted to particular kin, who are in an avoidance or respect relationship with the speaker. In the case of Guugu-Yimidhirr the special style is used mainly between a man and his wife's brothers and wife's father. This style
Overview of indigenous languages of Australia
45
carries over into behaviour as well so that a man will avoid approaching a taboo relative at all, but if it is necessary he should do so slowly and avoid direct eye contact. In speech some notions from the everyday language to do with sexual organs, for instance, are avoided altogether but the norm is to replace an everyday term with a special 'brother-in-law' expression. Interestingly, there is a many-to-one relation between the vocabulary of the everyday language and that of the respect style (for details, see Haviland 1979). Loan words from Aboriginal languages have passed into English. Often these have been words for animals, parts of the environment and objects which were not familiar to the English-speaking newcomers, for example, billabong, dingo, kangaroo, koala, kookaburra, nulla nulla (a kind of wooden club) and woomera (spear-thrower). Unfortunately for many nonAboriginal Australians these items, along with numerous place-names like Parramatta, Uluru, Coolangatta, Kununurra and Mallacoota, are the sum of their understanding and interest in the rich linguistic heritage of the first Australians. 1.9
Writing and texts
Before white contact, Aboriginal languages were not written down. That is to say, there were no indigenous writing systems: there was a tradition of transmitting distant messages using message-sticks. As soon as outsiders were curious enough to find out something of these new languages written records began to appear. But this does not mean they became written languages: the people writing down the new language were usually untrained and with the best will in the world would miss details of the language which were quite significant to the native speaker. However, the native speakers were scarcely able to comment on such problems because they had no direct access to the writing; indeed the writing system devised by the investigator remained a kind of private dialogue between the investigator and himself with no other participants. In this way it contrasts sharply with an established writing system in which a community of speaker-writers have a shared understanding of how to use the system. As far as the history of English literacy is concerned, we know that the community of writers remained very small for a long time. In the case of Aboriginal languages it is only in the last 20 years or so that writing has started to have a significant impact on the community as a whole. Threlkeld's mission to the Aborigines a little to the north of Sydney in the early nineteenth century (see 1.3 above) certainly produced a range of religious and secular written texts, but it is unlikely that any of the Aboriginal community actually got to a stage where they could read them. At the time literacy was something of a rarity in the general community.
46
MICHAEL WALSH
Bilingual education has been the major impetus in the more widespread introduction of literacy. In tandem with this development the Summer Institute of Linguistics has often provided the detailed, explicit background in local languages necessary to set up a bilingual education programme. Written texts can now be found in many of the more populous languages in northern Australia including Kriol (see Sandefur, this volume). Some of these are translations of scripture: the New Testament has been translated in full, for instance, into Pintupi (see language number 133d on map 1.1) and Kriol and there are many translations of extracts from the New and Old Testaments in many of these languages. The traditional literature of Aboriginal and Islander people has found its way into print as translations into English or as written versions in local languages. One curious 'reversal' of this process can be found in a translation of Alice in Wonderland into Pitjantjatjara (Sheppard 1975). Somewhat less exotic are translations of traditional literature from other parts of Australia into local languages. Although a part of Aboriginal culture in a generalised sense one must wonder what effect such cross-fertilisation will have on indigenous literature in the future. Some written texts now available in Aboriginal languages are a direct response to the predominant introduced culture of Anglo-Australians. Booklets have been written in Aboriginal languages on such topics as how to repair a gearbox, how to participate in national elections and what to do about particular medical problems. One area of concentration has been in the rather specialised field of linguistics, as a result of training by such institutions as the School of Australian Linguistics and the Institute for Aboriginal Development (see also 1.2 above). Aboriginal and Islander people have written introspectively on aspects of their own languages. One example can be found in Bani (1987), where a Thursday Islander ponders some issues to do with the encoding of gender in his own language, Kala Lagaw Ya. There is nothing particularly out of the ordinary about this kind of intellectual activity in terms of the traditional oral culture. What is surprising is that this activity has been transferred not only into the new medium of writing but has been written in a language for which writing is very new. In this and other languages we are seeing the birth of written scientific discourse. It remains to be seen how widely this development will be felt in Aboriginal communities. 1.10
Australian languages in the modern world
Australian languages have faced many challenges since first contact. Perhaps the most potent one has been mere survival in the face of continued efforts to suppress or minimise the value of Australian languages. Many languages have succumbed to the relentless influence of English. Our
Overview of indigenous languages of Australia
47
understanding of language maintenance in Aboriginal Australia is certainly far from complete but increasing attention is being focused on this crucial area (see McConvell, this volume). If these languages are to survive, they will have to respond to the introduced culture of the Europeans. We have already seen that many loan concepts have been incorporated (see 1.8 above), but perhaps far more important is the development of additional registers to handle discourse in areas such as land rights legislation (see e.g. Koch, this volume), mining negotiations and the provision of goods and services for the community which, if not entirely new, represent a significant departure from traditional practices. One of the more exciting responses has been in adapting mass media for Aboriginal purposes. The most successful venture to date is the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAM A). Starting with radio for just a few hours per week in 1979, CAAM A now has regular radio broadcasts which include news services (local and international) in four Central Australian languages: Pitjantjatjara, Pintupi, Arrernte and Warlpiri (see language numbers 133f, 133d, 82 and 135 on map 1.1). In 1987 CAAM A successfully competed for a commercial television licence. The significance of this achievement becomes apparent only when the proportion of Aborigines in the community (around 1 per cent overall) and their usually marginal status is borne in mind. The newly founded TV station, Imparja, now operates regular programming for the whole community, but also broadcasts programmes specifically targeted to Aboriginal audiences in 'downtime' periods which can then be shown on video recorders at more amenable times. One of the major contributions CAAMA sees for its work is in language maintenance. Apart from this Aboriginal broadcasting has had an important role in fostering community pride in the face of indifference or even contempt from the wider Australian community (Michaels 1988). Elsewhere in northern Australia, Aboriginal radio broadcasting has begun, notably in Townsville, Queensland. Another reaction to a changing world is to be found in the provision of interpreting and translation services. The needs in this area have long been recognised (Brennan 1981), but it is only quite recently that training programmes have been set up to meet the special requirements of Aboriginal people. In the past interpreting and translating needs had to be met, if at all, on an ad hoc basis but with the establishment of these training programmes we can expect to see more of the needs being met in a more effective way. Perhaps the most pressing need is in the area of education. If Aborigines and Islanders are to be afforded equal status in the workforce they will need new skills. The concern expressed by many older people is that these skills will be gained at the expense of traditional languages. Bilingual education is one possible solution to this legitimate concern. Regrettably there has been
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MICHAEL WALSH
too little and most of it too late. However in parts of northern Australia, especially the Northern Territory, bilingual programmes deliver part of the curriculum in traditional languages. This kind of education needs to be bicultural as well as bilingual. There needs to be a two-way process: not just making Aborigines aware of white institutions and mores but Aborigines and Islanders introducing the wider community to the riches of their culture and languages. In this way some progress might be made in improving cross-cultural communication, which is presently often flawed, despite good will on both sides.
Language in Aboriginal Australia: social dialects in a geographic idiom PETER SUTTON
2.1
Introduction
The distinctions Australian Aboriginal people make amongst their own language varieties are couched principally in the idiom of local geography. Other linguistic distinctions are typically framed within speech etiquettes focused on kinship relations, ascribed ceremonial and other social status or the temporary ritual condition of individuals. These practices are fairly typical of recent hunter-gatherer and shifting horticulturist societies and in many ways unlike those of agrarian and industrial societies. Classical or precolonial Aboriginal culture did not, for example, distinguish language varieties associated with institutions such as social class, caste, occupational group or nation state. It did, however, distinguish varieties associated with territorial groups, or regionally specific sets of such groups, and in this it has seemed to resemble closely the language/state model of much of Europe and some other parts of the world, at least to some scholars (see e.g. Dixon 1976, who argues for a tribe/state analogy in the Cairns region of north Queensland). This resemblance has been much exaggerated. One of the most profound differences between Aboriginal linguistic culture and that of so many other people in fact lies in this very domain. In Aboriginal Australia a large number of languages were spoken by a very small number of people. There were not, however, a large number of small, well-bounded Aboriginal societies (for a critique of the Tindale-Birdsell hypothesis regarding language group endogamy in Australia, see Sutton 1978: 17-34, 106-15). (It is worth noting that nation-states are seldom well-bounded linguistically.) Simply recording the facts of this linguistic diversity, especially in coastal regions, has been a major and continuing task. In recent times increasing attention has been given to the use of specially marked linguistic varieties
50
PETER SUTTON
within particular Aboriginal languages, such as the ritually marked Jiliwirri of Warlpiri (Hale 1971), the so-called 'mother-in-law language' of Dyirbal (Dixon 1971), and the Big Language of Western Cape York Peninsula (Sutton 1982). These varieties have been bracketed off, methodologically speaking, from analyses of relations between regional language varieties. They have been treated essentially as social varieties, or features of linguistic behaviour within groups, while the regional or socalled geographic varieties, the languages and dialects', have largely been treated in the form of grammars and as the defining and bounding features of the linguistic groups themselves rather than as cultural forms which are themselves socially constituted in an interesting way. While there have been many formal gammars, ethnographies of speaking have been rare. By contrast, I argue that all linguistic variety in Aboriginal Australia essentially arises from the character of interaction within, rather than from lack of interaction amongst, populations, and is therefore the positive product of a social and cultural system rather than an epiphenomenon.l 2.2
Aboriginal language groups
Since the critiques of Berndt (1959), Peterson (1976) and Sutton (1978), in particular, but also following the specific findings of a number of other scholars (e.g. Warner 1937, Sharp 1958,1968), the terms 'tribe' or 'dialectal tribe' (see e.g. Tindale 1940, Birdsell 1973) have fallen into disfavour among Australianists. They have frequently been replaced by 'language group', although many of the criticisms which can be mounted against the use of the construct of the dialectal tribe apply just as well to the notion of the language group, at least as it is still used by many writers. Tindale's (1974) 'tribal map', for example, is still often misinterpreted as a map of the distribution of speakers of particular languages at some point in the past (cf. Milliken 1976). It is more accurately seen as a religious statement. What it marks are the lands whose owners under Aboriginal customary law were given particular languages during the mythic foundation of the world, the Dreaming, and it plots those land/language associations. It is a general rule in Aboriginal Australia that languages are held to have originated when Dreamings (Ancestral Beings, totemic heroes) invested the land with meaning and with human beings. Although manifested in a variety of ways, the relations which obtain between mythology, totemism, land, people and languages usually bear strong resemblances across the continent.2 Language 'groups', in the Australian literature, whether loosely or tightly defined, are artefacts of the intersection of systems brought to their interpretation by scholars in anthropology, linguistics and other disciplines. More pedantically, evidence for language groups does not arise
Aboriginal Australia: social dialects
51
from physical observations of the inclusion of people in collectivities such as crowds, camps or townships. It arises cumulatively from speech acts concerned with asserting or denying relationships between people and linguistic varieties, and from the ways analysts handle these statements. There has been a tendency for analysts to look for neat systems in which each person belongs to one and only one language group, language groups are socially well-bounded and relatively autonomous, and language groups are associated with single continuous tracts of landscape. Individual Aboriginal informants may also speak of language affiliation and groupness in such neat terms, for their own areas and even more so when talking about those of others. Both kinds of tendency towards simplification and harmonisation need to be treated with a healthy skepticism. They are models. The Aboriginal models, however, are part of the system the scholar is analysing, and require explanation. Basic semantic facts about language names and language group names need to be remembered in this context. Where there are two independent assertions that Person X belongs to, say, the Malak Malak language group, one has to be mindful of the fact that a phonetic identity of labels cannot guarantee identity of definitions. On the other hand, a single definition may be shared by a variety of labels (cf. Germany=Deutschland = Allemagne). A label may also have more than one legitimate meaning for a single individual, such that 'Malak Malak' in one context may label a narrow subset of people, contrasting them with the Madngele, while in another context both subsets may be conflated under the broad label of 'Malak Malak', regardless of the fact that the Malak Malak and Madngele languages may have rather different grammars and lexicons (for further details on the Malak Malak language situation at Daly River, Northern Territory, see Tryon 1974; Sutton and Palmer 1980). Furthermore, labels of differing sociocultural or structural type frequently occur in identical sentence-frames and may thus appear to belong to a single system of social or linguistic distinctions when they do not. In Western Cape York Peninsula, for example, Cape Keerweer people refer to certain clans whose homelands are south of the Kendall River as speakers of 'WikNgenycharr', in sentential contexts exactly parallel to the way they refer to their own languages. But this particular label covers clans affiliated with several different (and differently named) languages. Moreover, these are languages with affiliates from more distant areas which do not fall into the 'Wik-Ngenycharr' category at all. The term is linguistic, but in a way that is regionally and politically selective. It is not simply based on grammatical homogeneities. Such problems are compounded by the existence of old written records and maps, which tend to preserve former definitions of language group labels and their social or geographical scopes of reference. Earlier terms of
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precision may have in time become generalised and vague while earlier terms of loose application may in time have become firmed up and narrowed. Social group labels are porous: people pass into and out of them, not always by birth and death. Categorial scope, then, has to be kept distinct from known denotata, if a group label's meanings are to be pinned down accurately (see also Walsh, this volume). The importance of the category of language affiliation has tended to rise in Aboriginal Australia as a result of massive social disruption and depopulation in the wake of the European invasion. In many parts of the country, finer-grained segmentary systems such as the clans and other small groups have tended to disappear or become less prominent, and the public idiom of local identification has emphasised language group more than in the past.3 The relatively high degree of negotiability enjoyed by language affiliation in the past may have predisposed language to receiving this expanded role in identity formation. Its relative wideness of social scope may also have given language a powerful identity-marking role at a time when Aboriginal people have shown a desire to play down finergrained divisions within their society and emphasise larger ones. Sheer depopulation, however, has been a major factor in most areas, rendering many finely balanced segmentary systems unworkable. The legal land rights process in the Northern Territory has recognised this historical movement, and land claims by language groups have, after some initial hesitation, now long been pursued and have been accepted by the Aboriginal Land Commissioner. As legal associations of Aboriginal landholders increasingly base their membership definitions on language group identity, for example, Gagudju Association, Anangu Pitjantjatjara, etc., language groups in some areas have achieved a degree of definition, corporateness and exclusivity which until lately they have generally lacked. Such recent cases of greater clarity should not be confused with older states of higher negotiability which can be found in the historical record or in older peoples' memories. Just as tempting as the expectation that a language group labelling system will be neat and uncomplicated is the expectation that it will exist, in a formal sense, at all. Parts of Aboriginal Australia demonstrably have no formal names for language varieties, although such varieties can be referred to, for example, by citation of typifying phrases or words, and are clearly distinguished within the repertoires of multilinguals (see, e.g. Miller 1972; Douglas 1972; Osborne 1974; Sutton 1979).4 2.3
Language affiliation
In the classical culture of Aboriginal Australia it is a general rule that people are multilingual, even in those areas where the culture does assert
Aboriginal Australia: social dialects
53
the association of a single language with a single continuous tract of land, or with a single cluster of clans owning contiguous estates. The Western Roper River region is perhaps the best documented case of relatively monolithic association of a language with a single tract of land and a definable language and land-owning group (Merlan 1981). Such language groups' may be cultural realities as folk categories, but they are always narrower than the actual range of interactions in which people engage. They are not societies. Even in a language group' area such as the Western Roper River, residence groups are quite commonly linguistically heterogeneous. This is typical of Aboriginal Australia at least until recently. Language differences are thus culturally produced and reproduced, not only within networks of interacting persons but also within the linguistic repertoires of individuals. In classical Aboriginal culture most individuals, however polylingual, assert a primary affiliation, as of right, to a particular language variety. A common basis of such affiliation is inheritance through the father or patrifiliation. Secondary and other rights and interests in language varieties (and sometimes even primary rights) may be based on matrifiliation and other less direct relationships of descent, for example, from the mother's mother, or on long residence in a certain community, or adoption, and so on. It is often the case that public ideology states a certain rule for linguistic affiliation but the record suggests that the rule is frequently disregarded because other factors supervene. The missionary Otto Siebert, in genealogies stretching back in time from 1898, recorded 34 cases in the Lake Eyre region where the linguistic affiliations of parents and offspring were both known (see Howitt 1904; facing p. 159). Although Howitt said that children in the region were supposed to take the language of their father, in Siebert's data only four took their father's language (when different from that of their mother), while twelve took that of their mother (when different from that of their father). Eight took the language of both parents (in each case it was the same language), and four took the language of neither parent. The majority of marriages (nine out of fourteen) were linguistically exogamous. Not all linguistic affiliation in Aboriginal Australia is to a single language variety only. Individuals and groups may be affiliated to more than one language. Non-unique affiliation is of several types. A wellrecorded type is that which results in people with 'mixed' or 'half-half language identity (see Sutton 1978: 85-6, 185 for examples from different parts of Australia). These cases often come from the peripheries of linguistic zones. Where people cite two languages as their own, but always cite them in the same sequence, some kind of primacy can be attributed to the relationship with the first language mentioned. Dual language identity of this kind, which may be inherited from a particular parent, is distinct
The WIK region • Aboriginal settlement • Aboriginal outstation O Town D Cattle station N
Gulf
of
Map 2.1 The Wik region.
Aboriginal Australia: social dialects
55
from dual affiliation resulting from rights in the different languages of both parents. Where an individual has dual linguistic affiliation, other persons affiliated uniquely with each language may claim her or him as 4one of us', thus making it clear that language groups are usually far from wellbounded. Non-unique language affiliation may also arise from the application of different principles of affiliation on different occasions, as relevance, amity, politeness or politics require. For example, one may rightfully claim variety X to be one's language on the basis of patrifiliation when discussing ceremonial matters or traditional land ownership, but variety Y may also be one's language on the basis of conception, birth or long residence in an area associated with Y variety, and one may stress this Y affiliation at a local meeting on a housing or financial issue, for example. Some of the language varieties involved in these non-simple cases of affiliation are only marginally distinct, from an academic point of view, yet the question of affiliation may be none the less vital to the Aboriginal people concerned. It is important to recognise, however, that speakers of Aboriginal languages are normally very sensitive to linguistic similarities and differences and often have a well developed apparatus for discussing language variation. This suggests strongly that considerable linguistic variety is not merely coped with but is actively recognised as part of Aboriginal tradition, as a meaningful domain of one's culture. This would not be the case if inter-language differences marked the customary limits of interaction and thus marked social and cultural closure.5 To exemplify these points, I will now examine in some detail the relation between my own assessment of linguistic relationships and that of members of the local culture, in a remote Aboriginal community in the Western Cape York Peninsula region, where I have carried out intensive and long-term field work for various periods, from 1976 to the present. 2.4
An Aboriginal dialectology
The Cape Keerweer people of north Queensland (see map 2.1) have an explicit terminology for distinguishing many shades of similarity and difference between linguistic varieties, both dialectal and intra-dialectal. This terminology reflects a 'folk model' under which the linguistic variety owned by each clan is held to be distinctive, although in many cases differences between pairs of such varieties are said to be virtually insignificant. In these cases the varieties are usually, but not always, known by the same name. People can readily name the language variety of their more immediate kin and many of those of more distant relatives. An older adult can name around 15 or so languages, covering a maximum range of perhaps 300 kilometres. Beyond that, the Aboriginal world is, or was until
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recently, largely unknown. Yet I was surprised at how many people could not think of names, or even disagreed among themselves over the names when they had little trouble distinguishing the varieties concerned and also believed that all varieties had names. Cape Keerweer people say that some languages are 'plain' or easy to understand; others vary in difficulty. Regardless of difficulty, they may be contrasted as either 'lighter' or 'deeper'. Specificity, uncommonness, or association with senior social status, are forms of lexical 'difficulty' which are often referred to as 'bigness'; their opposites are characterised as 'smallness'. Within a language, some lexicon is big and other lexicon is small, a distinction connected with the respectful, status-based and other special social connotations of certain synonyms (Sutton 1982). Languages with more 'big words' than others are 'big languages', and are said to be inherently harder to learn. Some languages are said to be 'by themselves' or isolated, and include those which are lexically and structurally most different from the majority. These lie on the periphery of the area, and this attribution suggests that the Wik group established on the genetic criteria of the linguist corresponds to a relative unity recognised by the Wik-speaking people themselves. They do not, however, have any linguistic or social nomenclature which positively identifies the Wik group as such, even though, at least in the northern parts of the Shire there is a fuzzy correlation between the culturally important loci of a boundary between Wik and non-Wik languages and a fairly major sociocultural boundary based on a complex of features including different traditional marriage rules. Speakers of the southern Wik languages who reside at Edward River, south of Aurukun, belong socially to the 'Mungkan-side' half of that community's north-south social dichotomy, even though Wik-Mungkan may not be the primary language of more than a few of them. If Wik speakers wish to stress a high degree of difference between two languages, they may say they are (using Wik-Ngathan for my examples) wik thun-thuna-ma - 'language other-other-EMPHATic'. Languages which are thought of as similar, but not similar enough to bear the same name, may be referred to as wik yaarrha- 'half language' (from yaarrha- 'part of a whole'). Thus, Wik-Iiyanh is regularly distinguished from Wik-IiyanhYaarrka - 'Half-Wik-Iiyanh'. People distinguish between a variety which is 'really X language' or 'proper X language' and another which is 'X and Y language mixed'. I have never, though, heard anyone assert that their own language was such a mixture. A language may have more than one name even within its own variety. Wik-Ep, for example, is also self-known as Wik-Iit, and some clans' varieties of Wik-Ngatharr are self-known as Wik-Elkanh. These cases do not imply mixture. There is a further and rather curious case of a
Aboriginal Australia: social dialects 57 clan whose estate lies midway between one whose language is Wik-Ep (clan 10) and another whose language is Wik-Me'anh (clan 16): the 'middle' clan's language is known by either of these two names, and is said to be like the varieties of other two clans, yet different from both (see clans 10,13, and 16 on map 2.2). This, at least, is the interpretation offered by members of clans other than these three. Linguistic varieties owned by clans which are geographically and genealogically distant from one's self may be clustered together by an individual under convenient cover-terms. These cover-terms may or may not be recognised as valid by the people who own the languages concerned. This is a common feature of many cultures, and unsurprising. What perhaps is surprising, in one such case, is that the cover-term encompasses only a subset of the owners of the languages named (see above on WikNgenycharr). The features Wik-speaking people select when encapsulating language differences are, in order of prominence: (1) key lexical items or phrases; (2) suprasegmental phonological features; and (3) degrees of lexical elaboration. The key lexical items are almost always various translations of either the verb 'go', an oblique first-person pronoun, or the verb 'bring or take'. These are customarily given as exemplars of language varieties in sentences where the main verb is in imperative mood ('Let's go!', 'Bring it to me!'). Suprasegmental characteristics which are said to distinguish languages include rate of articulation (e.g. 'dragging' the speech versus 'quick' speech), clarity and precision of articulation, and width of intonational range. Some languages, because of a combination of such features, seem to Aboriginal people to be rough and 'barking', suggesting aggression, even where aggression is not intended. People are skilful mimics of dialect stereotypes. I have heard them daily and hourly use a language other than their own in a quite neutral and matter-of-fact way, but then in certain contexts, particularly when ridiculing some of its individual owners, they have reported speech in that language using merciless pastiche of its distinctive stylistic features (for a central Australian parallel, see Strehlow 1969: 89-90). These languages share many near or not-so-near lexical cognates, yet people rarely appeal to particular phonological contrasts between nonidentical cognates when making dialectal distinctions, even though the slight phonological differences between languages lend themselves to the picking out of such cognates as typifiers. They prefer sheer lexical contrasts above all others. Names of languages are usually based on the lexical items mentioned. In very few cases is the lexical item on which the language name is based actually unique to the language so named. The language names, Wik-Me'anh, Wik-Keyangan, Wik-Iinychany, Wik-Iiyanh, Kugu-Muminh, Kug-Uwanh, Kugu-Mu'inh and several
Carpentaria
17
Clan identification numbers Schematic boundaries Possible boundaries 0 6
10 km 5 miles
Map 2.2 Clan countries
Aboriginal Australia: social dialects
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others may all be translated literally as 'language-go' in the respective languages. Similarly, Wik-Ngatharr and Wik-Ngathan both mean ianguage-mine'. Sets of languages with semantically identical but phonologically distinct names tend to belong to the same sub-region, in the sense of the clustered estates of the language-owning clans. (Estates are owned sets of sites, not all of them contiguous.) In at least one case I observed, the most powerful member of a particular clan decided to change the name of the clan's language from one of these local contrast-sets to another, by shifting it from language-mine' to 'language-go'. She had recently been in prolonged dispute with key members of another clan with a nearby estate, whose language was also named 'language-mine'. She wished to emphasise her mother's clanspeople as kin, and their own clan-estate neighbours as allies, and since the languages in their case were named 'language-go', her renaming of her own language represented, not unification with them, but self-placement in their contrast-set. The specific lexical items translated as 'mine' and 'go' remained the same in her own clan's dialect, and thus they remained the same as those of the dialect of the clanspeople with whom she wished to stress her disfavour and distance. What she changed was the politically relevant semantic frame of her clan's language title, not her language as such. Such changes depend on the availability of a variety of language name sets which possess sub-regional connotations. There is an apparent anomaly in the case of Wik-Mungkan ('languageeat'). No other Wik language in the area under consideration takes its name from the verb 'eat', and Wik- Mungkan thus appears to have no contrast-set. The answer lies in the fact that the more distant inland clans owning Wik-Mungkan have nearby east-coast neighbours whose languages are subclassified by their verbs for 'eat' (Thompson 1976). But the west-coast Wik-Mungkan-owning clans do not know this (at least, they did not in 1978). Language names, then, have common morphological structures within this region, and by containing particular lexical markers, they are placed in sub-regional and politically definable fields of like entities. They do not express uniquenesses so much as specific braces of overlapping similarities and contrasts. In this they resemble totemic personal names and totemic terms for clans, a matter which I discuss in detail elsewhere (Sutton, forthcoming). 2.5
A linguist's dialectology
I have made a rudimentary comparative study of the languages under discussion, and have sampled seven of them for basic comparative purposes. A preliminary classification of those which belong to the Wik
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SYMBOLS Map 3
[non-WikJ
Wik-Paach Wik-Ngatharr^
B
Wik-Ngatharr2 etc. Wik-Ngathan,
B
Wik-Ngathan2 etc. Wik-Iinychany • Wik-Ep • Wik-Me'anh/Wik-Ep Wik-Me'anh Wik-Keyangan Wik-Mungkan., Wik-Mungkan2 etc. • Mungkanh (?) Wik-Iiyanh
D D
E E-F F I C C
c
'Half Wik-Iiyanh' Kugu-Mu'inh Kug-Uwanh Kugu-Muminh ?Kugu-Mangk ' ?Kug-Ugbanh ' ?etc.
G H
Figure 2.1 Preliminary statement of genetic relationships, Wik Group
group (the great majority) is shown infigure2.1. All Wik languages share at least 43 per cent cognate basic vocabulary, on the basis of a comparison of 100 common words, but non-basic vocabulary varies enormously, even between very closely related languages. The highest degree of sharing of basic common vocabulary with a non-Wik language appears to be about 45 per cent, and as that is between very near neighbours much of it can be attributed to comparatively recent diffusion. Phonological comparisons between cognates establish a baseline of innovations shared by all members of the Wik group which, together with other shared features, enable us to distinguish this group from the other Paman languages of Cape York Peninsula (Hale 1976). There is also clear evidence of recent phonological diffusion across subgroups.
Aboriginal Australia: social dialects
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Using conventional phonological, lexical and grammatical criteria, my own assessment of degrees of difference between the languages accords remarkably well with that of their native speakers. This may be demonstrated, by way of example, in teasing out what is meant by 'easy' or 'simple' when people attribute these characteristics to the regional lingua franca, Wik-Mungkana. People say Wik-Mungkan is inherently simple. It is easy to learn. That, they say, is why it has become the first language of Aurukun children since Aboriginal settlement there took place between 1904 and 1957.6 Some local people say that the simplicity of Wik-Mungkan accounts for its selection by the Summer Institute of Linguistics as a medium of literacy in Aurukun School.7 On the contrary, the Summer Institute of Linguistics' principal consideration must have been that everyone can speak it. Nevertheless, a linguist's analysis lends support to the view that WikMungkan is the simplest of the local languages. Note the following: 1. Wik-Mungkan (abbreviated Mn), like all Wik languages, has the (long and short) vowels i, e, a, o, u, and schwa (short only) but several other languages have a seventh vowel, oe (long and short). 2. Mn, like all Wik languages, has the stops p, k, th, ch, t and ' (glottal stop), but several others have the parallel voiced series b, g, dh, j , h, as well as some (possibly phonemically non-contrastive) fricatives, the unusual labiovelar stop kp, and some non-contrastive retroflexion as well. 3. Mn, like all Wik languages, distinguishes singular, dual and plural second and third person pronouns, but Mn, unlike several others, makes no distinction between dual and plural in the first person exclusive nonsingular. 4. Mn, like all Wik languages, has both free and bound pronouns; but several of the other languages attach the bound forms, mainly as suffixes but in some cases as prefixes, to a wide variety of stems, while Mn allows only verbs to bear pronominal enclitics. 5. Mn, like all Wik languages, possesses among others the four nominal cases ergative, instrumental, locative and accusative, but uniquely marks all of them with the same suffix form -nga. Other Wik languages have two or three different morphemes for these cases (e.g. Wik-Me'anh has ergative/instrumental -nga, locative/accusative -na; Wik-Ngathan has ergative/instrumental -nhtha^ -ngka~ -la~ -rra, locative -nga, accusative ,-nhd). 6. Mn has one verb conjugation; some Wik languages have three. 7. Most Wik languages have a nominal suffix which indicates greed for or obsession with something, which is phonologically distinct from a free adjective with the same connotations; in Mn there is no such distinction and the adjective 'crazy' in free and enclitic placement serves both functions.
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8. Some Wik languages distinguish the privative suffix from a non-cognate free term for 'no nothing', but Mn does not. 9. Mn, like all Wik languages, uses a set of 'big language' synonyms, but is impoverished in this respect by comparison with several of the others: it has fewer such doublets. 10. Mn is characteristically spoken with the clarity, deliberation and slow speed of an old-fashioned European elocution display, especially when spoken by women, while other Wik languages are generally less clearly spoken. Although the Wik languages share an underlying stock of common features, their differences are far greater than those among what has customarily if misleadingly been called 'a group of mutually intelligible dialects' (see, however, Sutton and Rigsby 1980-2 on this notion). But the extent to which they share common structural and semantic features in idiomatic expressions, customary greetings, forms of requests, place names, botanical classifications, swearing terms, semantic extensions in domains such as kinship and anatomy, etc. is strikingly great. Most utterances in one Wik language are readily translatable, morpheme-by morpheme, into another Wik language, in a way which is somewhat reminiscent of the Indian cases known to us from the work of scholars such as Gumperz and Wilson (1971). More detailed work would be necessary before this parallelism could be systematically quantified. Here are two examples: 'wife'='woman fire-ablative' pu'ath thuma-ma peepath thuma-ma koew wekanya-ma wanycha thuma-ma thawa thumu-m kuyu thuma-m
(Wik-Ngathan) (Wik-Ngatharr) (Wik-Me'anh) (Wik-Mungkan) (Kugu-Muminh) (Kug-Uwanh)
'He drove the Land rover.' Nhula Landrover inhtha maawka-ngana-0 (Wik-Ngathan) Nhila Landrover ana nunkpa-ngayi-n (Kug-Uwanh) 3SgSb Landrover yon run-TRANSinviSER-DEFiNiTE MOOD. 2.6
Why so many languages?
In the northern part of the area, nine names are used to distinguish language varieties. By comparing their lexicons and systems of morphosyntax a linguist might subgroup these varieties into five distinct 'languages' (see map 2.2). We might then be able to say that each of the five 'languages'
Aboriginal Australia: social dialects 63
Gulf
Carpentaria
A Languages owned by clans early 20th cent ( ) Languages owned by clans in 1977 where different from above / Ownership of two languages by one clan -f- Shared ownership of one estate by two clans - Alternate naming of one language using names of two other languages n: • ; # : : : : : : : .T :: A - ; (?) Land ownership in unresolved state in 1977 i f v l j i j j j j j ? j :\:: fr\\ Shadings mark estates of clans with closely related dialects
0
10 km 5 miles
Map 2.3 Language associations by clan estate, Wik Region
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PETER SUTTON
had an average of perhaps 400 owners at the time of European incursion, and therefore that the area was unexceptional by Australian standards (Dixon 1980:43). But the Aboriginal people of the area do not explicitly tag subgroups of the varieties in this way and that is essentially why I refer here to each named variety as a language rather than a dialect of a language. Thefivelinguistic subgroups defined in terms of comparative similarities are not isomorphic with any significant territorial, cultural or political aggregations of the area. Unlike some other Aboriginal groups, these people do not even assert that such correlations may or should be made. It would be hard to make out a case for recognising a consciousness of such subgroups as even a semi-independent force in language change in the area. We cannot equate the owner-speakers of the nine wik of the Aborigines nor those of thefive'languages' of the linguists with some such entities as 'dialectal tribes' or 'speech communities', except perhaps by defining these terms as 'people who share grammars and lexicons by customary legal right'. That would involve an odd use of the terms 'tribe' and 'community', since nothing really more than logical sets are implied, while functioning organic political or residential groupings are not. Should we, on the other hand, be characterising the whole study population itself as a particular kind of speech community? Would this add anything to our analysis? Scholars such as Bloomfield (1926: 153, 1933: 42) have defined speech communities in two ways, which are often confused. One is as a set of people who share a common grammar (in the widest sense of grammar). The other is as a set of people who interact by means of speech. Much of the persistent popularity of the term itself seems to derive from its conflation of these two ideas. More recently, Silverstein (1972, 1976b) and Hymes (1974) have attempted to bring order to the confusion. Hymes (1974: 51) defines a speech community as a 'community sharing knowledge of rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech. Such sharing comprises knowledge of at least one form of speech, and knowledge also of its patterns of use'. Silverstein defines those who share a common grammar as a language community, and those who interact using speech as members of a speech community. (Here I omit the finer details of Silverstein's definitions.) Rigsby and Sutton (1980-2) take the view that neither of these terms should be considered part of our essential technical vocabulary in sociolinguistic description and analysis. They are most convenient in referring to the folk concepts of the people among whom we work, but even in such cases we have to decompose such concepts into precisely statable relationships between language varieties, language names, language owners, language users, land-holders, residents in on-the-ground groups, and so on. We assume that sociolinguistic studies are concerned with the interpretation of linguistic knowledge, beliefs and acts of speech on the one hand with other cultural knowledge and beliefs, and other social action,
Aboriginal Australia: social dialects 65 discursive and non-discursive communication and social structure, on the other hand. Our basic conceptual tools as scholars therefore consist of such categories as family, clan, class, caste, ethnic group, social network, voluntary association, age-set, etc. on the one hand, and those such as grammar, lexicon, context-dependent rules, shifters, performative utterances, etc. on the other. What, then, is the broad shape of the relation between 'groupness' and language variety in this particular case? The people from the northern end of Aurukun Shire and south of Archer River (see map 2.2) largely interact within the same social field, although there is a substantial social disjunction between those whose estates are coastal and those whose estates lie in the dry sclerophyll uplands. This is based not only on observations of residential groups and contemporary politics but also on the fact, for example, that of nearly 150 recorded marriages of clansmen owning estates on the coastal strip west of the uplands, only 13 per cent took wives from the upland clans up to the 1970s. The 'tribe-sized' cultural groupings in this region (i.e. definable regional populations in the low to mid hundreds) are marked by relatively bounded patterns of intermarriage and by over-arching ritual unity, and by relative intensity of interaction such as co-residence, cooperation in smaller rituals and other action, but they are fuzzily rather than clearly defined. Even so, language variety does not enter into their definition by members of the groupings themselves. The reasons for this are not hard to find. Most marriages in the area from early this century to the late 1970s took place between spouses who owned different languages. Most camps or households, and most social and political entities recognised by the people themselves, consisted of people who owned a variety of languages. Conversely, people owning the same language were commonly found in distinct social and political groupings. Multilingualism was the norm, and a complex etiquette of languageswitching was in use. It is likely, however, that members of regional groupings would have shared largely common multilingual repertoires which would be distinct from the repertoires of other people from areas of relatively bounded interactional density. Nevertheless, marriage and other connections between such regional groupings always meant that some individuals, at least, had linguistic repertoires which did not match those of the people with whom they usually lived. Language competence was highly individuated. 2.7
Conclusion: regional versus social dialects?
In so far as Aboriginal culture turns geography into social meaning, socalled regional language varieties in Australia can be subsumed by the category 'social dialects', along with the class varieties of the world's urban
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centres and caste varieties such as those of India. Customary definitions of the locations' or 'territories' occupied by Aboriginal languages are in large part folk geographical constructs which we must explain culturally and sociologically, and not simply by reference to two-dimensional grids such as those of spacing or lines of face-to-face (and, now, electronic) communication. Defining Aboriginal linguistic regionality effectively only in terms of topography and customary land tenure or place of residence is about as useless in an explanatory context as simply defining urban dialects in terms of their speakers' annual incomes or job descriptions. Yet we have generally been content to leave the regional or geographic character of Aboriginal language variation relatively unanalysed. The more one looks at this so-called geographical character the more it looks just like the nongeographical kinds of language variation, both in the way it is structured and maintained by social action, and in the way its meaning is constituted by social actors. Language variation always locates language users within both geographical and social space. Social actors themselves, though, tend to play up either the geographical or the social connotations of speechforms. This is no reason for scholars to posit two different kinds of language variation. Notes 1. I am being unrepentantly reconstructionist here. My analysis focuses on what can be discovered about Aboriginal language systems as they were at the time of early European contact. The collapse of most of these systems and the resulting linguistic homogenisation is a closely related topic, but would take too much space to discuss in this context. 2. On the Dreaming, see Stanner (1979). In Aboriginal tradition, languages were emblems of religious as well as of political significance, but were seldom distributed isomorphically with other types of social cleavage. For those and other reasons they may be regarded as the grist for a species of totemism (see Sutton forthcoming). 3. Other new emphases in identification have focused, for example, on which mission or government settlement families originally settled, or on contemporary outstations. 4. In Sutton (1979) I examined the literature on formal language group labels for an area in Cape York Peninsula which, as it turns out, lacks them. In virtually all cases the terms recorded by earlier field workers were found to be recognisable clan names, place names, regional group names, and so on. 5. In terms of purely linguistic features, regions of particularly intense social interaction in Australia are often strongly marked by shared surface characteristics such as phonetics and the semantics of idiomatic expressions, for example among otherwise markedly varied local languages. Genetic subgroupings, on the other hand, are poor indicators of recent patterns of interaction. Attempts to correlate genetic, rather than diffusion-marked, groups of language with social interaction phenomena such as traded stone tool distribution have met with very limited success (e.g. McBryde 1984). 6. There is evidence that some children achieve the multilingualism of their parents' generation on reaching adulthood, but their own clan languages are now often second languages (for a description of Wik-Mungkan, see Kilham et al. 1986). 7. I do not enter into discussion of the political motivations involved here, except to say that this view came from people not affiliated with Wik-Mungkan.
Aboriginal English - an overview SUSAN KALDOR and IAN G. MALCOLM
3.1 Introduction The label 'Aboriginal English' usually refers to a range of varieties of English spoken by Aboriginal Australians, which are not identical either with Standard Australian English or a Creole. While in recent years the number of speakers of Standard Australian English has increased among Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal English continues to be used by many in a variety of functions, as either a first or second language. In this chapter we will identify some of the features of Aboriginal English, noting in particular the differences between Aboriginal English and the Creoles on the one hand, and between Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English on the other, and examine its functions in contemporary Australian society. We will also consider likely trends, and finally, point out areas for further research. 3.2
Studies of Aboriginal English
Up to the late sixties little scholarly attention had been given to any English-based variety spoken by Aboriginal people, though the existence of such varieties was well known from the earliest times of European settlement and even documented by many lay observers. These speech varieties were generally lumped together under such labels as 'pidgin', 'jargon', 'perverted', 'corrupt', 'disjointed' or 'broken English'. At best, they were dismissed as quaint manifestations of valiant but not quite successful attempts by Aboriginal people to speak English, and at worst, seen as varieties to be ridiculed and eradicated. Over the past quarter century the situation has changed radically. There is now in the linguistic, educational and anthropological literature a clear recognition of the fact that Aboriginal English, like the Creoles, is a linguistic system worthy of serious study in its own right. There also exists a wealth of information on each English-based new Aboriginal speech variety.
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The serious scholarly study of Aboriginal English began in the early 1960s with the Queensland Speech Survey directed by E.H. Flint of the University of Queensland which had been aimed at surveying and describing all varieties of English spoken in Queensland. Reports by Flint himself (Flint 1968) and his associates provide information about Aboriginal English in different parts of Queensland, for example, in the south (Readdy 1961), the north (Alexander 1965), the centre (Alexander 1968), at Palm Island and in the Torres Strait (Dutton 1964,1965,1969 and 1970). In the late 1960s a large-scale, educationally oriented study was launched, also in Queensland, to examine the language educational problems of Aboriginal children in the early primary school years (Department of Education, Queensland, 1972). The seventies saw an upsurge of interest in Aboriginal English as well as in pidgins and Creoles. Aboriginal English was studied in the Northern Territory by Sharpe (1977, 1979), El well (1979), in Sydney by Eagleson (1977, 1978, 1982) and in Melbourne by Fesl (1977). In Western Australia Douglas (1976) described the speech of the south-west people representing a continuum from one of the original Aboriginal languages of the area, Nyungar, to Standard Australian English. We began our statewide survey of the English speech of Western Australian Aboriginal primary school children in 1973 (Kaldor and Malcolm 1979, 1982, 1985). Further descriptive studies appeared in the 1980s from all parts of Australia (Harkins 1984; Walker 1981; Eades 1983; Eagleson 1985). These descriptive studies have been complemented by various other studies, for example, on the status of Aboriginal English (Jernudd 1971; Sommer 1974; Brandl and Walsh 1982; Ford 1984; Elwell 1982); Aboriginal English discourse genres and ethnography of communication (Muecke 1981, 1983; Koch 1985; Eades 1981; 1985 and this volume; Von Sturmer 1981; Sansom 1980); the pragmatics of Aboriginal children's speech (Walker 1983); educational issues relevant to Aboriginal English Pwyer 1974b, 1976; Gray 1980; Murtagh 1982; Kaldor 1976; 1980; Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982; Malcolm 1979a, 1979b, 1982; Christie and Harris 1985; Harris 1980; Thies 1986); code-switching (McConvell 1985); communication problems in law courts (Lester 1973; Nash 1979; Liberman 1981; Coldrey and Vincent 1980; and Koch, this volume); the history, nature and status of pidgins and Creoles and their relationship to Aboriginal English (Crowley and iligsby 1979; Donaldson 1985; Dutton 1980; J.W. Harris 1984, 1986a; Hudson 1983a, 1983b; Miihlhausler 1985; Harris and Sandefur 1985; Sandefur 1982a, 1983a, 1983b, 1985; Shnukal 1985; Troy 1985). In spite of the seeming wealth of material available today, however, it is still quite difficult to provide a representative description of all the varieties of Aboriginal English all over the continent. The difficulties stem from the
Aboriginal English - an overview 69 fact that individual researchers have concentrated on very different aspects of Aboriginal English. The picture today is like a jigsaw puzzle from which many pieces are still missing, but in which some major patterns are detectable. 3.3 Aboriginal English vs. the Creoles Aboriginal English is distinct from both Standard Australian English and the English-based Creoles of Australia. In this section we shall explore the criteria by which it can be distinguished from the Creoles. We shall consider those suggested by Miihlhausler (chapter 9, this volume) and Sandefur (1985b) together with some additional criteria. The first point of difference concerns its origins. In some Northern communities where earlier extended pidgins have been creolised, Aboriginal English has emerged as a post-creole continuum, though as Sandefur (this volume) points out with reference to Kriol, not necessarily as a continuum in the process of decreolisation. In these Northern locations, then, Aboriginal English is a variety which chronologically follows the development of Creoles. In other areas, especially in the South and in some desert locations, however, circumstances prevented the creolisation of earlier pidgins. In these areas Aboriginal English developed simultaneously with one of the extended pidgins or Creoles that had developed elsewhere. In some locations, the transition from a traditional Aboriginal language to Aboriginal English happened within four generations in the present century. Donaldson (1986) sketches the linguistic experiences of speakers of four twentieth-century generations in central western New South Wales, where the language shift between the original Aboriginal language, Ngiyampaa, and Aboriginal English occurred within the lifetime of the oldest generation still alive in the eighties. Today the children use only some vocabulary items from Ngiyampaa or from pidgin in their English speech 4 as affirmation of special identity'. Certain varieties of Aboriginal English arise from the acquisition of English as a second language. This may occur in an entire community where the population's first language is an Aboriginal one (Elwell 1979) or at any time at any place on what Sandefur has called an 'individual-based timeline' (Sandefur 1985b: 74). Troy (1985), for example, found ample evidence that in the earliest years of European settlement some Aboriginal children were already exposed to^English through formal education and a number of them developed interlanguages which approximated various standard models of English of the period. In sum, Aboriginal English as spoken today has a complex history of multiple origins, all distinguishable from the history of Kriol or of Cape York Creole.
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A further set of criteria relates to functions, needs and motivations. Miihlhausler (chapter 9, this volume) suggests the criterion of 'targeted learning', viz. that at least some varieties of Aboriginal English can be seen as the product of a more or less formal learning process, of which the end result is competence in Standard Australian English. Creoles, on the other hand, arose out of a need for communication between Aboriginal groups who did not share a common traditional Aboriginal language, and lacked full access to the Standard Australian English model. Today Kriol is spoken by Aboriginal speakers in the relevant areas exclusively with Kriolspeaking Aboriginal interlocutors (Sandefur 1984b: 5) whereas Aboriginal English is used by Aboriginal speakers in interaction with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal interlocutors. A further point of difference concerns mutual intelligibility. Most varieties of Aboriginal English are, on the whole, comprehensible to speakers of Standard Australian English, even though miscommunication does, of course, occur between the two groups of speakers as will be illustrated later in this paper (see also Koch, this volume). Kriol and Cape York Creole, on the other hand, are virtually incomprehensible to Standard Australian English speakers without previous study. Along yet another dimension, one may take speaker awareness manifested in folk labels as a distinguising criterion. During the past decade there has been a growing awareness of Kriol in Northern areas where speakers increasingly use the term 'Kriol', though the folk label 'pidgin' is also still current for speech varieties that would be classified as Kriol by linguists. Aboriginal English is usually perceived by its speakers as 'English', though distinguished from Standard Australian English when necessary. Thus, Standard Australian English is variously referred to as 'flash' or 'posh' English (Eagleson 1982: 155), 'strong' English (Lester 1973), Wetjala- 'white fellow' (Douglas 1976) or other variations on the term 'whitefella talk', 'pure' or 'straight' English (Sandefur 1983b: 56), 'high' English, 'Gadiya/Kardiya/(white) English' (in the Kimberleys, Thies 1986), while Aboriginal English is often referred to as 'easy', 'simple' 'slack' English (Sandefur 1983b), 'blackfella English', 'blackfella talk'. Recent developments in literacy in Kriol have created another point of difference between Aboriginal English and the Creoles. Kriol has been given an orthographic system by linguists who have been engaged on literacy programmes related to Bible translation tasks or to bilingual education. The introduction of the new quasi-phonemic orthographic systems to be used by the speakers themselves has important practical, educational and social implications. A phonemically spelt Creole text actually looks like a language very different from English. By comparison, Aboriginal English is only occasionally presented in phonetic or phonemic transcription and only when phonological features are discussed in the context of a technical
Aboriginal English - an overview
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linguistic presentation. More commonly, it is presented in 'impressionistically modified' conventional English orthography, especially in cases where descriptions are aimed at a non-linguist readership, for example, teachers or other professionals who may not have any linguistic training. Finally, the most important criteria for distinguishing Aboriginal English from Creoles have to be structural, viz. differences between the phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical features of the two speech varieties. However, structural criteria, while being the most significant distinguishers, also present severe problems. In creole-speaking areas speakers shift between a wide range of lects within the same speech event. Creole forms are freely 'borrowed' in what may be classified as Aboriginal English speech by reference to other criteria and, conversely, Aboriginal English or Standard Australian English forms are 'borrowed' in the Creoles. Perhaps some solutions lie in statistical information on variables. Later we will give some examples of variation of forms within the speech of a small group of children in speaking Aboriginal English in an area adjacent to Kriol-speaking areas. These children's speech shows a very high degree of variability. In the Kriol-speaking areas it may well be the case that Kriol, at least 'pure' Kriol, shows less variability than Aboriginal English. Much further research is required before more definite conclusions can be reached concerning these matters. In the absence of such information, we have to be content with stating that Aboriginal English differs from the Creoles in many respects but that the exact borderlines and cut off points are difficult to establish. 3.4
Structural properties of Aboriginal English
We have referred to Aboriginal English as a 'range of non-standard varieties of English'. It is customary to regard this range as a continuum between Standard Australian English and the Creoles. When it comes to sketching such a continuum, however, a number of theoretical questions arise. The end parts of the continuum are perhaps not too problematic. At one end are the varieties typically spoken by urban Aboriginal people in Southern cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide and also by some Aboriginal speakers all over the continent. At the other end are the varieties spoken by Aboriginal people in areas where Creoles are widely used and where Creoles influence the use of English. However, the varieties in between are much more difficult to place along particular sections of an idealised continuum. Is the interlanguage of a bilingual child in an isolated desert community closer to or further away from Standard Australian English than the creole-influenced but fluent first-language varieties of Aboriginal English spoken, for example, in some north-western coastal
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areas or in some Northern Territory town camps? Within the same location there may be a continuum between what Sharpe (1977: 4) has called 'town [Aboriginal] English' and 'camp [Aboriginal] English'. Harkins (1984) discusses the problems of identifying and isolating varieties of Aboriginal English even within the town camps of Alice Springs. It seems clear that one is confronted here not with one continuum but a whole host of continua, such as geographically based continua, town dweller/camp dweller continua, sociolectal continua, second-language interlanguage continua, developmental or acquisitional continua, stylistic continua and possibly many others. The picture is further complicated by the high degree of variation often displayed in the speech of a single individual speaker whose motivations for the choice of particular variant forms are often very difficult to identify. At this stage, it is not possible to trace any of these continua with any hope of accuracy. The best that can be done is to attempt some tentative grouping of features in the hope that it can be ultimately refined and revised as more information becomes available. Such a grouping is, with reservations, presented here. Apart from the problems just outlined, our reservations arise also out of the fact that presenting only features in which Aboriginal English differs from Standard Australian English is not the best way of characterising Aboriginal English as has been pointed out by Eades (1983). Such a presentation tends to obscure the real nature of Aboriginal English as a vital, expressive and creative linguistic resource - a living tongue which serves the speakers in a large array of functions and situations and which expresses and reflects their culture and social world. Nevertheless, lists of features are probably the only way to provides some rudimentary introduction. It is hoped that the samples of speech which follow the list will, to a certain extent, compensate for the limitations of the list. Ultimately, when more information is available, a multidimensional model of variation will give a clear indication of the structure of variation. 3.4.1 Grammatical features The grammatical features in the following list have been divided into four groups. Thefirstgroup contains features reported by Eagleson (1982) in his study of the speech of Aboriginal children and adolescents in the Sydney metropolitan area and thus represents speech at the end of the continuum closest to Standard Australian English. Features in the second group have been reported by many researchers from Northern and desert locations in different parts of Australia. The third group is more characteristic of the Aboriginal English of speakers, in Northern areas mainly, who are themselves Kriol speakers or are exposed to Kriol speech. Group 4 represents forms more characteristic of Aboriginal English in areas where the children's first language is a traditional Aboriginal language.
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It should be noted, however, that the groups do not necessarily correspond to geographical divisions. While in the Southern metropolitan areas it is unlikely that one would find speakers with Group 2 or Group 3 features, in the North one can find the entire range. The list cannot be taken as a basis for postulating implicational relationships as is often done in other cases where a continuum of varieties exists, for example, Jamaica. While some of the features listed in Group 1 are present in speech which displays also Group 2, 3 or 4 features, others are not. Thus, a speaker who uses invariable present verb form to relate past events, does not necessarily use such non-standard past tense forms as brang. A further point which needs to be noted when considering Group 1 is that some of these features are shared with non-standard English spoken by non-Aboriginal Australians and, indeed, by varieties of non-standard English around the world. It is questionable whether the variety characterised by Group 1 features should be considered Aboriginal English at all. The justification for including this variety is that the features occur in speech which has other characteristics that render it 'Aboriginal' rather than just those belonging to 'international non-standard English'. These characteristics include some phonological properties (the products of influence from both Australian English and Australian Aboriginal traditional languages) as well as distinctive vocabulary and idiomatic usages and pragmatic, functional or speech act differences (Eades 1983) which are increasingly seen by Aboriginal people as markers of Aboriginal identity (see Eades, this volume). By the same token, one might ask whether some of the Group 3 features are indeed those of Aboriginal English or of Kriol. The justification for including these is that they all occurred in conversations between Aboriginal children and non-Aboriginal interlocutors and in speech in which, apart from the Group 3 features, many Standard Australian English features also occurred. Features of all three groups occur in variation with standard forms in varying degrees of frequency. Group 1
Urban/metropolitan 1
1. Non-standard past and participial forms of certain verbs, e.g. brang, ated;2 2. have omission with perfect of be, e.g. / been; 3. was/were reversed and other instances of non-standard concord, e.g. / weren't, we was; 4. Plural of you, i.e. yous; 5. me and him, etc. in subject positions, e.g. me and him went swimming; 6. Non-standard reflexives, e.g. hisself;
74 SUSAN KALDOR AND IAN G. MALCOLM 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
what as relative marker for human and non-human antecedents, e.g. / got one mate what . . .; / do all the things what . . .; Demonstrative them, e.g. them blokes; Non-standard comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, e.g. worser; Unmarked adverbs, e.g. talk proper; Double negatives, e.g. she hasn't got no boyfriends; eh as question tag used chiefly as a request for confirmation, e.g. they never stop drinking, eh?; Pronoun inserted after NP subject (predicate marker), e.g. the policeman he heard him banging.
Group 2 14. 15. 16.
Northern and desert areas
Unmarked third-person singular present tense verb forms, e.g. 'e talk; Unmarked past tense forms, e.g. she.end up driving then; Zero copula, in a range of syntactic environments, e.g. 'e skinny; this a big wave; this the second time; this in a rock; his name Peter; my sister she in Perth now; they cousin brothers; that in Carnarvon, he not down there; 17. Absence of be in progressive forms, e.g. she swearing; 18. Preference for get over be passives, e.g. dog got run over; 19. Non-standard contracted forms, e.g. /ka:n/ - 'can't', /wiaz/ - 'we was', /ins) - 'in the', /ons/ - 'on the', /ob) - 'all the'; 20. Plurality not marked explicitly, e.g. three big giant; 21. Zero determiner, e.g. make cuppa tea, take car for ride; 22. Demonstrative used before proper noun, e.g. this Andy; 23. Generalisation of masculine pronoun to feminine or non-human referents or antecedents, e.g. my sister, 'e. (See also 13); 24. Unmarked possessives, e.g. Andy Mob; 25. Zero preposition, especially after up, down etc., e.g. / was down Hedland. Some prepositions (especially in, at, on) interchanged; 26. never as simple negator, e.g. the dog never died; 27. Yes-no questions in statement form, e.g. you training alia kids?; 28. Further question tags and interrogative markers: invariable ini, ana, init, inti, etc., e.g. they don't lay eggs here, inti?; 29. Wh - questions without inversion or do-support, e.g. where you was? how you write that?; 30. Lack of some conjunctions and other markers in complex sentences, e.g. / saw one bird was going across? (I saw a bird that was going across.), no rain they don't camp in the'cave*. (If there's no rain, they don't camp in the cave.)
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Group 3 Northern creole-speaking communities 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.
Past tense expressed by bin + invariable present stem, e.g. Jim bin go [went] to Derby, also as copula, e.g. 'e bin in hospital yesterday; 'e got for 'there is' 'there are', e.g. 'e got winmill there; gonna and gotta as future auxiliaries, e.g. / gotta [will] talk about fishing, I gonna go, if you kick him, you gotta [will] kill him; Transitive marker /-im/ /-9m/, e.g. me bin takeim you (I took you); one as indefinite article, e.g. then she got one house; Allative and locative with preposition la, longa, e.g. hit him la guts (hit him in the guts); Use of inclusive v. exclusive, dual v. plural distinctions through use of Creole pronouns, e.g. mela (we exclusive), yuntupala (you two); for/por as possessive marker, e.g. Stephenpor wife (Stephen's wife); gotta/gada as instrumental and comitative, e.g. 'e got 'im gada net. (He got him with the net.); 'Afterthought' structures (second and subsequent adjective follows noun, in turn is followed by 'one'), e.g. e got lots of cars, toy one.
In situations where Aboriginal children speak a traditional Aboriginal language as their first language, Aboriginal English often displays many of the features already described as well as some additional features, for example, the transfer of bound morphemes from their first language. Such phenomena are particularly noticeable in remote desert locations. Group 4 Interlanguage varieties in bilingual settings 41.
42.
3.4.2
Use of possessive borrowed from Aboriginal languages, e.g. Auntie Wilmaskuplace (Auntie Wilma's place), isn't dat Sandrangu modaga? (Isn't that Sandra's car?); Various interlanguage forms which come about through overgeneralisation in the course of formal learning, such as the use of did as unemphatic past marker in narratives, e.g. we did go camping (we went camping). Phonological features
At this stage it is not clear how phonological features are related to the above groups of grammatical features. It seems safer to provide a single list of phonological features with the comment that Aboriginal English in creole-influenced areas is likely to display a larger number of features which are consistent with phonological influences from Aboriginal languages and consequently from Creoles than speech closer to Standard Australian English. The following are some of the phonological features that have been reported in the literature:
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1. / 5/ alternating with /v/ e.g. vwv=with; 2. /Q/with If/e.g. fings; 3. /r)/ with /n/, e.g. readin'; /q/ with /r)k/, e.g. somethink - the latter being mainly reported from Sydney; 4. /h/ added to initial V, e.g. huncle (reported mainly from Southern metropolitan areas); initial /h/ deleted, e.g. ospital; 5. /n/ deleted in 'an' before vowel, e.g. a eel; 6. Word boundary re-analysed in another, e.g. this nother one; 7. Alternation between voiced and voiceless obstruents, especially voicing of medial stops following nasals, e.g. hunding (hunting); 8. /t/ and /d/ alternating with flapped /r/ input it, got it, etc., e.g. purit, gorit; 9. Affricates and fricatives alternating with palatals, e.g. tyicken; 10. fricatives alternating with stops, e.g. jibe - 'five'; 11. /s/ HI /z/ fo/ alternation, e.g. Z?oyce (boys), yks1 (fish); 12. diphthongs alternating with short clear vowels, e.g. [horn] - 'home'; 13. primary stress on first syllable, e.g. ['kaerjgru] - 'kangaroo'; 14. syllable timing; 15. sustained pitch rise in narratives. There has been little systematic work on distinctive features of prosody such as 13-15. 3.4.3 Lexical features Lexical features are too numerous to list in a brief sketch and a few eclectically provided examples will have to serve as illustrations. It is often the distinctive vocabulary usages and idiomatic expressions that give all varieties of Aboriginal English their distinctive 'flavour' or character as much as (and, in some instances, even more than) the grammatical or phonological features. Even speakers of the varieties closest to Standard Australian English often employ lexical items in ways which reflect Aboriginal cultural semantic categories, especially in certain semantic fields, such as kinship. Distinctive usages include: 1. English words used in different senses, e.g. granny in the south-west includes any male or female relative of a person's grandparents' generation, while in the north-west it also includes relatives in a person's grandchildren's generation; jar (North, scold); dust (overtake on a dusty road); language (Aboriginal language); country (ancestral home area); law (Aboriginal law); 2. Specific lexical combinations, e.g. tell - lie (Northwest, pretend); big shame (embarrassing situation, embarrassment)4; morning time, afternoon time (morning, afternoon); big mob (a lot, many, much); this kine
Aboriginal English - an overview
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(north-west, this way, such); cousin brother (parallel male cousin); teach up, train up (teach, train); 3. Some verbs which are normally intransitive are used transitively, e.g. growl as in / growled him; grow up as in my mother grew me up; 4. Use of words borrowed from Creoles, e.g. olgaman (old woman); 5. Words borrowed from Aboriginal languages. These can come from any semantic field, but words denoting Aboriginal persons from particular regions or groups and words denoting white persons are particularly frequent, e.g. gadiya (north-west, white person); wongai (Aboriginal person from the western desert region and the goldfields). 3.5
Discourse features
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to give an overview of discourse features associated with Aboriginal English, partly because they require lengthy exemplification and partly because insufficient information is available on a representative array of discourse genres from different geographical areas (see, however, Eades, this volume, on communicative strategies). Nevertheless, brief mention must be made of the fact that Aboriginal English grammatical, phonological and lexical features usually combine with characteristic features of discourse. Muecke's (1981) studies of Aboriginal English narratives in the Kimberleys have shown that several narrative genres have emerged in Aboriginal English, all with their own particular configurations of discourse features, e.g. narrative tense in contrast with unmarked tense, and the use of various discourse markers, which create immediacy by going straight into the dialogue instead of introducing scenes with descriptive passages, direct quotes, repetitions, etc. Our studies showed that such features are present also in quite young children's speech as will be seen in an excerpt from a six-year-old's speech below. 3.6
Variation in Aboriginal English and sample texts
We have called attention to the high degree of variability not only from one geographical area to the next, or even from one speaker to the next, but within the speech of a single speaker and often within the same utterance. However, our study of variation in verb forms in the speech of seven primary school children in a remote north-western town over a period of 18 months indicated that different grammatical features of Aboriginal English showed different degrees of variability. Thus, while past tense marking appeared to move towards Standard Australian English in all the children (65 per cent of all verbs relating past events were in a standard form), thirdperson present-tense marking was lacking in 96 per cent of the cases and 91
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per cent of the questions were formed in various non-standard ways, that is, as statements or with zero copula.5 It would seem that certain features are much more resistant to change than others and are likely to survive longer. It would be interesting to compare such data from different areas to find out whether trends under the impact of exposure at school to Standard Australian English are similar throughout the continent. The following three excerpts, one from a young child and two from adult speakers in Western Australia, will give some idea of how the various features appear in discourse. Excerpt 1 was recorded with a 6-year-old girl in a small and isolated north-western town, some distance away from 'true' Kriol speaking areas. She relates her experiences during a recent cyclone in a highly visual presentation. [Interviewer: What happened while I was away?] Yeah, cyclone, rain did pitja [come] and the . . . all rain comin' on, comin' on and Danny, 6 they bin fall down, they fall down in the thing . . . and he got ajirriya [splinter] and he got thingy and he bin cry really hard. [Interviewer: And what did you do when the cyclone came?] There was Stephen, me and little Rosie and Matthew and I put Matthew in my back. I put Rosie in my back and I put Matthew here. And Stephen had two. And run, run, run, run, run . . . and we ran. I put two of them here then, so I can hold them and I hold them, but they fall away, one of them fall off. I draggin' Stephen, Stephen comin' last and next Stephen bin go first past me 'cause I let him go first. Next he let me go fast, first, then I passed him. And I let him go fast, let him go first, passed 'im comin' up, comin' up, comin' up with two little child, dragged 'im. Comin' up and I dragged 'im. Comin' up, comin' up, I just ran, comin', comin', comin', comin'. . . and we were still running, and when I runned, 'e put his back up and 'e went to sleep and I dragged 'im, going to sleep. We having a blind race then . . . I was racing to the bin, Stephen racing to the c a r . . . I was that side and the bin this side.
Excerpt 2 is from a multilingual, multidialectal woman of 39 in an isolated Northern community. She moves freely between Kriol and almost Standard Australian English. Well they garra [gotta] djidan [sit down] an' prepared to learn. How come we prepared to sit down and learn about their ways and culture, from li'l kid up to y'know . . . Whatrong, they kaan kamdan [come down] to our level too; learn; sidan an' learn these things, learn about our way of life. Or are they too superior? Health sister ought to be learning about our traditions and ways; and the teacher should be learning about customs and language and the way people live. Teacher should go down and look at the situation; where that kid come from, y'know, what type of lifestyle the kid is living. It's got to be both ways, cooperation, you know. (from Thies 1986) Excerpt 3 is from an elderly woman in a remote Northern location, reminiscing.
Aboriginal English ~ an overview 79 My own mother grew me up and sent me to school, she was a sensible old lady. Although she was a bush lady, but she knew how to speak English. Well, they took me there, overland - not by no aeroplane, not by no boat; they swim across with me this firs' river, the second river and the third river, in Oombulgurri. They went to D.J. and said 'My gal I purum [put plus transitive marker] 'ere for school'. You know they used to talk Pidgin English, well I have to say that! (from Thies 1986) 3.7 Communication problems between speakers of Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English
Communication problems often arise between speakers of Standard Australian English and Aboriginal English. Such problems are not always directly attributable to linguistic differences- indeed, they are just as much relatable to differences in cultural values, in expectations relevant to verbal behaviour and to different interpretations of situations (see Eades, this volume). Nevertheless, linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of communication problems cannot be understood in isolation from each other. Here we shall consider just a few of the types of situations that have been described in the relevant literature. Problems often arise in courts of law. A multilingual Aboriginal interpreter, Lester (1973) points out that a speaker of Aboriginal English may respond with 'yes' to a negative question such as 'Did you or did you not do that?', meaning 'Yes, I didn't do that'. He also mentions the frustration many Aboriginal persons feel in the process of decoding sentences that contain words like 'if, 'but', 'because', 'or' etc. (These are often omitted in Aboriginal English, see feature no. 30.) He tells of the problems of an Aboriginal interpreter in a court who had trouble understanding such phrases as 'determine this case', 'on the second occasion', 'in this instance', 'did you value the artefacts' and words such as 'signature', 'procedure', 'defendant', 'accused', among others. Nash (1979) reports having witnessed a magistrate asking a perplexed young Aboriginal man, 'Do you want the matter stood down while you seek counsel?' He also points out that 'politeness and deference is signalled in Aboriginal communities by softness of speech, silence or averting the gaze . . . in the courtroom this has been taken as sullenness or stupidity'. Liberman (1981) points to instances of what he calls 'gratuitous concurrence', that is, Aboriginal defendants or witnesses always replying in the affirmative to a variety of questions, having developed a 'strategy of accommodation' in interaction with non-Aboriginal interlocutors. The 'police caution' is also often reported in the literature as being very difficult for Aboriginal people to understand (Coldrey and Vincent 1980). Policemen tell an arrested person that he is not obliged to answer and then ask Aboriginal interlocutors if they have understood the caution. Abo-
80 SUSAN KALDOR AND IAN G. MALCOLM
riginal persons often answer in the affirmative but when asked whether they have to answer questions, they also answer in the affirmative. Koch (1985 and this volume) describes communication problems relevant to English in another vital contemporary area of communication, namely, land claims. Yet another area of great importance is classroom interaction. Harris (1980) described traditional interactional patterns among the Yolngu people at Milingimbi (Northern Territory) which have a bearing on classroom behaviour. Malcolm (1979a) studied extensively classroom discourse relevant to communication problems between Aboriginal English speaking children and their Standard Australian English speaking teachers. He has described many instances of communication failure, some linguistically based, others stemming more from differing sociolinguistic rules relevant to speech behaviour. One instance of miscommunication observed by Kaldor provides a quick illustration of purely linguistic factors. A child had fallen off a swing and was sitting on the ground, crying. Teacher, rushing out to the playground: 'What happened?' Another child: "e bin pol down'. Teacher: 'Who pulled him down?' Child: 'Nobody. 'E jus' bin pol down [fell down, pol=fall].' 3.8
Written Aboriginal English
So far we have dealt exclusively with oral communication. In recent years, however, it has become clear that at least some varieties of Aboriginal English need to be looked at in their written manifestation as well. As more and more men and women of Aboriginal descent become literate in some variety of English, there is a growing stock of written material aimed at an Aboriginal readership. Further, as communication between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians becomes more intensive, there is also a burgeoning literature aimed at a general readership or audience on topics related to Aboriginal life and Aboriginal culture. Three strands in this area need to be singled out for special mention. One is the works of fiction written by outstanding Aboriginal writers, themselves speakers of Standard Australian English who write novels, short stories or plays with Aboriginal protagonists who speak Aboriginal English. Another type of written text material consists of transcriptions of recordings with speakers of Aboriginal English by researchers of various disciplines, especially anthropologists. A third type of written material of interest is writings by Standard Australian English speaking persons (both Aboriginal and nonAboriginal) for literate speakers of Aboriginal English. This literature displays some interesting characteristics and deserves scholarly attention. Such writings (type 3 above) are written in Standard Australian English grammar but with comparatively simple syntactic structures. They avoid
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technical, official or academic sounding terms and use colloquial synonyms for words normally associated with formal style. For example, a newsletter aimed at discussing language education contains, in the English translations of messages recorded in Aboriginal languages by Aboriginal contributors, the following expressions: kids, proper language, bit of trouble, the language mob (linguists working on a project), a little bit of money ('funds'), whiteman's language, bush tucker, walkabout for goanna, snake, pussycat and dingo, gadia [white] ways, law bosses, law business, skin.1 These alternate with completely Standard Australian English passages. In some publications formal style is preserved, but some Aboriginal word usages give the text 'Aboriginal flavour'. For example, the 'long version' of the report of the pilot study for the Kimberley Resource Centre (Hudson and McConvell 1984) uses simple formal style, but also includes terms such as sea country, river country, gardiya (white person) high English, flash English, language (in the sense of'Aboriginal language'), with an explanation of these terms for the non-Aboriginal reader. 3.9
Roles and functions of Aboriginal English today
Aboriginal English today performs a wide variety of functions as a first- or second-language variety in Aboriginal society. Several researchers have reported that Aboriginal speakers even of a variety of Aboriginal English close to Standard Australian English are developing an awareness of the social significance of their dialect and its function as a symbol of Aboriginal identity. Many wish to maintain the dialect while gaining increasing competence in Standard Australian English. Such loyalty to the dialect may well lead to a situation akin to that found by Edwards (1986) in the speech of young British blacks born in England who use 'Patois' (a commonly used folk label for Caribbean speech varieties) features in their speech deliberately for a variety of communicative purposes. Donaldson (1986) has pointed out that a non-standard dialect can be used for emotional comfort, for developing a feeling of belonging and warmth with persons with whom one shares a linguistic and cultural heritage and for inclusion and exclusion, as the need arises. Aboriginal English performs all these functions for its speakers. Schmidt (1985: 210) mentions that even odd vocabulary items from a dying language included in English speech may serve to maintain Aboriginal identity. Aboriginal English is now also recognised as a 'modern Australian Aboriginal language' by language planners of both Aboriginal and nonAboriginal descent. The Aboriginal Languages Association, a body under the control of representatives of Aboriginal communities, included, in its constitution, reference to Aboriginal English. Two documents that are undoubtedly so far the most important official statements on language
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planning at a national level in Australia today, A National Language Policy (Commonwealth of Australia 1984) and National Policy on Languages (Lo Bianco 1987), devote several pages to Aboriginal English (see Ozolins, this volume). 3.10
Concluding remarks
In view of the paucity of sociolinguistic survey data relevant to Aboriginal English at this stage, no accurate predictions can be made concerning its future. However, even under these circumstances some trends can be observed. An increasing number of men and women of Aboriginal descent are becoming proficient users of Standard Australian English. Some of these speakers replace Aboriginal English features with those of Standard Australian English and become monodialectal in the latter. Other speakers acquire competence in Standard Australian English while retaining some competence in Aboriginal English. To this latter group Aboriginal English seems to become a marker of Aboriginal identity, of group solidarity and loyalty. In many communities such bidialectalism is highly valued, though valuation may be expressed only indirectly. For example, Aboriginal English- or Kriol-speaking parents who wish their children to become proficient in Standard Australian English, do not always want them to be monodialectal speakers of the latter variety, namely they do not want them to speak only 'flash' English when they come home. In some remote areas Aboriginal English is very strong and many speakers, including children, are monodialectal. In these areas Aboriginal English is undoubtedly going to be retained for some time to come. The continued existence of Aboriginal English has many implications for language planning and language policies. There seems to be a consensus among educators as well as Aboriginal parents that Standard Australian English has to be made available in the education system to every Aboriginal child as it is the medium of offical communication and of higher education. Competence in Standard Australian English is essential for Aboriginal children if they are to enjoy equal educational and occupational opportunities with non-Aboriginal Australians. Whether Aboriginal English should be used in formal school work is seen by some educators and Aboriginal parents as more problematic. But whatever role is assigned to Aboriginal English in the school curriculum, one matter seems certain: teachers need to have a thorough understanding of the linguistic heritage of Aboriginal children. They have to be able to comprehend the children's speech; they have to know the salient characteristics of Aboriginal English and be able to assess the differences between Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English; they need to understand the nature of
Aboriginal English - an overview 83
bilingualism, bidialectalism and communication problems. Further, they need to have thorough training in the Teaching of Standard English as a Second Dialect, which is just beginning to receive some attention in Australian teacher education. Interestingly, these points became the subject of a court mandate in the United States in the famous Ann Arbor Black English case. There the judge ruled that teachers be required to attend workshops in order to gain expertise in areas relating to the Black English spoken by their pupils. One of the most urgent research tasks is to conduct nation-wide surveys to establish the number of speakers of Aboriginal English, the number of Aboriginal speakers of Standard Australian English and to find out the proportion of monodialectal and bidialectal speakers in the two varieties. Other studies urgently needed are variation studies in different geographical areas, studies of language change in Aboriginal communities and of possible implicational hierarchies of features of Aboriginal English. Notes 1. Eagleson (1982) points out that all of the features he found in the speech of Sydney Aboriginal adolescents represent low-level rules and occur variably and mostly with low frequency in variation with higher frequency standard forms. In all cases the speakers had competence in all major categories of standard English grammar. 2. The examples are mostly taken from speech samples collected from children and adolescents in Sydney and Western Australia (for further details and examples see Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982, and Kaldor and Malcolm 1985). 3. Such sentences can be interpreted also as exhibiting an intrusive be, in which case the Standard English equivalent would be: / saw a bird going across. 4. The term 'big shame' stands for a concept which was found to be very important for young Aboriginal speakers in Western Australia (for a detailed discussion of this concept see Kaldor and Malcolm 1982, and also Eades, this volume). 5. It is, of course, difficult to tell whether a question from which the copula is missing is, in fact, in a statement or question form. However, examples in which the copula is present, suggest that where the copula is missing, it is missing following the subject NP. 6. Names have been altered to preserve the anonymity of the speakers. 7. In the sense of section or sub-section (Kimberley Language Resource Centre Newsletter 1, 1980).
Communicative strategies in Aboriginal English DIANA EADES
4.1
Introduction
Most definitions and descriptions of Aboriginal English confine themselves to formal linguistic structures, for example, phonology, syntax, and vocabulary. Although some Aboriginal speakers of English may share a common grammar with speakers of Standard Australian English (see e.g. Kaldor and Malcolm, this volume), they do not necessarily share meanings and interpretation because of the sociocultural context of Aboriginal ways of speaking. For example, constraints on the social dimensions of the use of question structures by Aboriginal speakers of English (discussed in 4.4.1 below), transcend grammatically defined dialectal boundaries, and are part of widespread Aboriginal communicative strategies, regardless of the language variety used. Such pragmatic evidence (and further evidence discussed later in this chapter) indicates that our definitions of Aboriginal English need to look beyond grammatical features and include aspects of communicative strategies. I therefore use the term 'Aboriginal English' to refer to Aboriginal varieties of English, which in some instances may differ from Standard Australian English primarily in features of pragmatics (and minimally in grammar). 4.2
On communicative strategies
This chapter is concerned with the patterned ways in which Aboriginal people use dialects of English as part of their social interaction. The focus is on 'socially constituted linguistic' study (Hymes 1974), which relies particularly on ethnographic method, and which reverses the typical structural linguistic tendency of isolating referential structure and then posing questions about social functions (see e.g. Gumperz 1972 on 'correlational sociolinguistics'). Understanding language usage (in the sense of communicative strategies) necessitates 'starting] from function
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and look[ing] for the structure that serves it' (Hymes 1974: 197). The work of Hymes (e.g. 1974), Gumperz (e.g. 1982a, 1982b) and others within the ethnography of speaking provides a theoretical framework for this kind of language study, variously referred to as language usage, pragmatics, communicative strategies, communicative style, or ways of speaking. The first studies of communicative strategies in Aboriginal English are providing exciting evidence about the strength and viability of Aboriginal culture in a complex multicultural society. They also raise a number of serious questions about cross-cultural communication in areas such as educatioa and the law in Australia today. It is impossible to use or understand language outside its social and cultural context. Thus, it is necessary first to outline briefly some key features of the sociocultural context in which speakers use Aboriginal English. 4.3
Sociocultural context of Aboriginal English
Varieties of Aboriginal English are spoken as the first language of Aboriginal people living in most areas of Australia, primarily in urban and rural areas in 'settled' Australia (as opposed to remote Australia). The majority of speakers of Aboriginal English are of mixed descent, and many are undeniably biculturally competent, as is evidenced by their increasing participation in mainstream Australian institutions, such as education and employment. The extent of bicultural competence and the degree of (conscious or unconscious) code-switching in mainstream domains varies considerably, according to a number of aspects of social context. However, just as it is rare for Aboriginal people to renounce their responsibilities and rights in their Aboriginal society, so too is it rare for them to depart from Aboriginal ways of acting in their own in-group interactions. While we cannot speak of a homogeneous Aboriginal culture and, indeed, there are differences in the degree to which groups of Aboriginal speakers of English interact with mainstream Australian people and institutions, there are a number of significant shared features of Aboriginal sociocultural context. Many of these features reflect continuities from precontact Aboriginal societies, and they illustrate Keen's (1988) claim that 'regardless of the degree of heterogeneity within Aboriginal social life, it tends to be separate from that of other Australians'. Irrespective of the language spoken, Aboriginal people throughout Australia today belong to overlapping kin-based networks sharing social life, responsibilities and rights, and a common history, culture, experience of racism and ethnic consciousness. Social relations are characterised by on-going family commitments within groups, and the highest priority is placed on the maintenance and development of these commitments (rather
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than, for example, on financial security, employment, or individual fulfilment). Moreover, Aboriginal social life is very public. In towns and cities the openness of traditional Aboriginal camp life has been replaced by the openness of frequently overcrowded housing and vehicles, and the outdoor lifestyle, which involves much of the business of day-to-day living occurring in open outside areas (for example, in parks and other public places, on the main streets of towns, and on verandahs of houses). Because people have on-going commitments to a wide network of kin (far beyond the nuclear family), virtually every aspect of their lives is shared in some ways with a number of relatives. While Aboriginal societies place a high priority on constantly maintaining and developing social relations, there is also provision for considerable personal privacy. This personal privacy is ensured not in terms of physical privacy as it is, for example, in mainstream Australian society, where walls, an indoor lifestyle and a strong prohibition on directly observing many of the actions of others, are all essential factors in the maintenance of personal privacy. It is in the indirect style of verbal interaction that Aboriginal people experience much personal privacy, as shown in 4.4. The only detailed sociocultural study of an English-speaking Aboriginal group is Sansom's (1980) ethnography of a Darwin fringe camp. A major focus of this work is the use of words 4to create and establish social forms' (1980: 4), and an analysis of a number of speech acts is central to the ethnography. Sansom's graphic account illustrates his claim that the Aboriginal English spoken in the fringe camp 'remains distinct from the standard spoken language of Australian whites because its words and formulations define a separate Aboriginal reality' (1980: 11). A full discussion of the sociocultural context of the speakers of Aboriginal English needs to examine a considerable number of areas including the following (some of which are treated in the works cited): 1. The nature of obligations to kin, including financial, housing, the rearing of children, the sharing of material resources, and the use of respectful ways of speaking, such as terms of address (e.g. Barwick 1974; Beckett 1988; Birdsall 1988; Eckermann 1988; Gale and Wundersitz 1982); 2. The wisdom and power attributed to old people (Birdsall 1988); 3. The physical nature of much interaction, including dispute settlement (Langton 1988; Macdonald 1988) and, in some instances, the punishment of children; 4. Links to traditional land and ritual knowledge, (Baines 1988; Barwick 1988; Eckermann 1977); 5. Notions of time and orientation to the present and past rather than the future (Eades 1983, 1984). However, in the discussion of communicative strategies in Aboriginal
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English, the most important element of sociocultural context is the indirectness which is central to much of the social interaction. The following section will focus on a few selected language functions (which may be termed 'speech acts' by some analysts), which highlight the role of indirectness in social (including verbal) interaction.
4.4 4.4.1
Indirectness in Aboriginal English Seeking information
While questions are frequently used in Aboriginal English in certain contexts and functions, there are constraints on their use which serve to protect individual privacy. Elsewhere (Eades 1982, 1983, 1988) I have explained this difference in terms of whether a speaker is seeking orientation information or substantial information. Orientation information serves as clarification of a topic, often by way of background details, about people especially, but also about the time, place and setting of some situated or narrated event. Direct questions are frequently used to elicit orientation information, as for example in a typical greeting such as 'Where you been?' Frequently, however, the orientation question takes the form of a statement uttered with rising intonation followed by an optional interrogative tag. This linguistic strategy (often referred to as 'uninverted question forms', e.g. Dwyer 1974a) illustrates Aboriginal indirectness, in that the speaker is presenting known or supposed information for confirmation or denial (for example, 'You been to town?'). This strategy of seeking information by presenting information is seen more clearly in the ways in which English is used by Aboriginal speakers to seek substantial information, such as important personal details, a full account of an event, or the explanation of some event or situation. In these situations questions are not used, but the person seeking information contributes some of their own knowledge on the topic, followed often by silence. This strategy serves as an invitation (or hint) for another participant to impart information on this topic. There is no obligation on the knowledgeable person to respond, and, further, it is rare for silences to be negatively valued in Aboriginal conversations. Important aspects of substantial information seeking are the two-way exchange of information, the positive, non-awkward use of silence, and the often considerable time delays (frequently of several days) between the initiation of substantial information seeking and the imparting of such information. 4.4.2
Making and refusing requests
Aboriginal people rarely make direct requests. A question frequently serves to make an indirect request, as well as to seek orientation information. For
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example, a typical Aboriginal way of asking for arideis to ask a car owner an orientation question, such as 'You going to town?' or 'What time are you leaving?' Questions such as these are multifunctional, structurally ambiguous, and of course, depending on the relationship between speakers, communicatively ambiguous. That is, such questions can be interpreted as information seeking of a kind common in Aboriginal conversations, but they can also be interpreted as a request for a ride. Appropriate interpretation cannot be made without an understanding of the relationship between speakers. Even if speakers understand questions such as these as requests for aride,the ambiguity enables a person to refuse a request in a similar indirect fashion, for example, 'Might be later', 'not sure'. In this way Aboriginal people can negotiate requests and refusals without directly exposing their motives (see Eades 1988)1.
4.4.3
Seeking and giving reasons
Research with Aboriginal speakers of English in south-east Queensland reveals that the questioning of a person's motives, or reasons for action is always carried out indirectly through the use of multifunctional linguistic forms (Eades 1983). There is a striking absence of the reason-seeking question 'Why?' in Aboriginal English. This is not to say that Aboriginal speakers of English do not often use 'why?' (as a question) in cross-cultural settings. In addition, people often use 'why?' or 'what for?' as a complaint, for example, 'What you come to me for? I got no money.' In seeking reasons, Aboriginal people elicit statements of facts (using the strategies discussed in 4.4.1 to seek orientation and substantial information), which they accumulate over time and interpret as reasons. Thus, these information-seeking strategies are multifunctional, serving also to provide the basis of the seeking of reasons, and also, on occasion, serving as requests (see 4.4.2). The interpretation of such multifunctional forms as forms used for seeking information and/or reasons, and/or making requests is dependent not on the linguistic context (such as grammatical or lexical items) but on aspects of knowledge shared by speakers. Thus, for example, an orientation question such as 'You went to town yesterday?' would be used to seek information concerning a person's movements. However, it could also serve to provide some evidence which a speaker could accumulate concerning that person's reasons for certain actions. The use of multifunctional forms makes the requests for reasons indirect and ambiguous, and it gives people considerable privacy; they are never confronted with an inescapable request for a reason (e.g. 'Why didn't you visit us yesterday?'). Indirectness is further maintained by the seeking of reasons from a third
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person, using the verbal strategies discussed above. A number of phrases are used to indicate the speculative nature of a reported statement. These include'must have. . .', 'must be. . .', 'might be. . .'and'reckons. . .', for example, 'Fred reckons that old man went to town this morning'. The direct and uninterrupted observational access to many day-to-day interactions, which is common in Aboriginal society, is a further factor lessening the need for direct verbal enquiries. Sansom (1980: chs. 4-6) gives a detailed account and analysis of the rules governing the way in which events are observed ('witnessed') and later retold in the Darwin fringe camp. Just as the seeking of reasons relies on the use of multifunctional forms, so too does the expression of reason. There is frequently no unambiguous linguistic marker of reasons (cf. Standard Australian English because, in order to, so). Again speakers rely only on non-linguistic context for their interpretation of a statement as a reason. Specifically, it is shared experiences and knowledge which provide the evidence that a multifunctional statement is intended as a reason (for a detailed example of giving and seeking reasons in Aboriginal English, see Eades 1988).
4.4.4
Expressing opinions
A number of recent studies of Aboriginal communicative strategies provide evidence that it is important for Aboriginal people to present opinions cautiously and with a degree of circumspection. Von Sturmer (1981: 29) first discussed the use of disclaimers as a strategy of'not presenting oneself too forcefully and not linking oneself too closely with one's own ideas'. Examples of such disclaimers are 'might be I right or wrong' (Von Sturmer (1981:29), and 'this is just what I think' (Eades 1988). Disclaimers such as these point to a fundamental cultural view that Aboriginal persons can speak only for themselves. Eades (1988) reports that many Aboriginal people in south-east Queensland do not express a firm or biased opinion, even if they hold one. A common strategy involves general discussions on a topic, while speakers gauge each other's views gradually, before a definite presentation. When speakers realise a difference between their views and those of others, they tend to understate their own views. This style of gradually and indirectly expressing an opinion is a significant factor in cross-cultural miscommunication, and will be discussed below. Also relevant here is the widespread Aboriginal notion of'shame', which is a combination of shyness and embarrassment occurring in 'situations where a person has been singled out for any purpose, scolding or praise or simply attention, where he/she loses the security and anonymity provided by the group' (Kaldor and Malcolm 1979: 429).
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4.5
Further research
Further research on communicative strategies in Aboriginal English could profitably follow the work of recent researchers working with speakers of 'traditional' (i.e. non-English related) Aboriginal languages. The most significant research to date is Liberman's (1985) ethnomethodological study of Pitjantjatjara-speaking people. Liberman gives a central role to the preservation of congeniality and harmony in Aboriginal social interaction. His detailed account and analysis of the process of reaching consensus is consistent with the strategies of presenting opinions discussed above. Central to this process of community decision-making is the unassertiveness of participants, avoidance of direct argumentation, a deferral of topics which will produce disharmony, and, above all . . . an objectification of discourse which is effected by a serial production of summary accounts of the participants' deliberations. (Libermann 1982: 1)
A number of studies of communicative strategies in traditional language-speaking communities have focused on the choice of language or dialectal variety according to the kin relationship of participants (e.g. Rumsey 1982; Merlan 1982; Sutton 1982; Haviland 1979), and other contextual factors such as the personal states of participants, the situational context and the topic (Sutton 1978; Haviland 1982). To date, there is no study of different genres within Aboriginal English ways of speaking. An obvious area of research would be that of jokes and 'funny stories'. The only study of narratives in Aboriginal English is Muecke's (1981) semiotic functional analysis from the Kimberley area of Western Australia. However, he does not examine patterns of interaction, but analyses the use of Aboriginal narrative structures and style in Aboriginal English texts which were narrated especially for him in an organised speaker-linguist speech event. Nonverbal communicative strategies such as sign language (Kendon 1988) and eye contact in traditional groups have their counterparts in Aboriginal English-speaking groups and these have yet to be studied. 4.6 Aboriginal communicative strategies in cross-cultural communication The application of studies of communicative strategies is potentially of considerable benefit to the understanding and resolution of much crosscultural misunderstanding. Von Sturmer (1981) and Liberman (1981,1982, 1985) examine ways of accommodating Aboriginal communicative strategies in meetings, consultations and formal negotiations with government officials. Liberman also makes a significant contribution to the understanding of Aboriginal miscommunication in courts of law (see also Koch, this
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volume). Eades (1985) highlights some of the areas of cross-cultural communication which are greatly affected by Aboriginal strategies in seeking of information and reasons, namely the areas of education, the law, and research. Eades (forthcoming) focuses on the application of pragmatic features to a specific controversial case in Australian law. Recent research in the classroom education of Aboriginal children has developed an awareness of the need for teachers to accommodate Aboriginal ways of interaction, for example, Malcolm (1979a, 1979b), Harris (1980), Walker (1983), Christie and Harris (1985), and Gray (1985). While Harris and Christie have worked primarily with children speaking traditional Aboriginal languages, the work of Gray, Malcolm and Walker focuses on Aboriginal English-speaking children. In particular, Malcolm (1982) shows that the questioning strategies used by classroom teachers are often ineffective in communicating with these children. The indirectness characteristic of much interaction within Aboriginal groups is a key feature in many cross-cultural situations. Indirect communicative strategies are of course not uncommon in mainstream Australian use of English, but they tend to be characteristic primarily of sensitive situations. However, the Aboriginal use of such strategies is not restricted to sensitive situations. These are the usual everyday ways of Aboriginal interaction, in which indirectness is the norm. Self-assertiveness is neither a common nor highly valued personal characteristic in Aboriginal society. Aboriginal people have developed a number of ways of accommodating the directness of White interactions. One important strategy is that described by Liberman (1981,1982,1985) as 'gratuitous concurrence'. This is an agreement or confirmation (such as 'yes') which serves to keep conversationflowing,and does not necessarily signify the speaker's actual agreement with a proposition (see also Kaldor and Malcolm, this volume). Many Aborigines find 'that the easiest method to deal with White people is to agree with whatever it is that the Anglo-Australians want, and then to continue on with their own business' (Liberman 1981: 249)2. Liberman's explanation and illustration of'gratuitous concurrence' with Pitjantjatara-speaking people of central Australia bears striking resemblances to situations I have observed in a range of formal and informal contexts with Aboriginal English speakers in south-east Queensland, including interviews, meetings, tutorials, and legal interviews3. The discrepancy between an Aboriginal speaker's use of gratuitous concurrence (not to signify actual agreement, but to facilitate on-going interaction), and the White speaker's interpretation (that in saying 'yes', for example, the Aboriginal speaker is agreeing with a certain proposition), has serious implications for all cross-cultural situations in Australia which use direct questioning, in particular, police interviews, law courts, employment
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interviews, medical consultations, classrooms at all levels, and government consultations. Another strategy of accommodation involves code-switching from the indirect style to a vociferous, confrontational style which Aboriginal people perceive as appropriate to interactions with Whites. In some situations the Aboriginal participants are, in fact, more direct and confrontational than the White participants. A further, frequently used strategy of accommodation is for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal speakers to compromise in their communicative styles. Evidence of such bicultural communicative competence comes from Aboriginal participation in tertiary education (Eades, unpublished). Not all cross-cultural interactions are marked by some form of accommodation. In many settings, differences in communicative strategies are either unnoticed or unaccommodated, and much tension and conflict can arise. In meetings, for example, Aboriginal people are often offended and feel dominated by the White participants, who express forceful opinions, often in direct opposition to those expressed by a previous speaker. On the other hand, White people often mistakenly assume Aboriginal agreement with a particular viewpoint after listening to the initial statements of an Aboriginal speaker, and not allowing time for the expression of a different opinion. If asked directly whether they agree with a particular issue, Aboriginal speakers may frequently respond with the 'yes' of gratuitous concurrence. The indirect and roundabout Aboriginal style (discussed in 4.4.4 above) requires a non-linear meeting organisation and a much longer time span than is typical of White meetings, before participants can express important contradictory viewpoints. Thus, in meetings of Aboriginal organisations, for example, the lengthy discussion of issues often causes non-Aboriginal participants to become frustrated with the seeming lack of organisation and inability to make decisions. Research with Queensland Aboriginal students at University and College (Eades, unpublished) indicates that the bicultural competence of many, but not all, of these students includes the ability to participate successfully in mainstream strategies of information seeking, which are so central to the western education system. For some Aboriginal students, however, the direct interrogative style used in tutorials is quite unsuccessful in involving them in discussion, and in assessing the extent of their knowledge of a topic. These students are often uncomfortable and annoyed about views expressed by non-Aboriginal students, and the forceful manner of their expression, but are not able to respond in the same manner. Thus, without the Aboriginal students' feedback, non-Aboriginal students continue in the direct expression of opinions upsetting to Aboriginal students, who in turn become more resentful of non-Aboriginal students.
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Such situations of miscommunication, potentially disastrous in a crosscultural setting, are being constructively approached by discussions by Aboriginal students with fellow students and staff (some of whom are Aboriginal, some of whom are non-Aboriginal, with some bicultural competence). The resulting processes of in-group discussion and analysis, and particularly the support and responsibility assumed by the successfully bicultural Aboriginal students is an important factor in the on-going positive resolution of such challenges. 4.7
Conclusion
International developments in the ethnography of speaking in the last decade have amassed a wealth of evidence which highlight the startling fact that in large-scale multicultural societies 'speakers may have similar lifestyles, speak closely related dialects of the same language, and yet regularly fail to communicate' (Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz 1982: 13). Nowhere could this statement be more applicable than in urban and rural Australia where miscommunication and resulting conflict and tension occur daily between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people speaking closely related dialects of English. A positive and constructive approach to this situation has much to gain from the development and expansion of studies of communicative strategies in Aboriginal English. Notes 1. Walker (1983) classifies enquiries made by Aboriginal children in this way as being in declarative mood. 2. Liberman (1985) discusses the same phenomenon with Pitjanjatjara-speaking Aborigines in central Australia. 3. Liberman (1985: 198) points out that gratuitous concurrence is also a strategy frequently used by 'oppressed peoples, who utilise such facile assent to placate those they fear and to avoid confrontation.'
Language and communication in Aboriginal land claim hearings HAROLD KOCH
5.1
Introduction
The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act of 1976 is intended to give Aboriginals in the Northern Territory legal title to their traditional lands, where these lands are unalienated from the Crown or where all interests in the lands are held by or on behalf of Aboriginals. When an area of land is being claimed, an Aboriginal Land Council prepares a claim on behalf of the traditional owners, often using contract researchers, in which it tries to ascertain the names and relationships of all the traditional owners, the location of sites on their land, and the nature of their affiliations (spiritual and economic) to the land. This evidence is presented before an Aboriginal Land Commissioner, who is a judge of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory, in a quasi-legal hearing with lawyers representing the claimants and other parties with interests in the same lands, for example, mining and pastoral companies, the Northern Territory government, local councils. The proceedings are tape-recorded and an official transcript produced by the Commonwealth Reporting Service. The Aboriginal Land Commissioner issues his findings and recommendations in a published report to the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, who may then make a grant of the land to an Aboriginal Land Trust established to hold title to the land for the benefit of its traditional owners (see Maddock 1983 and Neate 1989 for a general discussion of the Land Rights Legislation). My aim here is to describe aspects of the communication process in land claim hearings as well as formal features of the English of Aboriginal witnesses. I will illustrate these with extracts from the transcripts of proceedings of a sample of the 25 land claim hearings that had been completed by mid-1986 (ALC 186: 17).1
Language and communication in land claim hearings 95 5.2
Interpreting
The majority of Aboriginal witnesses at the hearings were native speakers of traditional Aboriginal languages (TLs), but all of them knew some English. The general policy was to conduct the proceedings in English, the language of Australian courts, unless communication breakdown occurred, whereupon an intepreter was employed (see Nash 1984 for further discussion of interpreting in land claims). The transcript does not record what was said in the TL, but it does usually indicate where a TL was spoken, for example; C O U N S E L : DO you want to show us any places for those dreamings? DISCUSSING IN ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE. (MB 162)
Sometimes the interpreter also clarified what a witness had said in nonstandard English, for example, WITNESS: All along the book. INTERPRETER: It is all in the book.
(MB 101-2)
5.3 Use of traditional language words Although the proceedings took place primarily in English, many words from TLsfigurein the hearings and associated documents. Many of these items would have been written and explained in the documents before the court such as the claimbook, maps, and genealogies. Nevertheless, novel TL terms were spelled into the record when they occurred by the interpreter or one of the researchers of the claim; for example, Kurdurdurdu is the name of the place - K-u-r-d-u-r-d-u-r-d-u- (MB 162). TL words occurring in the transcripts include place names, personal names, subsection or 'skin' names, kin terms, terms for ceremonies such as yawulyu and djeruda,flora,fauna, especially as Dreamtime personages, and terms that describe the relationship of people to lands and land-based rituals, as in this extract: WITNESS: Kurdungurlu got to start him Jungarrayi. COUNSEL: The kutdungurlu start? WITNESS: Yes, kurdungurlu got to start him and kirda. INTERPRETER: Yes, and then the kirda. COUNSEL: What do the kurdungurlu start, Peggy? WITNESS: Yawulyu they start it there. INTERPRETER: They start from body paintings. She is indicating
by her hands the designs across the body. COUNSEL: The kurdungurlu put the paintings on the kirda. Is that correct? (MB 164)
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HAROLD KOCH
The Aboriginal Land Commissioner chose to have these TL words used as technical terms in preference to their customary English translations (see Nash 1984; Neate 1981; and the articles in Hiatt 1984 for discussion of these terms). He noted that: The Aboriginal English usage of terms may not be helpful. Thus 'boss' or 'owner' on the one hand and 'worker' or 'manager' on the other, as the glosses of mingeringgi and djunggaiyi or of kirda and kurdungurlu can be misleading. (ALC 1981: 11) 5.4
Non-verbal communication
A different kind of non-English element in the land claim hearings was the use of communicative gestures. In Central Australia a well-developed system of signs is widely used among women in mourning (Kendon 1988). In one land claim women who were under a speech ban gave their testimony in sign language, which was interpreted. Gestures were also used in lieu of or to supplement verbal responses. Such gestures included: movements of the head to signal assent or dissent; pointing (sometimes with the mouth) to identify a person, locate a site on a map, or specify a direction verbalised only as 'this way' or 'that way'; indications of size (e.g. 'that high'); miming an action or symbolising an activity. These non-verbal indications were then typically clarified verbally for the written record by the lawyer or interpreter, as in this example: Could you tell us again, Mary, what skins the kurdungurlu are for this country? WITNESS: Nungarrayi. INTERPRETER: 'Nungarrayi', she says, indicating Molly Nungarrayi. WITNESS: Nungarrayi, Rosie. INTERPRETER: Indicating Rose Nungarrayi behind her. (MB 169) COUNSEL:
5.5
Non-standard English
The English of most of the Aboriginal witnesses was non-standard to some degree. For some, English is a second language in which they have not achieved fluency. Their utterances in English thus represent a kind of interlanguage. Other witnesses were fluent in Kriol, widely spoken in the Northern Territory both as a mother tongue (especially in the Roper Valley area) and as a second language (Sandefur 1979, 1986, and this volume; Glasgow 1984; and Graber 1987c). A few witnesses may have been native speakers of Aboriginal English (see Kaldor and Malcolm, this volume). Non-standard features of the witnesses' English include both overt TL or Kriol elements and the absence of Standard English (SE) elements. They
Language and communication in land claim hearings 97
affect the phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of their English. Many witnesses' pronunciation of English showed influence from the phonological patterns of TLs, including such features as the lack of a distinction between voiced and voiceless stops, trouble with fricatives, fewer vowel distinctions, and the absence of certain consonant clusters. Although participants in the proceedings get used to the Aboriginal accent, words were sometimes misheard in one direction or the other, and the transcript occasionally records the wrong word, as in these examples. WITNESS: seed boats [pods] like beans (MB 22). WITNESS: He just find [point] that place (KW 70) WITNESS: After road fix. COUNSEL: After the road is fixed (Aly 429).
In the area of morphology, personal pronouns do not always show the Standard English distinctions of case between subject, object, and possessive forms or between genders in the third person singular, as in these examples: Okay. That is we country . . . That is our dreaming out of we father (Mu 13). COUNSEL: Does this business help the land? WITNESS: Yes, it helps the land. COUNSEL: Can you tell me a bit more, how it helps the land. WITNESS: Yes, him help, you got to have one place here. COUNSEL: What does that mean? (RB 343) WITNESS:
Separate Kriol pronoun forms such as mipala 'we' also occur, for example: I'm really kurdungurlu for Janyinypartinya. Bandy and Willy me fellow, kurdungurlu for Janyinypartinya- two Jupurrula. (MB 43-4)
WITNESS:
Plural inflection may be omitted from the noun, although plurality is sometimes specified by an accompanying quantifier as in: RESEARCHER: Any more there? WITNESS: That is all the boys there, and he got two or three girl, I think. He
got two girl. (NR 244) The articles a and the are often omitted. Possession may be marked, if at all, by the Kriol preposition blanga(nda) or by for, as in . . . those kids for their sisters, they the djunggayi for Milwarapara. The kids, their sisters' kids, they are the djunggayi. (RB 116) WITNESS: That country belonging to some old fellow here. WITNESS:
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HAROLD KOCH
'Old fellows', and you are pointing over to that Duncan Hogan and that mob? WITNESS: Yes. Him buwaraji mine, that one. COUNSEL: YOU sit down buwaraji for that one?
COUNSEL:
WITNESS: Yes. COUNSEL: Have you got him WITNESS: Yes, Wayawarinya.
bush name? (NR 29)
Verbs are often not inflected for subject agreement, or past tense, although past is often marked by the Kriol particle bin. Future is sometimes marked by got to. The copula and auxiliary are typically omitted. Transitive verbs are often followed by the Kriol marker -em, which is usually transcribed as him. Some examples follow: We got to wait for the porcupine to get out of the cave to walk around . . . You just grab it when he come out and kill him in the neckhit him with a stick. (NR 47) WITNESS: Police get after some steal coats [goats] Willara, sheep and after that they run away, they dead . . . come through that way to Willara and ask them where the people who steal coat. They keep coat with us . . . (AR 583) WITNESS: That one been finish, passed away. (RB 57) WITNESS: We got to be living here . . . all the time. All the young boy . . . and old people they going to be living right here. (Mu 32A) WITNESS: After road fix. (Aly 429) WITNESS: Take him back to Narakarani, then tie him up, put him chain and tie him up, like tree- no more been gaol there that time, locked goalhouse - and they keep him there for one week . . . (RB 224)
WITNESS:
Locational notions are often expressed by the Kriol preposition ianga, spelled in various ways. Prepositions are often omitted or a different preposition is used from Standard English. Major constituents of a clause may be absent if the referent is recoverable from the context, as in: COUNSEL: WITNESS:
He comes from down south way, does he - that rain? Yes, come from this way. (Mu 14)
Kriol 'e got may be used in place of there is as in: He got white cliff there and jungle behind, heavyjungle. There's another one here. (All 195)
WITNESS:
With regard to the order of constituents, a sentence may begin with the verb or, more commonly, a topicalised subject or object noun phrase, or it may end with an 'after-thought' constituent. Relative clauses may lack a relative pronoun, for example, Police get after some steal coats Willara
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99
(AR 583), that is, T h e police were pursuing some people who had stolen goats from Willara'. Non-standard lexical items include such forms as no more as an ordinary negator, that time- 'then', for example, 'no more been gaol there that time' (RB 224), kill 'em - 'hit', for example, 'kill him in the neck' (NR 47), and finish - 'die', for example, 'that one been finish, passed away' (RB 57). 5.6
Accommodation by Aboriginals
Aboriginal witnesses accommodated their language to the Standard English of the court situation. Sandefur (1986:82) has found, for the 'Kriol language area', which covers the northern half of the claims in question, a sociolinguistic rule that: English, or as much English as one knows, is to be used with and in the presence of Europeans. . . When speaking to Europeans, a Kriol speaker will shift as far up his Kriol-to-English interlanguage continuum as he is able. For those speakers who do not fully control Standard English, the result of this accommodation is a form of language that includes a mixture of SE and non-standard features, the latter being due to the influence of Kriol and/or TLs and the effects of second learning processes. 5.6.1
Variabili ty
There is much linguistic variability in the transcripts. It can be seen, for example, in the optional inflection for plurality, possession, gender, subject agreement and past tense, and in the alternation of Standard English and Kriol grammatical features such as bin, Verb-era, langa and lexical items, for example, die vs. finish. This variability may be a sign of accommodation; on the other hand, it may be inherent in the speakers' version of English, whether this is Aboriginal English, Kriol, or an interlanguage. Variability is to be expected in interlanguage (Ellis 1986: ch. 4), and is also the norm in Aboriginal English (Allridge 1984; Kaldor and Malcolm, this volume; and Elwell 1979) and Kriol (Sandefur 1979,1986 and this volume; Hudson 1983a; and Koch 1984). 5.6.2
Correction
A better case for accommodation can be made from instances where the transcript records a Standard English variable following a non-standard or Kriol variable, as in the following example where the speaker shifts from been to was and from that to the: Moon been here all the time . . . That moon been up here first . . . the moon was there; it never did move anywhere. (RB 106)
WITNESS:
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HAROLD KOCH
5.6.3 Hypercorrection An even better indication of witnesses' attempts to adjust their speech in the direction of Standard English comes from the occasional production of hypercorrect forms, whether in phonology, where /f/ may appear in place of/p/, for example,findfor 'point' or in grammar, where hybrid past tense expressions arise: WITNESS: Yes, djadukal been clapped. COUNSEL: The kangaroos clapped? WITNESS: Yes. (RB 76)
5.6.4 Suppression It appears that certain Kriol features were deliberately suppressed in the witnesses' English. This would account for the virtual absence in the transcripts of fella and one after adjectives and numerals used adnominally and of the preposition garram/got'em - 'with'. One particular witness, in his testimony at the Kaytej-Warlpiri land claim hearing, made only one clear usage of the Kriol transitivity marker -em, whereas in samples of his speech recorded in more casual situations he used the Kriol construction Verb-em NP as often as the Standard English construction. Here then is a clear example of style-shifting involving the suppression of a Kriol feature in the formal court situation. 5.7
Clarification by the court
The language of witnesses was often clarified for the court and for the transcript by repetition in Standard English by the lawyer, interpreter, or occasionally the land commissioner. This repetition also served the purpose of verifying the participant's understanding of what was said. In the process the official standardised the witnesses' pronunciation and grammar by supplying missing inflections and grammatical words, for example, articles, prepositions, copulas, auxiliary verbs and missing constituents such as subjects. They also replaced non-standard forms, for example, pronouns, prepositions, tense markers with standard ones, translated TL words, described gestures verbally, and expanded cryptic responses. 5.8
Accommodation by the court
In the hearing of land claims not all the accommodation was done by the Aboriginals. Adaptation to the Aboriginal situation can be seen in such
Language and communication in land claim hearings 101
general features as the outdoor setting of many hearings, the taking of evidence from groups of witnesses, the restricting of parts of the evidence and exhibits to one sex, the use of interpreters, the observance of taboos on speech or on the use of certain names. Linguistically, the lawyers adapted by trying to avoid the use of complicated syntax and too learned vocabulary. They sometimes substituted two-word phrases for Standard English interrogatives such as where, how, when, why, who and for demonstrative and personal pronouns, as in these examples: COUNSEL: When was the last time you went to djeruda ceremony? WITNESS: Nutwood. COUNSEL: When though? It was Nutwood, was it? WITNESS: Yes, we went to Nutwood. COUNSEL: When was that? WITNESS: That other djeruda for Nutwood. We had that. COUNSEL: What time was that? WITNESS: Cold weather time. (RB 342) COUNSEL: Albert, if you mob get this title for this 84 square miles, what
are you mob going to do with this land? (Mu 32A) Kriol lexical items were sometimes employed, for example, finish- 'die', sit down - 'be'. Counsel also used Kriol syntactic features such as that for 'the' or with a proper noun, the afterthought construction, and been. Even a few morphological features of Kriol were used; for example, omission of verb agreement, and he for it. Sometimes the attempts at accommodation resulted in constructions which are neither Standard English nor Kriol, such as the counsel's question, 'Have you got him bush name?' (NR 29).
5.9
Communication failure
In spite of accommodation from both sides there remained numerous instances of communication breakdown. Since the hearings proceeded largely by the format of questions by counsel followed by responses from witnesses, these communication breakdowns can be located in the questions, the responses, or the general process of the investigation. (Some of the following discussion has been inspired by Penman 1987.) 5.9.1
Questions misunderstood
On at least one occasion a witness had trouble hearing the question because of partial deafness. Sometimes witnesses failed to grasp a particular word, usually a question word such as why or when as in the example quoted in 5.8
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HAROLD KOCH
about the djeruda ceremony. Occasionally confusion arose when the witness failed to follow the counsel's switch in topic. 5.9.2
Reluctance to respond
There were times when the witness consciously declined to respond in the terms requested. Most of these problems in obtaining evidence were created by the etiquette and rules of what can be said in what context by members of that culture . . . Many Aboriginal witnesses were unwilling to talk about sacred aspects of sites on or near the claim area. (Layton 1983: 228) There are examples of witnesses exhibiting reluctance about giving information about secret sites or dangerous practices, uttering the name of a recently deceased person (circumlocation is used instead), answering for another person, or providing information that only senior people have a right to talk about. On a couple of occasions witnesses balked at having to repeat evidence that had been previously related to the counsel (at the proofing stage) or to the researcher of the claim as in this example: We might go on and talk a little bit about dreamings for Yarruku and maybe some of the places that those dreamings go on Yarruku. WITNESS: All along the book. I N T E R P R E T E R : It is all in the book. (MB 101-2) COUNSEL:
5.9.3
Unsatisfactory response
Some responses did not constitute a clear answer to the question. On a few occasions witnesses provided extraneous information. More often they gave insufficient information. Sometimes their responses were too specific, and sometimes they were not easily interpretable. Some apparently incomplete answers reveal a strategy of presenting the information in list form, pausing after each item, and some seemingly ambiguous responses reveal a strategy of replying to the last of a set of alternative questions. There are many examples of questions being answered indirectly; the hearer needs to infer whether the answer is 'yes' or 'no'. 5.9.4
Response not understood
Even when the witnesses answered the question accurately, their response was sometimes misunderstood by the counsel or the judge. The cause of this misinterpretation may lie in cultural factors or in the linguistic features of the response, whether phonetic, grammatical, or lexical. In this next
Language and communication in land claim hearings
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extract, counsel misunderstands that bamboo means 'didgeridoo' in Kriol (see Koch 1985 for further examples): Dick, I understand that you also do some painting and make didgeridoos? WITNESS: I can make him bamboo. COUNSEL: YOU make it from bamboo? COUNSEL:
WITNESS: Yes. (RB
125)
Here the reply 'yes' seems to be offered not as affirmation, but as what Eades (this volume) calls 'gratuitous concurrence'. 5.9.5
Problems of process
The general procedure of a court hearing is foreign to Aboriginal traditional culture. In this procedure information is extracted by a series of questions and responses, with the witness having little control over the sequence or structure of how the information is presented. This type of discourse process at times led to confusion on the part of witnesses and to a less clear presentation of the facts than if witnesses had been allowed to relate them in their own way. 5.10
Conclusion
In order to gain official recognition of their traditional relationship to their lands, Aboriginal people find themselves in the position of having to perform successfully in a communicative task using a non-traditional language, English, in a non-traditional type of communicative event, a quasi-legal hearing. Notes 1. The sources for the extracts are as follows: Australia. Aboriginal Land Commissioner. Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. All Re: Alligator Rivers Stage II Land Claim. Transcript of Proceedings . . . 1980. Aly Re: Alyawarra Land Claim. TOP 1978. AR Re: Uluru (Ayers Rock) National Park and Amadeus/Luritja Land Claim. TOP 1979. KW Re: The Kaytej, Warlpiri and Warlmanpa Land Claim. TOP 1981. MB Re: The Mount Barkly Land Claim. TOP 1983. Mu Re: Yingawunarri (Old Top Springs) Mudbura Land Claim. TOP 1979. NR Re: The Nicholson River Land Claim. TOP 1982. RB Re: The Yutpundji-Djindiwirritj [Roper Bar] Land Claim. TOP 1982.
Warlpiri in the 80s: an overview of research into language variation and child language
EDITH L. BAVIN and TIM SHOPEN
6.1
Warlpiri and its social setting
Warlpiri is spoken in a number of desert communities north-west and north of Alice Springs. It belongs to the Pama-Nyungan group of languages, which encompasses 90 per cent of the Aboriginal languages of the continent (see Walsh, this volume). It has a number of structural features typical of Pama-Nyungan languages,1 for example, agglutinating word formation and case-marking on nouns. Warlpiri has three distinct casemarking patterns for different transitive verbs, but the dominant case frame for transitive sentences is ergative-absolutive. Its syntax follows a nominative-accusative pattern, in that subject agreement is found with subjects regardless of their case form. It also has one of the freest word orders in the Pama-Nyungan languages; elements within complex noun phrases and non-finite clauses need not be contiguous. Like other PamaNyungan languages, Warlpiri has a highly developed system of pronouns and demonstratives: it distinguishes singular, dual and plural number, as well asfirst-personinclusive and exclusive. As is the case for some PamaNyungan languages, Warlpiri utilises bound pronouns that cross-reference subjects and objects. Typical of Pama-Nyungan languages, Warlpiri has few vowels and a large number of articulatory positions for consonants: there are five for oral and nasal stops and three for laterals and rhotics; it has no voiced-voiceless contrast and no fricative phonemes; words are always at least two syllables long and have primary stress on the first syllable; all words and syllables begin with a consonant. As with some Pama-Nyungan languages, there are morphemes which end in consonants as well as in vowels, but all words end in a vowel. Warlpiri is one of the strongest surviving Aboriginal languages with some 3,000 speakers. The people have gained rights to their own land, and children acquire Warlpiri as their first language. However, there are communities, for example, Lajamanu and Tennant Creek, where some
Warlpiri in the 80s
105
parents report that when they speak to their children in Warlpiri, the children answer in English. This pattern marks a stage in language loss, one which is spreading throughout the remaining Aboriginal languages and also community languages (see McConvell, this volume). There are now less than 50 Aboriginal languages in Australia still being spoken by children: there were over 200 when the English arrived in 1788 (Dixon 1980: 18). As speakers of Aboriginal languages have become aware of the threat to the survival of their languages, there have been moves to maintain them. Many communities are requesting bilingual schools and the training of more Aboriginal teachers. When the languages are used and taught in the school environment, they tend to have more status. Presently there are bilingual schools in three of the Warlpiri-speaking communities: Yuendumu, Willowra and Lajamanu (see Bavin 1988 for some discussion of the programme at Yuendumu). Change has taken place in the life-style of the Warlpiri people quite rapidly over the past 50 years and there has been lack of time for speakers to develop standard forms for talking about new things (Poulson et al. 1986). If people are talking about the land, hunting trips, ceremonies or kinship ties, there are traditional terms, but if they are talking about shopping, living in houses, doing new kinds of jobs, driving or repairing motor vehicles, or playing basketball, softball or Australian Rules football, the necessary words are usually borrowed from English and these words are pronounced with varying degrees of assimilation into the Warlpiri phonological system (Bavin 1989a), or there is a switch into English. Warlpiri speakers give different expressions for many things of European origin. For example, one mechanic used jiring wiili from the English 'steering wheel' to name that concept, while another used kanja-kurlangu, which is literally 'to drivebelonging'. Compare an adult's expression for 'ice cream soda' with the expression used by two children: adult: walyka ngarninja-kurlangu - 'cold to eat-belonging'; child 1: [ais] - 'ice'; child 2: kardirri - 'white'. Despite the impact of English-speaking culture the status of Warlpiri has remained high. Like many Aboriginal people, the Warlpiri retain a vigorous attachment to their land and kinship system. The kinship system, hard for outsiders to appreciate, defines relationships not only between people, but between people and the land (Laughren 1982b). Aboriginal land ownership is essentially religious, not economic, and this has placed much of the traditional culture on a plane different from the one where English-speaking culture has had its greatest impact. The people have been moved into settlements and lost much of their hunting and gathering way of existence. Although they do still hunt and gather, they have adopted many new practices from European culture. They also continue performing traditional ceremonies and speak Warlpiri for most of their communicative needs.
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EDITH L. BAVIN AND TIM SHOPEN
6.2
Change in progress in the pronominal system
The Warlpiri pronomial system includes independent pronouns for first and second person and bound pronouns for first, second and third person that cross-reference subjects and objects. In 1982, we interviewed 197 Warlpiri speakers for their use of the third-person bound pronouns, and, in 1985, we did a study of the independent and bound pronouns for first and second person, obtaining first-person forms from 166 speakers and the second-person forms as well from 84 of these people (Bavin and Shopen 1987). By comparing speakers of different ages, we have found a number of age-related innovations and neutralisations taking place. We believe that some of these have been made and perpetuated by children in the process of language acquisition (see Mougeon, Beniak and Valois 1986 for such a case in Ontarian French). As the children grow older, the forms they use serve as input for younger children. Once they are past the toddler stage, the children spend a lot of time together away from adults, and older children provide a great deal of the input for the language development of younger children. Two properties characterise the innovations: first, neutralisations, and second, a move towards semantic transparency, that is, the use of one form with one meaning as well as a preference for ease of segmentability, which is a general characteristic of child language acquisition (Slobin 1977, 1985). Robertson (1983) argues that a paradigm with greater 'iconicity', where semantically similar forms are phonologically similar, will be more elaborated and make more distinctions than one which is 'symbolic', where semantically similar forms are not phonologically similar. In the changes we have observed, however, there has been a move to both more iconicity and a less elaborated paradigm. Younger Warlpiri speakers are using semantically more transparent forms, but they are losing several contrasts, most notably the one between exclusive and inclusive in the non-singular first person. The bound pronouns that cross-reference subjects can be taken as an example. The bound pronouns are clitics that are part of the auxiliary, Table 6.1. The traditional Waripiri system for bound subject pronouns
First person Exclusive Inclusive Second person Third person
Singular
Dual
Plural
rna — n(pa)
rlijarra rli n(pa)pala pala
rnalu rlipa nkulu lu
0
Warlpiri in the 80s 107 separate from the verb but work in tandem with it to signal tense, aspect, mood and at the same time to cross-reference subjects and objects. Whereas Warlpiri word order is in general quite free, the auxiliary typically occurs in second position in the clause, as in example (1). (The ergative on the locative-marked nominal 'rock' shows agreement with the subject of the main verb, indicating that 'we' were in the rocks while doing the chasing.) (1)
Marlu-j arra-lpa-rnalu-palangu kangaroo-DUAL-iMPF-1 pi EXCL SU-3 DUAL OB
pirli-ngka-rlu wajili-pungu rock-LOC-ERG running-attack
nganimpa-rlu we (pi EXCL)
(PAST)
-ERG
'We [not you] were chasing two kangaroos in the rocks.' The clitic sequence -Ipa-rnalu-palangu is the auxilliary cluster. It marks aspect (Ipa, which in combination with the past-tense marking of the verb signals imperfective), the subject (rnalu - 'first-person plural exclusive', agreeing with the independent pronoun nganimpa), and the object (palangu - 'third-person dual'; agreeing with the first constituent, marlu-jarra- 'two kangaroos'). The traditional system of bound subject pronouns (Hale 1973) has a paradigm with eleven slots, as in table 6.1. The second-person forms represent a phonologically conditioned allomorphic alternation between n and npa. (The person marker npa is reduced to n when followed by the sequence pa. The npa of the second-person dual is realised as npa only when it is separated from the number marker pala.) In two of the traditional first-person forms, rna can be said to be the person marker, that is, the rna of'first-person singular' appears as part of rnalu - 'first person plural exclusive'. By assuming that singular is the unmarked number, we can analyse rna as 'first-person exclusive' in all its occurrences and n(pa) and nku - 'second person'. By assuming that third person is the unmarked person, we can analyse lu as the plural number marker in rnalu - 'first-person exclusive', nkula - 'second-person plural' and lu - 'third person plural'. Similarly, we can assume that pala of n(pa)pala- 'second-person dual' marks the dual number as in pala- 'thirdperson dual'. This analysis is represented in table 6.2 with morpheme boundaries between person (Pers) in first position and number (Nbr) in second position, with 0 representing the unmarked person (third) when it is in first position, and the unmarked number (singular) when it is in second position. It is apparent that the traditional system lacks semantic transparency: first, there are three forms which are not segmentable. They all include rli, but this cannot be assigned a consistent meaning. The form for 'first person dual exclusive', rlijarra, containsyarra, which occurs on nominals to signal
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EDITH L. BAVIN AND TIM SHOPEN
Table 6.2. The traditional Warlpiri system for bound subject pronouns, analysed into morphemes for person and number
First person Exclusive Inclusive Second person Third person
Singular
Dual
Plural
(Pers-Nbr)
(Pers-Nbr)
(Pers-Nbr)
rna-0 — n(pa)-0 0-0
rlijarra rli n(pa)-pala 0-pala
rna-lu rlipa nku-lu 0-lu
'dual', but the rli cannot mean 'first-person exclusive' because when it stands alone rli means 'dual inclusive' as well as 'first person' and it is part of the form for plural inclusive as well. These forms have to be learned as unanalysed wholes. Second, among the forms for second person, there are three allomorphs for person: n, npa, and nku. Thus, there is no iconicity. By contrast, consider the system in table 6.3 that is emerging among younger speakers. We see a loss of the exclusive-inclusive contrast, and in the reduced paradigm every form is segmentable into morphemes for person and number, with no allomorphy: in all instances ma is the morpheme for 'first person', npa the one for 'second', pala the one for 'dual', lu the one for" "'plural', while 'third person' and 'singular' are unmarked. There is regular principle of language change in the evolution of this system. The singular person forms and the third-person number forms have been taken as the basis for levelling with a completely regular paradigm as a result. Third-person forms have served as a basis for levelling in many languages (see, for example, Watkins 1962; Arlotto 1972; and Bybee 1985). Benveniste (1968) has argued that third person is the least marked person in that it is semantically the simplest, and in many languages it is the least morphologically marked: this is clearly the case in Warlpiri. Similarly, singular tends to be the least morphologically marked number (Greenberg 1966). This generalisation also holds for Warlpiri. Thus, in each case it is the least marked forms that have been taken as the basis for levelling. 6.3
Child language development
6.3.1 Word order and case marking Adult Warlpiri has a pragmatically determined word order (Swartz 1988). One could imagine that early in the process of acquiring the language,
Warlpiri in the 80s
109
Table 6.3. The forms most frequently used by young Warlpiri speakers for bound subjects pronouns Singular First person Second person Third person
rna npa 0
Dual
Plural
raapala npapala pala
rnalu npalu lu
children might overgeneralise and make some particular word order a signal for the grammatical function of noun phrases. In fact, this is not so. Among older children and teenagers, we have found that for certain tasks of a formal nature (e.g. describing actions in short sets of pictures), there is a tendency towards subject first word order. We have claimed in earlier work that the influence of English may be a factor (Bavin and Shopen 1985b) but in fact this can be explained in another way. When a new subject marks a switch in topic, the subject is likely to be first, following the principle that new information comes first. When talking to each other, or telling stories with well-developed thematic structure the children use varied work order with much ellipsis of core arguments (Bavin 1987). Clause initial and clause final position have a subtle focusing effect, but the language also has morphology that can be used for focusing, and speakers use intonation for this function as well. Children use focus markers even before they are three. While morphology is optional for pragmatic functions, it is necessary for grammatical ones. Case marking is the main cue for argument structure, but this is not an easily acquired aspect of Warlpiri grammar. We have done experimental work with children on sentence comprehension and found that their acquisition of core case marking (in terms of using the case markers as cues to sentence interpretation) is late by comparison with children acquiring other languages (e.g. Turkish, Slobin 1981, 1982; Polish, Weist 1983; Hungarian, MacWhinney 1985). Indeed, until the age of five the children pay more attention to semantic and pragmatic cues than to case marking, with word order always the least salient cue (Bavin and Shopen 1989). In 1985 we conducted a study of the processing of transitive sentences by 50 children. There were ten children for each of the age groups, three, four, five, six and seven years. We were unable to get reliable responses from children under three. (Until they go to school Warlpiri childrenjiave little practice at following directions. In the community, the young children learn mainly by observation rather than verbal instruction.) A total of 78 transitive sentences were included in the test, putting in competition the cues of case marking, pragmatics, and semantics of nouns and verbs, and word order. The children were asked to act out the sentences using toy
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EDITH L. BAVIN AND TIM SHOPEN
animals, people and objects. For each item, two objects were set out and then the test sentence was read. The children were asked to listen to the sentence before attempting the action. Part of the test put case-marking in competition with verb semantics and the animacy of nouns. Half of the sentences the children heard were semantically well-formed, like (2a), but the other half were like (2b): (2) a. Nyangu watiya nantuwu-rlu see (PAST) stick horse-ERG 'The horse saw the stick.' b. Nyangu watiya-rlu nantuwu see (PAST) stick-ERG horse The stick saw the horse.' For the action described by these two sentences, the children had a toy horse and a stick in front of them separated by a barrier preventing either object from 'seeing' the other. To demonstrate their comprehension of the sentence read, they picked up the entity they understood to be the subject of the seeing and moved it around the barrier so it could 'see' the other entity. All of the children got a high score on the sentences like (2a) by choosing the ergative-marked noun as the 'doer' of the action, but for sentences like (2b) there was a significant difference in how the children from the different age groups interpreted the sentences. Children aged six and seven used the information provided by the case forms, but children of five and below generally ignored that information, using instead their pragmatic and semantic knowledge. In another part of the test we put case marking in competition with probability, including probable sentences, such as (3a) and improbable sentences such as (3b): (3) a. Jampurnu maliki-rli karnta lick (PAST) dog-ERG woman 'The dog licked the woman.' b. Jampurnu maliki karnta-ngku lick (PAST) dog woman-ERG 'The woman licked the dog.' The results were similar. All children scored highly on the probable sentences. However, the childrenfiveand younger responded incorrectly to most of the sentences of the improbable type, while the six- and seven-yearolds performed the actions according to the case marking. What is most interesting is that word order was the least used cue. Although the children do produce case markets before the age offive(see 6.3.2), they do not rely on them for sentence interpretation. We can think of several reasons for this. However, before pursuing these, we should point
Warlpiri
in the 8 0 s . I l l
out that there are properties of Warlpiri which are likely to facilitate the early acquisition of case markers (cf. the properties of Turkish discussed in Slobin 1982: 151). Warlpiri is an agglutinating language, so that words are easy to segment into stems and affixes; case markers do not fuse with other morphemes; there is no grammatical conditioning for case allomorphy, only phonological. The children do not confuse the case forms which vary according to the vowel harmony rules of the language. However, the ergative and locative case forms also vary according to the number of syllables in the stem; with two syllable words, ngku/ngki is the ergative marker and ngka is the locative, but for longer words, rlu/rli is the ergative, and rla is the locative. This alternation based on stem length does cause some confusion, and the young children do over-generalise and use rlu/rli, or ngku/ngki on all words. All the allomorphs of the case markers lack phonetic prominence. While absolutive is signalled by the absence of any form, ergative and dative cases are monosyllabic in citation form and usually unstressed. In fast speech, they often loose their syllabicity, so they are difficult to perceive. In addition, cases are only necessary as markers of noun phrases, so that a head noun with modifiers may not itself carry the case marker. The case marker is not strictly 'local', as illustrated in example (4). The word pirli is the subject of the ergative-absolutive verb katirni wto press down on', but the ergative case form is some distance away. (4) Pirli win yalampu-rlu kapu tiraki katirni. rock big that-ERG FUT truck press down on That big rock is going to crush the truck.'
(NON PAST)
One of the most important factors influencing young children's ability to interpret case forms is argument ellipsis, which is very common in Warlpiri discourse. Many arguments for verbs are not represented by case marked nominals of any sort. Our data from the speech of three- and four-year-olds have very few case-marked nominals, because the most typical utterance is either a single word such as nyampu - 'here/this' or a predication with the arguments ellipsed (see Bavin, forthcoming, for a detailed discussion of the early data). It is not until children arefiveor older that a transitive sentence with two overt core arguments appears regularly in their speech. Another factor is that there are three kinds of transitive verbs with different case frames, as illustrated in example (5). Ergative-absolutive is the most common pattern and this is the one children comprehend best in their early development (Bavin and Shopen 1985a). A third factor is the polysemous nature of the case forms: one form does not always have one meaning. For example, there is not a one-to-one correlation between semantic role and ergative case. Depending on the verb, an ergative-marked noun can be understood as causing an effect on
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EDITH L. BAVIN AND TIM SHOPEN
an object (as with contact and change of state verbs) or simply experiencing the object (as with verbs of perception such as nyanyi - 'see, look at'). In addition, the ergative appears on constituents that are not subjects of transitive verbs, on adverbial constituents that agree with the subjects of transitive verbs, as on the locative in example (1). When we include the constituents that can be marked with ergative through case agreement, we can see that the range of semantic roles for constituents that can be marked with ergative is quite large. (5) a. Pakarnu karnta-ngku wati
(ERGATIVE-ABSOLUTIVE)
hit (PAST) woman-ERG man
T h e woman hit the man.' b. Rdipija karnta wati-ki (ABSOLUTIVE-DATIVE) meet (PAST) womanman-DAT T h e woman met the man'. c. Warrurnu karnata-ngku wati-ki (ERGATIVE-DATIVE) look for (PAST) woman-ERG man-DAT T h e woman looked for the man.' The dative has striking polysemy. For example, the ditransitive verb yinyi-'to give' marks recipients; with another ditransitive verb puntarni 'to take away from' it marks the source; for 13 two-argument verb roots, it marks the second argument; it is used to mark arguments for compound verbs; it marks possession of kin as in ngaju-ku ngati (me-DAT mother) 'my mother'. 6.3.2
Early production data
Some of the examples we have recorded of children's Warlpiri illustrate that when children acquire a form, they may over-generalise its application. We stated above that individual children use rlu/rii as the ergative case marker even on two syllable words. Later they learn the form ngku/ngki. However, there are some words which are exceptions to the rule that ngku/ngki is added to words of two syllables. The same words are exceptions to the rule that the locative morpheme for two-syllable words is ngka. These exceptions include nyampu - 'this, here', nyiya - 'what', and yali - 'that removed'. Children over-generalise to produce forms such as example (6) from a boy aged 4.4, where ngku is used instead of rlu. (6)
Nyiya-ngku-ju = Nyiya-rlu-ju what-ERG-FOCUS 'What (did it)?'
Warlpiri in the 80s
113
The pronunciation of children under five varies a great deal from that of adults. Some of the phonological properties of children's talk include the dropping of word initial consonants the replacement of alveolars for palatals, for example, nampu for nyampu - this/here, kuta for kuja - 'thus'; and the replacement of glides for rhotics, for example, kayi for kari 'other'. These pronunciations reflect properties of baby-talk style Warlpiri people use when directly addressing a baby or young child (Laughren 1984). Other common variations we have noted in the children's pronunciations are ng for ngk, as in (6), and rlu for lu - '3 PI Subject clitic'. (In fact, young people up to twenty years of age use this retroflex pronunciation, so it reflects change in progress rather than a developmental feature.) When first and second singular pronouns are case marked, a special long form of the stem is used. So the adults say ngajulu-rlu for 'I-ERG' not ngajungku, and nyuntulu-rlu for 'you(Sg)-ERG' not nyuntungku. However, small children generally produce the short stem form as in example (7): (7)
Luwarnu-rna Luwa-rna yali = Luwarnu-rna Luwarnu-rna yali shoot (PAST)-lSgSu shoot (PAST)-lSgSu there yuwarli-rla ngajulu-rlu house-LOC I-ERG
'I shot it. I shot it there, at the house.' 'I shot it. I shot it there, at the house.' Another instance of over-generalisation in early child language occurs in the use of the possessive morphemes. In traditional Warlpiri, there are separate forms of the possessive for nouns and pronouns, as in examples (8a) and (8b). In addition, there is a separate construction for kinship expressions, as in (8c), in which both the possessor and possessed may be marked: (8) a.
maliki wati-kirlangu dog man-possessor 'the man's dog' b. maliki nyuntu-nyangu dog you (Sg)-possessor 'your dog' c. nyuntu-ku kapirdi-nyanu you(Sg)-DAT older sister-possessed 'your older sister'
Children produce noun-I- kurlangujkirlangu and pronouns -j-nyangu in their fourth year, as illustrated in example (9) from a girl aged 3.10.
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EDITH L. BAVIN AND TIM SHOPEN
(9) Ngaju-nyangu jinta-kari yirraka I-possessor one-other put (IMP) 'Draw my other one!' The most frequent over-generalisation we have noted is the use of ku, which has many functions including dative and benefactive, as a marker of possession for pronouns. Children seem to use ngaju-ku not only to mean it's for me' but also 'it's mine'. The exchange in example (10) is part of a dialogue between a girl aged 2.9 (N) and a girl a few months older (V). We rely on the interpretations of native speakers to gloss these examples. (10) N: panika, wija = panika, wiri-jarlu Veronica, big very 'Veronica, it's very big.' V: Wiri-jarlu naku = wiri-jarlu ngaju-ku (for ngaju-nyangu) 'Mine is very big.' Young people also neutralise comitative case forms. Instead of the traditional ngkajintajrlajinta, they always use the perlative wana - 'along' for the commitative function, while old people sometimes do. This is an example of change in progress. Schmidt (1985) reports that young Dyirbal speakers use the instrumental for comitative function, and thus the traditional comitative form is being lost. Example (11) is from two fouryear-old Warlpiri children. (11) N: Na, ngana-wana no, who by/along 'No, who with?' U: Kara-wana Kara by/along 'With Kara.' Young Warlpiri children produce the auxiliary base and crossreferencing clitics late in their third year (Bavin 1989b). Although in most of the data ka appears in second position as in adult grammar, there are a few examples of ka in initial position. We also have a number of examples of ka+cross reference elements in initial position. In adult Warlpiri the future auxiliary kapu can appear in initial position, but ka does not. An auxiliary can appear in initial position only if it can stand as a phonological word, and words in Waripiri are two or more syllables long. So the children may be reanalysing ka+clitics as a phonological word, although the adults generally interpret an initial ka as a shortened form of kapu - 'future' (see Bavin, forthcoming b).
Warlpiriin the 80s 115 Examples showing the use of auxiliary bases in initial position are given in example (12), and examples with and without required cross-reference clitics are given in example (13). They are all taken from play situations, where the children are generally referring to toy animals. The children's ages are given at the end of each example. In (12a) the future auxiliary appears in initial position, and in (12b) the imperfective auxiliary ka with cross-referencing for first-person singular subject appears in initial position. The adult ordering of the element in (12b) is indicated in parentheses. (12)
a. Kapu wangkami nyampu wita (4.9) FUT talk this small This little one will talk.' b. Ka-rna narna (2.8) = ka-rna ngarni (ngarni ka-rna) 'I'm eating.'
In example (13a) the cross-reference clitic for the dative object is missing, but in (13b) the speaker, has the correct dual clitic (paid) for the dual subject. In (13c) a boy has the required cross-reference clitics in the right order. Generally the subject clitic precedes the object one, but when the object isfirstor second person singular, it is ordered before the dual marker pala or the plural marker /w, as in (13c). In (13d), these is no auxiliary base and no cross-reference marker for jirrama. Our helper interpreted this sentence as 'The two are fighting' although, with the freedom of Warlpiri word order, the child might have intended 'Something isfightingthe two'. (13) a. Ngaju-ku ka wangkami (4.9) = Ngaju-ku ka-ju wangkami I-DAT AUX-lSgOB talk 'It's talking to me.' b. Nyampu ka-pala nyinami, junga? (3.11) this/here AUX-DUSU sit true 'These two are sitting, aren't they?' c. Yungka-ju-lu (3.0) give (iMP)-lSgOb-PlSu 'You all give it to me!' d. Jirrama pakarni (3.9) =Jirrama ka-pala pakarni Two
AUX-3DUSU hit
'The two are fighting.' Young children talk frequently about themselves or singular thirdperson arguments, so the instances when a dual or plural cross-reference clitic would be required are few. A clitic sometimes missing in our data for
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EDITH L. BAVIN AND TIM SHOPEN
young Warlpiri children (2.8-4.11 years-old) is for the dative object, although not all of the children omit it. In example (14) rla cross-references nganaya-ki: (14) Nganayi-jala ka-rna-rla watirni, watirni = Nganayi-jala ka-rna-rla warrirni, warrirni what's it-Foe AUX-lSgSu-DAT look for, look for nganayi-k Nganayi-ki what's it-DAT The what's it, I'm looking around for it.' There are a number of innovations in our data from Warlpiri children besides those described above for the pronomial system. Two of these are the use of wati as a plural marker, and the use of a negative imperative. These innovations will be discussed in turn. Warlpiri marks number on nouns with the inflections jarra - 'dual' and patu - 'specific few'. For determiners, these two inflections plus rra 'plural' may be used. The noun panu - 'many' may be used as modifier, and for certain human nouns, reduplication is used to mark plural, for example, kurdu-kurdu 'children'. Warlpiri children have adopted the ending wati as a marker of plural on nouns. (In traditional Warlpiri wati means 'man'). This innovation is used now by all children on nouns and determiners. In the exchange in (15) between a girl aged 4.10 (Y) and a boy aged 4.3 (G), wati is used on nantuwu 'horse' but we have recorded it on all types of nouns. (15) Y: Nantuwu-wati, nantu-wati kari horse-Pi horse-Pi other 'Horses, other horses.' G: Nantu-wati horse-Pi 'Horses' In traditional Warlpiri the negative imperative is expressed with the negative wangu and the infinitive form of the verb; the imperative form is used only for non-negative forms. The young children most typically use a negative marker na or nati with the imperative verb form to make the negative imperative. Consider the three examples in example (16): (16a) contains an imperative verb form, while (16b) shows the traditional negative imperative, and (16c) the innovated form:
Warlpiriin the 80s 117 (16)
6.4
a. Yirraka! Pit (IMP) Tut/write/draw it!' b. Yirranja-wangu! Put (iNF)-without 'Don't put/write/draw it!' c. Nati yirraka! NEG put (IMP) 'Don't put/write/draw it/' Conclusion
Warlpiri children's pronunciation varies a great deal from that of adults. Like other children acquiring a first language, they over-generalise, particularly in their use of allomorphs, until they have learned the restrictions or exceptions. In addition, they use innovations, and some of these innovations are being retained as the children grow up. These lead to overall change in the Warlpiri language2. Notes 1. A short grammar and dictionary of traditional Warlpiri (Hale 1974) is available from the Institute of Aboriginal Development, Alice Springs, NT 5750. Other aspects of Warlpiri grammar are described by Hale (1982), Laughren (1982a), Nash (1982,1986) and Simpson (1983). 2. The research was funded by the Australian Research Grant Scheme and the Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies. We are most grateful to the people of Yuendumu for teaching us their language and for their support.
A sketch of Kalaw Kawaw Ya KEVIN FORD and DANA OBER
7.1
Language and setting
Kalaw Kawaw Ya (KKY) is a dialect of the Western Torres Strait language, which is considered to belong to the Pama-Nyungan family, the largest of the Australian subgroupings (Dixon 1980). Kala Lagaw Ya, Kala Lagaw Langgus, Yagar Yagar and Mabuiag are other names which have been applied to the Western Torres Strait language or another of its dialects. Speakers have agreed that the language as a whole should be called Kala Lagaw Ya, the 'Western Island Language'. The Western Torres Strait region, whose islands and waters lie mainly within Australia's international boundaries, includes four dialect zones, marked by broken lines on map 7.1. The description presented here comes from Saibai Island speakers and is representative of the northern zone. Kalaw Kawaw Ya is their own name for the 'Western Island Language'. Bani and Klokeid (1975 and 1976) have described the dialect of Mabuiag Island in the western central zone. The dialect of the eastern central zone is used only by older speakers; younger people have adopted Torres Strait Creole (see Shnukal, this volume) as their mother tongue. The southern zone includes the town of Thursday Island, the administrative and service centre for the region, where groups of speakers from different dialect zones now live. In recent times, a multi-village settlement has grown up at Bamaga on the mainland of Cape York Peninsula. Torres Strait Islanders are the majority group, including people who migrated from Saibai Island originally. Some few thousands of Islanders now also live in the nearest Queensland cities of Cairns and Townsville. With an estimated total of 3,500-4,000 speakers, Kala Lagaw Ya is one of the three or four largest indigenous Australian languages. Perhaps 1,500 people speak Kalaw Kawaw Ya, including those resident at Bamaga. In addition, Torres Strait Creole (Broken), English and Meriam Mer, a
Kalaw Kawaw Ya
PAPUA
NEW GUINEA
Map 7.1 The Western Torres Strait, showing major dialect boundaries
119
120
KEVIN FORD AND DANA OBER
Papuan language, are spoken (see Rigsby forthcoming for a comprehensive list of materials in and about the languages of the Torres Strait). In this brief sketch we can give only a limited idea of the complexity of KKY. We have provided appendices which give more detailed information about the personal pronoun system, sample noun declensions and conjugations, the deictic system, particles (see appendix 1), and a basic word list (see appendix 2). Appendix 3 contains a short sample text.
7.2
Phonology and orthography
KKY has the following standard orthography which will be used in this sketch; only non-IP A equivalents are specifically marked. The vowels are i e [e] a oe [i] o [o] u The consonants are p, b, the [jt], dh [d\, t, d, k, g, s, z [z]/[d z], m, n, ng [rj], r, I w, y [j]. The syllable structure displays (C) V (C(C)) patterns, as in: a na nadh sarz kayb woewr ap moesalg
'great-great-grandparent 'she' NOM 'she' ERG 'type of creeper' 'today' 'strong east wind' 'bat' 'ripe almond fruit'
The permitted consonent clusters are r, 1, w, y plus an obstruent or nasal (with some restrictions not noted here), and w, y plus r or 1. Clusters of two vowels occur only rarely, and these represent separate syllable nuclei. The basic pitch-accent is H + L (H = high pitch; L = low pitch), distributed as follows: monosyllables: HL ya [\] - 'speech' H + L gumi [~_] - 'secretly' disyllables: polysyllables: H + H + Lq moeginakoezin [
] - 'child' ERG
Sentence intonation is an extension of the word accent principles and is important in marking sentence focus (see 7.4.8). The main phonological processes are vowel shift and epenthesis (both vocalic and consonantal). The vowel shift (or umlaut) of a > oe is for the most part morphologically conditioned. Some examples are seen in: Initial syllable of a form governing a preceding qualifier:
Kalaw Kawaw Ya
121
gimal loeg-a-l
'g' g' g'parent' DAT
AUG
a-ni-ya
'g' g' g'parent COM
AUG
The occurrence of a vocalic augment of /-i-/, /-a-/ or /-u-/ in consonantfinal stems is morphologically conditioned before a consonantal or consonant-initial suffix: awn-a-n
cf. awn 'stingray' ABS
AUG ERG
yoepkoez-i-n
cf. yoepkaz 'woman' ABS
AUG ERG
thurik-u-n
cf. thurik 'axe' ABS
AUG INS
7.3
Morphology
The parts of speech are: nominals (pronouns, proper and common nouns), verbs, qualifiers (adjectives and deictics), modifiers (adverbs and particles), and clitics. All members have word or phrase status except clitics, which are unaccented and suffixed to the word preceding. Nouns, verbs and some adjectives inflect; nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives may be derived by suffixation. Some adverbs and adjectives, and all particles, are indeclinable. 7.3.1
Nominals
Sample paradigms are provided in appendix 1. Pronouns distinguish singular, dual and plural number, nouns only singular and plural. Pronouns distinguish ergative, nominative and accusative case; proper nouns distinguish nominative and accusative and common nouns distinguish ergative and absolutive. Third-person pronouns distinguish masculine
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KEVIN FORD AND DANA OBER
and feminine genders. Singular nouns determine the choice of pronoun according to sex in the case of humans and other appropriate animates, and non-predictably otherwise (see Bani 1987 on feminine and the unmarked gender in KLY). Nuclear cases mark the syntactic functions of S (subject of an intransitive verb) and A and P (Agent and Patient, the two arguments of a transitive verb; see Comrie 1981). The oblique cases (possessive, instrumental, dative, ablative, locative, comitative) are each found in a range of constructions. Imitative, though not a case suffix, is shown here. (a) Possessive. In KKY, the possessor NP normally precedes the possessed; the order may be reversed for special effect (focus): ngi-nu
lag
- 'your house'
you POSS house ABS
nga-w ubi kedha + thana senabi za i POSS wish ABS thus they PL that thing 'I want them to break that thing'.
ABS
idim-a-n break PR
PF
The symbol + (intonational 'upstep') is explained in 7.4.8 below. (b)
Instrumental. suguba-n woen-i-g - 'don't smoke!' tobacco INS smoke NEG IMPER SG
(c)
Dative. moeginakoez-i-pa nagi - 'look at the child' DAT look at child IMPER SG
(d)
Ablative. wnay-ngu kulay - 'beware of the dog' dog ABL beware
(e)
Locative. umay mabayg-i-ya thoeydh-i-z dog ABS person LOC bite PR PF SG T h e dog bit somebody'.
(f)
Comitative. Ezoera midh mul-i-z kedha + nuy-dh nga - n Ezra NOM Q say PR PF thus he ERG who ACC SG
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123
im-a-n Eleno-n-i-ya paru - nu siy - ayn see PR PF Eleanor COM front LOC standing 'Who did Ezra say he saw standing in front of Eleanor?' (g) Imitative. This suffix is used with all nominals: nungudh - 'like him' nanudh - 'like her' thanamudh - 'like them'
7.3.2
Boekaradh - 'like Boekar' yoepkoezidh - 'like a woman'
Verbs
Transitive and intransitive conjugations are distinguished by the form of the singular concord suffix, and otherwise syntactically in the choice of nuclear cases. The two criteria do not correlate perfectly, and there are exceptions. Some intransitive verbs govern oblique cases; and there are irregular and defective forms. Appendix 1 includes transitive and intransitive paradigms for present, past and future tenses, simple, habitual, imperfect and perfect aspects, and declarative and imperative moods. The future is a periphrastic formation of either of the clitics hay - 'immediate' and bal - 'non-immediate' and an inflected verb form. Positive number/tense/aspect differences are neutralised to a single negative in both the declarative and the imperative. These negatives are technically derived forms comprising the infinitive with alternatives of the predicative suffix. Other derivations are the infinitive or nominalisation (suffix -y\ the aversive (suffix -le on the infinitive), and the participle or adjective (suffix -zi on the infinitive). Phonological variation within the conjugation classes is, like that in noun declensions, based on the quality of the vocalic augment (i, u, a), for example, path-a - 'chop', palng-i - 'whip', uth-u - 'plant'.
7.3.3
Qualifiers
7.3.3.1 Adjectives Adjectives form a large class, and the majority are invariable when used attributively, but may take one of two series of suffixes in predicative use, as in these examples: Attributive i. i. ii. ii.
woeray - 'wet' gizul - 'sharp' kikiril - 'sick' aziral - 'shy'
Predicative Positive
Predicative Negative
SG.
PL.
SG.
woeray-nga gizul-nga kikiril-ayg aziral-ayg
-mayI -mayI -gal -gal
woer-gi-nga -gi-mayl gizu-gi-nga -gi-mayl kikiri-gi-g -gi-gal azira-gi-g -gi-gal
PL.
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KEVIN FORD AND DANA OBER
Adjectives may be derived from verbs by the use of the participial suffix zi. Examples of various attributive and predicative expressions are: teypoel ayde-nga - 'there's food on the table' table ABS food PRED wapi-w gasam-oe-y-zi garkaz nuy nu-ngu loeg-oe-nu fish POSS catch INF PC boy ABS he ABS he POSS home LOC 'the boy who caught the fish is in his house'. poeth -a~y-zi puy - 'chopped, felled tree' chop INF PC tree ABS puy poeth-a-y-zi-nga - 'the tree has been felled' PRED
puy moeginakoez-i-w poethayzinga child
POSS
'the tree has been felled by the child' No systematic difference in meaning or use can be associated with the two predicative suffixes, except in the case of nonfinite relative clauses (see 7.5.3) where -ngaj-mayl has an objective and -g/-gal a subjective force. Some adjectives may take either suffix without any change in meaning. A few commonly used adjectives behave differently, either because they are restricted to attributive use, or have their own plural form. 7.3.3.2 Deictics Appendix 1 displays the forms of the deictic system which distinguish proximate and remote location, masculine and feminine gender in the singular, and singular, dual and plural number. The order of elements within the noun phrase is flexible, being partially constrained by focus (see 7.4.8). 7.3.4
Modifiers
The modifier subtypes are distinguished only by the tendency of 'particles' to be the focus of the sentences in which they are found. Adverbial modifiers may limit the meaning of any other sentence elements, including other modifiers, or whole sentences. Particles are listed in appendix 1. Adverbs are indeclinable, except for the locative nouns which we classify as nominals, but which may also function as modifiers without any change in form. Some adverbs are derived from nouns by means of a vocalic suffix, as in: dapara - 'in the sky' kubilu - 'at night' moelpala - 'during a month'
dapar - 'sky' kubil - 'night' moelpal - 'month'
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Nouns in the locative regularly function adverbially, as in: goeyg-i-nu - 'during daylight' goeyga - 'day' kup-a-nu - 'at the base' kup - 'base' kuth-a-nu - 'at the end' kuth - 'end' puy lag-oe-nu pasi-nu - 'the tree is beside the house' tree house LOC side LOC 7.3.5
Clitics
Clitics cannot stand alone and are never the focus of the sentence. They are normally linked intonationally to whichever word precedes them to form a compound, though they may occur sentence-initially for particular emphasis (see 7.4.7). There are only seven clitics: a a bal dhe kay nay nge 7.4
interrogative 'and' non-immediate future vocative/'take your turn' immediate future unfulfilled condition 'then, next'
Syntax - simple sentences
The basic word order pattern is SOAV, with possessor preceding possessed and qualifiers preceding their head. Modifications are discussed in conjunction with intonation and focus in 7.4.8. 7.4.1
Anti-passive
The anti-passive has the following structure: Subject+ABS/NOM Oblique Object+INS Verb+iNTR Its meaning is collective or inclusive force in the object. Some examples are: moeginakaz puy-n path-i-z child ABS tree INS chop PR PF 'the child chopped all the trees down' Compare the transitive equivalent: moeginakoez-i-n puy-l path-a-moey-n Child ERG PL Chop PL PR PF 'the child chopped the trees down'
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KEVIN FORD AND DANA OBER
The anti-passive construction may also be negative: lawnga moeginakaz puyn poeth-a-y-gi-nga 'no, the child didn't chop all the trees down'
7.4.2
Apposition
Different types of nominal may be apposed. i.
Locative phrases comprise a content noun with a locational noun, as in: kaba-nu para-nu - 'in front of the paddle' paddle LOC face LOC
ii. Pronouns in apposition with nouns function as definite determiners and have a discourse linking role, as in: na wara yoepkaz - 'the other woman' she other woman (previously mentioned) thana yoepkoez-i-l - 'the women' they woman PL Out of context these examples are, of course, ambiguous, and they could be interpreted as verbless predications. iii.
Quotation with the optional adverb kedha, as in: thana na-n kedha thoeraypa +Boekar they NOM her ACC thus call PR IMP 'they call her "Boekar"'
Sentence apposition is discussed in 7.5.2.
7.4.3
Equation
Past and future tenses employ the intransitive verb aym-a - 'happen' (the common transitive aym-a- 'make, do' also exists). All negatives are strictly non-finite predictions (see 7.4.6). Some examples are: Pili nagu-uth-u-y-moebayg - 'Pili is a farmer' ABS seed plant INF person ABS thana kulba that hi-1 law-nga they NOM old man PL NEG 'they haven't grown old' Pili - bal ngara kulba thathi aym-e-dhe FUT must old man happen FUT 'Pili will have to grow old'
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111
Location
Non-present forms regularly employ the verb waz-i-'be situated, appear'. A range of other stative verbs is possible, with a further range of locative/temporal modifiers, as in: Pili puy-nu gimal lawnga - 'Pili is not up a tree1 tree LOC up NEG Pili ngul puynu gimal woeziginga yesterday Tili was not up a tree yesterday' na yoepkaz adhal thanuriz / apiyayuypa / kulunsipa sit lie kneel 'the woman was sitting/lying/kneeling outside' koewbu paru-nu thana aym-oe-dhin war ABS face LOC they make REM PA 'it was made before the war' na rum-a-nu ten klok-oe-nu she NOM room LOC LOC 'she will be in the room at ten o'clock'
7.4.5 Possession Attributive possession has been exemplified in 7.3.1a; predicate-suffix forms are shown in 7.4.9; other expressions are as follows: ngay-bi-ya ukasar geth - 'I have/own two arms' I COM two hand/arm ABS yana nga-bi-ya - 'who's got the bag?' bag ABS who COM cf. yana ngu-nu - 'whose is the bag?' POSS
Nami-ni-ya yana - 'Nami's got the bag' COM
cf. Nami-n yana - 'Nami owns the bag' POSS
7.4.6
Negation
The negative particle lawnga may have originated as part of the productive predicate system (see 7.4.9). The single-form declarative negatives also display the predicate suffix -nga or -ayg, and both the declarative and imperative forms employ the negative suffix -g(i); as in
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KEVIN FORD AND DANA OBER
Imperative: (ngi-dh) awta guyth-way-a-r you ERG outboard start IMPER
'(you) start the outboard motor!' (ngidh) awta guyth-woey-a-y-g 'don't start the outboard!' ma-r - 'give (it)!' give IMPER ma-y- gi - 'don't give (it)!' INF NEG (also used to mean 'don't!') Declarative: nan matham-a-n - 'you hit/killed her' ngidh you ERG her hit PR PF nigdh nan matham-oe-y-gi-nga INF NEG PRED
'you didn't hit/kill her' The aversive suffix -le is added to the infinitive, to derive non-finite verb forms, as in: gabudhan na-n yuth-a-r pudh-a-y-le carefully her ACC pull IMPER fall AVS 'pull it carefully lest it fall' ngay akanme-pa puy-ngu poeth-a-y-le I NOM afraid PR IMP tree ABL chop AVS 'I'm afraid to cut the tree down' 7.4.7
Questions
Direct 'yes/no' questions are normally marked by the sentence-final clitic -a (which is regularly lengthened), and by the use of any of the optional particles waza, midh and nag. The interval between high and low pitches is increased, and the final clitic bears extra-low pitch, as in: Ezoera puy midh pathan-a - did Ezra cut the tree down?' Note the alternative emphatic form: a-Ezoera midh puy pathan-a Q
Q
nag Ezoera puy pathan-a - 'did Ezra cut the tree down?' Ezoera waza puy poethayginga 'Ezra didn't cut the tree down, did he?' WH questions choose from a range of proforms or else prefix mi- to nouns; as in:
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sepal garkaz nga-w-al - 'who are those two boys?' those 2 boy ABS swho DU nga-dh iman nga-n - 'who saw whom?' Who ERG
w h o ACC
ngadh manin mi-za nga-be-pa namuyth who ERG WH thing DAT when 'who gave what to whom and when?' Ezoera midh mul-i-z kedha + Gabu nga-n im-a-n Q say PR PF thus who ACC see PR PF 'who did Ezra say that Gabu saw' Embedded questions are structurally appositional complements (see 7.5.2). 7.4.8 Focus, intonation and word-order These three elements of KKY interact, in the following way. Utterances may have unmarked or marked focus as in the examples below. Focus is carried by intonation, with a tendency for the focused element to be the penultimate constituent (or antepenultimate in longer utterances). SOAV word order is regularly modified to SOVA or similar to comply with the tendency for penultimate focus. Basic H + L (see 7.2 on word-accent) are attached to the focus and if necessary to each major constituent following the focus. The High accent of the focus spreads leftwards, and a simple phonological adjustment process whereby [L>-H/H H] (combined with the principle of automatic downdrift) accounts for the intonation pattern. There is a further tendency for certain constituents to be the natural focus of their clause, and these form the following hierarchy: WH words and nay, particles, and negatives. Focus is otherwise determined by position as outlined above, though these tendencies may be overridden by speakers if they so choose. Some minor intonation rule adjustments are required for mono- and di-syllables, as the KKY canonic form for descriptive purposes is trisyllabic. Some sample derivations are as follows; focused elements are italicised. Ezoera Gabulpa moeginakaz manin H L accent assignment H HL L accent spread 1 H H H H H H H H L L L L accent spread 2 'Ezra gave the child to Gabu' This sentence may represent unmarked focus (as in answer to the question, 'What happened?') or marked focus (as in answer to, 'What did Ezra give to Gabu?). In the latter case, the response could be elliptically just moeginakaz.
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KEVIN FORD AND DANA OBER
The tendency for penultimate focus can be overridden by speakers, as in: Ezoera Gabulpa moeginakaz manin H L accent assignment H L HL post-focus accent HHL HHL HHLL L L accent spread H H!H H H ! H HHLL L L adjustment rule 'it was Ezra who gave the child to Gabu' Within the noun phrase, word-order appears to be flexible. As noted, qualifiers normally precede their head, though they may follow, in which case focus or emphasis applies to the initial element. Between qualifiers the order is flexible, as in: nuy senaw garkaz ngaybiya minakay kikirilayg he that boy ABS I LOC more sick PRED 'that boy is more sick than me' cf. senaw nuy garkaz ngaybiya minakay kikirilayg 'that boy is more sick than me' ukasar kuykuthal moeginakaz - 'two tall children' two tall child cf. kuykuthal moeginakaz ukasar - 'two TALL children' The difference in focus here is reinforced by intonation and the last two sentences could be spoken in such a way as to bring any of the three words into focus. In particular complex structures (see 7.5) the symbol + is used to mark 'upstep', or a return to utterance-initial pitch level.
7.4.9 Non-finite clauses 7.4.9.1 Causative/purpose Verb forms add the dative suffix to the infinitive. Certain nominal arguments also take the dative; and the semantic range is wide. Some examples are: ngoey-mu-n ubi umay-pa lag-oe-pa moey-pa want dog DAT house DAT take DAT we POSS 'we want to take the dog(s) home' nga-th nuy-n thari-pa man-i-n I ERG he ACC run DAT make PR PF 'I made him run' ngath palay tharipa may-gi-nga I ERG they 2 run DAT make NEG PRED
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'I didn't make the two of them run'. nga-w ubi garkoez-i-pa puy-pa poeth-a-y-pa I POSS want man DAT tree DAT chop DAT 'I want the man/men to cut the tree/trees down' While the non-finite is possible, the finite form in the next example is stylistically preferable when the subjects change: ngaw ubi kedha + garkoez-i-n puy-l patha-moey-n thus man ERG PL PL PR PF moeginakoez-i-w ubi ngay-a-pa nga-wgeth child POSS want I DAT I POSS hand matham-oe-y-pa hit INF DAT- 'the child wants me to hit myself Similarly, the next example is normally preferred to the previous one. moeginakoeziw ubi kedha + ngay ngaw geth matham-i-z PR PF
7.4.9.2 Predication with agent This structure involves an absolutive subject, possessive agent, and participial verb with suffix -zi, followed by the predicator -ngaj-mayl, as in: moeginakaz Ezoera-n gumi gasam-oe-ychild ABS POSS secretly take 'the child was taken secretly by Ezra'
zi-nga INF
7.4.9.3 Simple predication The suffixes, which attach to the verbal infinitive, are those exemplified with adjective qualifiers in 7.3.3.1 (with positive and negative, and singular and plural forms). An alternative negative is possible with lawnga. Additional uses include: ngay igil-i-l-nga - 'I am alive' I NOM life PRED ngay ukasar geth-a-l-ayg - 'I have two arms' I
two
arm PRED
ngi bokadhzoe-gi-g - 'you don't have any money' you money
7.5
NEG PRED
Syntax - non-simple sentences.
Multi-verb sentences in KKY are essentially paratactic. There are no subordinate verb forms, and there are no formal grounds for establishing a separate class of conjunctions. Use is made of the linking clitic -a 'and', which also acts as the noun phrase linker, and a range of sentence
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KEVIN FORD AND DANA OBER
modifiers. There is a relative pronoun which declines for case and number (singular, dual and plural), thereby showing concord with its antecedent noun-phrase. There is an alternative finite relative construction which does not require the relative pronoun, as well as a non-finite relative construction. Sentence intonation reinforces the paratactic analysis of multi-verb constructions in that 'upstep' highlights the break between clauses. Five types of construction will be considered separately.
7.5.1
Clitic-conjoining
The linker is -a - 'and' which attaches to the final word of the preceding clause, as in: lawnga Ezoera woerab-a-l poer-a-y-gi-nga -a NEG
PL pluck INF NEG PRED and
+ nu-ngu ira - pa gumi ma-y-gi-nga he POSS in-law DAT secretly give 'no, Ezra didn't pick the coconuts and give them secretly to his in-laws' The linker is omissable only in noun phrase concatenations, as in: palay alay ipa - 'husband and wife' they 2 husband wife
7.5.2 Appositional complements Finite sentences can be set in apposition to the modifier kedha - 'thus', typically after verbs of saying, perceiving and questioning. Such complements can be statements, questions or direct speech, kedha is syntactically part of the controlling clause and is omissable; the appositional clause is marked intonationally by upstep; as in: nuy ngayapa kedha muliz + Ezoera Gabulpa he I DAT thus say PR PF DAT soekoeri maninu arrow ABS give IMM PA 'he told me that Ezra gave the sharp-pointed arrow to Gabu' (61) ngay Ezoeralpa kedha yapupoeybiz + nuydh ngabepa DAT ask PR PF he ERG who DAT dagul manin spear 'I asked Ezra who he had given the fishing spear to'
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7.5.3 nanga clauses Temporal, potential conditional, and relative sentences are linked by the particle nanga, which may not be sentence-initial and which may be repeated in long sentences and/or for emphasis. Clause breaks are invariably marked by intonational upstep. nanga is intonationally the information focus of its clause. 7.5.3.1 Temporal clauses Typical temporal modifiers are mi-thunara and namuyth, as in: sena-w-kay nanga dhangal namuyth karay-pa that M FUT dugong up DAT uzar-ipa + buway-garkoez-i-n-kay senabi thunar-a go PR IMP harpooner ERG FUT that time ADV wap nithu-ypa harpoon cast PR IMP 'as soon as the dugong surfaces, the harpooner will throw the harpoon' 7.5.3.2 Potential conditions The particle nanga is used with either of the future time clitics kay and bat, as in: ngalpa-kay nanga dhangal gasamay-g kayb we PL dugong catch NEG today + ngalpa-kay ay-gi-gal kun-i-ya food NEG PL back COM 'if we don't catch a dugong today, we won't have any food to take back' 7.5.3.3 Relative clauses Finite expressions employ either of the formulae: mi- NP na(nga) and REL na(nga), as in: mi-moeginakoezin nanga dhugu pathan + nuy uzariz ERG log chop he go 'the child who cut the log went away' Ezoera soekoeri senawbi moeginakoezipa manin that (M) DAT give + wapi ngadh nanga pagan fish who ERG spear 'Ezra gave the sharp-pointed arrow to the child who speared th&fish'
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KEVIN FORD AND DANA OBER
The non-finite relative has the following structure: NP + POSS ( = object of relative verb), Verb + INF + -zi ( = participial form), NP (with functions of s, A or p in its finite clause). Compare the following finite and non-finite equivalents. wapi mi-moeginakoezin nanga gasamoenu 4- nuy nungu fish ABS.child ERG catch IMM PA he he POSS loegoenu 'the child who caught the fish is at home' wapi-w gasam-oe-y-zi moeginakaz nungu loegoenu POSS
INF PC
'the child who caught the fish is at home' The participial expression may also be used predicatively, in which case the choice of predicative suffix (singular/plural pairs -g/ -gal and -ngaj -mayI) presupposes a subjective and objective force, respectively (see 7.3.3.1), correlating with the system of number concord and ergativity (see Comrie 1981), as in: senawbi moeginakaz wapiw gasamoeyzig that M child ABS fish POSS catch PRED 'that is the child who caught the fish' sethabi moeginakoezil wapiw gasamoeyzigal those
PL
PRED PL
'those are the children who caught the fish' senawbi moeginakaz baydamaw thoeydhayzinga 'that is the child the shark mauled' sethabi moeginakoezil baydhamaw thoeydhayzimayl 'those are the children the shark mauled' As expected, only the subjective forms {-gj-gal) are possible with intransitive verb forms, as in: soekoeri mi-moeginakoezin nanga Gabulpa arrow ERG manin + nuy mayoedhayzig/*mayoedhayzinga give he cry PRED 'the child who gave the sharp-pointed arrow to Gabu is the one who cried'
7.5.4 Irrealis conditions Counter-factual conditions are marked by the particle nay in the conditional clause and by the clitic -nay in both clauses. Intonational upstep marks the clause boundary. The particle nay occurs penultimately in its clause as the information focus, as in:
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135
Ezoera-nay Gabulpa dagul-al nay ma-may-i-nu DAT
PL
PL
IMM PA
+ nunga apuwan-nay nuyn koey-m-a mathamoenu he POSS mother ERG he ACC big ADV beat IMM PA 'if Ezra had given the fishing spears to Gabu, his mother would have beaten him soundly' 7.5.5 Other ad verbally linked clauses Sentence modifiers which help to link finite clauses are se kasa (midh) 'although', kasa(kay) kedha-'bxxi\ kedhazungufkedha) - 'because', wagel'or else', lawnga - 'or (not)' and kurusipa - 'until'. Examples are: nungu apuwan nuyn mathaman + se kasa Ezoera Gabulpa dagulal mayginga 'Ezra was beaten by his mother even though he didn't giv§ the fishing spears to Gabu' ngaw ubi Dawinipa maypa + kasa-kay kedha ngay bokadhzagig 'I want to go to Darwin but I don't have any money' Notes 1. We have used the following abbreviations. locative LOC ablative ABL masculine M absolutive ABS NEG negative accusative ACC NOM nominative adjective ADJ P adverb patient ADV PA past augment AUG PART particle aversive AVS PC participle/participal comitative COM PF perfect dative DAT PL plural dual DU POSS possessive ergative ERG PRED predicate feminine F PR present future FUT REC recent HAB habitual REL relative imitative IMIT REM remote immediate IMM S subject imperfect IMP SG imperative singular IMPER TR instrumental transitive INS 1 downstep (the lowering of the following tone) intransitive INTR
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KEVIN FORD AND DANA OBER
Appendix 1 KKY sample noun declensions NOM^j >ABS ACCJ ERG/INS POSS DAT ABL LOC COM IMIT PL
'foodstuff' 'Boekar(f)' boekar ayza boekarina boekar ayzapun boekarina ayzaw boekaraw ayzapa boekaroelngu ayzangu boekaroenu ayzanu boekaraniya ayzaya boekaradh ayzadh boekaral ayzapul
'Diwe(f)' diwe diwena diwe diwena diwew diwelngu diwenu diweniya diwedh diwel
'g'child'
'woman'
ngep
yoepkaz
ngepan ngepaw ngepapa ngepangu ngepanu ngepiya ngepadh ngepal
yoepkoezin yoepkowziw yoepkoezipa yoenkoezingu yoekkoezinu yoepkoeziya yoepkoezidh yoepkoezil
KKY sample verb conjunctions: verb dudup - 'drown* (tr/intr) Transitive Intransitive Pres. Perf.
SG.
dudupan
PL.
Pres. Imp erf.
SG.
dudupoepa
PL.
SG. DU.
duduparngu dudupoenu dudupoengu
PL.
dudupoedhin
PL.
dudupoedha
PL.
dudupar
PL.
SG.
(kay, bat)
DU. PL.
dudupay dudupoemar dudupoemoeyr
DU.
Fut. Simple
dudupidha dudupoemoedha dudupoemoeydha
DU.
Rem. Past Imp. SG.
dudupaydhin dudupoemoedhin dudupoemoeydhin
DU.
Imm. Past Imp. SG.
dudupayngu dudupoemoengu dudupoemoeyngu
DU.
Rem. Past Simple SG.
dudupima dudupoemoenu dudupoemoeynu
DU. PL.
Rec. Past Simple SG.
dudupayrngu dudupoemoerngu dudupoemoeyrngu
PL.
Imm. Past Simple SG.
dudupipa dudupoempa dudupoemoeypa
DU.
Pres. Hab. Rec. Past Imp.
dudupiz dudupoeman dudupoemoeyn
DU.
dudupoene
dudupidhe dudupoemoene dudupoemoeyne
Kalaw Kawaw Ya
SG.
Past Hab.
dudupupu
dudupipu dudupoemoempu dudupoemoeypu dudupoeyginga
DU. PL.
Negative Imper. Pos.
SG, DU, PL. SG.
dudupar
dudup dudupoemar dudupoemoeyr dudupayg
DU. PL.
Imper. Neg.
137
SG, DU, PL
Deictic system Proximate In view Not in view Locational Remote In view Not in view Locational
M
F
DU
PL
in
ina
inubi inuki
inabi inaki
ipal ipalbi ipalki
itha ithabi ithaki
senaw senawbi senawki
sena senabi senaki
sepal sepalbi sepalki
setha sethabi sethaki
'over there' Nominal Locational 'up there' Nominal Locational
pinungap pinungapki
pinangap pinangapki
pipalngap pipalngapki
pithangap pithangapki
pinuka pinukaki
pinaka pinakaki
pipalka pipalkaki
pithaka pithakaki
'down there' Nominal Locational
pinuguy pinuguyki
pinaguy pinaguyki
pipalguy pipalguyki
pithaguy pithaguyki
'up at the front Nominal pinupay Locational pinup ay ki
pi napay pinapayki
pipalpay pipalpayki
pithapay pithapayki
'down at the back' pinupun Nominal Locational pinupunki
pinapun pinapunki
pipalpun pipalpunki
pithapun pithapunki
The initial/?/- of the forms in the lastfiveseries is omissable. Examples of concord with the locational forms. a. ngath burum senawki wakaydhin I ERG pig ABS chase REM PA 'I chased a pig there' b. thana burum senawki wakaydhin 'they chased a pig there'
thana burum sepalki wakaymoedhin 'they chased two pigs there' d. thana burumal sethaki wakaymoeydhin 'they chased pigs there' c
ApA. KKY personal pronoun system Nominative Ergative subject
Accusative object
Possessive belonging to
Locativeaccompaniment Ablative from with
Dative to
Imitative like
1 I
ngay (intr.) ngath (tr.)
ngoena
ngaw (M) nguzu (F)
ngaybiya
ngawngu
ngayapa
ngawdh
2
ngi (intr.) ngidh (tr.)
Person
c
I N
a
U L
ngin
nginu
ngibiya
nginungu
ngibepa
nginudh
na (intr.) nadh (tr.)
nan
nanu
nabiya
nanungu
nabepa
nanudh
nuy (intr.) nuydh (tr.)
nuyn
nungu
nubiya
nungungu
nubepa
nungudh
1 we (exc.)
ngalbe
ngalbe
ngalben
ngalbeniya
ngalbelngu
ngalbelpa
ngalbedh
he&I we (inc.) you & I
ngoeba
ngoeba
ngoeban
ngoebaniya
ngoebalngu
ngoebalpa
ngoebadh
2 you (two) 3 they (two) 1 we (exc.) they & I
ngipel palay ngoey
ngipel palay ngoey
ngipen palamun ngoeymun
ngipeniya palamuniya ngoeymuniya
ngipelngu palamulngu ngoeymulngu
ngipelpa palamulpa ngoeymulpa
ngipedh palamudh
we (inc.) we & you
ngalpa
ngalpa
ngalpan
ngalpaniya
ngalpalngu
ngalpalpa
ngalpadh
you
ngitha
ngitha
ngithamun
ngithamuniya
ngithamulngu
ngithamulpa
ngithamudh
3 they
thana
thana
thanamun
thanamuniya
thanamulngu
thanmulpa
thanamudh
you
3 she
R
he
D U A
L
p
L U p A
2
ngoemudh
T
Kalaw Kawaw Ya Appendix 2 Basic wordlist (Swadesh 100) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
I
ngay
you sg
ngi
we
ngoey
this that who? what?
ina
not all
many one two big
long small woman man
person fish bird dog
louse tree seed leaf root bark skin flesh blood bone grease
sena nga
miza lawnga mura koeyma urapun ukasar koey kuykuthal moegina yoepkaz garkaz mabayg wapi uruy umay ari puy
kapu nis
sipi piya goengaw madhu kulka ridh idi
egg
kakur
horn tail feather hair head
—
ear eye
nose mouth
koewb baba yalbup kuyk kawra purka pati gud
43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84
tooth tongue claw foot knee hand belly neck breast heart liver drink v eat v bite v see v hear v know v sleep v die v kill v swim v fly v walk v come v lie down sit
stand give say v sun
moon star water rain stone sand earth cloud smoke fire ashes burn v
dhang noey awar ngar kulu geth maytha mudul susu ngoenakap sib
wan-i purth-a thoeydh-i im-a karngem-i ngulayg (Pred) uthuy yun-a um-e umamatham-a way-i palg-i mab uzar-i ay-a apiya yun-a than-u thar-i ma-
mul-i/thar-a goeyga moelpal thithuy nguki ari kula buthu boeradhar ziya thu muy
kunar muy punath-a
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85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100
path mountain red green yellow white black night hot cold full new good round dry name
yabugudh pad
kulkagoemul maludhgoemul bamidhgoemul goerabgoemul kubikub kubil komal gabu gudapoelam kayn kapu bokadh thepadh nel
List of particles
na(nga)
[temporal marker] [irrealis condition] midh [interrogative] nag [interrogative] waza [interrogative - positive orientation] se kasa midh [concession] [obligation] ngaru sike [possibility] matha [durative] 'thus' kedha kedhazungu kedha 'because' 'but' kasa-kay kedha 'like, for example' mathakedha minakoey [comparative] bu [superlative] dhapa [superlative] wagel 'or else' kurusipa 'until' lawnga 'or' nay
Kalaw Kawaw Ya 141 Appendix 3 Sample text Bayra ~- n adhi
(Danalgub-a-n um-a - y - zi-nga)
Baira POSS story ABS Danalgub POSS speak INF PC PRED
The story of Baira (as told by Danalgub) War thunar-a thana kulba moebayg-a-l kedha Other time ADV they NOM old person PL thither Once upon a time people used to go across to uzar-moey-n Sigabadhoer-pa burum-pa gO PL PR PF
DAT pig
lum-a-y-pa.
DAT hunt INF DAT
Sigabadhoer to hunt pigs. Umay man-i-n. Koey-goesar garkoez-i-l ladh-u-n Dog ABS take PR PF Big many man PL go PL PR PF They would take dogs, and quite a large group of men would go. Thana kal-a-nu burum-i-yalum-e-mi-n. They NOM back LOC pig COM hunt PL PR PF And they hunted for pigs. War moebayg-a-n na burum nanga matham-a-n nanga Other person ERG when pig ABS when kill PR PF when When the others killed a pig, + nuy-dh Bayra burum matham-oe - y - gi - nga. he ERG
Baira
pig ABS kill
INF NEG PRED
Baira failed to bag one. nuy nga - w dhugu. Senaw Bayra nanga That M Baira particular he NOM I POSS g'father That particular Baira was my grandfather. Thana ladh-u-n. Nu-ngu kasa gamu-kawba-as-i-n. They NOM go PL PR PF He POSS only body tired get PR PF They moved on, and he just grew weary. Yan burum-i-ya lum-i-z + war moebayg-a-n nanga In vain pig COM hunt PR PF other person ERG when He hunted in vain for a pig while the others burum koey-m-a matham-a-n pig ABS big ADV kill PR PF bagged many. Nuy kedha uzar-i-z -a 4- war wang gasam-a-n. He NOM thither go PR PF and other jungle reach PR PF So he went to another part of the jungle.
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Nuy siki woelmay. Kedha nanga nuy He NOM there keep going PR PF Thither when he NOM (irreg. vb) He was walking around there and when he nag-i-z + nuy-dh mabayg im-a-n, look PR PF he ERG person ABS see PR PF looked round, he saw someone. Nuy goengaw adhal me-pa. Thabu koey za. He NOM skin ABS outside be PR IMP Snake ABS big thing ABS His skin was lying beside him. It was a big snake. Wa dhawdhay moebayg. Mabayg adhal nipa. Yes mainland person ABS Person ABS outside sit PR IMP Yes, it was a mainlander, sitting outside his skin. Nuy-dh woesar
koba-nga purth-a-ypa.
He ERG wallaby ABS raw PRED eat PR IMP
He was eating a wallaby raw. Nuy nu-be-pa kedha + 'koeymeg-a ngi friend Q you NOM He NOM he DAT thus He said to Baira, 'Friend, are you here, too?'
kay-a here Q
Wa ay a +ngoe-ba ina woesar koba-nga purth-a-ypa. Yes come you + 1 DU this wallaby raw PRED eat PR IMP Yes, come! We two can share this raw wallaby meat.
8 Understanding language shift: a step towards language maintenance PATRICK McCONVELL
8.1
Facing facts and facing theories
If nothing is done about it, almost all Aboriginal languages will be dead by the year 2000. Even the two most likely survivors, the Yolngu languages of north-east Arnhem Land and the Western Desert language may not last long beyond that date. Most of us who have worked for some time in the field of Aboriginal languages would agree with statements like this. However, if we were asked to show why we thought a particular language was going to die, we would often not be able to give a very coherent account of our reasoning. Nor would any two researchers necessarily come up with the same kinds of answers about how and why a language dies. In recent study of a dying language in Australia, Schmidt (1985) was unable to give any general theory of language death that would fit the many different linguistic and sociocultural features of the different languages that have died or are dying. She points out that linguists can predict neither when nor what types of changes will occur in language contact situations generally, despite some decades of impressive work on the subject. She also notes that sociocultural factors are more important than linguistic factors in determining whether a language survives or not. I believe that a beginning has been made in constructing a sociocultural theory of language death. In this discussion I shall be concentrating on recent accounts of why and how a language lives and dies. I shall not be describing, therefore, the history of massacre, forced movement, and institutionalisation of Aboriginal people, nor the periods of prohibition and denigration of their culture and languages by schools and other bodies which are necessary background for the understanding of the present situation of Aboriginal languages in Australia (see Hudson and McConvell, 1984; and Fesl 1988). I shall focus on the present situation and how theories of language shift can contribute to language maintenance.
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Theories of language shift (the change-over in a community from speaking one language to speaking another) have strong implications for the practice of language maintenance. If we have wrong ideas about how and why people change from one language to another, we are not likely to find the right ways of stopping or reversing the process. Also, whether they say so or not, people who advocate a particular way of maintaining a language are usually guided by assumptions about language shift. If the ideas that lie hidden behind their practice are not brought out in the open, they cannot be tested to see if they hold water. 8.2
Language shift
Language death and language shift can be regarded as two ways of looking at the same type of process. Most studies by and large consider only what is happening to one of the languages in the language situation. What is needed is a framework which looks not at individual languages but at entire bilingual or multilingual situations, seeing the functions of each language as fitting together to make a whole. Changes in one language's use are seen as related to changes in the use of other languages, and not necessarily related to a particular end-point. The future development is to be predicted and not assumed from the state of the whole situation and the theory. Here I will draw on three approaches to the study of language shift and death as they apply to findings from my research on the maintenance of Aboriginal languages: the domain theory, the interactional-variationist theory, and the adaptation theory. 8.3
The domain theory
The domain approach to language maintenance may be traced back to a conception of the relationship between 'stable bilingualism' and separation of the two languages into distinct domains of social interaction (sometimes termed 'bilingualism with diglossia'), attributed to Fishman. On the other side of the coin is the hypothesis that lack of strict separation of domains is a sign of 'transitional bilingualism'. In published work, Fishman (1972: 115) seems to soften statements about this correlation. A stronger form of the hypothesis has been advanced by Di Pietro (1970: 19) under the title 'Universal Number One': The presence of multilingualism in a speech community depends on the association of each language involved with specific domains of social interaction . . . a perfect balance of multilingualism in which, say, English and Spanish would be used equally as well for all domains of interaction is highly transitory and represents the step just before a new stage of monolingualism in one or the other language.
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This way of putting it really talks about only the two extremes of bilingualism, both of which are relatively rare: where there is strict separation of domains (and where bilingualism is stable, according to the hypothesis) and where both languages are used equally in all domains (highly unstable, according to the hypothesis). Thus, this view does not tell us much about intermediate states, where one language is chosen for some domains but both languages are used in others. This hypothesis is presented as a correlation at one point in time: it does not predict when, how or why bilingualism shifts historically from one state to another. There are several ways in which this model is inadequate. It does not account for the social functions of the codes, and in particular does not explore the social meaning of the codes in code-switching, which has been shown in many studies (Blom and Gumperz 1972; Gumperz and Hernandez-Chavez 1972; Scotton and Ury 1977; Gal 1979). A number of people working in the domain model or similar frameworks still regard code-switching in the same domains, particularly within sentences, as random or unorganised by definition, in the tradition of Weinreich (1953: 73). This lends to a negative view of code-switching, and code-switching is blamed for language shift (Harris 1977). Scotton (1982) has argued, on the contrary, that code-switching may be a positive force, helping to maintain multilingualism. The concept of domain itself is not very well defined. Domains have traditionally been seen primarily in terms of place or setting, but there is an increasing amount of evidence that place or setting has very little or no role in choosing which language to use in most bilingual situations (Denison 1971; Gal 1979; McConvell 1986). What appears to be an effect of setting may result from a combination of the other two factors which are usually referred to in defining domains: the identity of participants, and the topic of discourse. Where more than one language is used in the same domain (with the same people and talking about the same sorts of things) this hypothesis predicts language shift. In such a model, 'expressive' or 'metaphorical' code-switching between languages used by the same people talking about the same subject is a sign of impending shift. We can certainlyfindexamples where stable bilingualism, often of very long standing, is reportedly correlated with separation of language use into domains, for example, Paraguay (Rubin 1961) and Village India (Gumperz 1969). On the other hand, there are places where 'expressive' code-switching is found in communities which appear to be undergoing language shift, for example, Eastern Austria (Gal 1979; Gumperz 1982b) and Northern Australia (McConvell 1986). However, there are equally plenty of examples of 'expressive' code-switching in stable bilingual situations: Northern Italy (Denison 1971), East Africa (Scotton and Ury 1977), French Canada,
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Belgium, the Philippines, etc. The existence of the common correlation of code-switching not structured by domain with stable bilingualism is enough to force us to qualify or change the historical prognosis that codeswitching leads to code shift. 8.4
The interactional-variationist theory
The interactional analysis of the use of different types of speech has revealed that much of the variation in language which might previously have been dismissed as random is in fact quite systematic, and is a vehicle of social meaning. Speakers switch to a different language, or use a different dialect form, not necessarily because they are speaking to a different person or about a different subject, but because they want to express a feeling or point of view about something which is going on. Although such codeswitching seems to be used in a number of different ways, its meaning can usually be tracked down to the basic meaning 'them' versus 'us' (Gumperz and Hernandez-Chavez 1972), that is, expressing identification with one or other social groups and the values associated with them. There is clear evidence that bilingual code-switching and other types of linguistic variation are used by Australian Aborigines in this way, too (Haviland 1982; McConvell 1986). This function of code-switching occurs both in language shift situations and apparently stable bilingualism. So does it tell us anything about the process of language shift? The most interesting hypotheses in this area are those which try to relate codeswitching between languages to style shifting or choice of registers in a single language. It has been widely acknowledged that the choice of language in bilingual situations plays a similar functional role to the choice of style or register in a single language (Gumperz and HernandezChavez 1972). Recent work on language shift seems to show that functional equivalence of style switching and language switching means that in the historical change of language shift, one can replace the other. Gumperz (1982b: 52) reports that in the younger generation of a bilingual community in Austria the skills of stylistic manipulation in German are replacing the reliance on switching between Serbo-Croat and German characteristic of the older peopler. Gal (1979) shows that style switching and language switching are complementary to each other. Style switching is used between speakers where only one language is habitually used, whether it is the old language Hungarian, or the new language German, while language switching is used where two languages are habitually used between speakers. This suggests that, over time, style choice in the old language gives way to language choice, which in turn gives way to style choice in the new language. I have some doubts about whether the usage studied by Gal is strictly
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complementary, even in the Austrian situation she investigated. In my own work on Gurindji code-switching (McConvell 1988) both style shifting (in the sense of alternation between a local and more widespread dialect as the term is used by Gal) in both Gurindji and Kriol, and language switching between them occur in the same conversations, used by the same people. However, we could take a slightly weaker position and say that collapsing of style or register distinctions is a feature of the old language of the younger generation of speakers in language shift and attempt to relate this to the language switching behaviour of those of their parents' generation. Thus both loss of style/register distinctions in the old language and increasing use of them in the new language by the younger generation could be symptoms by which we could recognise language shift in progress perhaps a more reliable indicator of language shift than the presence of language switching alone. Gal (1979) herself does seem to regard the presence of conversational language switching as an accurate predictor of language shift, like the domain theorists discussed in 8.3. This view seems to arise from certain properties of her model. The theoretical problems arise mainly when we try to extrapolate from that to make it a model of a diachronic process. As with the domain theory, this model predicts that once the process of change in functions of the languages had started, it would continue spreading through the social groups involved inexorably until the new language became categorically accepted throughout the community (see e.g. Bailey 1973; Labov 1972; and Bickerton 1975, on variationist models of language change). Language change and changes in the use of languages do not always follow this pattern. Different changes can be generated from different groups and spread along different paths. We have seen that variation, such as code-switching, need not always immediately give way to a categorical pattern but can remain fairly stable for a lengthy period. Moreover, as Gal (1979: 154) points out, a pattern like the one shown in the chart need not necessarily mean that a historical change has taken place. It could be that change in use of the languages is a cyclical phenomenon related to the age of individuals: Either speakers regularly change their patterns of language choice as they age, so that in each generation young people use more German and then switch progressively to using more Hungarian as they grow older, or . . . people within a generation retain their patterns relatively unchanged throughout life, but each generation systematically differs from the preceding ones, so that old people's patterns constitute a historically older pattern that is being replaced as the older generations die, by the newer patterns of the young. It is by no means unknown for young people in a group to speak differently from their elders, and later to adopt the older people's way of
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talking. In fact, Gal is simplifying the question by posing it as a simple alternative like this. Among other possible explanations of the pattern on the chart is that, formerly, people spoke varieties of one language throughout their lives, but that more recently the sociolinguistic conventions have changed so that young people speak mainly the new language, then later in their lives speak the old language. This kind of scenario might have some appeal in some of the Australian Aboriginal situations that I know. It is known that many Aboriginal groups either have or had a distinct 'Baby Talk' variety of the language that was used to address children sometimes up to the age of seven or eight. Where it is now customary for older people to address children in Kriol, the new language, as among the Gurindji and Kija, one could speculate that Kriol has taken on the functional role that the Baby Talk form of the language had before. I have seen examples of Gurindji children who during their school years appeared to talk nothing but Kriol, but who begin to talk more Gurindji in their late teens as they are accepted as members of the adult group. I would not argue that the position of Kriol is wholly a life-cycle matter, nor would I deny that language shift seems to be well underway in such Aboriginal groups. I am merely making the point that the cycles and the historical process can become mixed in a potentially confusing way. This also raises other issues which the simple variationist model cannot handle adequately. One of these concerns the role of passive knowledge of a language. Clearly Gurindji youngsters who on the face of it speak only Kriol are also building up a passive knowledge of Gurindji, and when the time and circumstances are right, may use that knowledge actively. In the meantime, they will continue to speak Kriol even when spoken to in Gurindji. This is an example of what Gal calls 'unreciprocal' use of a language: it is also common for Oberwarter young people to carry on such conversations in two languages with older people: the old person talks Hungarian and the young one, German (Gal 1979: 110-11). I argue below that such asymmetries may be among the key features that point to the progress of language shift. 8.5
The adaptation theory
Bavin and Shopen's observation of linguistic change among school students in Warlpiri communities made them suspect that language shift may be a danger, even for this reputedly 'strong' language (Bavin and Shopen 1985b, and this volume). Shopen has been advocating language adaptation or language engineering as a language maintenance measure for Warlpiri. This strategy is based on the theory that rapid cultural change is
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responsible for language shift, because traditional Warlpiri is increasingly unable to talk about all the new things and ideas that are being introduced from the modern world (see Poulson et al. 1986). In a sense, this theory is a variant of the domain theory, and the phrase 'contemporary domains' is used for the areas such as shops, European law, sport etc. in which adaptation is going on. The emphasis is on topics, rather than setting or the identity of people spoken to, as determining the language used. Furthermore, according to this theory it is not so much simply the association of a topic with a social group and its values which makes a speaker choose a particular language but the inadequacy of the old language to express certain concepts which forces the switch to English. This is plausible, and certainly I have heard Aboriginal people give lack of adequate words for a particular topic in the other language as a reason for choosing to speak in a particular language (Hudson and McConvell 1984: 43). Also, it brings out the question of the enormous cultural differences between traditional Aborigines and Europeans reflected in their languages and cultural differences of a type and scale not found between two European languages in bilingual situations such as the one Gal looks at in Austria. Certainly, these cultural differences and resulting difficulties in talking about certain things belonging to one culture in the language of another do motivate some instances of language choice. In my experience, this theory may not explain even half the language choices in Aboriginal bilingual situations, no matter what the people say or believe about their language behaviour (a notoriously unreliable guide among any group of people). Why does the person telling off the people at a picture show talk English, when he could perfectly well do it in his old language (S. Harris 1984: 136)? Such usages relate to the social functions and social meanings of the languages (e.g. the use of a superordinate language as an authoritative language), and not to particular cultural differences between groups. This is also why there is remarkable similarity in such uses of language in bilingual situations throughout the world. It may be that language engineering will not provide the language maintenance strategy we are looking for, because language shift could happen anyway, for other social reasons that have been overlooked by the adaptation theory. If one believes in the diachronic domain theory, one would see language engineering as creating the very conditions for language shift, by making the old and new languages share the same domains. I do not think the domain theory is necessarily correct about that, but I do fear that language engineering could spend so much effort altering the old language and culture that it would become a tool of cultural assimilation.
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A better theory?
All these theories have something to contribute to a better, more useful, theory. I shall now discuss how they could be integrated and made more realistic. Firstly, I agree that the expression of either solidarity with or distance from certain social groups is probably the most important function of language choice in bilingual situations and probably also the factor which above all other determines whether language shift takes place. However, this is not the whole story, and for this reason I have written of three functions of language choice in bilingualism (McConvell 1986). Thefirstis the basic communication function. This has to do with relations between bilinguals in the speech community and outsiders who know only one of the languages in the community. Under these circumstances, bilinguals are free to open a communication channel with the outsider by speaking the language they know, or to erect a communication barrier by speaking in the language they do not know. Both these choices can have great functional value. It is of considerable importance if this choice becomes restricted. This basic communication function may be of particular importance for us in distinguishing between different language situations in Aboriginal Australia. It seems to be a fairly well-observed rule in many communities that English or the nearest thing to it that people can manage should be spoken in the presence of English-speaking whites. This is consciously articulated by Aboriginal people (Hudson and McConvell 1984; Arkwookerum, Woolla 1982) and often reinforced by teachers, white coworkers, etc. demanding the same thing. In the same places, no one really expects Whites to learn Aboriginal languages. By contrast, in north-east Arnhem Land and Western Desert communities, there seems to be no such rule requiring people to speak a form of English in the presence of Whites, and there is a strong expectation that outsiders will try to learn the local language. The presence of a rule restricting basic communication choice may well be a symptom of language shift ahead. On the other side, some modern developments could lead in the opposite direction. In communities using two-way radios traditional languages are now being used sometimes on the radio to maintain confidentiality. The second function is social. It refers to language choice between bilinguals who share the same language repertoire. A language is chosen in order to identify the speaker, listener or both with a particular social group. This identification may be always the same between a pair of people, or it may be variable, in which case code-switching in the course of one conversation takes place, expressing social meaning. The third function is cultural. This has to do with culturally-based
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function language Basic yes/no choice Communication Function
Figure 8.1 Model of language choice in bilingualism choices between languages which make available contrasting world-views and systems of knowledge. Choice of a language may reflect either the basic communication function, or one or both of the other two (social and cultural functions), as in figure 8.1. In this perspective language shift can be seen as resulting from the loss of the functions of bilingualism, that is, the loss of functional choices between languages, and in the case of the social function, their likely replacement by choices of style within one language. Likewise, language maintenance can be seen as the retention of these choices, or their replacement by other choices between the languages which still serve the major functions in different ways. We should perhaps speak of the maintenance of bilingualism, rather than maintenance of a language. This theory of language shift has implications quite different from the domains and adaptation theories. Survival of the old language depends on the number and importance of functional choices the bilingual situation can maintain. The applied versions of the adaptation and domains theories, on the other hand, would both tend to reduce one or other of the functions of language choice. Engineering the old language to emulate the new one is likely to reduce the value of the cultural function in language choice. Similarly, eliminating socially meaningful code-switching between languages as advocated by domain theorists in Aboriginal bilingual education (Harris 1977) would tend to reduce the value of the social function of the bilingualism, as Scotton's work (1982) also implies. From this start, which I shall call for convenience the functional choice theory of language shift, we have to look more deeply at the actual process of language shift, how it progresses from stage to stage, and (importantly for language maintenance) whether this progress is inevitable, or can stop at particular stages. Here the interactional-variationist theory can be of great help. It is necessary, however, to remove the historical fatalism from
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the theory, which says that once the shift has started it continues in one direction until it reaches the end-point, monolingualism. This part of the theory is not justifiable on theoretical grounds, nor is it supported by evidence, since there are numerous groups who mix languages in single conversations, yet have maintained bilingualism over many generations. It is important to recognise when and how an entire bilingual situation becomes, as it were, tilted, then overbalances into a rapid shift into monolingualism. At this stage, we do not yet have a full theory of 'tip' (Dorian 1981: 51). All three of the functions, basic communication, social and cultural, would normally be involved in combination in determining the course of such events. Ultimately, though, it is in the area of the social function where the drama of language shift and language maintenance is played out. New patterns, or redistributions of language choice functions, spread through groups within bilingual Aboriginal communities in much the same way as that described by Gal for Oberwart. Given the individual and family differences which can be ascribed to the influences of different social networks (Gal 1979), it is not particularly surprising that family differences in degree of language shift also exist in small fairly homogeneous communities like Daguragu and Turkey Creek, where I have worked. These communities also show a pattern of age distribution of languages such that the young speak Kriol, the middle-age group speak either the old language to some people and Kriol to others or code-switching, and only the very old speak the old language most of the time. Consistent 'unreciprocal' uses of the two languages in these Aboriginal language shift situations seems rare, although it happened frequently between different traditional languages, and still does, where Kriol does not intervene as a lingua franca. Code-switching between the old and new languages has become widely used in many situations among the middle-age group but, unlike in Oberwart, it seems that switching between local varieties of the old language, for the older ones, and different lects of Kriol, nearer to and farther from standard English, for the young, can also occur in the same conversation. All these types of switching have social meanings, which I relate to what I call a social arenas configuration. Figure 8.2 shows the social arenas configuration I use to explain code-switching at Daguragu, among the Gurindji (McConvell 1988). The nesting pattern of the languages/varieties indicates that the more inclusive groups properly include the more exclusive ones, for instance a member of the Wanyjirra local group also considers himself a member of the Gurindji speech community, and a Cattle Station Aboriginal. This particular type of social arenas configuration, which is probably found associated with a large number of Aboriginal languages currently undergoing language shift, is not itself to blame for the shift. It is similar to
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KRIOL Cattle Station Aborigines GURINDJI Speech Community LOCAL DIALECTS Local Origin Groups
Figure 8.2 Social arenas relevant to codeswitching at Daguragu the one associated with trilingualism in Sauris (Denison 1971), which, according to historical records, has been, until recently at least, very stable. However, there can be an asymmetry built into this type of model of language use which tends to favour the larger, more inclusive, languages. A speaker of a more exclusive language, for example, Gurindji, cannot speak to a person identified as a speaker of a more inclusive language, for example Kriol, in the more exclusive language (even though the listener may understand it); nor would, say, a Kriol speaker be expected to attempt to talk Gurindji to a person identified as a Gurindji speaker, under this rule. Clearly if this rule is combined with a rule that defines children as a new language (Kriol) speaking group, as appears to be happening in a number of places, then acquisition of the old language by the younger generation would be difficult and probably not encouraged. Thus, language shift would be hard to avoid. Kriol has a variety of styles based on a 'heavy-light' (basilectalacrolectal) continuum (see e.g. Sandefur, this volume) which could easily be adapted to various 'expressive' functions related to in-group and outgroup identity, and thus take over many of the social functions currently served by switching between languages. This is likely to happen in stages, so that the use of certain traditional language words and phrases is retained to flavour the Kriol for specific expressive effect, without people actually being able to speak the old language properly or even understand it. 8.7
Learning to be bilingual
Young Aboriginals in the areas I know sometimes do have quite extensive passive knowledge of the old language, but are unable to use it normally
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because of strong sociolinguistic rules against its use. Use of Standard Australian English is similarly prohibited by strong peer-group pressure. Part of the reason for the force of this prohibition may stem from the social meanings of the old language created by code-switching. These social rules about language use have exerted a strong psychological influence on the younger generation, perhaps as strong as the oppressive attempts to wipe out Aboriginal languages by white people in the past. An illustration of this recently was the reaction of Turkey Creek children to a film of Pitjantjatjara people at Ernabella. They watched the adults speaking the Pitjantjatjara language to each other with some interest, and without strong reaction, but when children came on the screen speaking Pitjantjatjara, they were greeted with gales of almost hysterical laughter by the Turkey Creek children, who normally speak Kriol rather than their traditional language, Kija. From this and similar incidents I have concluded that the rule against speaking the old language is not primarily a question of the basic communication function, that is the competence of the children, or of the cultural function, but of the social function, with strong psychological backing supporting the identification of speaking the old language with old people and their ways. We need to be aware of the kind of acquisition process which children in unstable bilingual situations go through, both in terms of learning the languages themselves, and in learning the sociolinguistic rules and social meanings of the codes used. We need not assume that these are acquired intact, but are undoubtedly reanalysed and reinterpreted by the children. Although I have looked mainly at the social determinants of language shift, it is also possible that the complexity or difficulty of learning a particular language could affect its chances of being learned under adverse circumstances and, therefore, its chances of survival. Slobin (1982) compared acquisition in different languages and suggested that certain types of grammatical encodings of categories in a language make particular aspects of a language easier to learn, for example, one-to-one mapping of that form and meaning. Many Australian languages are very far from this ideal, particularly the prefixing ones such as Tiwi and Kija, in which fusional irregular non-syllabic morphemes abound (see also Bavin and Shopen, this volume). Aborigines sometimes wonder whether the children use Kriol simply because it is easier. Winnie Budbaria at Turkey Creek said: 'English is straight out, our languages are all back-to-back'. Does this mean that language shift is harder to resist for such languages than, say, for Arrernte, which follows many of these ideal features - and, incidentally, has survived remarkably well in the urban environment of Alice Springs? Another related investigation is children's acquisition of a prefixing language. Do children simplify the language in ways that might be expected from these observations about learnability?
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While several studies have begun to be made on the linguistic aspects of young people's speech in Australia, I do not know of any ethnographic study of the development of communicative competence (cf., e.g. Schieffelin's 1989 on the Kaluli). Ron Day, a Mer Islander who grew up in the period when language shift to Torres Strait Creole was going on on the island, has described to me what happened to him and his peers as they went through a process of feeling rejected by their elders and by the teachers for not speaking either Meriam Mir or English 'correctly'. The children then embraced the pidgin as their own. Similar processes have gone on and are going on with young Aborigines today, and are leading to language shift, a result that Topsy Chestnut (Hudson and McConvell 1984: 37) feels sure they will regret. Young people don't care about the language, but when they get older they feel sorry about it. That's why we want to keep the languages. Until we understand these processes of language shift better, we shall find it hard to help people like Topsy keep their languages.
Part II Pidgins and Creoles
Overview of the pidgin and Creole languages of Australia PETER MUHLHAUSLER
9.1
Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to provide a general picture of the pidgins and Creoles spoken in Australia. Outside its scope are descriptive and historical accounts of individual languages as well as Aboriginal English, the history and structure of which differ in a number of significant aspects from that of English-derived pidgins and Creoles, and are dealt with in other chapters of this volume (see Kaldor and Malcolm, Eades, and Koch). The greatest need in an overview of this kind seems to be clarification of basic terminology. As pointed out by Sandefur (1985b), 'the terms "pidgin", "creole" and "Aboriginal English" have been used with a great deal of ambiguity in recent years'. This ambiguity reflects an insufficient understanding of the phenomena at hand as well as the continuing influence of folk labels for varieties of speech used by non-mainstream Australians. One view, in particular, that has continued to survive even in quite respectable publications is that there are underdeveloped languages with few or no abstract terms, and that pidgin and Creole languages are corruptions of true languages. Hence we find Pidgin English referred to as a 'quaint and macaronic jargon' or 'English perverted and mangled by the natives' or, from a different perspective (Strehlow 1947: xviii) 'English perverted and mangled by ignorant whites, who have in turn taught this ridiculous gibberish to the natives and who then affect to be amused by the childish babblings of these "savages".' Such contempt for pidgins and Creoles has led to a long tradition of misunderstanding and prejudice as well as a deplorable lack of large-scale studies of these languages. Crowley and Rigsby (1979: 154) remark: When most Australians speak of Tidgin English' or 'Pidgin', they generally think of something they also call 'broken English', which is a language variety that no one takes seriously. Pidgin is a sort of simplified English and its simplicity is believed to
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reflect the lesser mental capabilities of its darker skinned speakers. Such misconceptions are dangerous because they serve to rationalise European ethnocentrism and they perpetuate racist stereotypes. The terms 'pidgin' and 'creole' are, however, technical terms used by linguists to refer to structurally and contextually definable linguistic systems: 1 A 'pidgin' is a contact language used among people who have no other language in common. It is a second language for those who use it, and its use is restricted to a limited number of situational contexts, such as trading (e.g. Chinese Pidgin English), plantation life (e.g. Queensland Kanaka Pidgin) or military operations (e.g. Korean Bamboo Pidgin). Since a pidgin is used in a small number of contexts, it has a smaller lexicon and a less complex grammar than languages with native speakers. Grammar and lexicon are derived from many sources, including the superimposed European language, local languages and universal grammar. 2 If parents of different linguistic backgrounds use a pidgin to communicate at home, their children will grow up speaking this pidgin as their first language. If this happens in many households of a community, the nativised pidgin can become the language of a new speech community. This process is known as 'creolisation'. A creolised pidgin or 'creole' is structurally more complex than a second-language pidgin as it has to meet all the communicative requirements of native speakers. The structural complexity of a Creole is comparable to that of other languages. Creolisation illustrates the human capacity to 'create' language. Far from being an imitation of their parents' pidgin, a first-generation creole can be structurally quite different. I have observed first-generation creole speakers of Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea who spoke a language that was so different from their parents' pidgin that the latter could not follow the creole when spoken by the children among themselves. When communicating with their parents these children switched to the former's less developed variety. Pidgins and Creoles have to be regarded as dynamic rather than static systems. Often, creolisation is preceded by a long history of structural expansion of a pidgin, so that the difference between first and second language is not very great. In other cases, creolisation occurs before a sophisticated pidgin has had time to develop. In such cases the importance of universal grammar is considerable. In the development from a rudimentary pidgin to a full creole a number of stages can be distinguished It must be remembered that the stages intermediate between the jargon stage and the creolisation stage are optional and not found in all creole life histories. I have given below a rough outline of the structural and functional properties of pidgins at various stages in their development.
Overview of the pidgin and Creole languages of Australia Structural properties One or two-word sentences, very small lexicon, simple sound system, great individual variation.
Functional characteristics Used for communication in limited referential domains, e.g. trade, labour recruiting, military
Stable pidgin (Chinese Pidgin English)
Simple sentences as well as some complex ones, social norms concerning linguistic correctness.
Used for communication in a fixed number of domains, for social control and, to a small extent, selfexpression.
Expanded pidgin (e.g. Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea)
Complex grammar, development of a word-formation component, increase in speech tempo.
Used in almost all domains of everyday life, for selfexpression, wordplay, literature, instrumental in providing cohesion in heterogeneous groups.
Stage Jargon (e.g. Thai-English)
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In addition to varieties arranged on such a developmental continuum (which could represent speakers belonging to different age groups), one finds varieties of pidgin and Creole English that are in some ways closer to English. Anglicised versions of pidgins and Creoles develop in communities where English is the superordinate language. The two main reasons for their development are the facilitation of vertical communication and prestige factors. By 'vertical communication' I mean communication between people of different social status, such as that between Englishspeaking overseers and pidgin-speaking labourers on a plantation. As very few Europeans bother to learn a pidgin properly, the indigenous pidgin speakers make use of whatever knowledge of the standard language they have in communicating with English speaking outsiders. This ad hoc anglicised variety is the only type of 'pidgin' that most Europeans ever get to hear.
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The implications for the study of Australian pidgins are far-reaching. As pointed out by Troy (1985), the documentary evidence we have of varieties such as New South Wales Pidgin English tends to reflect such anglicised jargons as were in use among Europeans and Aborigines rather than the more stable varieties used when Aboriginal speakers from different language backgrounds communicated. A second reason why Pidgin English can become more anglicised involves prestige. If the speakers of a pidgin are constantly told that their language is bad and if they are made to believe that English is the only way to full social acceptance, they will try very hard to acquire as much of the standard language as they can in an informal learning context. Being able to use standard English expressions in one's pidgin may enhance a speaker's social standing. It is important to keep in mind that replacing a pidgin construction with one borrowed from English does not mean that the language can suddenly express more. All that takes place is a kind of restructuring. Present-day forms of Aboriginal English may well be heavily reconstructed earlier pidgins and Creoles. Leaving aside the historical details of this question, I will provide briefly some criteria for distinguising a Creole from a variety of Aboriginal English. The principal criterion one can appeal to here is that of targeted learning: whereas pidgins are second languages developed in the absence of full access to a target language and Creoles first languages learnt without a full target, Aboriginal English is more in the nature of an interlanguage, that is, a variety of English oriented towards the norms of a standard variety, and sharing many of its underlying forms. There tends to remain a structural gap between pidgins and Creoles on the one hand, and their related standard languages on the other. This distinction can become blurred when a pidgin or Creole is heavily restructured during intensive contact with its lexifier' language. One must also consider the adequacy of pidgins and Creoles. It is often argued that pidgins and Creoles are deficient when compared with languages such as English, in that one cannot talk about certain aspects of the world or that speaking such a language promotes muddled thinking. Proponents of this view ignore a number of important linguistic and sociolinguistic findings, including the following. 1 A language is simpler than another language if it is more regular (and thus more learnable), without any loss in communicative potential or, as it is called, referential adequacy. In the following examples Northern Territory Kriol encodes the idea of'person' in a uniform fashion, where English relies on different lexical forms: gitamen klebamen
'guitar player' 'smart man'
Overview of the pidgin and Creole languages of Australia pailitmen songmen raithenmen wailmen
163
'pilot' 'singer' 'assistant' 'wild man'
2 A language is called impoverished if it is unable to express what is relevant to its speakers' needs. Since a pidgin cannot fulfil all of its speakers' communicative needs, it is impoverished. Since pidgin users can express all these needs in their first language, however, this does not reflect any inferiority on the pidgin users' part. Someone who uses a pidgin for trade purposes only is like a scientist who knows enough of a foreign language to communicate in his/her narrow field of specialisation. No language has a word for everything. Sandefur and Sandefur's Kriol dictionary (1979a), for instance, contains a number of entries which are translated by longish paraphrases in English. Examples are: nyapaja soptri bush rod bundin
kinship term for an old man who is in 'banjimen' relationship a kind of wattle tree, used for fish poison and medicine Aboriginal foot walking track water lily seed at certain stage of development, when it is brown
There are considerable differences in the density of semantic fields across languages; the English kinship system looks very impoverished, for instance, when compared to the system of kinship terms found in some Australian pidgins and Creoles. 4 By referential adequacy we mean the ability of a language to refer to aspects of the 'real' world. The referential potential of many western languages is great because of the existence of a vast number of specialists' sub-languages. Whilst such sub-languages may express a multitude of technical concepts, specialist vocabulary for the description of cultural activities of other societies may be missing. 5 The fact that the lexicon of a language contains a very large number of entries does not mean that all members of the language community can actually use them. There are hundreds of terms for parts of the body which are known to medical experts only; the average speaker of English can handle about 70, as many as the speaker of a Creole derived from English. 6 Languages may also differ in expressive adequacy, that is, in their power to convey the same information in different ways. Most pidgins, particularly in the early phases of their life, lack such stylistic devices. Extended pidgins and Creoles, on the other hand, often exhibit a rich inventory of registers and styles. In the absence of detailed studies, questions of adequacy have to be
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treated with greatest care. In particular, the presence or absence of certain structural or lexical devices cannot be taken as a direct index of speakers' ability to communicate as the total communication process includes shared knowledge of the world, intonation, gesture and many other components. What seems uncontroversial, however, is that a negative image of one's language tends to promote feelings of inferiority. The past history of Australia is full of examples where languages and their speakers were degraded, mistreated and misunderstood. In the absence of any reliable criteria for assessing the overall quality of different communication systems we are well advised to treat pidgins and Creoles with respect, thus enhancing the positive feelings towards them that have begun to develop among their speakers. 9.2
An inventory of pidgins and Creoles found in Australia
From what has been said so far it should have become clear that counting pidgins is not an easy job. Roughly speaking however, we can distinguish the following principal traditions: (i) East Coast Aboriginal Pidgin, stemming from the early colonial days and initial contacts between whites and Aborigines, (ii) Western Australian Pidgin English (see Miihlhausler, forthcoming), (iii) Chinese Pidgin, brought by Chinese migrants in the late nineteenth century, (iv) Melanesian Pidgin, spoken by the many thousands of black workers in the Queensland sugar cane industry, (v) Macassarese trade pidgin used in pre-European days between visiting trepang fishermen and Aborigines as well as Aboriginal lingua franca in the Northern Territory, (vi) pidginised forms of Malay used in the pearling fisheries around Broome and Thursday Island, particularly between 1900 and 1930. (vii) possibly unrelated to (v) and (vi), Plantation Pidgin Malay and later creolised forms of Cocos and Christmas Island, (viii) the Pitcairnese Creole English transported to Norfolk Island, (ix) Bass Strait English, possibly reflecting an earlier Tasmanian pidgin, (x) pidginised or simplified Aboriginal vernaculars used as mission and intergroup lingua franca such as Gunwinygu or Pitjantjatara. The status and viability of these languages differs greatly. Generally speaking, the most healthy are those that have the support of large Aboriginal communities such as Northern Territory (Roper River) Kriol or Torres Strait Broken. Others such as Kanaka English, Broome Pearling Pidgin or Macassarese Pidgin are virtually extinct.
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9.3 The history of research into Australian pidgins and Creoles There are numerous gaps in our understanding of the pidgins and Creoles of Australia directly related to the scarcity of scholarly investigation of them. Interest in the pidgins and Creoles of Australia is a very recent phenomenon. The bibliography of Reinecke et al (1975) lists a mere 45 publications, most of them concerned with other matters but containing text samples. The most comprehensive account of any variety is Sayer's (1944) 'haphazard book' (Reinecke et al. 1975: 588), which gives data from Northern Territory Pidgin English based on the author's first hand experience. Data from other varieties are very uneven. Banfield (1908) for instance, gives a massive body of data for Aboriginal Pidgin English of Dunk Island; other areas such as South Australia or Victoria were virtually unaccounted for. Baker's summary of what was known about Aboriginal Pidgin English in the 1960s (e.g. Baker 1953, 1966) adds little to Sayer. Conspicuous by its absence is any treatment of creolisation, a fact which led an overseas writer working with secondary sources (Bauer 1975: 140), to the conclusion: 'Since Australian Pidgin English was replaced rapidly by substandard English, no tendencies towards creolisation have been observed among Australian Aboriginals.' The existence of creolised varieties was established in the late 1970s by Rigsby and Crowley for Torres Strait Broken and Cape York Creole and by Sandefur for Northern Territory Kriol. Projects concerned with Aboriginal pidgins and Creoles were virtually non-existent before 1975, mainly because whatever English-related form of speech was spoke by these people was simply classified as 'English'. Consequently, some varieties were surveyed as part of dialect surveys, the most important being Flint's Queensland Speech Survey in the 1960s. One of Flint's collaborators in particular, Dutton, investigated a number of non-standard forms of speech which were later classified as pidgins and Creoles. Dutton has continued to survey such varieties in Queensland and his work offers the greatest time depth and continuity of research to date. From the mid-1970s onward a number of institutions in Australia began to get involved in (typically small) projects on pidgins and Creoles, a consequence of the world-wide upsurge of pidgin and Creole studies as well as a number of political changes affecting the Aboriginal community. Whilst it is impossible to deal with this work in an exhaustive fashion (a more comprehensive account can be found in Sandefur 1983), there are certain institutions which warrant mention. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies provided grants both for smaller projects such as my research in North Queensland (Miihlhausler 1979) and the Torres Strait as well as for a more substantial fellowship to
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study Torres Strait Broken, an award held by Shnukal between 1980 and 1983. The Institute also acts as a repository of language materials. The study of Australian pidgins and Creoles was made an official research emphasis at the Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies of the Australian National University in the mid-1970s and a considerable amount of work has been carried out by staff and students since. Particular mention should be made of Dutton's work on Canefields English and Queensland Aboriginal English (Dutton 1980, 1983; Dutton and Miihlhausler 1984) and Tryon's work on Northern Territory Kriol. A number of articles concerned with these languages have been published in the departmental publication Pacific Linguistics and a beginning has been made in the compilation of a map of Australian pidgins, Creoles and lingua franca for the forthcoming Atlas of Languages for Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, a joint venture between members of this department and linguists at Oxford University. Some badly needed research on the history of Pidgin English in New South Wales is currently being conducted by Troy whilst Hosokawa has made some exciting findings about the language contact situation around Broome (Western Australia). Work on Kriol in central and Northern Australia is also carried out by the Department of Linguistics, The Faculties, Australian National University, in particular by Koch. The University of Queensland was one of the early centres of research on pidgins and Creoles and there is considerable interest in both the Anthropology Department (e.g. Rigsby and Sutton 1982; J.W. Harris 1984) and among linguists attached to other departments (e.g. Shnukal). Work tends to concentrate on Cape York and the Torres Strait. Members of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Western Australia (in particular, Kaldor and Sansom) have provided much-needed studies of both pidgins and varieties of Aboriginal English in Western Australia. Details on a number of projects concerned with nonstandard English in Western Australia are given by Sandefur (1983). In 1987 Muhlhausler carried out a survey of Pidgin English in the south-west and the Pilbarra under the auspices of this department. This very sketchy survey of research at Australian universities immediately reveals some major gaps: no work has been undertaken to my knowledge by universities in Tasmania, South Australia and Victoria on the pidgin and Creole varieties spoken within these states. The scale of operations at the institutions mentioned is also very moderate and largescale systematic surveys such as those begun at the Australian National University are still very much the exception. Generally speaking, research into these languages at Australian Universities remains patchy and haphazard and fails to do justice to their growing social and educational importance.
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A number of other researchers such as Sandefur, Hudson, and Sharpe at institutions outside the universities have worked more systematically on these questions. The Summer Institute of Linguistics, whose concern is primarily with mission work, education and Bible translation and only secondarily with linguistics, has nevertheless produced an impressive body of descriptions and lexicographical and sociolinguistic data. Some work, particularly work of a practical nature is also carried out under the auspices of the School of Australian Linguistics at Batchelor and the Kimberley Language Resource Centre at Halls Creek. The question of Kriol as an educational medium is a dominant one. Other much-needed research is the systematic documentation of the linguistic history and the sociohistorical context of Australian pidgins and Creoles. The models provided by Troy (1985) for New South Wales and J.W. Harris (1984) for the Northern Territory can be easily adapted to other parts of Australia. What is surprising is the sheer amount of historical information still recoverable. Government and mission archives in Australia and the UK are full of materials in and on these languages, as are travel books, newspapers and scientific writings. Work with present-day and former speakers can be very rewarding, as has been shown, for instance, by Dutton (1980) in the case of Canefields English, by Hosokawa with the contact vernaculars of Broome, and by Miihlhausler for Nyungar Pidgin English. One hopes that the accelerating pace of research can be maintained and that the next few years will see a significant increase in detailed accounts of the pidgins and Creoles of Australia.
9.4
The origin and development of Australian pidgins and Creoles
The development of pidgins and Creoles in Australia is generally seen as a direct consequence of contacts between Aborigines and outside groups, such as South-east Asian traders in the north or Europeans in most parts of Australia. Whether or not indigenous pidgins were used in pre-contact days is not known, but is generally regarded as unlikely. Instead, widespread biand multilingualism, together with dialect and language chaining, enabled Aboriginals to communicate efficiently across considerable distances. Still, in view of the recent findings of numerous indigenous pidgins in neighbouring Papua New Guinea, where their existence had been doubted in the past, it might be wise to postpone judgement on this question. The general pattern of pidgin-creole development is repeated several times in the more recent post-1788 history of Australia. It proceeds in the following stages: (1) A relatively unstable jargon develops between Europeans and an Aboriginal group
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(2) Stabilisation and genuine pidgin development occurs as this jargon is used as a means of intercommunication by Aboriginal groups who either had not communicated previously or else who reserve this language for talking about things European (3) Some expansion takes place as European modes of life become more pervasive (4) Creolisation occurs where permanent non-traditional settlements are established. With regard to the situation around Port Jackson, for example, we find that 4a barbarous mixture of English with the Port Jackson dialect is spoken by either party' (Collins 1798). The relatively high Aboriginal content in its lexicon (more than 50 per cent in the data collected by Troy 1985) reflects the relative powerlessness of the coloniser in the very early period. Troy (1985) argues that a much more stable pidgin appears to have been spoken further inland along the traditional communication network of the Aboriginals. However, data for this variety are very hard to come by as the typical reports are by English speakers who availed themselves of the less stable jargon. Disease, 'dispersal' and assimilation prevented the development of a Creole in Port Jackson (Sydney) and indeed New South Wales. A very similar picture is found elsewhere. Thus, Urry and Walsh (1981) comment on considerable differences in the proficiency with which Macassarese Pidgin was spoken. Whilst direct linguistic evidence is lacking it seems reasonable to suggest that the coastal varieties were less stable as they involved contact between visiting outsiders and single Aboriginal groups whereas inland, Macassarese was used as an intergroup lingua franca. Again, in the absence of major disruptions following the Macassarese visits, no Creole community appears to have developed. Creolisation typically is the result of a major break in the continuity of transmission of languages from one generation to another. Thus, it is found in conditions such as social breakdown, displacement, slavery and mass migration. Creolisation can occur only if a sufficiently large new speech community is involved, and members of such a community adopt the new language as an act of identity. In the case of Australia, the conditions for creolisation were met in a number of areas, particularly in the far North. In the case of Roper River Kriol, as described by J.W. Harris (1984), creolisation began at the beginning of this century. A new mission community was created at Roper where Aboriginals from various language groups came together. Because of the small numbers of speakers of each language, language decline and loss set in and the traditional vernaculars were replaced by pidgin English as the primary language. The expatriate missionaries tended to com-
Overview of the pidgin and Creole languages of Australia
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municate with the Aboriginals in pidgin English or simplified English. Children were separated from their parents through the dormitory system. Of these factors the last is probably the most important, as the dormitories provided a centre for the development of a new society, neither traditional nor western whose medium of expression was Kriol. Contemporary evidence suggests that the pidgin English of Roper changed from a relatively rudimentary language into a much more complex one in a short span of time, incorporating the many innovations developed by the children themselves. Mission dormitories also appear to have played an important role in the emergence of creolised English in the Cape York Peninsula but not in the Torres Strait (Shnukal, personal communication). Creolisation of other Australian pidgins was prevented by adverse social conditions. Thus, the rapid decline in numbers of Aboriginals, their dispersal and their status as marginal dwellers at the outskirts of white settlements in the South promoted the adoption of a non-standard Australian English. Queensland Kanaka English, despite favourable conditions between about 1900 and 1906, did not become a Creole because of the large-scale repatriation of South Sea Islanders after 1904 and the dispersal of the black communities. To what extent plantation Creoles developed on Christmas and Cocos Islands to the west of Australia is not known, though it seems likely that creolised forms of pidgin Malay are spoken there. Creolisation, like pidginisation, appears to begin at small foci of development and then spread over wider areas. Thus, creolised varieties of Northern Australian Pidgin are found in most parts of Northern Australia and the processes begun around the turn of the century continue. The dynamics of this remain ill-described and indeed ill-understood. Most researchers have concentrated on small geographic areas (Sandefur and Sandefur's 1979b survey of the Kimberleys is a notable exception). The picture that emerges from most descriptions is abstract, static and suggestive of self-contained pidgin and Creole languages. In reality, the linguistic situation in the various areas of contact tended to be in considerable flux and susceptible to many influences. Thus, in each case researchers will have to establish whether a pidgin tradition is an independent development or a continuation of an earlier tradition, what mergers and divergent developments occurred, and the extent of variation for a given time and place. With regard to the first factor, we find that pidgin development in Port Jackson was not entirely independent. Thus, early visitors to Australia had had experience with the reduced English-Polynesian jargons spoken in Tahiti and the Marquesas and, in the case of some individuals, Africa and the West Indies. It is significant, for instance, that most of the early London Missionary Society mission personnel had worked in Tahiti prior to their
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coming to Australia. In the case of another pidgin, Queensland Kanaka (Canefields) English, a number of the white overseers had worked on pidgin speaking plantations elsewhere, whereas many of the black recruits had a smattering of broken English. Pidgin English in the Torres Strait again has very strong outside connections. It was brought there mainly by South Sea islanders, both teachers and mission helpers and later time-expired workers from the canefields. It soon became the language for discussing non-traditional matters by the indigenous population and in some areas intermarriage with the South Sea islanders resulted in creolisation (see Shnukal 1983a and this volume). Added to this is the influence of the pearl-lugger Malay spoken on board the numerous pearling vessels ploughing the sea around Thursday Island. Finally, the Macassarese Pidgin of the Northern Territory is another example of a pidgin imported from outside Australia and, more recently, the Pidgin German of some industries in Victoria (see Clyne 1977a) has been added. We have insufficient evidence to address a number of issues. One question in particular, that of the Pidgin English spoken by Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth century remains unsolved. The few examples I have been able to trace appear to exhibit some similarities with Canton Pidgin English, but I have also seen evidence that many Chinese did not speak any form of English on arrival in Australia. Whether they picked up their English from other pidgin speaking groups such as the South Sea Islanders or whether they acquired Chinese (Canton) Pidgin English from other Chinese remains to be established (see Baker 1987). Independent development is established for a number of places, though some of the varieties identified did not have a very long life. A particularly shortlived variety was spoken around Port Essington in the Northern Territory (see Harris 1984) and the Moreton Bay (Brisbane) pidgin identified by Dutton (1983). Others, for example, varieties spoken by the Afghans, remain to be identified. An important issue is the extent to which the earliest variety, Port Jackson Pidgin, can be established as the ancestor of all other Englishbased pidgins in Australia. It is certainly true that this variety was diffused extensively by settlers. Aborigines and, in particular travelling stockmen and workers on the transcontinental telegraph line. This diffusion did not extend to the south half of Western Australia until the 1890s, by which time an independently formed Nyungar Pidgin English had already established itself (see Miihlhausler, forthcoming). Words from the original Port Jackson Pidgin are found in Northern Territory Kriol, for instance: benjy'abdomen, stomach', bogey - 'wash, swim', cobra - 'head', yarraman 'horse', and jidan - 'camp, stay' (J.W. Harris 1984). On the other hand, there is interesting circumstantial evidence that a partial relexification of
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Macassarese Pidgin was also involved in the development of Kriol. The complexity of the history of Kriol is found also with the varieties of pidgin and Creole around Broome currently studied by Hosowaka and in the history of Queensland Canefields English. Mergers, divergence and new starts are continuous factors in the histories of such contact languages. A direct result of these factors is a considerable amount of variability in each of these languages. Variability is organised in terms of three dimensions: 1 First vs. second language, for example, both Kriol and Torres Strait Broken exist as first and second languages, and the history of creolisation can still be recovered by moving from location to location. Thus, in the Torres Strait, Torres Strait Creole replaced Pidgin English on Erub in the 1890s, on Moa around 1910, on Masig between 1920 and 1930 and on other central eastern islands in the 1940s (see Shnukal 1983a: 179). 2 White vs. black varieties: The White varieties and the varieties spoken by Blacks with or in the presence of Whites tend to be less systematic and considerably more anglicised (light) than the varieties spoken among Aboriginals. 3 Style, for example, 'light' (English influenced) and 'deep' or 'heavy' varieties of pidgin and Creole have been reported for most of the languages under discussion (see Sandefur 1984a). The myth that pidgins and Creoles are monostylistic is certainly not applicable to the Australian situation and existing accounts fail to do justice to the stylistic and other types of variation found in these language. 9.5
Further research issues
Many questions remain unanswered, though it is hoped that they are at least answerable in principle with further research. 1 What is the relative position of the varieties spoken in the Torres Straits, Cape York Peninsula and in the Roper River areas? Are we dealing with a continuum or can one identify separate traditions? Some interesting groundwork has been carried out by Rigsby (1984). 2 What is the link between Queensland Kanaka English and other pidgins and Creoles? J.W. Harris (1984) has cast doubt on links with Kriol, but there are very strong links with the Torres Strait varieties which need to be investigated more closely. 3 Were there separate traditions in Tasmania, South Australia and Victoria? 4 Have there been instances of creolisation in the south? 5 What languages were used by non-European immigrant groups such as the Afghans, 'Manilamen', and more recently, the Timorese?
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Finally, when determining the number of Australian pidgins and Creoles, researchers should not forget that such languages are often spoken across national boundaries. Thus Pidgin English of the Torres Strait has been used extensively on the south coast of Papua and Norfolkese is also spoken on Pitcairn; Canefields English has very strong links with Bislama and Solomons Pijin, and Macassarese was probably similar to the Malayo Portuguese spoken in the Dutch Empire between Capetown and China. A task less formidable than identifying Australian pidgins and Creoles is tracing the origins and diffusion of typically Australian lexical items and constructions. Some useful beginnings have been made by Sandefur (1984a) and J.W. Harris (1984) and more detailed work on this problem is currently being carried out by Philip Baker and me. There are also educational and political questions. When the Aboriginal Languages Association was formed in 1981, Aboriginal English, pidgin and Creole were recognised in its constitution as modern Aboriginal languages, a major change after years of ridicule, neglect and misunderstanding. Rather than being regarded as obstacles to progress, dyseconomies and something to be ashamed of, an increasing number of their speakers seem to be developing more positive attitudes. The situation is reminiscent of the Creole situation in Belize, described by Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985), where the development of a strong sense of community goes hand in hand with the development of a narrowly focused and stable Creole. It seems possible that the wide scatter of Australian pidgin and Creole grammar and lexicon will become similarly narrowed down and focused with the increasing identification of Aboriginal speakers with this language. The focusing has also been helped by active promotion of Creole by organisations such as Summer Institute of Linguistics and the establishment of bilingual school programmes in the Northern Territory. First findings suggest that this programme has been quite a success. Murtagh (1979: 54), for instance, concludes that there are 'very definite trends towards the superiority of bilingual schooling over monolingual Englishonly schooling for Creole-speaking students with regard to oral language proficiency in both mother tongue, Creole, and second language, English . . . students schooled bilingually show progressively greater success at separating the two languages than their counterparts schooled monolingually.' This increasing ability to separate the two languages (English and Creole) which bilingually-schooled students have shown and which appears to be explainable only in terms of the two languages being taught as separate entities in the classroom, constitutes a powerful argument for the introduction of bilingual education to other schools where similar conditions obtain. Continued success will depend on adequate funding, on-going research
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and the extension of the use of pidgins and Creoles in the schools of Western Australia and Queensland. At the same time, there seems an urgent need for in-service training aimed at eliminating misconceptions still prevalent about these languages among the majority of teachers. Bilingual education tends to concentrate on teaching in Creoles rather than about Creoles. Given the special situation of these languages, it would seem useful to develop syllabuses telling students about their nature, origins and social role. The aim of such courses would be to reinforce the growing favourable attitudes towards pidgins and Creoles among Aborigines and at the same time they would help to counteract the somewhat paradoxical developments that have occurred in the most recent past. As Shnukal, writing on attitudes towards Torres Strait Broken (1983b: 3), says: Ironically, at a time when the Creole is decreolising, that is, becoming linguistically more like English, the Creole is being rediscovered as a marker of ethnicity and separateness from Europeans among Islander children.' The discrepancy between linguistic and social developments encountered in education and language attitudes has further repercussions in other areas, particularly language rights issues. Unless languages such as Kriol or Torres Strait Broken are officially recognised as separate languages, their speakers will not enjoy rights to translation and interpretation enjoyed by speakers of other minority languages in Australia. As illustrated by Koch (1985 and this volume), miscommunication in land rights claims is very frequently due to the fact that Aboriginals speak 4a non-standard form of English', and/or a pidgin or Creole lexically related to English. Similar misunderstandings are common in many, if not most, dealings between Aboriginal speakers of pidgin or Creole English and white officials and fellow citizens. It seems time to address the question of how many social and economic inefficiencies and injustices could be remedied by assigning these languages a proper status. 9.6
Conclusions
The political and social fate of Australian pidgins and Creoles has been such that only the English-based varieties have survived. Their survival in turn will depend on whether Aboriginal pidgin and Creole Englishes are recognised as equal but separate systems or substandard systems parasitic upon English. Language planners, educators and politicians will have to address many issues if the pidgin and Creole question is to be meaningfully integrated with a wider Australian national language policy (see Ozolins, this volume).
10 Queensland Kanaka English PETER MUHLHAUSLER
10.1
Introduction
This chapter will provide a brief sketch of the sociohistorical background and general structure of Queensland Kanaka English1 (see also Dutton 1980; Dutton and Miihlhausler 1984; and Miihlhausler 1986). I will also explore how this language relates to some crucial aspects of pidgin and Creole linguistics, in particular Hall's (1962) model of the life-cycle of these languages and, secondly, the role of universals in its formation and development. The origins of Queensland Kanaka English date back to the period between 1864 and 1904 when more than 60,000 Melanesians were brought to Queensland to work on the sugar plantations and in other rural industries. The recruiting pattern for the Queensland plantations was similar to that for the other Pacific plantation centres, that is, a continuous shift from south to north, beginning with the Loyalties in the 1860s and ending up in the northern Solomons of New Guinea in the 1880s. It thus seems likely that some kind of Loyalty Island Pidgin English formed the foundation of Queensland Kanaka English. As the recruiting grounds shifted, considerable numbers of non-speakers were blackbirded. These non-speakers in all likelihood modelled their pidgin on existing varieties. Recruiting from previously uncontacted areas ceased around 1885, after which date the majority of recruits could speak Pidgin English, many having been recruited for a second time, after serving a term of contract in Queensland itself or on some other plantation in the Pacific. In the years after 1900 no new recruiting grounds were opened up and the Pacific Island Labourers Act of 1901 meant the end of the system of recruiting Melanesian labourers for Queensland. In the years between 1900 and the repatriation of most workers in 1906, the vast majority of Melanesians on the plantations were old hands and time-expired men with a considerable knowledge of the stable Kanaka English spoken on the
Queensland Kanaka English
175
Queensland plantation. About 50 per cent of the 9,327 workers employed in 1901 into this category (Corris 1973). The historical context suggests a period of strong outside influence followed by increasing isolation, particularly in the last years on the plantation. Throughout the period English persisted as a target language. In the initial years of small private plantations and employment of Kanakas in the pastoral industry this influence must have been particularly strong, whereas in later years, on the large coastal sugar plantations employing several hundred Melanesians, the social environment for the development of separate pidgin norms was more favourable. The final years of Kanaka English were characterised by an increase in 'wokabauts', that is, the Melanesian practice of travelling long distances in the hope of reemployment on another plantation. This undoubtedly promoted the diffusion of local innovations and hence, greater uniformity of the pidgin. 10.2 Kanaka English and the pidgin-creole life cycle
Hall (1966: 126ff) discusses an important difference between normal languages and pidgins, namely that the latter possess life cycles. Thus, 4a pidgin language usually comes into existence for a specific reason, lasts just as long as the situation that called it into being, and then goes quickly out of use'. Moreover, 'a pidgin acquires a longer lease of life only by becoming the native language of a group of speakers' (becoming creolised). Queensland Kanaka English, with its life span of only about 50 years is an excellent illustration of this principle. There were two main reasons for its coming into being. One was the desire, on the part of the plantation owners, to be able to transmit orders to their workforce efficiently without letting them become part of the acrolectal English speaking society. The second was the need of the multilingual workforce to have a common means of verbal intercommunication as well as their desire to emulate the prestige target culture. Rapid crystallisation of a pidgin language in the 1870s was promoted by the fact that first generation plantation workers already spoke some form of reduced English, as well as the ghetto character of the Melanesian living quarters and the geographic remoteness from the speakers' home territory. The social and geographical boundaries that defined the movement of the Melanesians in Queensland also determined the extent to which their pidgin language could stabilise and expand. The development of stable grammatical norms independent of English was promoted by factors such as the relative distance of acrolectal English and the common Oceanic substratum of its speakers. The fact that the language remained lexically and structurally relatively reduced reflects the practice of employing workers for relatively short contact periods only and the limited range of
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Table 10.1. Number of male and female Melanesians in Queensland Dates
Males
Females
Total
1868 1871 1876 1881 1886 1891 1901 1911 1921
1,536 2,255 4,938 5,975 9,116 8,498 8,380 1,404 1,350
7 81 170 373 921 745 380 335 537
1,543 2,336 5,108 6,348 10,037 9,243 8,760 1,739 1,887
functions and domains served by Kanaka English for most of its life cycle. Unlike its daughter languages, Solomon Islands Pijin and Vanuatu Bislama, Kanaka English never reached the stage of an expanded pidgin, at least not for a significant length of time. The continued life of a pidgin language, as pointed out by Hall, depends on the continuation of favourable environmental factors of creolisation. There was growing public pressure for a White Australia policy after 1900 which resulted in a decision to repatriate all Melanesian workers between 1904 and 1906. This move put a virtual end to the expansion of Kanaka English. Its main raison d'etre, that of serving as a lingua franca on the multilingual plantations, ceased. However, contrary to the intentions of the Queensland Government and contrary to what is believed by many white Australians, not all Melanesians were sent back between 1904 and 1906. The numbers that remained are estimated at between 1,500 and 2,000. Few of those who did remain continued to work on the plantations, and the former principal reason for the use of Kanaka English simply was no more. For some larger Melanesian groups around Mackay and Ayr, it continued as a marker of Melanesian identity for one, and sometimes, two generations. For those Melanesians that were dispersed among the White and Aboriginal communities of Queensland this second function of establishing identity was of little relevance. The viability of a pidgin and its chance of becoming creolised very much depend on the relative distribution of males and females among its users. Schneider (1934: 86) provides the information in table 10.1. The fact that less than ten per cent of all recruits were female is indicative of the obstacles encountered by those workers who wanted to lead a normal family life on the plantations. The small proportion of females, together with the practice of employing labourers for limited short periods only, prevented the emergence of stable immigrant communities where nativised (creolised) varieties of Kanaka English could develop. As can be seen from
Queensland Kanaka English
177
the figures, significant changes in this proportion occurred only after the majority of the Melanesians had been repatriated. Moreover, at least around Mackay, a reasonably sizeable Melanesian community had established itself, the members of which communicated mainly in Kanaka English. Nevertheless, no creolisation appears to have taken place. Whilst the parents in many Melanesian families spoke to one another in Kanaka English, thereby providing the preconditions for this language to become a Creole, they discouraged their children from using it. Instead they urged them to learn 'proper' English at school or from their older siblings. These negative parental attitudes towards pidgin were reinforced by the fact that most Melanesian children went to White state schools where both teachers and peers looked down on Kanaka English. Jourdan (1983) has studied the decline of Kanaka English in Mackay, one of the main centres of the sugar industry. It appears that, after a brief period of bilingualism and bidialectism extending for no more than three generations, a total shift to English monolingualism occurred. The case of Queensland not only illustrates how changing external conditions lead to the death of a pidgin, it also shows that creolisation does not necessarily occur when children grow up in pidgin-speaking families. In fact, the same phenomenon was observed with Samoan Plantation Pidgin where, instead of creolising their parents' pidgin, children shifted to a more useful language spoken in the wider community. Whilst Kanaka English thus died out in Queensland itself, it continues to be spoken, in a changed and more developed form, in the areas where the labourers were originally recruited. Both Solomon Islands Pijin and Vanuatu Bislama are in many ways continuations of the Queensland tradition of Pidgin English. 10.3 Some theoretical implications
The study of Queensland Kanaka English can throw light on a number of theoretical issues in pidgin and Creole studies, in particular those encountered in the debate concerning Bickerton's (1981) bioprogram hypothesis of creolisation. There are, for instance, a number of striking similarities between the Creole situation in Hawaii and Queensland. In both instances we are dealing with an influx of foreign workers into a settler's colony, that is one about to be dominated by White Anglo-Saxon modes of behaviour. This is quite different from the colonial setting encountered in Surinam or Jamaica. In both Hawaii and Queensland formal education was provided in the acrolect for children born on the plantations. Thus, bilingualism in the Creole and the acrolect was the norm rather than the exception. The full impact of the schools on Hawaii Creole English still remains to be documented. Queensland and Hawaii were also part of a number of Pacific
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trade networks in which reduced forms of English and other trade languages were used. Another similarity is the presence of immigrant groups other than those employed on the plantations. However, there remain a number of differences, the most salient being the number of plantation workers, who stayed on permanently and the size of the Creole community. It appears that these two factors, crucial to the viability of a separate social group, at the same time determine the extent to which an independent Creole can emerge. Creolisation, is not, as suggested by Bickerton (1986:4), a matter of acquisition by individuals, but a result of special extralinguistic factors. Thus, in spite of very similar superstrate and substrate languages, the linguistic solutions adopted on the plantations of Hawaii and Queensland differed because those social factors conducive to the creation of a novel Creole language were lacking in Queensland. The few Kanakas who grew up speaking Kanaka English as their first language did not produce, as far as can be ascertained from the linguistic data collected, a qualitatively different Creole. Such qualitatively different systems are only beginning to emerge in the varieties of Kanaka English that were taken back by workers returning to the Solomons and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). It appears that the complexities that have emerged in the grammars of Bislama and Solomon Islands Pijin originated to a very significant degree among adult urban speakers in the process of constructing a new social and linguistic identity. Earlier isolated urban dwellers do not appear to have produced such linguistic elaborations, again confirming the principle that creolisation is dependent on social conditions. A second theoretical issue, the discussion of which has involved frequent reference to Kanaka English, is the role of substratum influence in pidgin development. Keesing (1988) and Miihlhausler (1987) have concentrated on the emergence of pronominal marking or resumptive pronominalisation in Kanaka English and its daughter languages. Whilst Keesing emphasises the close similarities between pronominal marking in the most developed forms of Kanaka English and the Oceanic languages spoken natively by its Melanesian users, I attempt to demonstrate an independent development of this construction, ranging from no marking in the early varieties of the language to increasing grammaticalisation in later stages. The independent development hypothesis is given additional support by a number of important differences between pronomial marking in Kanaka English and its Oceanic substrate languages. At the moment, the issue remains unsettled as there are considerable problems with the quality of the data and their interpretation. A similar case study could be undertaken for other constructions, such as the marking of relative clauses by means of we (from English where) which either developed independently in Kanaka English and many other Creoles or can be traced back to a common source. Because of the well-known historical links between the plantations of Queensland
Queensland Kanaka English
179
and many parts of the Pacific and Australia, this issue of monogenesis vs. polygenesis of pidgins and Creoles can be studied particularly well with reference to Kanaka English. 10.4
Conclusions
In comparison with other pidgins and Creoles in Australia and the Pacific, relatively little has been written about Queensland Kanaka English, unlike, for instance, languages such as New Guinea Tok Pisin. The dearth of information about this language is out of proportion to its importance as a crucial stage in the development and diffusion of Pidgin English in the south-western Pacific, and its consequent importance for the theory of pidginisation and creolisation. Whilst only a handful of active speakers survive, there is ample scope for archival research and for comparative work with its successor languages. Note 1. Kanaka is the term by which the Melanesians of Queensland refer to themselves (cf. canaque for the indigenous New Caledonians).
11 Torres Strait Creole ANNA SHNUKAL
11.1
Introduction
On ten of the 18 inhabited islands of Torres Strait, lying between Cape York Peninsula and the mainland of Papua New Guinea, and in the Cape York communities of Bamaga and Seisia, where Torres Strait Islanders predominate, the traditional languages are being or have been replaced by an English-based Creole. Its speakers call this language Broken (from 'Broken English'), Pizin (from 'Pidgin English'), BigThap ('BigPiece') or, among some younger speakers, Blaikman ('Blackfellow') or Ailan Tok ('Island Talk'), but it is never called Langgus, a name reserved for the indigenous languages and English. Here I shall refer to it as Torres Strait Creole (TSC). Today, the children of Erub, Hammond Island, Masig, Mer, Moa, Purma, Thursday Island, Ugar, Waraber and Yam (see map 11.1) speak TSC as theirfirstlanguage, although in some communities the children can still understand their traditional language. On Masig, Mer, Moa, Purma and Waraber only elderly speakers of the traditional languages remain. The Creole has been the first language of the majority of inhabitants of Erub, Ugar and St Paul's Community, Moa, for four generations. The number offirst-languagespeakers of the Creole in the Torres Strait islands and in the Cape York settlement of Bamaga is probably around 3,000 out of a total Islander population of about 4,000. However, since the end of World War II there has been a steady outflow of people from the Strait and today a majority of Torres Strait Islanders, some 12,000 to 14,000 people, live permanently or temporarily on the mainland. As the lingua franca of all Torres Strait Islanders, including the majority now living in Bamaga and the coastal cities and towns of Queensland, the Creole may now have as many as 12,000 second-language speakers. Because of the prestige of English as the official language of Australia, the language of education, of administration and of the media, TSC and
Torres Strait Creole
PAPUA
NEW
GUINEA
Map 11.1 Torres Strait showing inhabited islands
181
182
ANNA SHNUKAL
English are in a diglossic relationship on those islands where TSC is the majority language, with English as the 'high' and TSC as the iow' variety. There as signs, however, that the domain boundaries are beginning to weaken, as the Creole has taken on the functions of pan-Islander ethnicity and identity among younger people. While many Islanders and Europeans consider the Creole to be merely a 'corrupt' or 'ungrammatical' form of English, this view cannot be sustained on either sociolinguistic or linguistic grounds. Few Europeans speak the Creole well, and the two languages are not mutually intelligible when spoken by native speakers at normal speed. For most Islanders, English is felt to be an alien language, a product and shaper of European, rather than Islander, culture. Linguistically, TSC more closely resembles the indigenous Torres Strait languages in its phonological, semantic and pragmatic structure than it does English. Nevertheless, some 85 per cent of the vocabulary of TSC has been borrowed from English, often with substantial phonological and semantic change (see 11.3 below). There are two main dialects of the creole, eastern and western, which reflect differences between the two major indigenous language areas of Torres Strait and different periods of creolisation. The eastern dialect is spoken as a first language on the three eastern islands, Erub, Ugar and Mer, and has been heavily influenced, both phonologically and lexically, by its indigenous substrate Papuan language, Meriam Mir (or Miriam). The western dialect is spoken on Moa, on Hammond Island and on all the central islands, although there are minor phonological and lexical differences among them. Like the eastern dialect, the western dialect has also been greatly influenced by its indigenous substrate language, Kala Lagaw Ya (called Mabuiag in early texts), which belongs to the Australian PamaNyungan language family (see Ford and Ober, this volume). Moreover, TSC exhibits characteristics of a post-creole continuum, a chain of varieties influenced by the superstrate language. English represents literacy, educational achievement and socioeconomic advancement, and has greatly influenced the younger generation of Islanders, the first to have been educated at secondary school by English-speaking Europeans. Generally speaking, the Creole varieties spoken by younger Islanders are phonologically, syntactically and semantically more like English than those spoken by their parents and grandparents. Nevertheless, all speakers of TSC share a common core of linguistic features and these will be briefly discussed in the latter section of this paper. 11.2 History TSC developed from the varieties of Pacific Pidgin English that were brought to Torres Strait by the Pacific Islanders and Europeans who
Torres Strait Creole 183 established the beche-de-mer, trochus and pearling industries from the late 1840s.1 Thus it is historically related to the varieties of Kanaka Pidgin English spoken in the canefields of northern Queensland (see Miihlhausler, chapter 10, this volume) and to three modern Pacific Creoles, Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin, Vanuatu Bislama and Solomon Islands Pijin. The rapid spread of the Creole was due to two main factors: its use as a lingua franca among Torres Strait Islanders speaking two mutually unintelligible languages, and the widespread belief that it was English. Although religion, trade, reciprocal visiting and name exchange had long linked the two groups of Islanders, they had no common language. With the commercial exploitation of the region's marine resources a lingua franca quickly arose among the newly arrived Europeans, Pacific Islanders (both Polynesians and Melanesians), Papua New Guineans, Australian Aborigines, Filipinos, Indonesians and Japanese and it was soon spoken by the Torres Strait Islanders who worked with the newcomers. This lingua franca was Pacific Pidgin English. By the late 1890s a majority of the children on the eastern islands of Erub and Ugar had immigrant fathers and Meriam Mir-speaking mothers and they began to use their fathers' pidgin as their primary language, thus creolising the pidgin. About ten years after its creolisation on Erub and Ugar, the pidgin again creolised independently on St Paul's Anglican Mission on Moa Island, under similar circumstances but with the western island language as its major substrate. For political, cultural and economic reasons the most influential men in these communities were Pacific Islanders, who were perceived to have a special relationship with the Europeans and became cultural mediators between them and the Torres Strait Islanders. Their children chose the pidgin as their primary tongue, partly to emphasise that they were different from, and superior to, other Torres Strait Islanders, and partly because they believed that they were speaking English which, as the 'white man's language', was more appropriate to the new order that was being established in the Strait. It became the first language of children born during the 1920s on Masig and Yam, of those born after about 1930 on Waraber, Purma and Hammond Island and of those born after World War II on Mer and Thursday Island. From 1871 Pacific Islander pastors were deposited by the London Missionary Society on several of the islands of Torres Strait, as part of the planned conversion to Christianity of the peoples of Papua New Guinea. These men were extremely influential in reshaping the cultural, social and religious life of the Torres Strait Islanders and exercised what appears to have been despotic control on the islands. Although the islands were annexed by the then colony of Queensland in 1897, the Government Resident, who was responsible for the adminis-
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ANNA SHNUKAL
tration of the islands, interfered very little in island affairs. In 1904, however, the Islanders came under the Queensland Aboriginals Protection and Restriction on the Sale of Opium Act of 1897, and their lives became increasingly controlled by the state government. European administratorteachers, placed on the largest islands to supervise the Islanders in almost all matters, began to displace the Pacific Island teachers as the principal authorities. They discouraged the use of indigenous languages and encouraged parents to speak to their children in (Pidgin) English to improve their schooling. From the second decade of the century Torres Strait Islanders began to be trained as assistant teachers and were soon being sent to communities other than their home island, often across the traditional language barrier. Because they did not share the community's traditional language, they had to use the pidgin in everyday conversation as well as in their teaching, thus increasing its prestige and the general belief that it was English. At the same time, trained Islander police and clergy, also men of some authority and influence, were deliberately being posted away from their home islands, which further reinforced the Creole's use and status. It was also during the period between the two world wars that a panIslander consciousness began to develop out of the previous linguistic, political and cultural divisions. It was a response in part to Christian ideology, in part to the shared experience of government control, and in part to the first east-west marriages, contracted by the descendants of the Pacific Islanders, who sought partners across the linguistic barrier in order to 'keep the blood'. As external circumstances weakened the traditional east-west barrier, they also created and strengthened pan-Islander ties which were symbolised by the newly-creolised pidgin. Thus, its function as the shared language of Torres Strait Islanders can be viewed as an extension of that of its ancestor pidgin as the lingua franca of the marine industries of Torres Strait. World War II saw the beginning of the end of isolation of the islands from the rest of Australia. Some 700 men joined the Torres Strait Defence Force and for the first time served alongside Europeans in a situation of equality. It was then they realised the Creole was not English. With all Europeans evacuated from the islands, Islanders again became responsible for the provision of their own local government, education, health and religious services. When the war ended, they presented the government with a series of demands: Australian citizenship, freedom of movement, control of wages, access to alcohol, better pay, housing, education and jobs. After many years most of these demands were granted and island councils were freed from state government control. Within a few years, however, people began to leave the outer islands in
Torres Strait Creole 185 search of improved services. They settled on Thursday Island (which had been barred to them before), the new communities of Bamaga and Seisia, and in the cities of mainland Queensland, many of which now have large Islander communities. Here, also, as whenever Islanders come together, the common language is TSC, although among the children in the cities English is becoming the dominant language. In this they are no different from the children of other non-English speaking families in Australia (and particularly in Queensland), where languages other than English usually disappear within a generation (see e.g. Clyne, this volume). 11.3 Structure of Torres Strait Creole2 11.3.1 Phonological structure
This brief phonological description of TSC sets out the core sound structure of the basilectal varieties and discusses some of the sound changes which occur when lexemes are borrowed from the major contributing languages. The phonemic differences between the eastern and western dialects are also noted. There is also considerable variation among speakers as they 'shift' their speech towards more English-sounding norms in formal situations and in the presence of Europeans. TSC has 24 contrastive sounds: 15 consonants, 5 vowels and 4 dip thongs. Table 11.2 presents the phonetic values for the symbols of TSC orthography. Vowel length is not distinctive in TSC and words may begin and end with any of the consonants, vowels or diphthongs above. Any sequence of two or more consonants that begins an English word can also begin a word in TSC. Words may have a maximum of four syllables. Any borrowed word of more than four syllables is reduced, e.g. prizareta ~ 'refrigerator', Early English borrowings may add an epenthetic vowel to initial or final consonant clusters, silip - 'sleep', or anis - 'ants'. TSC has three degrees of stress: primary, secondary and tertiary. With few exceptions borrowed words keep their original stress, although stress pattern of individual words may differ according to speaker's age and island origin. The eastern dialect has an additional phoneme, eu, found only in two words of Meriam Mir origin, beuger- 'booby' and euski - 'to squat'. The western dialect has three additional phonemes, a diphthong ui occurring in words borrowed from Kala Lagaw Ya and a voiced/voiceless pair of interdental stops. There has been some phonological simplification of words borrowed into the Creole from its superstrate and substrate languages. In English-
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ANNA SHNUKAL
Table 11.1 Phonological inventory of TSC Consonants
Stops Nasals Fricatives Liquids Semi-vowels
Bilabial
Dental
P,b m
t, d n s, z 1, r
w
ng
y Vowels Front
Centre
i e
High Mid Low
Velar
Palatal
Back u 0
a Diphthongs Front
Mid Low
Centre
ei
Back oi
ai, au
derived vocabulary the major changes are the substitution of'pure' vowels (i.e. monophthongs) for English ones, alveolar fricatives for English affricatives and stops for non-alveolar fricatives. In vocabulary derived from the indigenous languages final diphthongs tend to become monophthongs and the final vowel, as well as some internal vowels and consonants, may disappear. It is now impossible to know whether the few sound changes observed in lexemes borrowed from Meriam Mir are the result of nativisation or are long-standing dialect differences between Erub and Ugar. In lexemes borrowed from Kala Lagaw Ya, however, the phonemic long vowels of that language have merged with their corresponding short vowels in TSC and the final voiceless vowel has disappeared, for example, thaapi- 'piece' becomes thap. The vowel oe has generally become / or a, e.g. kibim - 'black trevally' from koebim. The diphthongs oey and oew have become / and 0, respectively, for example, ginau - 'Torres Strait Pigeon' from goeynaw, and word-initial ng is beginning to be replaced by n, for example, nar - 'lower leg' from ngar. 11.3.2
Morphology
This section and the next briefly describe the major features of TSC morphology and syntax. There is some morphophonemic variation
Torres Strait Creole
187
between dialects, but only the core shared features of the morphological system will be discussed here. Like most Creoles, TSC has little inflectional morphology. Most words are monomorphemic, even those of bimorphemic origin, for example, wanem - 'what' from what name). The derivational component is beginning to increase, which is a general tendency in the development of Creoles. Transitivity and causativity are linked in TSC, both being marked by the addition of the bound inflectional verb suffix -e (originally from him) to verbs of English origin. Thus, the verb, raw- 'run', is intransitive in No ran diskain! - 'Don't run around like that!', but transitive (or perhaps causative) in Rane em! - 'Chase him!'. There are seven derivational bound verb suffixes, all of which are derived from English verb particles and which add a spatial dimension to Englishderived verbs. They are: -ap - 'up', -aut 'out', -baut - 'about', -daun 'down', -op - 'off', -raun - 'around' and -wei - 'away'. The transitive/causative suffix may attach to -ap, -aut and -daun, as in asmape'hoist', mekraute - 'decipher' and belidaune - 'put face down'. There are three bound personal pronoun suffixes, dual -tu, plural -pla and reflexive -selp; a bound noun suffix, -wan - 'one', which derives nouns from adjectives, for example, slaikwan - 'a loose one'; and four adjective and adverb suffixes, -kain, -said, -taim and -wei, which express approximation, location, time and manner, respectively. Compounding is still a productive process in TSC, for example, baikso'backache' from 'back sore', but reduplication, apparently a productive process in the early pidgin, is no longer used. There remain, however, at least nine reduplicated, 'intensified' adjectives, derived from English nouns, such kalakala - 'multi-coloured' and spotspot - 'spotted'. 11.3.3
Syntax
TSC is an SVO language, and the basic sentence division is between subject noun phrase and predicate verb phrase, indicated by the predicate marker i (probably from he). Although there are subjectless sentences in TSC, there is none without a predicate. There is less syntactic variation in the Creole than phonological and lexical variation. Syntactic variation is largely dialectal, the result of two (and sometimes three) contributing systems still seeking an equilibrium. In the western dialect, for example, competition between the Kala Lagaw Ya derived repetitive aspect marker, lak (from laka), and the English derived repetitive aspect adverb, gen, has word order implications, since each occurs in a different position in the sentence, e.g. Ai lak go go - 'I'll go again' and / delait gen - 'It was daylight again'. Some of the variation, however, appears to be the result of universal trends in Creole development. Similar
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ANNA SHNUKAL
implications for word order arise from the recent movement into the verb phrase of aspect markers, like the dubitive mait and the completive pints, which were previously sentence initial and final, respectively, e.g. Yu mait bin luk em - 'You may have seen him' and Bel i pinis go -The bell has (already) sounded'. In this section, however, only the core of the shared system will be discussed. 11.33.1 The noun phrase Noun phrases consist of an obligatory noun or pronoun and four optional elements. The order of these elements is: determiner, quantifier, adjective, noun/pronoun, preposition phrase. Determiners may be articles (singular and plural definite, singular indefinite and generic), demonstrative adjectives (singular and plural, proximal and distal), or possessive adjectives (identical with the personal pronouns, except for the first-person singular form, mai). As for quantifiers, there is both a cardinal and an ordinal series of numerals, and six general quantifiers, all based on English, but with some semantic shift, for example, lelbet - 'a few', olgeda - 'all', plenti 'many', pulap - 'plenty of, tumas - 'too many'. Attributive adjectives are not inflected for case, number or gender. They may occur singly or in a string, as in smol siki gel - 'small cheeky girl'. Nouns do not inflect for case, number or gender. Case is marked, as in English, by word order for the core syntactic relations, and preposition phrases for peripheral relations. Number is optionally marked by the choice of singular or plural determiners and gender by the adjectives man 'male' or oman - 'female', for example man ata - 'grandfather' and oman ata - 'grandmother'. There are four classes of pronouns: personal pronouns; indefinite pronouns; demonstrative pronouns; and interrogative pronouns. The subject and object personal pronouns have singular, dual and plural forms, with an inclusive/exclusive distinction made in the first-person plural pronouns. Case is not marked except in the first-person singular, with ai and mi as subject and object, respectively. The 14 indefinite pronouns are based on those of English, with the exception of olgeda (from altogether) meaning 'everybody, everyone, everything', an old form currently being replaced by eribodi and ebriting. The four demonstrative pronouns are formed by adding the noun suffix -wan to the demonstrative adjectives; and there are 13 interrogative pronouns which begin interrogative sentences.
11.33.2 Like the noun phrase, the verb phrase contains an obligatory element as well as four optional elements. The obligatory element is the verb or
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predicate adjective. The order in which the elements occur is: predicate marker, modal, tense marker, aspect marker, for example: Ol i mait bin pinis strete yu. 3pl PM mood tense aspect correct you. They may have already corrected you. There is some evidence that all predicate adjectives were stative verbs in the pidgin and that they are currently being reanalysed as adjectives, possibly under the influence of English. There is no present tense marker in TSC but past and future tenses may be optionally signalled by the tense markers bin and go, respectively, e.g. Mary i bin graule em - 'Mary quarrelled with her' and Demtu go luk pamle bio demtu - 'They will visit their family'. Modality is expressed by six modal verbs (all except one borrowed from English modal verbs, but with some semantic shift), three modal particles, and several modal adverbs. The aspect system consists of six core aspect markers: kip (ITERATIVE); nomo (CESSATIVE); oltaim (HABITUAL); pinis (COMPLETIVE); stat (INCEPTIVE); and stil (CONTINUATIVE), as well as three adverbs and a set of verbal constructions, whose primary function is to convey aspectual meaning. 11.3.3.3 The preposition phrase Peripheral intrasentential grammatical relations are expressed in TSC by preposition phrases, consisting of preposition 4- noun phrase. The four basic prepositions in TSC, which may have been the only prepositions in the pidgin, are lo (LOCATION) from 'along', go (GOAL) from 'go', kam (SOURCE) from 'come' and bio (POSSESSION) from 'belong'. There are an additional eleven complex prepositions of location consisting of a noun + lo, for example, andanit lo - 'under, underneath, below' and antap lo - 'on, above, on top of. Notions of location and direction are central to the grammar of TSC and marked in various ways; of the 23 prepositions currently in use, 17 mark location or direction. The other six prepositions express TIME (apta - 'after', bipo 'before' and til 'until'), ACCOMPANIMENT (ene - 'with'), MANNER (olsem - 'like'), INSTRUMENT (gad - 'by means of), BENEFIT (po - 'for'). 11.3.3.4 Simple sentences A simple sentence is made up of two distinct parts, an optional subject and an obligatory predicate. Simple sentences express one of three processes: verbless sentences express relations; subjectless sentences express states; and 'full' sentences express events. There are five major simple sentence types. Relations of identity are expressed by verbless equational sentences, in which both subject and predicate are noun phraes, e.g. Mislam i boi bio Kemuel - 'Mislam
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is Kemuel's son'. Relations of description are expressed by verbless descriptive sentences, in which the predicate is an adjective, adverb or preposition phrase, e.g. Kaikia i redi nau - The meal is ready now'. States of affairs are expressed by subjectless impersonal sentences, like / ren naw- It's raining' and existential sentences, for example, Igadkap yaThere is a cup here', where the predicate marker is obligatory. Events are expressed by 'full' verbal sentences, sentences with both a noun phrase subject and a verb, for example, At bio mi i zam - 'My heart leaped'. Yes-no questions have the same structure as the sentences discussed above, but are spoken with rising intonation: I gad sos lo dis strit?- 'Is there a church in this street?'. Information questions begin with an interrogative pronoun or interrogative adjective, all of which are based on English interrogatives, although again there has been some semantic shift. Two examples are Wanem yu bin mekem?- 'What did you do?' and Amaspilam dapota i karem? - 'How much film does the camera hold?'. Imperative sentences have an optional second-person pronoun followed by an obligatory main verb, for example Yu prese tos po mi! - 'Hold the torch on for me!'. There are two negative particles in TSC, no and neba (the latter used only in sentences with past tense meaning), both of which precede the verb as well as any tense, aspect or modality markers, for example, Dalassa neba luk nating deya - 'Dalassa didn't see anything there' and Em no bin sing 'She didn't sing'. Some mention has already been made of the importance of location and direction in the Creole but the complex rules governing the use of obligatory locational and directional particles can be only briefly discussed here. The proximal or distal location with respect to the speaker of subjects of stative verbs and of the 'lexically simple' motion verbs, kam - 'come' and go - 'go' must be indicated by the preverbial deictics, ya (from 'here') and de (from 'there'), respectively, for example, Gemai ya slip - 'Gemai is sleeping (close to the speaker)' and Trakta de kam - 'The tractor is coming (distant from the speaker)'. Moreover, the direction in which the subjects of 'lexically complex' verbs of motion are travelling must also be specified. The use of go specifies that the subject is travelling away from the speaker, as in Em bin ran go sanbis - 'She ran to the shore', whereas kam specifies movement towards the speaker. Homomorphic adverbs are similarly used to indicate direction of movement, as in Sakem kam! - 'Throw it (over here)!'. 11.33.5 Complex sentences Coordinate sentences are linked by the coordinate conjunctions, ane 'and', bat- 'but', instedor matha- 'instead of, but. . . instead' and o- 'or', for example, Mitu Kathy bin dans ane Akabu bin sing - 'Kathy and I both danced and Akabu sang'.
Torres Strait Creole 191 Sentences may be subordinated either by juxtaposition or use of complementisers. There are five TEMPORAL complementisers, apta- 'after', bipo - 'before', sun - 'as soons as', til- 'until' and wen - 'when, after, as', three CAUSAL complementisers, bikos - 'because', daswai - 'therefore, for that reason' and prom - 'because', two CONDITIONAL complementisers, ip 'if and orels - 'or, or else', and two PURPOSE complementisers, po - 'to, in order to' and slong- 'so that, in order that'. Temporal clauses introduced by wen and conditional clauses must take the future tense marker go, if they refer to future events, for example, Yu go raite letapo mitu wen yu go libi Purma - 'You'll write to us after you leave Coconut Island' and Yu go zam tumas, leg bloyugo brok- 'If youjump around too much, you'll break your leg'. In addition, interrogative sentences may become embedded questions, for example, Ai no sabe wiskain ol man i stop - 'I don't know how people live'. All sentential noun phrases, whether their grammatical function, may be relativised by using optional we, for example, Dat stori we yu bin spik i prapa paniwan - 'That story you told was very funny' and Ai lukraun mai klos ai bin lusem - 'I looked for my dress (that) I had lost'. 11.3.4 Lexicon The lexicon of TSC comes from many sources, chiefly English, Meriam Mir and Kala Lagaw Ya, and it continues to borrow words from English and from Kala Lagaw Ya. English-derived vocabulary constitutes about 85 per cent of the lexicon, with another 14 per cent (in each dialect) from the regional indigenous languages and a further one per cent from Japanese, Malay-Indonesian and various Pacific island languages. The major contribution of the indigenous languages, as might be expected, has been in the domains of flora, fauna, traditional life, place names, kin terms and body parts, e.g. abal- 'pandanus', arti- 'octopus', bud - 'mourning period', Maizab Kaur - 'Bramble Cay', aka - 'grandmother'. However, English and, to a minor extent the Pacific languages, have also contributed to these domains, with the result that there is considerable synonymy in the Creole. The choice among synonyms is governed by situational context and by a concern for stylistic effect, as well as by sociological characteristics of the speaker, such as island of origin, gender and age. Moreover, in addition to the phonological changes outlined earlier, the borrowed words often undergo semantic change. This is most apparent in English-derived words and is the source of some misunderstanding between Islanders and Europeans. It would appear that English words with related meanings have been chosen to fit the preexisting semantic categories of the island languages. For example, the word traik (from track) in TSC has slightly different meanings in the eastern and western
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dialects. In the east it means 'sole of the foot' and leg refers to both 'lower leg' and 'foot (excluding sole)'. This parallels the semantic distinction made in Meriam Mir, but differs from the use of traik and leg in the western dialect. There, leg refers to the part of the body below the knee to the ankle (ngar in Kala Lagaw Ya) and traik means what 'foot' does in English, the part of the body from the ankle down. A comparison of borrowed vocabulary from English and the two indigenous languages suggests that English lexemes tend to acquire further related meanings, whereas the indigenous words lose meanings they once had. A word like kese, for example (from catch) now means 'catch', 'take', 'hold', 'grasp', 'seize', 'arrive at', 'hit', 'understand' and 'embrace', while tereg, from Meriam Mir tirig meaning both iawyer-cane' and 'teeth', now has only the first meaning in the Creole. Today, lexical innovation comes primarily through borrowing from English. However, new lexemes are sometimes created by compounding and phrase and sentence construction. New noun phrases are generally of the form: adjective + noun, such as big win - 'cyclone' and smol haikai - 'snack'; or noun-h Wo - 'of + noun, such as maut bio krik - 'estuary' and taim bio plan - 'planting season'. Sentences which express as a complex idea what is, in English, a compound word, includepauli singaut - 'cockcrow' and san i kamap - 'sunrise'. New verb phrases are sometimes formed by expressing as separate words the component meanings of Latinate English verbs, such as meke kam mo gud'improve' and pute insaid- 'insert'. These phrases are called by Islanders 'breaking down English', a process which is the origin of the most common name for the creole, Broken. 11.4 Future developments
It is only recently that TSC has gained a measure of acceptance as a language separate from English. Many Islanders and Europeans do not accept this view, however, largely due to the close linguistic relationship between Creole and English and the absence of codified norms. Moreover, few Europeans have heard basilectal varieties. TSC was without its own orthography until a few years ago and only three modern linguistic descriptions have so far been published.3 Since English is the only written medium of communication for most Islanders, even those whose mother tongue is an indigenous language, they tend to use English orthographical conventions in writing creole. All three Torres Strait island languages had, until the 1970s, been ignored or stigmatised as 'uncivilised' by the European administration. Schoolchildren were officially discouraged from using their indigenous languages in the schools and playgrounds. It was not until the 1980s that
Torres Strait Creole 193 TSC was recognised as a language separate from English and discussed in language classes at the Thursday Island and Bamaga High Schools. The increasing interest in Torres Strait languages led to the introduction of an official English as a Second Language programme on Thursday Island, but it should be pointed out that unofficial defacto bilingual programmes using both English and an island language had long been implemented by Islander teachers in the primary schools, often with the encouragement of their European principals. Another form of official support has come from the Australian Broadcasting Commission, which in 1985 assisted the transmission of an Islander broadcasting service from Thursday Island. There is now widespread and enthusiastic support for broadcasts in the indigenous languages as well as TSC. In fact, the attitude of Torres Strait Islanders towards the Creole appears to be changing. Originally believed to be English, the language gained prestige through its association with Europeans and their 'allies', the Pacific Islanders. This prestige was reinforced by its connection with Christianity, education and the newly emerging Torres Strait Islander elite. Then, as Islanders began to become more integrated into the broader Australian economy and society, it came to be seen as a substandard variety of English and even as an excuse for denying Islanders their just demands as Australians. Creole's low status among older Islanders and its connection with the Pacific Islanders has meant that the people of the western islands, Mer and Bamaga, feel threatened by its spread. The traditional languages there are becoming weaker, and while many Islanders could have accepted the loss, provided that the replacement language assured them and their children an equal place alongside whites in Australian society, they have come to realise that this is not the case. They blame the Creole for keeping them second-class citizens. Conversely, TSC today is being rediscovered and revalued by younger Islanders as a marker of identity, ethnicity and separateness from white Australians. Ironically, this is occurring in the context of decreolisation. Many Islander children who are fully bilingual in both English and TSC know very well the differences between the two. For them the Creole is an addition to their linguistic repertoire, which is not available to nonIslanders. Moreover, they cannot be made to feel ashamed of their competence in English since they speak it well. Whether the Creole remains a viable language in its ownrightor whether, as happened to Kanaka Pidgin English in Queensland within one or two generations, it becomes an ethnolect of Australian English, is difficult to predict (see Dutton 1980; Muhlhausler 1981,1985; Dutton and Muhlhausler 1984; and Shnukal 1985b). Certainly, its future will be decided by social and cultural factors, the most important of which is the maintenance of a
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distinctive Torres Strait Islander identity in an Australian state which remains antagonistic to the expression of linguistic, social and cultural differences. 11.5
Conclusion
The Creole's phonological, syntactic, semantic and discourse structure require further study, as do its regional and social varieties and the continuing influence of superstrate and substrates in its development. Another issue is the influence of TSC on the speech of young urban Queensland blacks. Finally, our understanding of Australia's language ecology would be broadened by an analysis of the critical factors involved in the shift by Torres Strait Islanders away from their indigenous languages towards the Creole and by an account of the developments arising from the Creole's new functions as a codified language, increasingly being used in education and the media, and as an ethnicity marker among young Islanders. Notes 1. An account of historical and sociocultural influences on the creolisation and spread of TSC can be found in Crowley and Rigsby (1979), Shnukal (1983) and Shnukal (1985a). 2. The general framework here is based on Crowley and Rigsby's (1979) description of Cape York Creole. Although the phonology of the two varieties is rather different, the morphological and syntactic structure is very similar. 3. Apart from a brief discussion and word list of the early pidgin in Ray (1907), there is an account in Dutton (1970) of the 'informal English' spoken in Torres Strait, based on data from several adolescent boys, a description by Crowley and Rigsby (1979) of Cape York Creole, a variety spoken by Aboriginal second-language speakers from Bamaga and some grammatical and lexical information in Shnukal (1982a). Shnukal (1988) is an introduction to the language, its history, development, phonology, grammar and lexicon.
12 Kriol - the creation of a new language JOHN W. HARRIS
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Introduction
Kriol is an English-based Creole, widely spoken by Aboriginal Australians in the 'Top end' of the Northern Territory and adjacent regions. Emerging early this century but derogated or ignored until just over ten years ago, Kriol has since become better documented. It is now the subject of considerable interest and debate, due largely to its expanding use in education and in the Christian church (see Harris and Sandefur 1985b; J.W. Harris 1986b). Kriol is of more than local interest because it is probably the latest Creole to be comprehensively described linguistically (Sandefur 1979; Sandefur and Sandefur 1979a; and Sandefur, this volume), sociolinguistically (Sandefur 1984b), and historically (J.W. Harris 1984, 1986a). It is also of importance because the circumstances in which Kriol arose differ from those in the plantation and post-plantation societies from which so many other Creoles have emerged. I outline briefly the history of Kriol in four broad stages: its pre-European background, the eras of pidgin genesis and stabilisation and the modern period of creolisation and extension. 12.2 The pre-European context
Speech communities consisting of large numbers of overlapping language communities are typical of Aboriginal Australia (Rigsby and Sutton 1982; and Sutton, this volume), particularly in areas such as North Australia where favourable natural environments are able to support large numbers of people organised into small groups (White 1978: 48). Along the Northern Territory coast and hinterland, multilingualism was the cultural norm. Furthermore, for several centuries prior to the European invasion of the region, Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory coast had a close
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trading relationship with South-east Asia. The trepang trade was largely based in Macassar (in modern Suluwesi) from where a largefleetof around 50 praus, with multilingual crews, arrived each December and remained until April (MacKnight 1976). The Portuguese-Malay trade language of the archipelago was adapted in North Australia to become the 'Macassan' Pidgin of communication, not only between Aborigines and traders but also, eventually, between distant Aboriginal groups (Urry and Walsh 1981). English, then, did not come into a pristine situation of societal monolingualism but into a complex cultural region in which there had already been developed skills of cross-cultural communication. 12.3 The rise of pidgin Englishes
From the sixteenth century until the early nineteenth, European explorers and slavers made fleeting contact with the northern coast. Their only linguistic heritage consisted of a few Portuguese loanwords (J.W. Harris 1986a: 117). In 1824 the British established the first of three-short lived military garrisons, Fort Dundas on Melville Island. Language contact during its five violent years was minimal. The second garrison, Fort Wellington, was established on Raffles Bay in 1827. Its first year was as violent as its predecessor but the appointment of the remarkable Collet Barket as commandant in 1828 led to an amicable relationship between the garrison and the local Aboriginal people. A contact language based on both English and the local vernacular began to emerge but its development was terminated by the abandonment of the garrison in 1829 (Harris 1985: 160). The third garrison, Victoria, on Port Essington lasted from 1838 to 1849, which, under circumstances of reasonable rapport between the settlers and the Aborigines, was a sufficient length of time to enable significant pidgin development to occur. Initially, the Port Essington people attempted to speak to the British in the 'Macassan' Pidgin, the language of their interaction with foreigners. Earl (1842: 140) reported: You ask for vocabularies. I am in the mostridiculousperplexity about them. After having collected many words, I found that I was making a vocabulary of a horrid patois of the Macassan dialect: in fact, nearly all the words the natives used when speaking with us are Macassarese . . . Early in 1840, McArthur reported that the Aboriginal people could speak some English but that no Whites spoke their language. By 1841 Stokes (1846 (II): 357) described the contact language of Port Essington as 'such few words of broken English as were then in use at the colony'. After a few more years it was becoming frequently recorded that some Aboriginal
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people spoke what was recognisably English (e.g. Keppel 1983: 158; Sweatman in Allen and Corris 1977:44). The Aborigines' contact language had changed in two years from the attempt to speak the 'Macassan' Pidgin, which was not generally understood by the British, to the use of an Englishbased pidgin understood by both groups. There is some evidence that what may have been taking place was a relexification of the 'Macassan' Pidgin (Harris 1985: 165-6). After an unsuccessful attempt (1864 to 1866) to establish a township at Escape Cliffs on the mouth of the Adelaide River, permanent European settlement was finally achieved at Darwin in 1869. Relationships between the settlers and the local Larrakia people were generally friendly and an English-based pidgin emerged rapidly. Ashwin (1932: 92) was able to describe the Larrakia people in 1872 as 'Port Darwin natives . . . semicivilised ones, which understand pigeon English'. Wildey, visiting Darwin in 1873, commented that 'some speak English fairly' (1876: 118). There is, however, little recorded data from this early Darwin period, making it difficult to assess the extent to which the Darwin pidgin may have been influenced by nautical jargon or by pidgin models from South Australia, where most of the early settlers originated from. Typically, the model presented to the Larrakia people was a non-standard English with pidgin elements, as exemplified by the use of terms such as savvy and piccaninny and baby-talk words such as turn turn for food. Important models were also provided by Port Essington people, who were frequently employed as interpreters. Searcy (1909: 36), for example, reports: 'These boys spoke good English, Macassar, and . . . their own language . . . I always took Port Essington boys with me on my trips.' This 'good English' was the Port Essington Pidgin English, as the very large number of quotations of Searcy's writings demonstrate. Thus, Searcy (1912: 172, in reference to 1882): ' " N o more, me think it", was Boom's reply. "That fella snake been piccaninny, him bin come alonga wood from over there. Blackfella alonga Port Essington say Macassar man have to catchem wood, no more good fella sit down along island"' [No, I don't think so. That was a young snake, he came from the wood over there. Port Essington Aborigines say the Macassans have to gather wood, there's no more good (wood) on the island.] It is deceptively easy to emphasise the European men's communication with a few Port Essington men and several prominent Darwin men, because these interactions are documented, and to ignore the much more frequent communication between European and Aboriginal women in which much linguistic innovation must have occurred. Thus, Sowden (1882: 144): 'The young lubras [black women] are engaged by the English as washerwomen and charwomen, and they work very well, I am told. Indeed, altogether they are almost indispensable to the whites.'
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The discovery of gold in 1872 changed Darwin from a tiny European outpost to a bustling multi-ethnic frontier town. In a decade or so the nonAboriginal population jumped from 200 to 8,000, many of whom were Chinese. There were not many mining camps inland from Darwin where communication with Aborigines demanded a contact language. The pidgin English of Darwin was almost certainly transported inland as a model. As Sowden (1882) clearly shows, Chinese Pidgin English was spoken by Chinese to Europeans. It could hardly have failed to influence the developing pidgin of Darwin and the mining camps. This can be seen in Searcy's (1912: 127) example: 'by-em-by plenty fella policeman takem one piecee blackfella along bush' [Later, many policemen will take one Aboriginal into the bush]. In this sentence, spoken by a European in about 1883, fella, a Southwestern Pacific pidgin item, and piecee, a Chinese pidgin English item, both perform the same function as a suffix to a prenominal. This variable use of alternate forms no doubt characterised the pidgin for many years in this region of complex linguistic mixing. The Overland Telegraph and the goldrush opened up the Northern Territory to exploitation by the cattle industry. Thus the pastoral frontier, which had reached Queensland in the 1850s, extended westwards into the Northern Territory in the 1870s along the valleys of the Roper and Victoria river systems and into the Kimberley region of Western Australia. These were violent years, but the Europeans were there to stay. Despite the valiant efforts of the Aborigines, their resistance was mercilessly put down. Important sites of pidgin development in the pastoral region were the frontier townships of Roper Bar, Borroloola, and Katherine, and those cattle stations where, either by choice or coercion, Aboriginal people were 'made quiet' (Merlan 1978). Thus, one Aboriginal account observes (Jess James Garalgnanjag and Maudie Mangui, as told to Jay Read, in Read and Read 1978: 74): Then people come quiet now from after that feller bin get shot now . . . white man bin settlem down blackfeller now. . . might as well him bin just give up . . . and we might as well sit down . . . that when they bin havem that station. Of these sites, the cattle stations were finally the most important. The 'settling down' of Aboriginal people at the stations institutionalised contact between linguistically different peoples who had thus far been scattered and discontinuous. In this way such contact became a daily fact of life. The cattle station pidgin, or, more accurately, the Elsey Station version of it, has been immortalised in Gunn's books (1905,1908), the major source of specific linguistic data. Thus, Gunn (1905: 54, 78): You plenty savey. Me no more savey yabber stick. I think you close-up savey white fellow paper-yabber. Jimmy.
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[You do understand. I don't understand message sticks. I think you nearly understand European writing.] Him Maluka. Him track belong Maluka. Him bogey last night. [That's Maluka. Those are Maluka's tracks. He bathed last night.] Historical studies of the extension of the pastoral frontier from New South Wales through inland Queensland and into the Northern Territory (J.W. Harris 1986a: 184-214), reinforced by lexical analysis of the pidgins (J.W. Harris 1986a: 260-300; J.W. Harris 1988), strongly indicate that the major lexical source of the pastoral industry pidgin was South-east Australian Pidgin English (SEAPE). This pidgin began in the late eighteenth century as a contact language around Port Jackson. It was carried throughout much of Australia and was the invariable model presented to newly encountered Aboriginal groups. Favenc (1904, quoted in Baker 1966: 313) writes: The pidgin talk which is considered so essential for carrying on conversation with a blackfellow is mostly of very old origin . . . As the whites pushed on and on amongst new tribes, nothing was taken from the local dialects to add to the general pidgin stock, but the original was carried along.
12.4 The stabilisation of the pidgins
The single most important factor in the stabilisation of pidgin Englishes in the Northern Territory was their convergence towards a common standard, a phenomenon typical of the Pacific region (Miihlhausler 1985). The fact that the various pidgins, due to a common ancestry, were not dissimilar to start with, helped this merger. The convergence was very largely effected by the greatly increased mobility of the population. Aboriginal people often accompanied Europeans to places far from their own country. Many Aborigines were sentenced to periods in Darwin's Fanny Gaol where they mixed with people from other parts of the Northern Territory. Europeans were also very mobile. Stockmen moved from station to station, policemen spent time in different postings and government officials of various kinds moved about a great deal. These people took the pidgin with them, abandoning its local idiosyncrasies when necessary and preserving its commonalities. A typical example was Lionel Gee, government surveyor, goldfield warden and magistrate who, in his various roles, travelled extensively in the Northern Territory in thefirstdecade of this century. Among his later reminiscences, Gee (1926: 15) observed that the pidgin, although mostly lexically English, was not semantically English: 'though the words used are quite English, some of them are put in such a different sense that it takes a little time before
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a new chum can get the hang of them and talk understandably with his black brother.' Not only was Gee able to use pidgin English wherever he went, but he and people like him were responsible for the convergence of pidgins towards a common standard. It is clear that by the beginning of this century, the pastoral industry pidgins had merged into one widelyunderstood lingua franca, best referred to as Northern Territory Pidgin English (NTPE). If one compares the pidgin English spoken in Elsie Masson's kitchen in Darwin in 1913 (Masson 1915) with that spoken in Jeannie Gunn's kitchen at Elsey Station in 1902 (Gunn 1905), or if one compares the pidgin English spoken in Borroloola Courthouse in 1902 (Spencer 1928) with that spoken in Darwin Courthouse in 1913 (Masson 1915), it is evident that all are examples of the same language. 12.5 The creolisation of the Pidgin
The history of Kriol well illustrates both the relationship between a Creole and its pidgin ancestor, and the important principle that creolisation occurs as a result of rapid social change and the demand for a primary language in a newly-emerged community. The first place in the Northern Territory where pressure was placed on the pidgin to expand to become the primary language of a new community was the Roper River Mission (now Ngukurr), where creolisation began to occur shortly after 1908 (see J.W. Harris 1986a for details). The invasion of the Roper River region by Europeans had commenced with the construction of the Overland Telegraph in the early 1870s. Huge cattle drives were then undertaken as the pastoral frontier moved from Queensland into the Northern Territory. Cattle stations were established in the 1870s and 1880s and a small township emerged at Roper Bar, the shallow crossing used by European drovers, miners, settlers, cattle thieves and anyone else who had to cross the Roper River travelling north or south. These were violent years and a great deal of aggression was directed at Aboriginal people in the region. As one of the early missionaries, R.D. Joynt (1918: 7) wrote, hundreds, had been 'shot down like game'. The massacre of Aboriginal people in a 'war of extermination' was widespread and continuous throughout the whole of the pastoral frontier. Initially, the battle was not entirely one-sided. The Aboriginal people of the Roper River region had gained themselves a reputation for fierce and concerted resistance to the European invasion of their lands (e.g. Willshire 1896: 7; Waters 1913:101-4). The abandonment of most of the cattle stations in the region in the 1890s was attributed to their efforts. Any possibility, however, of Aboriginal people being able to preserve their traditional cultural integrity was drastically ended at the turn of the
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century when the London-based Eastern and African Cold-storage Company acquired massive tracts of unleased or abandoned land to carve out a pastoral empire from the Roper River north into Arnhem Land (Bauer 1964: 157). Purchasing all the major stocked and viable cattle stations along the western Roper River, they began moving cattle eastward. The Company had no intention of allowing Aboriginal resistance to hinder this huge project. Determined to exterminate them, they employed gangs of up to 14 men to hunt all inhabitants of the region and shoot them on sight. With the police and other authorities turning a blind eye, the hunting gangs of the Company staged an unprecedented, systematic campaign of extermination against the Roper River people. They almost succeeded. This near annihilation of the Aboriginal people of the region produced the first factor necessary for the genesis of a Creole; sudden and drastic social change and the accompanying severe disruption of normal language transmission. The second requirement for the genesis of a creole is a new community. Challenged by the plight of Aboriginal people, the Anglican Church was determined to establish a mission, and choose a site on the Roper River itself (Cole 1968). The mission commenced in 1908, and was perceived as a haven of refuge by the scattered people of the region. By 1909 some 200 Aboriginal people gathered there. They were the remnants of the Mara, Wandarang, Alawa, Ngalakan and Ngandi people together with the easternmost Mangarayi people and the southernmost members of the Rembarrnga and Nunggubuyu. As Barnabas Roberts, an Alawa man who came to the Mission as a young boy, once said: (personal communication to John Sandefur), 'If the missionaries hadn't come, my tribe would have been all shot down'. The eight groups spoke separate and distinct languages. As is typical of Aboriginal people, the adults were multilingual. Although they had not lived permanently in such close proximity before, in their traditional lives they had met regularly for ceremonial and other purposes. Over the course of a lifetime, these people had normally become fluent speakers of each other's languages. The children, however, were not yet multilingual. Approximately 70 children attended school at the mission. There they were forced into contact with other children whose languages they had not yet had time to learn. They were the new community and they needed a primary language. Whereas their parents could communicate with other adults by speaking Alawa or Mara or whatever, the children could not. What they had in common was the English pidgin used between Aboriginal and European people (NTPE) and the English they were hearing in school.l With this limited input, it was this younger generation who, in the course of their lifetime, created the Creole, manipulating the lexical resources available to them and drawing on linguistic universals to create a
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language which catered for all their communicative needs. Ralph Dinggul writes of the linguistic situation in Stones in Bilingual Situations, a set of readers produced for use in Kriol/English bilingual programs (n.d.: 1): La Ngukurr melabat garrim eitbala langgus. Wen naja traib wandim tok la dis traib, jei tok mijalb garrim Kriol. Jad impotan langgus im Kriol. Olabat gan sabi bla wanim olabat toktok. [At Ngukurr we have eight languages. When another tribe wants to talk with this tribe, they communicate with one another using Kriol. The important language is Kriol. They can understand what they are talking about.] A similar creolisation process occurred elsewhere in later years in such places as the Kimberley cattle stations and around the World War II army camps in the top end of the Northern Territory. 2 These Creoles have spread and merged into one widely spoken language in use from far western Queensland, through parts of the Northern Territory and into the north of Western Australia. The language is now called Kriol. It is, however, important to distinguish between creolisation in the past and the spread of Kriol today. Whereas many thousands of people speak Kriol as their primary language, thousands of others from surrounding areas speak it as a second language. Among some of these groups there is a tendency for Kriol to assume near-primary language status, particularly among older children. This is very evident, for example, at Numbulwar. There is, however, an encouraging reverse trend for young adults to use less Kriol and to use Nunggubuyu for adult communication. In the years before serious attention was given to Creoles, such languages were usually dismissed as marginal, inadequate and improper (see Muhlhausler, chapter 9, this volume). Kriol itelf has been called 'English perverted', 'ridiculous gibberish' and 'lingual bastardisation' (see e.g. Turner 1966: 202, Strehlow 1947: xix, and Baker 1966: 316). Now, however, that Kriol has been objectively studied and described, it is seen to be a Creole in the tradition of all the great regional Creoles of the world. Although children had a vital role in its beginnings, it is now the language of adults, a fully-fledged language, the vehicle of communication of a large and increasing number of Australians. In common with many creole-speaking people throughout the world, Kriol speakers were themselves often convinced of its inferiority. This is, however, changing rapidly. A growing sense of community identity and political action are becoming linked with Kriol speech in the minds of many young people. Bilingual education programmes in Kriol and English have been particularly important, especially the outstandingly successful programme at Barunga school. In this context, it would be difficult to exaggerate the critical importance of the Kriol Bible translation programme. An increasingly indigenous
Kriol - the creation of a new language 203 Christian church is a significant institution in the larger Kriol-speaking communities. A critical component of their growing pride in their distinctiveness and unique identity is the possession of the Bible in Kriol. Thefirstedition, containing selected books, was published in 1985. A larger volume containing 30 per cent of the Bible appeared in 1988 and the whole Bible will be completed within the next decade. Notes 1. Langford-Smith (1935: 136) says that he was unable to communicate with a 16-year-old girl who suffered from leprosy and lived with her parents and was never part of the school and dormitory peer group. Speaking neither English nor Pidgin English, she knew only her home language. 2. An important additional factor in these creolisation sites was that existing Kriol speakers were often part of these new extended speech communities. This meant that there was already a Creole model and it is difficult to determine the extent to which new creolisation took place or Kriol was simply adopted with local dialect differences developing.
13 A sketch of the structure of Kriol JOHN SANDEFUR
13.1 Introduction This chapter focuses on the main distinguishing structural properties of Kriol, with some mention of the variation that exists between dialects (see Sandefur 1986 and Sandefur and Harris 1986). Other brief general descriptions can be found in Graber (1986b), Sharpe (1985) and Steffensen (1977). Sociohistorical aspects of the language are discussed by Harris (this volume).1 13.2 Phonological structure The phonological structure of Kriol is very complex, due both to the origin of the language and to the effects of continued contact with English, the socially dominant language from which it was in part derived (for details of the orthographic structure of Kriol, see Sandefur 1984a). The phonological system consists of a continuum of sounds which extend from what is referred to in the eastern dialects as hebi - 'heavy' Kriol to lait - 'light' Kriol with a span in between being prapa - 'proper' Kriol (see Sandefur 1982a, 1982b, 1985b, 1986). The extreme heavy end of the continuum reveals a subsystem that is virtually identical with that of traditional Aboriginal languages. There are, for example, no affricates, no fricatives, no contrastive voicing with stops, no consonant clusters within a syllable, but five points of articulation for stops and nasals. The extreme light subsystem, in contrast, includes virtually all the contrasts which occur in English. A significant difference between the two subsystems, however, is that while the heavy subsystem 'eliminates' all the non-Aboriginal contrasts of English, the light subsystem does not eliminate the nonEnglish contrasts of traditional languages. The phonemes of Kriol are shown in figure 13.1.
A sketch of the structure of Kriol 205 Consonants stops
t d
p
b
rt rd
tj j
affricates
tj
fricatives
j sh
f
b nasals laterals rhotics semi-consonants
High Mid
m
th th
s s
n 1 rr
w
Front i e
Low
rn rl r r
Simple vowels Central
k g
h
s ny ly
ng
y
Back
u 0
a Diphthongs
ai ei oi au ou
low mid mid low mid
central to high front front to high front back to high front central to high back back to high back
Figure 13.1 Phonemes of Kriol In the formative stage of Kriol, when Aborigines borrowed words from English, they reproduced the words in Kriol with the traditional language sounds. As they remained in contact with English, however, they began restoring some of the original English sounds to the borrowed words. As this restoration has taken place, the older pronunciations for the most part have been supplemented with new pronunciations rather than being replaced. Thus, a word in Kriol today may have several pronunciations along the continuum (e.g. balijiman-blijiman-plisman - 'police'). As one moves along the continuum, sound changes generally follow an implicational pattern consisting of several stages rather than yielding to the English sound in one step (see Sandefur 1979). Some words, however, move from heavy to light in one step (e.g. heavy brog - 'frog' moves directly to light/rag). More often than not, however, the transition takes several steps, for example, heavy mawuj - 'mouth' becomes mawus before becoming maus andfinallymouth. Words composed of sounds which are common to both subsystems remain constant throughout the continuum, for example, mani - 'money' is mani regardless of position on the continuum. With the exception of the extreme heavy and light variations of some words, most Kriol speakers control virtually all pronunciations in their active everyday speech. No Kriol speaker employs a consistently light
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JOHN SANDEFUR
pronunciation. There are, however, some Kriol speakers who tend to have consistently heavy pronunciation. These are mostly mother-tongue speakers of a traditional language who speak Kriol as a second language and who speak no English. With few exceptions, every stream of Kriol speech will contain some words with heavy and some with light pronunciations. Within the same conversation and even within the same sentence, it is not uncommon for Kriol speakers to use more than one of the pronunciation alternatives for a given word. 13.3 Morphological structure
Most of the morphological structure of Kriol is associated with the verb. The Kriol verb consists of a stem and three orders of suffixes, all of which mark either transitivity or aspect (see Hudson 1983a, 1983b; and Sandefur 1979). There are two suffixes in the first order, a transitive marker and a progressive aspect marker. Although the two morphemes cannot co-occur, it is possible to have a transitive verb with a progressive aspect, in which case the progressive aspect marker takes precedence, with transitivity being indicated by the context or the semantics of the verb stem. The form of the transitive marker is -Vm. There is a tendency for the vowel to harmonise with the last vowel of the verb stem (e.g. kuk-um 'cook', kil-im - 'hit', tjak-am - 'throw'), although in many cases, it is unstressed, and neutralises to an indistinct central vowel. Transitive verbs are normally marked, but the suffix can be omitted from verbs which have an intrinsically transitive stem, provided the object is explicitly stated and the resultant stem is an acceptable phonological shape, for example, Aibin rid-im det buk. - Aibin rid del buk. - 'I read the book'. When thisfirstorder suffix is omitted, second and third order suffixes are also omitted, for example, Imbin binij-im-ap ola daga.-Imbin binij ola daga. - 'He consumed all the food.' The first order progressive aspect suffix -in has two forms, -in and -ing. These variants are conditioned by rhythm and style rather than by vowel harmony like the otherfirst-ordersuffix variants. In the western dialects the progressive aspect suffix can alternate between first and second order positions when it occurs in intransitive verbs derived from English phrasal verbs, for example Jing-in-at-jing-at-in - 'singing out, calling'. Progressive forms are more common amongst young people than older people. The first-order progressive aspect suffix is related to the third-order iterative suffix -bat. There is an overlap of meaning (continuous or durational aspect), and an interweaving of distribution and co-occurrence. Both -in and -bat can be suffixed to the same verb, with a low central vowel optionally inserted between the two to avoid the resultant alveolar-bilabial
A sketch of the structure of Kriol
207
consonant cluster {e.g. silip-in-bat-silip-in-a-bat - 'sleeping'). The iterative meaning of-bat is more common than the durative meaning and can refer to either a repetition of action or to a plurality of participants. Iterative and durative aspect can also be indicated by reduplication of the verb, with extreme iteration or duration indicated by multiple reduplication to the order of six to eight times, usually accompanied by a rise in pitch which is sustained throughout the reduplication (see also Steffensen 1979a). Extreme duration can also be indicated by lengthening a vowel (usually the final vowel) of the verb and simultaneously raising the pitch and sustaining the high pitch on the lengthened vowel. There are ten suffixes in the second order, all of which are derived from English prepositions and are based on a spatial dimension. Four of them also include aspectual meaning: (i) -ap refers primarily to action performed in the vertical dimension or to spatial motion towards a physical goal, for example, Imbin galim-ap la top. 'He climbed to the top.', and in its aspectual meaning refers to an action carried out to its fullest extent, for example, Deibin binij-im-ap olabat mani. - 'They spent all of their money.' (ii) -bek primarily refers to an entity returning towards another entity or place, for example, Imbin go-bek la kemp. - 'He went back home.', and in its aspectual meaning refers to retaliation or reciprocation involving two entities with the assumption of a previous action that invoked the reciprocation, for example, Aibin owum-bek im. - 'I gave him a gift in return (for the gift he gave me).' (iii) -dan primarily refers to action performed in a downward direction, for example, Imbin juk-dan. - 'He ducked down.', and in its aspectual meaning refers to an event which causes the cessation of one state while simultaneously causing a change to a different state, for example, Det modiga bin breikdan. - 'The vehicle stopped working.' (iv) -at in its aspectual meaning refers to an action that is performed until a goal or a change of place or state is reached, for example, Melabat bin kipgon raidap melabat bin kam-at langa kemp. - 'We continued until we arrived home.' The morphology not associated with the verb is limited to adjectives and some adverbs. Adjectives normally occur with a suffix {-wan, -bala and less frequently -baga) that nominalises the adjective, thus enabling the adjective to stand in a nominal position in certain syntactic constructions, for example, Aibin lukjigi-wan sneik.-Aibin luk jigi-wan. - 'I saw a poisonous snake.' Some verbs can also be nominalised by these suffixes, for example, stilimbat - 'stealing', stilimbat-bala - 'thief, although their occurrence is not very common. There are also several suffixes that can be added to a noun, adjective or
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verb to form adverbs. These include, for example, -said to express location, for example, rib-said - 'beside (a person)', -wei to express manner, for example, brabli-wei - 'correctly, sincerely, and -taim to express temporal relations, for example, kambek-taim - 'when we come back'. 13.4 Syntactic structure The two central syntactic relationships of Kriol, subject and object, are identified by word order (see Sandefur 1979, but especially Hudson 1983a). The subject is always overtly marked in the clause and is identified by its position as the closest nominal or pronominal element preceding the verb, for example, Det olgaman silip. - T h e woman is asleep.' The object follows a transitive verb, for example, Det olgaman kukumbat daga. - 'The woman is cooking food.', although with ditransitive verbs it can be separated from the verb by another argument. Unlike the subject, the object does not have to be overtly marked in the clause, for example, Imbin kukumbat. - 'She cooked (the food).' An exception to the post-positioning of the object is its movement to the beginning of the clause for topicalisation, for example, Ola daga, deibin binijimap. - 'They ate all the food'. Most other syntactic relationships in Kriol are handled by the five prepositions. Blanga indicates a benefactive/purposive relation, for example, Aibin gibit im mani blanga daga, en imbin baiyim blanga melabat. - 'I gave him some money for food, and he bought some for us.' It has three other forms, blanganda (which tends to be archaic), bla (which is in free variation with blanga), and ba (which is not very widespread and tends to be used mainly by young children). Langa indicates a locative relation, for example, Imbin bogi langa riba. - 'He swam in the river.' It has four other forms, langanda (which tends to be archaic), la (in free variation with langa) and nanga and na (used in some eastern cattle station dialects). This preposition is also used to indicate the syntactic relation of the traditional category of indirect object, for example, Imbin gibit ola enijing langa mi. 'He gave all the things to me.' Brom indicates an ablative relation, for example, Olabat bin kaman brom deya. - 'They came from there.' It has two other forms, the heavier form burrum (used in the longer established dialects) and the lighter form from (which tends to be the norm in the western dialects). Garram indicates an associative relation, for example, Melabat kaan go garram yumob. - 'We cannot go with you.' It has two other forms, garra (in free variation with garram) and gat (restricted in its function and used mainly in the western dialects). It can occur in both verbal and verbless clauses. Fo indicates a purposive relation, for example, Deibin hambagam mi fo daga. - 'They pestered me for food.' It is used mainly in the western dialects, and in most constructions blanga can be used in its place, for example, Deibin hambagam mi blanga daga.
A sketch of the structure of Kriol
209
In addition to their syntactic function of relating the noun phrase to the verb, three of the prepositions {blanga, fo and garram) can function within a prepositional phrase modifying the referent of the phrase. When used adnominally, the benefactive/purposive and purposive prepositional phrases indicate a possessive relationship, for example, Det dog blanga mi bin binij. - 'That dog of mine died.'. While the preposition normally precedes the noun in the prepositional phrase, in the western dialects the preposition in certain contexts can be postposed, for example, Jonfo dedi bin kaman. - 'John's father came.' The purposive prepositional phrase is not very common in the eastern dialects. The associative prepositional phrase indicates a descriptive meaning that could be glossed as 'having' or 'comitative', for example, Det men garram ola blad bin go la hospil. - 'The man who was bleeding went to the clinic' Verbless clauses are used in Kriol to describe states which are perceived as existing at the time of speaking. If reference is made to a state that existed before the time of speaking, the completive verbal auxiliary bin can be used without a verbal element, although a verbal element is normally included. If the reference is to a potential or future state (indicated by the verbal auxiliary garra), then a verbal element is obligatory and the verbless clause becomes a verbal clause. Verbless clauses in Kriol consist of a subject and a predicate and can be divided into nine types (after Hudson 1983a) according to the composition of these two constituents:
NP + ADJECTIVE, e.g. Dis ti prapa swit. - 'This tea is really NP + NOMINALISED ADJECTIVE, e.g. Dis daga brabli gudwan. ~
sweet.' 'This food is very good.' This type of clause is much more common than the preceding one. NP + NP, e.g. Det blanbo gudwan bif - 'The fruit bat is good meat.' NP-f-LOCATIVE (with the locative being a locative phrase, ablative phrase or intrinsically locative lexeme), e.g. Det haus la ai pleis. 'The house is on a rise.', Melabat brom Ropa. - 'We are from Roper.', Olabat tharrei. - 'They are over there.' N P + [BLANGA + NP], e.g. Det bout blanga olabat dedi. - 'That boat belongs to their father.' NP + [GARRAM + NP], e.g. Dis bifgarram blendifet. - 'This meat is (nice and) fatty.' NP + [da + NP], e.g. Dis da king. - 'This is the best one.' The particle da is probably derived through the reanalysis of the English article and is heard mainly in the speech of young people in the western dialects. PRONOUN + [GARRAM + NP], e.g. Dei garram bigmob tetul deya. 'There are lots of turtles there.' The pronoun is restricted to third-
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person plural in the eastern dialects and third-person plural or singular in the western dialects. PRONOUN + TEMPORAL, e.g. Im dinataim. - 'It is noon.' The pronoun is restricted to third-person singular, and the temporal is usually identified by the suffix -taim. When topicalisation is applied to verbless clauses, the phrase to be topicalised is moved to the beginning of the clause and the subject identified by a pronoun following the topic and preceding the predicate, for example, Ola biginini, olabat bulap. - 'The children are all full.' The subject can also be moved to the end of the clause for lesser focus, in which case a subject pronoun is placed preceding the predicate to maintain the obligatory subject-predicate order, for example, Im sofwan, det bif. - 'The meat is tender.' When tense or aspect is added to a verbless clause, in most cases the clause has to be transformed into a verbal clause (see also Graber 1986a). Verbs used for this purpose include the copula bi, git, go - 'become'; the intransitive verbs sidan - 'sit', jandap - 'stand', stop - 'stay', leidan - 'lay'; and the transitive verbs abum - 'have, possess' and gedim - 'obtain, acquire', for example, Im bos. - 'He is boss.' and Im garra sidan bos. - 'He will be boss.'; Im kwait. - 'It is quiet.' and Imbin stap kwait. - 'It is quiet.' Most of these verbs differ in regard to the verbless clause types in which they may occur. Stap is widely used in the western dialects, whereas sidan is used in the eastern dialects. The copula bi in the western dialects is almost obligatory with the future tense (especially in the speech of children) and optional with the past tense, whereas in the eastern dialects it is optional with the future tense and rarely occurs with the past tense. 13.5
Lexical structure2
When lexemes are taken from English into Kriol, especially heavy Kriol, the neutralisation of phonemes allows for a great deal of potential homophony. Much of this potential homophony is avoided, however, for several reasons: many English words have never been taken into Kriol, in many cases the concept is expressed by an alternative word that presents no potential homophony, and in other cases a grammatical device (such as a transitive suffix) avoids homophony, for example, bak- 'to buck' is limited in transitivity to avoid homophony with bakam - 'to fuck'. As indicated in 13.2, words borrowed from English have normally undergone significant pronunciation changes. In addition, many borrowed words undergo grammatical changes as well as significant semantic changes. Almost all Kriol verbs are derived from English ones, which are not marked for transitivity. The borrowed verb is treated as intransitive
A sketch of the structure of Kriol 211 and a transitive form is derived by suffixation of the transitive marker - Vm, for example, blidin - 'to be bleeding', blidin- im - 'to cause to bleed'. Many Kriol verbs have both an intransitive and a transitive form, although there are some intrinsically transitive verbs which require obligatory marking and have no intransitive counterpart, for example, totjim - 'to shine a light on', as well as some intrinsically intransitive verbs that have no transitive counterpart, for example, jandap - 'to stand'. Some Kriol verbs are derived from English words other than verbs, for example, nidulum - 'give an injection to' from 'needle, which has involved a shift in the word class. More significant socially, however, is the semantic shift that often takes place in a borrowed word. It is significant in that it frequently causes crosscultural miscommunication because the typical English speaker, not realising that a shift has taken place, interprets Kriol speakers on the basis of English etymology rather than Kriol semantics, for example, in the context of writing, libum from the English 'leave it' means to 'delete'. Often when the meanings of English borrowed words have been extended (for an example of lexical expansion, see Steffensen 1979b), their references have been made to parallel the semantic range of traditional Aboriginal language words, for example, kukwan from English 'cooked one' means 'ripe' as well as 'cooked'. Of course, not all Kriol words are derived from English. Many are borrowed from traditional Aboriginal languages. Most such words are restricted to the dialect of Kriol spoken in the geographical area of the particular traditional language, although some such words have gained wider currency, for example, munanga - 'person of European descent', and a few are used throughout virtually all of the Kriol language area, for example, lambarra - 'father-in-law'). As with words borrowed from English, those borrowed from traditional languages may undergo grammatical changes. For example, the main meaning-bearing morpheme from a traditional language compound verb may take on full verbal status in Kriol and be inflected for aspect, for example, dilaj (from Walmajarri 'persistently demand one's own way') as in Wan boib in dilajbat langa is mamifob mani. -'One boy pestered his mother for money.' Unlike words borrowed from English, however, words borrowed from traditional languages seldom undergo pronunciation changes or significant semantic shifts. 13.6
Conclusion
I have highlighed some of the distinguishing structural properties of Kriol and commented briefly on some of the variation that exists between dialects. Other aspects of the structure of Kriol have not been mentioned
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but are discussed in Graber (1987a), Hudson (1983a) and Sandefur (1979). Much more research and analysis needs to be done, especially in the area of discourse structure (see Graber 1987b). Notes 1. I am indebted to Joyce Hudson from whose research I have drawn heavily in the preparation of this paper, especially her 1983a volume. 2. The only published Kriol dictionary presently available is Sandefur (1979). Noreen Pym has undertaken further compilation of the Kriol dictionary and a computer printout is available from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Darwin.
Part III Transplanted languages other than English
14 Overview of Immigrant' or community languages MICHAEL CLYNE
14.1
Demographic situation
There are some 75 to 100 'immigrant' or 'community languages' in use in Australia, the exact number depending on one's criteria for the term 'language'. The term 'community language' is employed to denote the socalled 'immigrant' languages used within the Australian community to emphasise the legitimacy of their continuing existence. These languages have been part of the Australian scene since early in the history of white settlement. However, there has been discontinuity between the earlier and contemporary use of community languages. The 1986 Census data provides the most detailed large-scale corpus of information on home language use. Of the Australian population 13.6 per cent reported employing a language other than English at home. (However, there are many who now use a community language not in their own but in their parents' homes). This rose to 18.5 per cent in Victoria, and was lowest in Queensland (5.9 per cent) and Tasmania (3.6 per cent), the states least affected by postwar migration. The community languages most widely used in the home were Italian (415,700 speakers), Greek (277,500), Serbo-Croatian (140,500), Chinese (139,100), Arabic (199,200), and German (111,300). Other languages with over 50,000 regular users were Dutch, French, Polish, and Spanish. With the large number of South-east Asian refugees since 1976, Vietnamese has also now joined this group of languages. A language which narrowly misses this category is Maltese, and Macedonian may have been excluded due to underclaiming. Australia has no single 'majority minority language' of the significance of Spanish in the United States. Precise numbers of speakers are difficult to estimate since different speakers designate their language in different ways. Serbo-Croatian/Croatian/Serbian/Yugoslav is a case in point (see Doucet, this volume). There are concentrations of different languages in different states. Most
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MICHAEL CLYNE
of the largest languages (Italian, Greek, German, Maltese, Polish, Dutch, Serbo-Croatian) are employed by more speakers in Melbourne than in Sydney, as is Macedonian, one of the languages most widely spoken by state-school children in Melbourne. Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese are far more highly represented in Sydney. Only in Western Australia do the numbers of Italian speakers exceed the total numbers of speakers of the next four languages (in this case, German, Serbo-Croatian, Dutch and Greek), and they outnumber their total by 30 per cent. Compared with other states, Western Australia has few Greek speakers but relatively large Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian speech communities as well as over-proportionate numbers of Portuguese, French and Burmese speakers. From table 14.1 it can be seen that the rank ordering of the languages varies between states, but the most widely used community language in all states except Tasmania is Italian. In Tasmania it is Dutch, in the Australian Capital Territory it is Serbo-Croatian, and in the Northern Territory, Greek, which is exceeded only by all the Aboriginal languages taken together. Greek comes second in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, while German has second place in Queensland, Chinese in Western Australia, and Italian in the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania. Within cities, there are concentrations of particular languages in certain areas. As these are largely due to arrival times and resettlement patterns, there are unique incidences of ethnolinguistic co-settlement (Turkish/ Vietnamese,Maltese/Serbo-Croatian,Macedonian/Italian,Khmer/Greek). Table 14.1 also shows the number of users of languages other than English by state. 14.2 Assimilation and language shift
The mass immigration programme launched in 1947 was embedded in an assimilation policy and general attitudes not conducive to linguistic pluralism (see Martin 1978; Clyne 1982: 17-21). Although community languages were maintained in the home domain and in those domains determined by the ethnic communities themselves (e.g. ethnic social life, religion, ethnic press, ethnic part-time schools, certain aspects of the transactional domain - continental shops, cafes, guest houses), there was little public support for community languages. Interpreting and translating services were inadequate and there were no employment officers, social workers and teachers with any knowledge of languages spoken by the migrant groups. Few local libraries stocked books in community languages. Ethnic newspapers had to publish sections in English (until 1956). Television established itself as a monolingual English medium, and radio stations were severely restricted in the amount of transmission permitted in
Overview of 'immigrant' or community languages
217
Table 14.1. Home-use of languages other than English: total numbers for first 14 community languages and Aboriginal languages (1986 Census data) NSW
Vic.
Qld
WA
SA
Tas.
113,203 178,097 26,115 43,590 48,179 1,590 Italian 96,652 128,562 10,491 5,864 28,622 1,508 Greek Serbo-Croatian ") Croatian |\ 57,957 49,496 7,160 11,662 12,529 697 Serbian J1
Yugoslav Chinese Arabic German Spanish Polish Vietnamese Dutch Maltese French Macedonian Aboriginal languages
66,974 88,475 35,324 42,783 21,362 25,506 15,852 24,086 20,256 15,131 806
40,443 24,515 32,665 18,556 22,920 21,680 18,278 30,535 14,803 24,090 374
ACT Aust.
NT
1,040 3,951 415,765 2,747 3,026 277,472 248 4,506 140,575
9,696 11,389 5,833 820 1,965 204 69 1,590 1,446 2,415 992 14,526 8,206 14,190 1,999 228 4,770 3,231 2,114 391 185 4,889 7,295 9,044 1,499 427 193 5,560 5,046 6,158 447 9,820 8,272 6,473 2,013 632 1,839 29 2,076 26 547 6,807 5,375 2,994 804 7 861 3 373 4,801 15 23,138 5,017 8,420 2,970
1,980 139,100 473 119,187 2,654 111,276 1,888 73,961 1,444 68,638 1,286 65,856 1,026 62,181 283 59,506 1,204 52,790 344 45,610 50 40,790
languages other than English. Legislation against bilingual education enacted during World War I was still in force. French, the dominant modern language taught in Australian schools at the time, was not spoken by many migrants, and there were discriminatory measures practised against 'native speakers' in examinations in other languages, for example, German and Italian (Clyne 1982). The period of assimilationist policies and attitudes is reflected in high language shift between ethnolinguistic groups. Of the large groups whose statistics were processed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1976, Greek-Australians display the greatest ethnolinguistic vitality in the sense of Giles, Bourhis and Taylor (1977) (see Tamis, this volume), and Dutch-Australians the least (see Pauwels, chapter 15, this volume). Among groups known to be successful in language maintenance include Latvianand Ukrainian-Australians. There is also variation between states in the rate of language shift, probably as a result of state policies, with Victoria and South Australia exhibiting lower percentages for most languages, and Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania higher ones (Clyne 1988b). There is also variation in domains such as education, social welfare and libraries which were to some extent satisfied by multicultural policies. This can be seen in table 14.2. These include the gradual introduction of community languages into primary schools, the provision of Saturday
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Table 14.2. Language shift (per cent, to the nearest whole number) 1986 Census Birthplace of speaker or of ethnic parents Germany
(1) (2) (2m)
Greece
0) (2) (2m)
Italy
0)
Malta
(2) (2m) (1) (2) (2m)
Netherlands
0)
Poland Yugoslavia
(2) (2m) (1) (1)
NSW Vic.
Qld
WA
SA
Tas.
NT
ACT Aust.
41 73 84 5 9 36 11 30 66 26 62 84 49 85 99 17 8
42 83 90 9 20 56 16 44 80 44 73 94 49 86 99 20 18
44 72 87 8 22 54 11 36 76 55 73 92 45 82 99 40 12
38 58 85 4 8 40 10 28 71 35 70 89 47 85 99 13 14
43 76 87 5 5 60 23 43 89 74 84 94 47 84 99 17 25
49 75 88 5 8 41 19 43 81 68 89 91 60 84 100 30 33
44 70 84 6 12 50 16 38 80 47 74 93 51 86 — 15 10
39 70 85 4 7 41 9 24 69 22 53 86 49 87 99 16 9
41 73 85 4 9 41 11 29 71 26 59 87 48 85 99 16 10
(1) Overseas-born (2) Australian-born of two parents of same country of birth. (2m) Australian-born of one 'ethnic', one Australian-British or Irish-born parent.
classes within State Education Departments in languages not widely taught in day schools, the recognition of all (or most) community languages as matriculation subjects limited bilingual education programmes in some areas, government subsidies for part-time ethnic schools, a nationwide Telephone Interpreter Service, ethnic and multilingual radio stations, multicultural television, and a reflection of the reading public in local library holdings, as well as some public and company notices in appropriate languages other than English (see also Ozolins, this volume). It has not yet been possible to examine the effects of new policies and attitudes on language maintenance and shift. The change in the wording of the census language question from regular use (1976) to home use (1986) renders comparisons between 1979 and 1986 impracticable. Similarly, it will be difficult to assess the consequence of ad hoc government cuts to funding in multicultural education and allied areas experienced in the 1986 Federal Budget. As this has put an extra onus on state funds and policies, it is likely that differences between the states may be widened (see 14.2). Comparisons between the language shift rates of different ethnolinguistic groupings suggest both clear-cut and ambivalent factors which can lead to either language maintenance or language shift, depending on their combination with other factors (Kloss 1966). Among the clear-cut factors
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in the Australian context are exogamy, pre-migration language maintenance experience, cultural similarity to the dominant group, and the role of language as a core value in the group's cultural values system (Smolicz 1979, 1981). Among the ambivalent factors are: 1 Numerical strength of the group: large groups can afford extensive language maintenance efforts, but may be 'swamped' more easily by the dominant language and culture than are closely-knit smaller groups. 2 Class, education and prior knowledge of English: working-class background, low educational levels and little or no English can lead to either a reliance on thefirstlanguage, or an all-out effort to master English to the exclusion of the first language, to achieve social mobility. 3 The political situation in the homeland: refugees either reject the language of the oppressive regime, which is their ownfirstlanguage, or they feel responsible for its projection from the regime in the isolation of their exile. 4 Ethnic religious dominations: these promote the first language if services and social functions are conducted in that language, but promote language shift if English is adopted as their language as is the case, for instance, in the Reformed Church of Australia. 5 Linguistic similarity of the ethnic language to English: in cases such as German and Dutch, this has probably contributed to language shift, because it has eased the English acquisition process, but this does not apply to Italian. On the other hand, there has been a large language shift from Maltese, a Semitic language unrelated to English (Clyne 1982: 35). In all these instances, other factors codetermine language maintenance and language shift. A factor still requiring some cross-linguistic study is the role of dialect vs. standard language. Bettoni (1981 and this volume) demonstrates a latergeneration gravitation towards Standard Italian. Among migrants from diglossic situations, the High language tends to be supplemented by English. However, Pauwels's (1986a) study of first language maintenance in Swabians and Limburgers yielded no substantial quantitative differences in language maintenance between standard and non-standard speakers in each of the groups although there was some variation between the groups. Limburgers displayed dialect loyalty but used English to other Dutch speakers whilst Swabians, who have a continuum of varieties available to them, employed more standard German variety to non-Swabian German speakers. On the whole, language shift decreases with age in the first generation and increases with age in the second. Female speakers tend to shift slightly less than males. This applies especially to Northern European ethnic groups in thefirstgeneration and to Southern European ones in the second
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generation. The shift from the mother's language is generally less than from the father's language if the other parent is a monolingual English speaker. However, in the second generation of mixed (non-anglo) parentage, the differential between language shift from the two languages depends on relative ethnolinguistic vitality (Clyne 1982: ch. 2). The strength of language maintenance institutions such as ethnic schools and churches helps determine the vitality of the Greek language in Australia, as Tamis (this volume) shows. There is anecdotal evidence that some second-generation Australians are reverting to their ethnic languages in order to pass them on to their children. Partners in some mixed marriages are raising their children bilingually on the principle of each parent speaking 'their' language to the children, and some part-time ethnic schools are now having to focus on second language teaching and on the activation of passive language skills because of the background of their pupils. 14.3 Multiculturalism and the changing functions of community languages
The widespread acceptance of multiculturalism and, by implication, multilingualism, has been associated with a new national identity in Australia (Ozolins 1985; Clyne 1986a). Kouzmin (1988) has shown that in the second generation of Russian-speaking groups, the symbolic function of the language replaces the communicative one, which is dominant in the first generation. This is probably a universal of community languages in the Australian context. Within the policy of multiculturalism, community languages have, to some degree, been 'mainstreamed' (demarginalised). For instance, they are taught in some schools to pupils of all ethnic backgrounds, and there are some bilingual programs based on a modified version of the Canadian partial immersion model (e.g. Clyne 1986b; Swain and Lapkin 1982) offered to children with or without a home background in the language. 'Mainstream' churches which had previously regarded themselves as 100 per cent Anglo-Saxon (Anglican) or which had established congregations using languages other than English originally as a transitional measure (Uniting/ex-Presbyterian-Methodist; Roman Catholic) are now starting new ethnic parishes on a permanent footing and proudly designating themselves as multicultural and multilingual (see e.g. Archbishop's Commission 1985; Houston 1986). Some communities have reconstituted or are reconstituting themselves, and language is proving an important factor. The multiplicity of Italian regional clubs are partly coordinated and partly supplemented by supraregional Italian ethnic organisations, employing lingua popolare or Standard Italian as a medium. The various groupings and vintages that make up
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the Australian-German speech community (including prewar refugees from National Socialism, Palestinian-Germans (Templars), postwar Germans, Austrians, Swiss, and ethnic Germans from eastern and central Europe), all of whom have a different relationship to the German language, cannot be regarded as a single cohesive ethnic group (Clyne 1988b). However, for certain purposes such as welfare matters, the language brings them together as a supra-ethnic German-language community. Kouzmin (1988) points out that recent Russian-Jewish refugees employ Russian as a means of communication and cultural continuity, but not as a language of symbolic identification. This function is assumed by Hebrew. Similarly, an important factor detracting from language loyalty among German-speaking Jews in Australia (in addition to the events of the Third Reich and the 'anti-foreign language' and especially anti-German attitudes prevailing in Australia during World War II) has been the reconstitution of the Australian-Jewish community into a more cohesive and independent ethnic group and the redefinition of Jewish ethnicity in the Diaspora since the Six-Day War. Zionism has become a core value to Liberals and Orthodox alike, and an attachment to but not necessarily the use of Hebrew is its symbolic marker. The Liberal Jewish community, based largely on German- speakers and ther descendants, have now not only adopted Zionism but also started day schools, following their opposition to full-time Jewish schools. Klarberg (1983) has shown how the seven Jewish day schools, each linked with some ideological direction within Judaism are all teaching Hebrew but how they have all developed different language policies towards this instruction. By the third generation, in many families any loyalty to the language of the grandparents is transferred to the symbolic 'ethnic language' of the Jewish (as opposed to German-speaking western European or Yiddish-speaking eastern European) 'ethnic community' which has, to a large extent, overcome the old east-west divisions. Fishman et al. (1985) have shown that identification with a language and positive attitudes towards it do not necessarily coincide with its maintenance. The same applies to the later generations of a number of speech communities in Australia. 14.4 Relations with metropolitan countries
One of the important resources for continuity and renewal that Australian community languages can draw on is contact with their origin homelands and/or (other) countries in which their language has official or national language status. Nevertheless, this is not a prerequisite fof language maintenance. The very opposition to the political regime in the homeland or to the country which has deprived it of its nationhood provides a strong incentive to refugee groups to keep up their language. They see it as their
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responsibility to protect the language and consider unacceptable language changes that have taken place in the country of origin. Some refugee groups, for example, Hungarians and Poles, were divided as to how much support they should accept from the homeland, for example, in resource materials for ethnic schools. In other communities, for example, Latvian and Lithuanian, there has long been a political 'softening' in the second generation, which has absorbed Australian 'multicultural' ideology and sees that contact with, and material from the homeland (including films) as essential for language maintenance. There are some languages that have lost their heartland and/or which have never enjoyed 'majority status'. These include Armenian, Romany and Yiddish. (Perth in Western Australia can boost both a Romany parttime ethnic school and 1-hour weekly radio programmes in the language). Yiddish and, to a lesser extent, Armenian, derive some support in the form of educational, literary and film materials from the much larger speech communities in the United States. Economic migrants, for example, Italians, Dutch, and post-1970 arrivals from Yugoslavia, are able to take advantage of cheaper and faster travel. Their children can now visit their parents' former homelands regularly, and attend school there, and elderly (non-English-speaking) relatives come to Australia on visits. Books and videos can be readily imported, and benefit the processes of linguistic renewal and language maintenance in adults and children. Representatives of foreign governments, such as the Goethe Institut and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, provide high culture activities in the ethnic language which in refugee groups have to be organised internally. Some refugee groups, for example, Hungarian and Estonian, developed links with similar communities in other English- and nonEnglish-speaking countries of migration through their worldwide umbrella organisations. These offered mutual support in curriculum development for ethnic schools, provided information based on homeland events, and facilitated the organisations of international cultural festivals. At such meetings, the ethnic language is used out of necessity as well as volition, being both object and lingua franca. A similar situation has developed recently for some economic migrant groups such as the Italians, who are now well represented in various European countries as well as in Australia and North and South America and who are organised internationally through bodies such as FILEF (Federation of Italian Migrant Workers and Their Families). Speakers of pluricentric languages (i.e. whose languages are used by several nations, such as Dutch, German, French, Spanish) all of whom recognise different norms, and identify differently with the language, present something of a problem. 'Mincmties', such as Austrians, French-Canadians, Flemings, and Chileans are not always happy to be
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dominated by the much larger and vocal 'majority' speakers of their language. The 'minorities' are, in a sense, multiple group members. Some people in such situations eventually discard one of their layers of identity, for example, 'German-speaking', 'Yugoslav', 'Lebanese', and keep another, for example, 'Swiss', 'Croatian', 'Arab'. The tension between the different subgroups within a speech community is sometimes based on different migration vintages, for example, Czechs who came in 1949 or 1968, Hungarians who came in 1949 or 1956-7, Serbs who migrated in 1949 or the 1970s, or different religions, for example, Muslim or Christian Lebanese. Among eastern Europeans, the more recent vintage was exposed to 'Socialist' changes in the language which alienate the earlier group. Among other things, this adds further potential for creativity. Within some language groups, particular institutions or individuals such as newspaper editors, clergy and ethnic school teachers, are entrusted with the task of keeping the level of language high, and especially of'keeping the language pure'. There does not appear to be any community language spoken in Australia that is free of English influence. The nature and extent of this influence depends on the functions of the languages as well as on the networks in which they are employed. Despite valiant attempts to declare an 'Australitalian' the Italian language of Australia (Andreoni 1980; Leoni 1981), there is little uniformity in any community language today (Campbell 1979, 1980). Variation occurs between individuals, families and groups according to their experiences and everyday communication needs through English and the other language as well as for idiosyncratic reasons (Clyne 1982: Ch. 4). There are particular sociolinguistic, communicative and stylistic functions of 'mixed varieties' which are characteristic of the speech situation in Australia as opposed to the country of origin, for example, citing key-words that had been used in English in bilingual interaction; as a more informal or familiar way of expressing oneself; within specific networks of which 'mixed variety' is a symbol; to emphasise the Australian context; for humorous reasons; to facilitate the use of synonyms. Links with language developments in the homeland ensure that fossilisation and large-scale loss and restructuring do not occur at the group level. In some cases, speech communities in Australia are more reluctant to accept transference from English than is the homeland society. In homogeneous rural settlements which retained a community language over several generations but almost completely lost contact with the country of origin, such as the German-speaking community of Tarrington (formerly Hochkirch, Western Victoria), the following characteristics have stood out in contrast to the greater variation andflexibilityin the German of recent migrants: stabilised lexical and semantic transference, a regular pattern of integrating lexical transfers from English, including the stabilised assign-
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ment of genders to transferred nouns, and stabilised use of archaisms and sortie neologisms (Clyne 1968). This stabilised situation does not apply to the same extent in the more recent North Queensland Italian settlement of Giru (Campbell 1979,1980; Bettoni 1981), whose transference patterns are similar to those in the urban centre of Townsville. Nevertheless, there are common tendencies within each language, especially in the rules for integrating English transfers and in syntactic (and, to some degree, morphological) transference. The former rules are often also operative in the country of origin; the latter may sometimes be seen as more advanced indicators of a drift inherent in the language (Sapir 1949). The common tendencies within a language can facilitate crosslinguistic comparisons which take into account both sociolinguistic factors and the structural properties of the languages (see Clyne, chapter 16, this volume). 14.5 The development of research methodology
Australian language contact research has drawn heavily on overseas (especially American) models and methods. Much of the initial descriptive linguistic work on immigrant languages (e.g. Clyne 1967, 1972a on German, 1977b on Dutch; Kaminskas 1972 on Spanish; Kouzmin 1973 on Russian; Bettoni 1981 on Italian) was influenced by Weinreich (1953) and Haugen (1956). Early methods of interviewing employed were both direct (eliciting) and indirect (leading questions). Terminology was adapted and there was a gradual extension of the framework to incorporate pragmatic and psycholinguistic perspectives. With the publication of Fishman (1966), sociology of language perspectives took a more prominent place in Australian research conducted by both sociologists (e.g. Harvey 1974; Smolicz and Harris 1976; Smolicz 1979), and linguists (e.g. Clyne 1976b, 198 la, 1982; Garner 1985; Pauwels 1980,1986a). This included the study of language attitudes promoted by the evolution of the social psychology of language (e.g. Pauwels 1985a, and this volume; Rado 1976; Lewis, Rado and Forster 1983; Giles, Rosenthal and Young 1985; Callan, Gallois and Forbes 1985; Gallois and Callan 1981, 1985, 1986). Such studies have focused largely on questions of language and identity. Linguistic conclusions have been verified by psycholinguistic experimentation (e.g. Clyne 1972b) as well as sociolinguistic data collection (e.g. Clyne 1980) and tests of awareness of deviation, perception of'Australianness' and attitudes to transfer phenomena (Pauwels, this volume). More recently, Bettoni (1985, 1986, and this volume) has adopted the language attrition paradigm. At present, linguistic, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, sociology of language, social psychological and demographic methodologies are all employed and combined in research on immigrant languages in Australia.
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The languages that have been described in detail are those mentioned above, together with Serbo-Croatian (Doucet 1984 and this volume) and Greek (Tamis 1985a and this volume). In addition, there have been studies of aspects of French (Ludwig-Wyder 1982), Hungarian (Endrody 1971), Japanese (Masumi-So 1984), Macedonian (Hill 1980), and Polish (Sussex 1980). Work is in progress on Finnish in Australia (Hannele Hentula, Turku) and on the Sinhala grammar of Sinhalese children in Melbourne (Dipemala de Silva). Oksaar (1975) has been conducting a longitudinal project on Estonian in the United States, Sweden and Australia, but to my knowledge, no findings have been published on the Australian data. The similarity offindingson lexicon across languages and between Australian and overseas studies has led scholars away from producing more and more word lists of lexical transfers and their motivation, to a greater interest in grammatical and sociolinguistic questions. Among issues that have occupied the attention of Australian researchers are the effects of exogamy on language shift (Pauwels 1985a) and bilingual language acquisition based on the principle of 'one person, one language (Saunders 1982; Dopke 1988), and first-language reversion and secondlanguage attrition in elderly bilinguals (Clyne 1977c, 1981b). 14.6
Gaps in research
The demographic situation and ethnolinguistic mix invite a somewhat more intensive study of the broader communicative complex, including pragmatic transference, cross-cultural communicative conflict and breakdown, and interactional networks - the kinds of areas developed by Neustupny (1978) and research by him and his students in the context of Japanese-Australian relations (Neustupny 1985a, 1985b; Bolitho 1976; Marriott 1984). This is potentially a very important area, especially considering the dependency of access to power on successful mastery of English communication rules (Pride 1985). There has been a dearth of studies on communication in ethnic and mainstream Australian institutions (see Clyne and Manton 1978 on meeting routines). The questions of multiple group membership, identity and its linguistic manifestations (see 14.4) have also been under-researched, despite their significance in Australia. They have been examined in relation to speakers from areas with strong regional identity (e.g. Pauwels 1986a). McNamara is examining Israelis in Australia, their relation to the Jewish community and their maintenance of Hebrew. As will be apparent from 14.5, only a small number of the 75-100 languages used regularly in Australia have so far been described. They are nearly all Indo-European and do not offer a wide range of typological characteristics (see Greenberg 1978; Lehmann 1977). It would be most
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desirable for morphological and syntactic transference and change and the grammatical integration of lexical transfers to be examined in a variety of languages, including Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Khmer, Maltese, Tamil, Tongan, Turkish, and Vietnamese. This would facilitate conclusions on linguistic and sociolinguistic universals of language contact. On the other hand, no systematic studies have been made of the transference patterns, code-switching and language shift of migrants from other Englishspeaking countries, for example, Americans, people from different parts of English, Irish, Scots, and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) burghers. Claims concerning first-language reversion and second-language attrition in the elderly have been made almost entirely on the strength of cross-sectional data. The next step would be to conduct a large-scale longitudinal study over 15-20 years to examine development in individuals. This would be costly and difficult to organise, but virtually the only way for progress to be made in this area. At the same time it would be highly desirable for research to be conducted on the activation of passive skills in a language and on the reactivation of lost skills. Since first and second language attrition and passivisation are such common phenomena in Australia, such research would be very feasible here. It could help answer a number of questions. What is the relation between language acquisition, attrition and reactivisation? Is it easier to acquire active skills in a second language or to activate passive skills in that language? How does such activation occur? Due to the rapidity of language shift and the limited number of community languages so far described in Australia, it has not yet been possible to show the role of each generation in language change although some advances have been made for Italian, German and Dutch (Bettoni 1985, and this volume; Bettoni and Gibbons 1988; Clyne 1972a, 1985, and this volume; Pauwels, chapter 13, this volume). 14.7
Prospects
As Fishman (1985: 515) has stated, predictions on language maintenance and shift are impossible since we do not have knowledge of future immigration movements or 'ethnic revivals'. However, it is possible to identify some major issues that are likely to affect language maintenance and shift. They are: 1. Immigration intake policies and settlement patterns - number, source countries, and language and education background of intake, and settlement and dispersion; 2. Policies towards multiculturalism - the type and extent of institutional
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support for multiculturalism in general, and National Language Policy in particular; 3. New technologies - subscriber television, home video equipment and personal computers will make it at least theoretically possible for Australians to enjoy equal access in the media domain to community languages and to English. In effect, the size and initiative of the speech community in Australia and the socioeconomic status of the individual, family or group will determine that some languages will benefit from the new technologies more than others. Undoubtedly, continuing immigration of speakers of languages already represented provides an impetus for language maintenance but it is not essential. (Ukrainian and Latvian, whose speakers are nearly all products of the 1949-51 'Displaced Persons' wave, have been maintained far more than German, which should have benefited from continuing migration, and Czech, which has been brought to Australia by three vintages of migrants). On present indications (Commonwealth 1986), immigration rates are likely to be stepped up again to avoid a population decline, and intake policies will, on the whole, probably benefit language communities already represented in this country. Many languages are already in an advanced stage of language shift. It may be that large-scale immigration of new non-English-speaking migrants from the country of origin could reverse this. Even if it is too late to reverse the shift to English in some communities, many other languages, especially those of the more recent migrant groups, will ensure the continuation of the multilingual nature of Australian society.
15 Dutch in Australia: perceptions of and attitudes towards transference and other language contact phenomena ANNE PAUWELS
15.1 Introduction1 The original preoccupation with the description of the linguistic performance of immigrant bilinguals in their two languages in an attempt to discover universal linguistic features of language contact has often meant that questions regarding a bilingual's perception and awareness of contact phenomena have not received a lot of attention. Usually studies of language contact in the Australian context have done little more than mention the fact that bilingual informants, when questioned about their speech patterns, realised that some mixing of languages occurred (see e.g. Clyne 1967; Pauwels 1980; Bettoni 1981). The same studies often also recorded that this awareness of mixing one's languages triggered off a whole array of feelings in the bilinguals ranging from indifference or resignation to annoyance or even acute embarrassment. Recently, with the upsurge of studies of language attitudes, researchers have become interested in establishing to what extent bilinguals' perceptions of 'language mixing'2 have an impact on the process of language maintenance or language shift (see e.g. Chana and Romaine's 1984 study of the attitudes to mixing of Panjabi English bilinguals in Britain). That is, does the perceived linguistic quality - pure or mixed - of the ethnic language affect its status, usefulness and so on with respect to English? I will explore this issue in relation to Dutch in Australia. 15.2 Previous studies A notable exception to the earlier ad hoc approach to the bilingual's awareness of contact phenomena is an experiment conducted by Clyne (1975). He tested the verbal and non-verbal reactions of ten German-English bilingual immigrants towards a German language sample
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containing a great number of integrated lexical and semantic transfers. The experiment revealed that there was some correlation between subjects' own use of transfers and their linguistic awareness of them: the two subjects whose own speech contained most instances of transference showed a lack of awareness of the transfers. On the whole, however, the transfers were detected and, for some informants, they became the source of great amusement because there was ambiguity or a double meaning across languages. The most thorough account to date of attitudes towards language mixing in the Australian immigrant context is the study by Bettoni and Gibbons (1988). By means of the matched guise technique the authors examined the attitudes of Italo-Australians towards a range of language varieties, including two Italian dialects, Regional Italian, Light (English-Italian) Mixture, Heavy (English-Italian) Mixture, and English, that characterise the Italo-Australian speech community (see Bettoni, this volume). The Light Mixture is more typical of first-generation Italian migrants, while the Heavy Mixture is linked to the second generation. However, they found that their informants did not associate positive feelings with either Mixture. Bettoni and Gibbons summarised the attitude towards the Heavy Mixture as one of hostility. The Light Mixture fared slightly better as it attracted mainly intermediate scores. It seems to be regarded as the unmarked or neutral choice in the Italo-Australian speech community: it is neither liked nor disliked. Positive feelings were associated with English and Regional Italian. The authors conclude that in the ItaloAustralian community puristic attitudes toward language prevail. Positive ratings are given to the 'pure' varieties, whereas English interference in Italian is mostly judged negatively. This may accelerate the shift towards English. 15.3 Attitudes towards Dutch as expressed by Dutch immigrants in Australia
Of the larger non-English-speaking migrant groups in Australia, the Dutch rank fourth in number. The Dutch record the highest rate of shift to English in both the first and second generation. The 1976 Census revealed that an estimated 43.5 per cent offirstgeneration Dutch migrants no longer claimed to use Dutch regularly (compared with 3 per cent for Greeks, 6.3 per cent for Italians, 27.8 per cent for Germans and 20.2 per cent for Poles). Language shift in the second generation is reported to be as high.as 80.8 per cent for the Dutch group compared with 10.0 per cent for Greeks, 18.5 per cent for Italians and 62.8 per cent for Germans (see also Clyne, chapter 14, this volume). Previous studies on Dutch language maintenance (e.g. Harvey 1974; Clyne 1977b; Smolicz and Lean 1979; Pauwels 1980) have all
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shown that the Dutch do not seem to be greatly concerned with the maintenance of their language in Australia. Although linguistic similarity between English and Dutch as well as cultural similarity between the two groups have provided some explanation for the high rate of shift in the Dutch community, the apparent lack of interest in maintenance has most often been linked to the fact that the Dutch language is not a core value in their cultural value system. Smolicz (1981) uses the term 'core value' to refer to those specific aspects of a culture which are seen as central to a group's life and values. My research has attempted to establish whether the apparent lack of interest in the fate of Dutch is matched by feelings of indifference towards the quality of Dutch spoken/used in Australia.3 15.4 The Dutch language in Australia
As is the case with other immigrant languages spoken in Australia, there is no stable or uniform Australian variety of Dutch (Clyne 1982). However, there are a number of phenomena that mark the speech of manyfirstand/or second generation Dutch-English bilinguals, for example, a range of lexical, semantic, morphological, syntactic, phonological and other transfers, instances of triggering (i.e. internally conditioned switching, see Clyne 1967) and marginal passages, that is, unlimited switching between two languages in both directions at the grammatical and lexical levels, promoted by a large number of compromise forms, and a phonic pattern from the first language, (see Clyne 1982: 108; and Hasselmo 1961). Although there are some inter-generational differences in the use of certain types of contact phenomena, these may be less clear-cut than those separating the generations in other language groups. The high degree of structural similarity between English and Dutch has meant that certain phenomena associated with the speech of second-generation bilinguals of other language groups, for example, the German group, are already present in the speech of first-generation Dutch bilinguals (see Clyne, chapter 16, this volume). On the basis of speech samples of manyfirst-and second-generation Dutch (Clyne 1977b; Pauwels 1980) it can be claimed, however, that marginal passages are a typical phenomenon of (elderly) first-generation speakers who have little competence in English. With regard to transference patterns, it can be cautiously stated that semantic transfers of any kind are more likely to mark the speech of firstgeneration than of second-generation bilinguals. Phonological transference (Australian accent in Dutch), certain types of morphological transference, for example, grammatical gender and plural markers, and syntactic transference, for example, generalised use of 'hebben'- 'to have' as auxiliary for past compound tenses, are more likely to occur in the
Dutch in Australia 231 speech of second-generation bilinguals. It is not surprising that the characteristic linguistic features of the second generation coincide with many so-called developmental errors (or interlanguage features) made by second-language learners of Dutch, as the former learn Dutch in similar conditions, where they are dominant and fluent in a language other than Dutch. Lexical transfers and syntactic transference involving word order (SVO instead of SOV) are present in the speech of both generations. 15.5 The investigation 75.5.7 Aims I will discuss one aspect of a current project on the Dutch language in Australia in which I examine in depth questions of awareness of language contact phenomena, that is, transference and code-switching, at sentence and discourse level, as well as the attitudes towards such phenomena. The central focus of this investigation is the degree of awareness of different types of transference (as presented in isolated sentences) among a group of first generation Dutch immigrants and the exploration of their attitudes towards these phenomena. I try to establish whether the type of transference/contact phenomenon has an impact on the degree of awareness expressed by bilinguals as well as whether attitudes towards language contact phenomena differ according to the type of phenomenon involved. I also examine to what extent awareness of and attitudes towards transference are interrelated. 75.5.2 The test sentences Eight sentences each illustrating a particular type of transference were presented to a group of 25first-generationDutch informants to test their awareness of transference phenomena and to register their attitudes towards them. In each case the transfer is underlined. Below the glosses I have noted the nature of the transfer and given the 'correct' Dutch version. 'Correct' in this context means conformity with the Standard Dutch norm propagated by grammars/dictionaries. Of course, in some instances the deviation could be corrected in various ways. Each of these were seen as correct. 1. Er staan paarden in de paddok. 'There are horses in the paddock'. Lexical transfer: integrated for gender, graphemic integration. Correct: Er staan paarden in de wei. 2. We groeien tomaten in de tuin. 'We grow tomatoes in the garden.'
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
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Semantic transfer of the verb 'to grow'. Correct: We kweken tomaten in de tuin. Ik heb in Frankrijk geleefd voor over een jaar. 'I have been living in France for over a year.' Loan translation involving a semantic transfer {to live) and syntactic transference (use of present perfect instead of present simple+order of adverbial phrases) Correct: Ik woon al longer\meer dan een jaar in Frankrijk. Het heeft zo hard geregend dat de straten staan helemaal blank. 'It has rained so much that the streets are flooded.' Syntactic transference: SVO instead of SOV. Correct: Het heeft zo hard geregend dat de straten helemaal blank staan. Ik heb het meer interessante boek gekozen. 'I chose the more interesting book.' Morphological transference: periphrastic expression of the comparative, possibly under the influence of English. Correct: Ik heb het interessantere boek gekozen.4 Hij heeft van zijn fiets gevallen. 'He has fallen off his bike.' Syntactic transference: the generalised use of 'hebben' - 'to have' as auxiliary for past compound tenses. Correct: Hij is van zijn fiets gevallen. Dat is de langste kanaal. 'This is the longest channel.' Morphological transference: wrong gender. Correct: Dat is het langste kanaal. Ik loopte snel naar de winkel. 'I quickly ran to the shop.' Morphological transference: 'lopen'- 'to run' is a strong verb, treated here as weak. Correct: Ik Hep snel naar de winkel.
15.5.3
The tests
(a) Awareness test I was interested not only in the question of the extent to which the informants were aware of the deviation in the presented sentences but also whether they perceived the deviations as the result of Dutclb-English language contact in the Australian context. The first aspect 'degree of awareness', called the A-test, was rated on a 3-point scale: 1 = Aware of the deviation and capable of providing a correct version. 2 = Aware of the deviation but unable to provide a correct version. 3=Unaware of the deviation.
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With regard to the second aspect, perception of Australianness of the deviations, called the B-test, informants were requested to tick one of the following four alternatives: I associate this way of speaking/writing mainly with 1 = Adult native speakers in the Netherlands. 2 = Adult native speakers of Dutch in Australia. 3 = Non-native speakers (i.e. learners) of Dutch. 4= Children of Dutch immigrants in Australia. (b) Attitudinal test Informants were asked to rate the acceptability of the sentences along a 5-point scale: •1
=
2= 3= 4= 5=
approve of the use of this sentence in spoken and written Dutch, accept the use of this sentence in spoken and written Dutch, approve of the use of this sentence in spoken Dutch only, accept the use of this sentence in spoken Dutch only, disapprove of the use of this sentence in spoken and written Dutch.
15.5.4 Administering of the tests Because these tasks formed part of an interview in which informants were asked to provide other information as well as perform other tasks, the administering of the attitudinal test did not follow directly after the awareness test. This 'spreading' of the tests helped considerably in avoiding 'automatic' replies by the informants (usually caused by being exposed to the same task for too long) and any influence of the tests on each other. 15.5.5 The informants On the basis of their knowledge and use of Dutch, 25 first-generation bilinguals who had taken part in other aspects of the project were selected for this investigation. All informants had to be native speakers of Standard Dutch and had to use Dutch regularly (i.e. daily) in Australia. They had to have been exposed to education in the Dutch language for at least eight years in the Netherlands. The minimum period of residence in Australia acceptable was set at ten years (in 1985). These restrictions were imposed on the group of informants to avoid too much heterogeneity within a relatively small sample. There were 13 women and 12 men in the sample. Five informants were under 35, ten informants were between 36 and 45, six informants were between 46 and 55 and four were older than 55. A control group of Dutch nationals (i.e. Dutch native speakers residing permanently in the Netherlands) was introduced to ascertain the effect of
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living in a language contact situation on awareness of the deviations in the sentences. This group closely resembled the Australian-Dutch group with respect to sex and age distribution, level of education and variety of Dutch used. 15.6
Results
15.6.1 Awareness of deviations in the sentences
Both the Dutch-Australians and the Dutch nationals were subjected to the first awareness task, that is, the A-test to detect deviation from the Standard Dutch norm in each of the sentences and, if possible, to provide a correct version. The Dutch nationals had no problem whatsoever in perceiving deviations in the sentences and were very competent in providing a correct version. All sentences were recognised as deviations from the Standard Dutch norm by all informants and, with the exception of item 5 (periphrastic expression of the comparative), all were able to provide a correct version for each of the sentences. The Dutch-Australian group was far less uniform in its response patterns. Although the degree of awareness that the sentences represented deviations from the Standard Dutch norm was still high in this group (83.5 per cent), some informants had problems in providing a correct version (22.5 per cent). This seems to suggest that an immigrant's competence to recognise certain types of deviations is not greatly affected by living outside the original speech community for a prolonged period of time, but that a lack of (regular) contact with that community may lead to difficulties in providing a correct version. Item 7 (wrong gender) and item 4 (word order), item 6 (generalised use of 'hebben' - 'to have') and item 8 (verb morphology) were recognised and corrected by 22,23,24 and 25 informants respectively. Sentences that were recognised as containing a deviation but caused problems with regard to providing the correct version included the lexical transfer (item 1), the semantic transfer (item 2) and the loan translation (item 3): 36 per cent could not provide a correct version for item 1, 40 per cent were unable to supply a correct version for item 2, and 56 per cent could not do so for the loan translation. The semantic transfer and the periphrastic expression of the comparative recorded the highest scores for lack of awareness. In each case ten informants were unaware of any deviation. 15.6.2 Perception of the 'Australianness' of the deviation
The task measuring the informants' perception of the 'Australianness' of the deviations was administered slightly differently to the two groups.
Dutch in Australia
235
Because it was assumed that the informants from the Netherlands would be unfamiliar with the specific situation of Dutch in Australia, the alternatives 'adult native speaker of Dutch in Australia, and 'children of Dutch immigrants in Australia' were replaced by 'adult native speakers of Dutch residing in an English-speaking country' and 'children of native Dutch speakers residing in an English-speaking country'. With the exception of item 5, most Dutch informants attributed the presented features to be characteristic of the speech of adult non-native speakers. That adult native speakers of Dutch residing abroad were not readily implied as likely producers of the 'errors' is probably partly due to the lack of (regular) contact that exists between Dutch nationals and Dutch expatriates and partly due to the lack of experience Dutch nationals have with language contact. The only item seen as attributable to the Dutch native speakers abroad is the lexical transfer of the first sentence. Dutch-Australians seemed to recognise lexical transfer as typical of the Dutch spoken by adult native speakers in Australia. Although about half of the Dutch-Australian group saw the semantic transfer (item 2) and the loan translation (item 3) as characteristic of Dutch speakers in Australia, a substantial number of informants (10 and 7 respectively) related the items to native speakers in the Netherlands. So-called developmental or language learner errors, for example, wrong gender, generalised use of 'hebben'- 'to have' and wrong verb morphology, tended to be seen as characteristic of either non-native speakers of Dutch or children of Dutch immigrants in Australia. 15.6.3 Attitudinal test In passing judgement on the sentences, informants were asked to consider the sentences as those of adult native speakers of Dutch. Although the 5point scale system allowed for some differentiation with regard to type of language use, that is, speech or writing, further refinements, such as specification of register, could not be incorporated in this scale system. The two groups also reacted quite differently with regard to the attitudinal test. Again the Dutch group was much more uniform in its answers than were the Dutch-Australians. Only two of thefivealternatives were used by the Dutch group, namely: (4) I accept the use of the sentence in spoken Dutch only. (5) I disapprove of the use of this sentence in spoken and written Dutch. Item 4 (SVO instead of SOV) and item 5 (comparative) were seen by the majority of Dutch nationals (22) as acceptable in spoken language. The acceptance of item 4 may be due to interpreting word order deviations as the result of wrong sentence planning, a feature typical of the spoken
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language. The acceptance of item 5 probably reflects innovative tendencies in the Dutch language in the Netherlands, possibly under the influence of English. Although the overall impression gained from the answers given by the Dutch-Australians was also one of disapproval of the items (70 per cent of all answers had a (5) score), quite a few items were given a (1) or a (2) score by some informants. The judging of items 6, 7, 8 was very uniform: they were almost unanimously rejected (i.e. disapproved of in spoken and written Dutch) by 25, 24 and 25 informants respectively. Informants were divided over the acceptability of such phenomena as the lexical transfer (item 1), the semantic transfer (item 2) and the loan translation (item 3). These are the ratings given to these items. lexical transfer (1) 2 informants (2) 6 informants (3) 3 informants (4) 2 informants (5) 12 informants
semantic transfer (1) 5 informants (2) 6 informants (3) 0 informants (4) 3 informants (5) 11 informants
loan translation (1) 5 informants (2) 6 informants (3) 0 informants (4) 0 informants (5) 14 informants
The item with the lowest disapproval score, that is, a score of 5, was the periphrastic expression of the comparative: only ten informants disapproved of it in speech and writing. 15.7 Links between awareness and attitudes
In order to establish whether there was an association between the degree of awareness and the approval rating of the phenomena, tables examining the contingency between the tests were produced.5 Contingency table 15.1 analysing links between the first awareness test (the A-test) and the attitudinal test revealed a strong association. Informants who were aware of, and able to correct the deviation, that is, vertical score 1, were more likely to disapprove of the use of the item in speech and writing, that is, horizontal score 5. Lack of awareness of the deviation, vertical score 3, tended to be associated with complete approval of the item, horizontal score 1. If informants were aware of the deviation but could not correct it, then they were slightly less strong in their approval rating: they accepted rather than approved of the item in speech and writing. Of greater interest to this investigation is the possible link between the informants' attitudes towards the items/deviations and their perception of the likely source of the deviation, that is, the B-test. Although the association between the B-test and the attitudinal test is not of the same magnitude as that between the latter and the A-test, it is still appreciable. This is shown in table 15.2.
Dutch in Australia Table 15.1. Contingency between the A-test and the Attitudinal test Attitudes
1 A w a 2 r e n 3 e s s All
1
2
3
4
5
All
4 11.59
8 14.64
3 2.44
3 7.93
104 85.40
122 122.0
5 4.28
9 5.40
0 0.90
4 2.92
27 31.50
45 45.00
10 3.13
7 3.96
1 0.66
6 2.14
9 23.10
33 33.00
19 19.00
24 24.00
4 4.00
13 13.00
140 140.00
200 200.00
Chi-square= 52.764 with D.F. = 8 Tabled X .01, 8 = 20.1 p <0.00001 52.764 >20.1 Explanation of symbols: Horizontal scores (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), cf. attitudinal scores. Vertical scores (1), (2), (-3), cf. scores for A-test.
Table 15.2. Contingency between B-test and attitudinal test Australianness
1 A 2 t t i
j
t 4 u d e j
All
1
2
3
4
All
8 3.70 4 4.68 0 0.78 7 2.54 20 27.30
8 6.27 15 7.92 2 1.32 3 4.29 38 46.20
2 3.70 2 4.68 2 0.78 1 2.54 32 27.30
1 5.32 3 6.72 0 1.12 2 3.64 50 39.20
19 19.00 24 24.00 4 4.00 13 13.00 140 140.00
39 39.00
66 66.00
39 39.00
56 56.00
200 200.00
Chi-square=41.042 with D.F.= 12 p <0.00005 Tabled X .01, 12 = 26.2 41.042 >26.2
237
238
ANNE PAUWELS
If an item was seen as typical of a Dutch native speaker in the Netherlands, horizontal score 1, the item would be given full approval for use in speech and writing vertical score 1. Items that were associated with the children of Dutch immigrants in Australia, horizontal score 4, were disapproved of, vertical score 5. If an item was attributed to an adult native speaker of Dutch residing in Australia, its use was found acceptable in speech and writing, vertical score 4. It could be expected that items which carried full approval would be linked to native speakers of Dutch in the Netherlands and vice versa. A more interesting observation was that those items attributed to adult native speakers of Dutch living in Australia did not attract negative ratings. The lexical transfer, the semantic transfer and the loan translation which were recognised as being deviations (although not always corrected) were seen by their most likely producers, that is, the first-generation informants, as acceptable both in speech and writing. The items identified as typical of the second generation did not fare so well on the approval scale: they attracted strongly negative ratings. 15.8 Discussion The overall impression gained from the test results is that first-generation Dutch immigrants are, on the whole, aware of language contact phenomena characterising the speech of first-generation Dutch speakers in Australia. They do, however, disapprove strongly of the use of the contact phenomena which are linked to the second generation. Living in a contact situation seems to have some effect on the degree of awareness that the items/phenomena presented are deviations from the Standard Dutch norm. Dutch immigrants are less likely than Dutch nationals to be able to correct an item. On the basis of the data obtained here, it is not possible to pinpoint the cause of this difference. It seems most likely that the failure to provide the correct version in some cases may be due to difficulties of recall. Psycholinguistic testing could possibly clarify this finding. There is also a difference between the Dutch-Australians and the Dutch nationals in their attitudes. The latter tend not to differentiate between the different items in their judgements. This may be related to the fact that the items are seen as typical of non-native speakers of Dutch. Learners of Dutch are expected to make errors which need to be corrected and which are normally not condoned by native speakers. Passingjudgement on items ascribed to fellow native speakers is a far more delicate task (see the attitudes towards item 5 in the Dutch group). Dutch-Australians can be said to still hold rather puristic attitudes towards language contact phenomena: 70 per cent of all answers recorded disapproved of the
Dutch in Australia
239
deviations presented in the sentences. However, their judgements of approval/disapproval are more differentiated than those of Dutch nationals in relation to the type of phenomenon involved. Although the attitudinal test revealed that the lexical and semantic transfers and the loan translation attracted both approval and disapproval scores rather evenly, Table 15.2 indicated that these phenomena were seen as acceptable (in speech and writing) when recognised as coming from adult native speakers in Australia. Thus, there seems to be some evidence that the first-generation Dutch informants are not overly concerned that the Dutch language characteristic of their generation and situation deviates from that of native speakers in the Netherlands. Perhaps this attitude may be cautiously summed up as one of indifference towards the linguistic quality of their Dutch. This feeling of indifference is not, however, extended towards phenomena involving grammatical deviations from the Standard Dutch norm which were associated with the speech/language use of the second generation in Australia. There seems to be some similarity to the observations made by Bettoni and Gibbons (1988) that the overall attitude towards the speech characteristic of the second generation ItaloAustralians is one of hostility. In the case of the Dutch in this investigation, the overall attitude is one of disapproval. The exploratory character of and the extremely limited data base for this investigation do not allow a valid prognosis regarding the relationship of this issue to the process of shift observed in the Dutch community. However, some speculation at this stage is not misplaced. It cannot be claimed that the Dutch as language users per se are possibly less concerned with correctness in their language than other language users. Both Dutch nationals and Dutch immigrants hold rather puristic attitudes towards correctness. Nevertheless, the latter do not seem to worry too much that the Dutch used by the first generation in Australia no longer adheres to the Standard Dutch norm. This may be a linguistic reflection of their lack of concern with the maintenance of Dutch beyond the first generation. The strong feelings of disapproval towards the deviations linked to the second generation may also affect the language behaviour of the first generation towards the second generation. Because the latter are no longer regarded as 'native' speakers but as 'learners' of Dutch (on the basis of their errors), the first generation may prefer to switch to English to communicate with their offspring. Notes 1. I would like to thank Monash University for giving me financial support (Monash Special Grants) which enabled me to carry out this research, and Kathy Diamantopoulos for assistance with the data processing.
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2. I use the term 'language mixing' to refer to all types of linguistic phenomena resulting from language contact. 3. So far two papers have resulted from this project: one (Pauwels 1985a) deals with a comparison of the attitudes of Dutch-Australians and Dutch Nationals towards levels of correctness in Dutch, and the other (Pauwels 1986b) is a matched-guise study examining the attitudes of Dutch-Australians towards language mixing. 4. In Dutch the superlative could also be used when two items are compared with each other. 5. Contingency tables were produced for each individual item as well as for all items. Here, only the all-items tables will be analysed.
16 German and Dutch in Australia: structures and use MICHAEL CLYNE
16.1 Introduction The German and Dutch speech communities in Australia appear outwardly similar. Both are socioeconomically well established (Derrick, Pyne and Price 1976: 31), relatively large, and fairly assimilated. According to the 1976 Census (adjusted figures, Clyne 1982: 12), Australia then had 170,644 regular users of German (54,824 in Victoria) and 64,768 regular users of Dutch (20,606 in Victoria). The languages and cultures do not diverge markedly from those of the dominant Anglo-Australian group and, incidentally, resemble each other. In comparison with some other communities, such as the Greeks, the German-Dutch similarities hold true but in comparison between them, the German and Dutch speech communities show some marked differences. I shall be focusing here on two aspects: the structure of the German and Dutch languages as used by postwar immigrants and their children and patterns of language use and maintenance of the two languages. I will explore possible interrelations between structure and language use, taking into account migration history and community dynamics and demographic factors (notably settlement patterns). 16.2 Language maintenance and community dynamics Every study so far conducted in Australia on language maintenance and shift, whether small-scale and detailed or large-scale and superficial, has found that, of all the speech communities in Australia, the Dutch speakers have experienced the most rapid shift to the use of English only, both within the home and elsewhere (see, e.g. Harvey 1974; Clyne 1977b, 1982, and chapter 14, this volume; Pauwels 1980; Smolicz and Harris 1976; ABS 1976, 1983). While the Dutch in the Netherlands are one of the most
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MICHAEL CLYNE
multilingual peoples in the world, immigrants from that country have, by their indifference to their first language, produced the most monolingual second generation of any non-British ethnic group in Australia. The Dutch, in contrast to the Germans for example, tend to speak English to their children (Clyne 1967, 1977b). In a survey of parental attitudes in different ethnic groups, Smolicz and Lean (1979: 20) have shown that Dutch-Australians disagree more with the learning of ethnic languages than any of the other groups, including 'British-Australians'. They have not founded ethnic Saturday schools to teach their language to future generations (with the exception of a small Saturday school in Sydney). They have not taken advantage of recent language policy initiatives, for example, in Victoria, to ensure that their language is introduced into state primary schools as a regular part of the curriculum by qualified supernumery teachers. On both counts they are unique among major ethnic groups. Due to the fragmented nature of Dutch society at the time of their migration, with compartmentalisation based on religious denomination, the Dutch are not a very cohesive ethnic community. Diglossia and the use of dialects may detract more from the maintenance of Dutch than from that of German. This problem has been studied for Limburgs and Swabian by Pauwels (1986a). While almost all the Dutch in Australia came to this country in the 1950s, German speakers have had a more diverse settlement history. A number of vintages (including, e.g. descendants of nineteenth century settlers in former closed rural enclaves; refugees from Nazism who came in the 1930s, the Templars, Swabian Pietists from Palestine, who were interned in Australia during World War II; postwar immigrants who have arrived at various times since 1951 from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as ethnic Germans from central and eastern Europe) constitute what is a very heterogeneous speech community, but certainly not a single ethnic group (Clyne 1988c). The German speakers are the most dispersed of all immigrant speech communities within all metropolitan areas of Australia, with different German-speaking groups preferring different areas, as in the case of Jewish refugees, Templars, postwar German immigrants, ethnic Germans. Also, each 'national' group, for example, Germans, Austrians, and Swiss, has its own clubs (see Clyne 1981a), and some groups, such as the Templars, have their own infrastructure, promoting language and cultural maintenance. Many of the clubs are not attracting the support of the ethnic young, and membership of non-German speakers is causing language shift in the organisations. The German-medium churches, too, are having to adopt bilingual strategies to serve both young and old. There are some organisations, for example, welfare and lobby groups, serving all German speakers. The fact that German is both an international and an Australian
German and Dutch in Australia
243
Table 16.1. Language shift in the 1st and 2nd generations: German and Dutch (based on regular use of English only, ABS 1976)
German Dutch
1st generation
2nd generation (both parents from same country)
27.79% 43.55%
62.28% 80.79%
community language means that it is well represented in education, at the secondary and tertiary levels and more recently in the primary schools. There are also strong attempts in some cities to maintain the language inter-generationally through Saturday schools. Melbourne alone has nine German language part-time ethnic schools. Nevertheless, German is only moderately well maintained; though the contrast with Dutch is still marked. At present, a high degree of exogamy appears to limit the tenacity of both languages but it is still more likely for a non-German spouse to know or learn German than for a non-Dutch spouse, Dutch. The effects of new policies and attitudes and the patterns among the most recent immigrants have yet to be examined. (A project on this topic is currently being undertaken by Anne Pauwels.) Table 16.1 shows the contrast between the Dutch and German communities with regard to language shift. Because language shift is so high among the Dutch, the tendency towards first-language reversion in the elderly is felt all the more dramatically (Clyne 1977c). Also, in some subgroups there are 'bilingual networks' in which Dutch and English are used by the same people, with much stabilised transference of lexical items as well as code-switching. This is very prevalent within parishes of the Reformed Church which consider themselves to be religious rather than ethnic communities and conduct almost all their services in English, although almost all their members are of Dutch origin. There are few similar networks among German speakers, one being that of German and Austrian prewar refugees within the Sydney and Melbourne Jewish communities. Both German and Dutch language maintenance has benefited from cheaper air travel resulting in visits to the country of origin or from elderly relatives from abroad. 16.3 Features of language structure common to Dutch and German
My data on language structures are based on similar taped interviews conducted with matching groups of 200 German-speaking and 200 Dutchspeaking postwar immigrants in Victoria and their children. (One difference, however, is that the Dutch speakers were taped about seven years
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MICHAEL CLYNE
after the German speakers and were consequently older. See Clyne 1967, 1977b.) Among the common features were the following: (1) Lexical transfers, i.e. the transference of lexemes (form and meaning) especially in the work domain, e.g. customer, office, college, period, milk, bar, shop, shoppen, supervisen, and in the social and recreational domain and that of Australian institutions and experience, e.g. beach, breakfast, drover, gum-tree; (German) television (Dutch televisie) watchen, relaxen, settlen. (2) Phonological integration of lexical transfers, e.g. English Building becomes [blldlrjk] in both Dutch and German English fence and sum become Dutch [fons] and [sem], respectively. English changed and front become German [tfe: njt] and [fRont], respectively. (3) Compromise forms between English and German/Dutch, i.e. forms representing a convergence between English and Dutch or German, e.g. [de: z] (from Dutch [de: z] and English [ 6i: z] - 'these'); ['di.alekt] (from Dutch [dia'tekt] and English ['daislekt]) - 'dialect'; [hai'drant] (from German [hy'drant] and English ['haidiant] - 'hydrant'; and [Ji: f] (from German [Ja:f] and English [JI:p] - 'sheep'). (4) Semantic transfers, i.e. the transference of the meaning of an English word to a homophonous or partly synonymous German or Dutch one, e.g. Dutch smal, German schmal- 'narrow' used for klein - 'small'; Dutch stil, German still - 'silent' used for Dutch nog, German noch - 'still'; Dutch weten, German wissen - 'to know facts' used for kennen - 'to know people'. 163.1 Syntactic transference The two types of syntactic transference in both the German and Dutch corpus are generalisation of SVO word order, for example, German: Und dann meine Mutter macht uns das Essen alles zurecht. (Standard German: Und dann macht meine . . .) 'And then my mother gets our meal ready'; and Dutch: Maar als wij praten in het Hollands, ze verstaan drommels goed. (Standard Dutch: Maar als wij in het Hollands praten, verstaan ze . . .) 'But when we speak in Dutch, they understand darned well.' Discontinuous constituents are also brought closer together, e.g. German: Er fahrt wieder zuruck zu Koln. (Standard German: Er fahrt wieder nach Koln zuruck.) 'He went back to Cologne.', and Dutch: Ze heeft gestudeerd op Hobart University. (Standard Dutch: Ze heeft aan de Universiteit Hobart gestudeerd.) 'She studied at Hobart University.' Interlingual and inter-generational differences in the distribution of the two types will be dealt with below.
German and Dutch in Australia 16.3.2
245
Code-switching
In both languages there are two main causes of code-switching. It is motivated by situational factors, such as domain, topic, interlocutor, and interaction type. Certain words of ambiguous language affiliation also trigger off a switch from one language to the other. The actual words vary from individual, but the main categories are: (1) Lexical transfers Dutch: Ze zijn gedeeltelijk [they were partly] waitress and the others are staff, and German: Im Augenblick les' ich eins, das handelt von einem alten [at the moment I'm reading one which deals with an old] secondhand dealer and his son. (2) Homophonous diamorphs, i.e. morphs in the two languages that sound similar. Dutch: Mijn idee is, dat het [my idea is that it is] is parks and pubs, and German: Das ist das Cafe [that is the cafe] near dem [the] Oriental Restaurant. (3) Proper nouns Dutch: Dat heb je [you have that] in Melbourne too, and German: Dieses Bild ist [this picture is] in Melbourne, Collins Street, is if! (4) Compromise forms Dutch: Die hadden allerlei contractors, die kwamen meest uit voor twee jaar en [they had all kinds of contractors who mostly came out for two years and], being the only Australian, well, hij kon geen Engels spreken, hij moest [he couldn't speak any English, he had to learn Dutch], and Das is [Is] [that is] taken round the coast. Triggering can occur in anticipation of, as well as subsequent to, the trigger-word, e.g. Dutch: Het is vlak, maar toch wat [it is flat, but still what]/yeah, / cant think of the word, hilly, and German: Ja, ich arbeit' im australischen Heer als Dozent in einer der Militarschulen [yes I work in the Australian army as a lecturer in one of the military schools] at Balcombe. Most of these phenomena are common to the community languages so far researched in Australia (Clyne 1982:93-115) and probably to all languages in contact with English (see Haugen 1956, 1973).
16.4 Differences in structure between Dutch and German Of somewhat greater interest are the differences between Dutch and German.
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MICHAEL CLYNE
16.4.1 Gender Postwar German-speaking immigrants assign lexical transfers to the gender of a semantic equivalent or, to a lesser extent, to that of a morphemic equivalent, for example, das Breakfast [
German and Dutch in Australia 247 Table 16.2. Percentage of syntactic transfers - proximity motivated or SVO generalisation (clear-cut cases only) Proximity
SVO
German 1st generation 2nd generation
74% 31 %
20% 51 %
Dutch 1 st generation 2nd generation
- 1 4 % 15%
60 % 66%
with SVO generalisation being the dominant cause of syntactic transference in the second generation. This is supported if we take into account data from prewar German-speaking refugees and descendants of nineteenth century German settlers (Clyne 1985b). One structural explanation would be the fact that while German in Europe is moving towards greater proximity of constituents, the tendency is much greater in European Dutch (Moser 1967; Geerts et al. 1984). However, I would contend that at least part of the reason for the advanced developments in Dutch in Australia is its low use. 16.4.4 Direction of transference and code-switching Out Dutch corpus contains far more instances of English lexical transfers than the German one. Most of the items are frequently-used monosyllabic Dutch words which, because of their similarity to an English equivalent and because of the speaker's phonological transference from Dutch, are always identified with the English by some subjects, for example, al- 'all', dat - 'that', een - 'a/and',ye - 'you', wat - 'what'. Dutch is very similar to English and as the items are structure words, the Dutch immigrants can communicate readily with monolingual Australians even if they employ such transfers. Dutch transfers will trigger off a switch from English into Dutch. They are responsible for about 30 per cent of the triggering in our corpus, mostly in the speech of adults in the La Trobe Valley and the Dandenongs. This is without parallel in our German corpus. There are three explanations for Dutch speakers switching to their first language more than German speakers: (i) They use English as well as Dutch for communication in their own networks. This applies especially to the close settlement networks of the
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MICHAEL CLYNE
Reformed Churches, particularly in the La Trobe Valley, and of the bulbgrowers in the Dandenongs. (ii) There is much mutual comprehensibility between Dutch and English. Een kop of [of] koffie could be English with phonological transference from Dutch, or Dutch with the transference of the English lexeme of. Dutch speakers with even quite modest competence in English may appear to speak English better than South Germans, let alone Turks or Vietnamese, (iii) As most of the instances are from elderly people, these phenomena should be seen in terms of reversion to first language among elderly Dutch (Clyne 1977c, 1981b). 16.4.5 Marginal passages The speech of five of our subjects in their late 50s or older is marked by unlimited switching between the two languages at the grammatical and lexical levels with a Dutch phonological pattern, promoted by a large number of compromise forms. This phenomenon, which does not occur in our German corpus, is described for older Swedish immigrants in the United States by Hasselmo (1961: 39-78), and also appears to exist among Danes of similar background (see the data in Kjaer and Bauman-Larsen 1974; and Clyne 1980). 16.5
Conclusions
There are some phenomena resulting from language contact in Australia common to the German and Dutch of postwar immigrants and their children. These include lexical and semantic transference, code-switching due to triggering or sociolinguistic factors, and syntactic transference. Other factors are specific to Dutch and can be attributed to a combination of structural and sociolinguistic factors. This comparison between German and Dutch indicates that even small structural differences can play a role in shaping different linguistic outcomes. It demonstrates the interplay of structural and sociolinguistic factors in language change. Finally, it shows the effects of the kind of indifference to language that exists among many Dutch people in Australia, (see Smolicz 1979 on the notion of'non-language-centred culture'; and also Pauwels, chapter 15, this volume) and the dubious impact of Australia's previous assimilation policy.
17 Modern Greek in Australia ANASTASIOS TAMIS
17.1
Introduction
There are almost 320,000 Greek-speaking Australians settled in all States, 150,604 of whom were born in Greece (ABS 1981 Census; Price, 1984; see also table 17.1). Even though traditionally there has been a high regard for the classical era of Greek culture, up until the 1960s most Australians (and even Hellenists) had little appreciation for the language and culture of modern Greece. Immigration intake policies of the 1950s, settlement patterns of Greek migrants and government policies towards ethnic communities, especially during the Whitlam era, all helped to reverse attitudes of suspicion, prejudice and animosity experienced by prewar Greek settlers. 17.2
Bilingualism within the Greek community in Australia
The 1986 Census confirmed that Modern Greek (MG) is still the most widelyused community language in Australia after Italian (see table 17.1). As Clyne (1982) attests, community languages have suffered substantial losses within their respective communities. However, Greek-born claimants showed the strongest language maintenance in Australia: 98 per cent of overseas-born Greek Australians claimed to use MG regularly, while 19.7 per cent (the largest proportion in Australia) claimed not to use English regularly. The self-report data in Tamis (1985a, 1986) suggests that 64 per cent of Greek-Australians used MG as their main language, 34 per cent spoke both MG and English depending on the occasion, and 4 per cent used English almost exclusively. The work place is the most important domain of language use in determining whether MG maintains its position amongst its native speakers. As many as 58 per cent of Greek-born claimants spoke MG at the work-place almost 'always', 21 per cent 'usually', 11.5 per cent 'rarely' and only 9.5 per cent 'never'.
Table 17.1. Number of regular users of Modern Greek in Australia by states States Nationality
Birthplace
Greek-Australians
Australia Greece Egypt & M. East* Turkey* Other* (England etc.)
Cypriot-Australians of Greek ethnicity Total
Australia Cyprus** Other*
Victoria
Qld.
NT
ACT
Total
35,873 49,267 896
58,256 74,228 4,500
3,349 4,307 289
9,248 14,592 425
3,160 4,414 301
587 806 39
405 1,340 32
796 1,650 13
111,624 150,604 6,495
612 720
2,200 3,500
168 114
228 630
152 130
28 23
26 25
31 26
3,445 5,168
5,300 7,800 800
9,050 9,244 1,100
600 1,040 280
1,030 1,600 390
228 382 103
42 61 18
132 204 18
98 131 5
16,480 20,462 2,714
101,268
162,078
10,147
28,143
8,870
1,604
2,182
2,700
316,992
NSW
SA
WA
Tasmania
*Estimate provided in records and by leaders of communities concerned. ••Price (1984: 17) estimated the Cypriot-born Australians as 24,044. My estimate excludes the Turkish population in proportion to the demographic composition of the Cyprus Republic. Turks have been excluded from the Australian-born Cypriots. Certain cross-tabulations (birthplace-religion) were also applied. Source: ABS 1981 and 1986 Census; Price (1984: 17ff); Tsounis (1975 and 1983).
Modern Greek in Australia
251
There are many factors conducive to the retention of MG. For one thing, its greater structural variance from English than Romance and Germanic languages makes it more difficult for the Greek immigrant to learn English. Furthermore, the family and community-oriented Greek culture insulates Greek settlers, at least until their children start to bridge the communication gap between the two cultures. In general, Greek communities abroad have shown that their language is inseparable from their cultural ethos, and Greek is widely used amongst members of the Greek community in Australia, 92 per cent of whose members reside within the metropolitan areas of the State capital cities. The Greek community maintains many community networks, notably clubs, newspapers, radios, journals, and many Greek-born and Australian-born residents make frequent return visits to Greece (74 per cent have visited Greece at least once). The recognition of Demotic Greek as the official language of the Hellenic Republic since 1976 has eased the problem of linguistic insecurity, although a living model for MG is not yet a reality. There are other factors, however, which are conducive to a shift from MG, the most influential being out-marriage. The percentage of outmarriages, involvingfirstand second generation or both, increased from 11 per cent in 1972 to 32 per cent in 1984. This has had a marked effect on the linguistic attachment of Greek community members: 59 per cent of all Greek-Australians who opt for a non-Greek spouse are male; 61 per cent of these obtained tertiary education. Furthermore, 62 per cent of all interethnic marriages involve a spouse from the wider Australian community, while 28 per cent of the remaining 38 per cent involve the Italian community. Members of the Greek community who marry out are generally prepared to accept the spouse's culture and language, but their choice of language can change according to the interlocutor's cultural and linguistic background. The constant and steady decline in the number of Greek immigrants since the early 1970s is another factor favouring the shift from MG. In 1981, the proportion of Greek-Australians with a period of residence of less than five years was one of the smallest among ethnic communities (2.8 per cent). This can be seen in figure 17.1. The 1986 data suggest that amongst second-generation Australian-born GreekAustralians the language shift to English was 12 per cent (the lowest of any ethnic group in Australia). At an inter-generational level, the home is the domain where MG is mainly employed. MG appears to be the sole medium of communication amongst first-generation Greek immigrants. However, its usage amongst second-generation bilinguals depends on the encouraging efforts of parents, other family members and, above all, on the language preference of the individual speaker, as seen in table 17.2. The practice of the Greek Orthodox Church in maintaining the
252
ANASTASIOS TAMIS
Table 17.2. Medium of communication normally used by secondgeneration claimants Having a conversation between themselves When alone
In the presence of parents (%)
In the presence of elders (%)
8 64 28
31 27 42
41 20 39
Medium Greek English Both
Persons 13000 12000 11000 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 500 Age 0-4 5-9 Group (167) (398)
10-14 (1649)
15-19 (2906)
20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-65 65 (4131) (5486) (83621) (11026) (1207) (10210) (6968) (5180X3680)
Figure 17.1 Number of overseas-born Greek-Australians in Victoria (source: ABS, 1981)
superimposed Katharevousa variety in liturgy and its gradual shift to English (in order to win over the second and subsequent generations) should be seen as factors inhibiting language maintenance. Nevertheless, it was the ethnocentrism of the individual priests that was instrumental earlier in establishing community networks and Greek afternoon-schools in Australia.
Table 17.3. Number of students attending MG classes in Australia (1986) Type of authority States
Government schools
Greek community schools
Total
Greek private schools
territories
Primary
Secondary
Primary
Secondary
Primary
Secondary
and colleges
Primary
Secondary
Victoria NSW SA WA NT Qld. Tasmania ACT
1,103 2,428 1,900 147 833 148 — 41
7,808 3,982 1,661 63 134 84 — 26
9,813 8,034 2,142 605 320 638 106 238
3,892 1,170 532 41 _ 64 11 41
10,080 320 50 — — — — —
3,748 130 18
605 340 80
20,996 10,782 4,092 752 1,153 786 106 279
15,448 5,282 2,211 104 134 148 11 67
605 340 60
38,946
23,405
1,005
Total*
—
—
— —
— —
* Approximately 7,000 primary and post-primary students attend classes in both Government and Greek community schools.
Tertiary
— — —
254
ANASTASIOS TAMIS
Table 17.4. Parental evaluation of the linguistic skills of their older and younger children Level of skill
Fluent Very Good Good Poor Not Applicable
Reading
Writing
Speaking
Understanding
Old
Young
Old
Young
Old
Young
Old
Young
18 28 37 13 3
10 17 37 23 13
23 31 32 10 4
13 22 32 19 14
23 37 31 7 2
13 25 35 19 8
26 40 29 3 2
16 29 36 12 7
Recent government policies promoting community language learning and more receptive attitudes in the community have facilitated the use of MG in other domains (mainly in schools and institutional life). The establishment in 1979 of both state and independent bilingual primary and post-primary schools in Australia has reinforced mother-tongue maintenance. Thus, despite the discouragement of community language acquisition by monolingual teachers at registered day-schools (e.g. 17 per cent of northern suburban students in Melbourne report that they experienced some form of discouragement), more than 56,000 students attend MG classes in Australia (see table 17.3). Available data suggest that amongst second-generation bilinguals certain domains of Greek language use are more prone to transference from English than others. Siblings converse almost consistently with each other in English. They switch to MG when speaking to grandparents or monolingual parents and they use the more appropriate medium with others, depending on their interlocutor's proficiency in English, topic, setting and role relationship. However, although parental evaluation (on which the statistics are based) is not reliable or comparable, it appears that most Greek-Australians are pleased with the competence of their children in MG (see table 17.4). With regard to mother-tongue maintenance, it is interesting to note that second-generation Greek-Australians proportionally outnumber their first-generation counterparts (see table 17.5). Reasons closely linked with preserving heritage, culture and ethnic identity account for almost 61 per cent of the responses to the question why people of Greek descent living in Australia should have a knowledge of MG. This is consistent with the popularity of MG which led to its prevalence over all community languages in Australia. (In 1985 and 1986 it accounted for 30 per cent of the total number of candidates matriculating in a language.) There has also been an increasing demand and expansion at tertiary levels. By 1986, two chairs of
Modern Greek in Australia 255 Table 17.5. Attitudes towards language maintenance, by generation Reason for language maintenance
Total of respondents (%)
1st generation (%)
Second and subsequent generations (%)
Cultural* Ethnic* Communication Linguistic Professional Return to Greece Sentimental Religious
34.0 27.0 14.0 14.0 6.0 3.0 1.4 0.6
43 59 63 51 47 88 71 100
57 41 37 49 53 12 29 0
* Cultural and ethnic values clearly overlap.
MG were established (Sydney, Flinders) as well as lectureships in four other universities (New England, Melbourne, La Trobe and Monash). MG was also introduced at five Colleges of Advanced Education. These appointments met the needs of a total intake of over 1,200 students (the largest outside homeland Greece). The Greek Orthodox Church became active at tertiary level in 1986 when St Andrew's Greek Orthodox Theological College was established in Sydney, where MG is taught as part of the theological course. 17.3 The situation of MG in Australia
Since the 1960s a number of MG lexemes relating to food and entertainment began to enter Australian English. Words such as spanakopita,fetta, souvlaki,fyllo, kalamari, bouzouki and taramas have been transferred from MG and now constitute part of the vocabulary of many Australians. Although these lexical borrowings can be identified in the host language, MG is influenced by English in almost all linguistic subsystems. Phonemic transfers from English are rare amongst first-generation Greek-Australians and are evident only amongst bilinguals with a greater knowledge of English. Although the speech of the majority of second and subsequent generations is free of phonetic substitutions, many use inconsistently some types which can be defined in the following forms: the increased positional aspiration of the MG voiceless stops /p, t, k/, for example, [pVntreftWa] for [pa'ntreftika] - 1 was married'; the velarisation of the MG clear alveolar /I/ to English dark [i],for example, [po'H] for [po'li] - 'much'; the lateral alveolar /I/ is replaced by a geminate or long English [11], for example, [polle'mume] for [pole'mume] - 'we fight'; the lateral trill /r/ in MG is influenced by the English retroflex /J/, changing
256
ANASTASIOS TAMIS
both its place and the manner of articulation and aspiration, for example, [pa'Ja] for [pa'ra] - 'very', and the replacement of MG velar fricative /x/ by the /h/ of English, for example, ['ihame] for ['ixame] - 'we had'. The variables which determine the use of English phonetic substitutions are mainly speakers' preference and educational background in MG. Speakers who obtained a post-primary education in MG tend to transfer less. Unlike their American counterparts, however, Greek Australians tend not to borrow non-standard English pronounciations (see also Horvath, this volume), but adopt the standard English phonemic segment corresponds and to the perceptually similar sound of MG, for example, American MG apa'resjo 'baksi 'fa/a 'pa/a
Australian MG ope'resjo 'boksi 'fa/r 'pa/z
'operation' 'box' 'fire' 'pies'
Amongst Greek-born bilinguals, relatively high proficiency in MG correlates with minimal or no lexical transference. Australian-born bilinguals use substantially more multiple transfers and draw on English more for abstract nouns and other parts of speech. Non-integrated lexical transfers are particularly restricted in use to informants with a poor knowledge of English. Certain lexical transfers from English are adapted to MG by adding affixes which mark their grammatical class membership. These integrated nominals and verbs are conventional amongst Greek Australian bilinguals. Some are accepted in a stable form by all bilinguals to the complete exclusion of the MG equivalent. Further, a number of integrated words are not recognised as loans from English by many speakers. Certain integrated nominals have derivational suffixes added to their stems, for example, flat >flataki and flatouli; basket > basketaki and baskettoula. These suffixes have a diminutive meaning. The grammatical structure of MG amongst first-generation Greek bilinguals appears to be almost unaffected by English, although the speech of second and subsequent generation displays some semantic deviation. The flexible word order of MG discourages transference of English syntactic constructions. The few instances of constructions with English word order could also be explained as semantic transferences. These involve the replacement of the MG constructions or grammatical distinctions by calqued English constructions. This re-arrangement brings MG closer to English because it presupposes the literal translation of English words into MG: 'eprepe na 'trekso 'piso kje na to \rapso 'kato - 'I had to run back and to write it down" (for Modern Standard Greek: 'eprepe na ksana'trekso kje na to 'yrapso).
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257
In certain instances new lexical arrangements of existing words are introduced by means of English idioms or compounds. In this case the English pattern again overrides the MG construction: mbo'ri 'name so'stos I may be right. (For Modern Standard Greek: mho 'ri na'xo 'dikeo) - 'I may have the right'. Greek-Australian bilinguals tend, however, to employ less complex sentence patterns (usually with SVO word order). Amongst second and subsequent generation bilinguals the main syntactic patterns employed include the omission of the definite article in their MG speech, the unnecessary use of the indefinite article and the unnecessary addition or replacement of prepositions. The incidence of the more familiar type of semantic transference, i.e. the transference of words in meaning only, appears to be limited amongst Greek-born bilinguals. Yet it is widely used by Australian-born bilinguals. A number of semantic transferences have become established as new norms, and many speakers appear to be unaware of semantically assimilated idioms which are widely used. This type of semantic transference involves the redefinition of existing MG words with an English frame of reference, without affecting the formal construction of MG, e.g. Oa 'pari to 'psari pu 7 be sto paraO iro
'He will take the fish that he saw in the house window.' In modern Greek the word para Oiro- 'window' is used only to mean 'house window'; for 'shop window' the conventional lexeme is vitrina. ' bioti 'espase mja mixana (because a machine broke) In modern Greek the word espase - 'broke' is used only to mean 'pull apart'; to indicate 'damage', the word xalase must be used. Bilinguals tend to use both lexical and morphosyntactic transferences. The majority of bilinguals use short syntactic units, mainly phrases and constituents up to the size of a complete clause. Such code-switching is largely dependent on the topic. Topics referring to the work place and institutional life trigger greater proportions of multiple transference. Greek-born bilinguals with a moderate or lesser command of English employ more pragmatic transferences than their Australian-born counterparts. These relate to intercultural differences and are sustained partly due to infrequent social interaction with Anglo-Australians (Tamis 1985b, 1986). These types of speech act involve the predominant use of the secondperson singular even in formal cases, the use offirstnames in a semiformal situation, role relationship forms (Clyne 1977d: 134), greeting-andresponse formulae, stereotyped invitation-formulae and a 'thank you' reply in a negative answer. Female bilinguals employ more frequent prosodic transferences, that is, the transference of stress and/or intonation in their MG speech. The most
258
ANASTASIOS TAMIS
frequent type, used by Australian-born females, is the rising-falling intonation (see Guy et al. 1986). Lengthy narratives which presuppose some degree of preformulation may lead to a high incidence of transfer of English discourse segments and markers. This depends in part on personal style, topic, setting and the role relationship of the interlocutors, but Tamis (1985b: 240) observed that idiolectal intralinguistic patterns are often not sufficient for effective narrative performance, which obliges the bilingual to resort to English. This is further evidenced by the use of doublets (a lexical item in English or in MG immediately followed by the equivalent word in the other language), which are mainly employed by male bilinguals with a relatively high proficiency in MG. However, Gumperz (1982b) and others have found that repetition of the same thing in both languages is one of the common functions of conversational code-switching (see also Tsitsipis 1988 on narrative skills of bilingual speakers). 17.4 The changing structure of Modern Greek in Australia Although the total impact of English on MG cannot be precisely measured, it can be argued that there is attrition at the inter-generational level, which can be combatted. This attrition is not prompted by any apparent motivation for assimilation or by any weakening of Sprachgefuhl, but is the result of contraction of the generally accepted norm for standard MG. The term 'contraction' is used to indicate its temporary status and to argue that an expansion to its original standard Greek norm is still possible. The degree, type and extent of this contraction depend on various aspects of language attitudes and language use, such as the motivation of bilinguals to acquire and develop their mother tongue, the elaboration of function of MG, its acceptability by the community, and its stability of form. Future government policies on immigration and multiculturalism, and ethnicawareness programmes also have an important role to play. The contracted variety which involves the transference phenomena and constraints mentioned in 17.3 may be called an 'Acquired Communication Variety' [ACV]. Non-integrated lexemes are repeatedly transferred from English into ACV. Bilinguals with different personal characteristics, for example, education, occupation, competence in the language used, etc., use different forms of the same word. This suggests that English transfers can occur in unlimited numbers in the speech of such bilinguals. Yet, certain lexical transfers appear to be stabilised morphophonemically and a few syntactic, semantic and pragmatic deviations from the standard norm are employed by almost all Greek-Australian bilinguals. These stabilised types in their usual form constitute the result of the transference since they are used only by members of the Greek-Australian
Modern Greek in Australia
259
community and no longer depend on bilingualism. This means that they are now established in the language, in the same way as transfers were accepted into MG in previous centuries in the homeland. I call this stabilised (non-) standard variety known and used by an ethnic community in a language contact situation an 'Ethnolect'. The ethnolect stabilised at an early stage of the first settlers' residence in Australia, and has become a new norm. This is manifested by evidence which shows that length of residence in Australia does not determine either the amount or the type of transference (Clyne 1972; Bettoni 1981; Tamis 1985b). The stabilisation of the ethnolect requires a degree of concentration and linguistic awareness which are best attainable in bilinguals with a high level of education in MG. The latter promotes adherence to norms and hence better conditions for stabilising the ethnolect by obstructing the process of language shift. There is, however, some urban/rural variation of the ethnolect. For example, the transfers blokos< block ( = 'farm'), raksja< racks, traxtres < tractors, lori < lorry, tracki < track, which constitute part of the norm of rural bilinguals, are not intelligible to their urban counterparts. Furthermore, some integrated words used by members of the Sydney Greek community are used in their non-integrated form in Melbourne, for example, (feminine) (neuter) (neuter) (neuter)
zipa
In many cases, Greek-Australian bilinguals use different integrated words from those of their American counterparts (Tamis 1985b). A large number of these integrated words are non-intelligible to Greek-Australian bilinguals, for example, American Norm biloferi biti bobis dipos klopi kredito paja
English
Standard MG
In a situation of dynamic bilingualism without diglossia, the ACV would be expected to be more flexible amongst second and subsequent generation speakers reflecting the process of language shift towards English. Lexical transfers and code-switching should thus have a higher incidence. At the present stage of research, it appears that this is the case only with a minority of second generation bilinguals (approximately 8 per cent) who are
260
ANASTASIOS TAMIS
STANDARD MODERN GREEK (Stabilised)
ACQUIRED COMMUNICATIVE VARIETY (Variable)
Figure 17.2 Evolution of MG in Australia indifferent in their attitude towards acquisition and learning of the mother tongue. This factor, reinforced by the socio-cultural setting of language contact, tends to correlate negatively with language learning. For the majority of individual bilinguals, however, it would appear that a positive interest in language, persistent parental encouragement towards language learning and careful attention to speech are very important factors for language maintenance. Nevertheless, with the present distribution of functions where home is the domain in which MG is mainly employed, the necessity to communicate in the Australian situation is satisfied by linguistic competence. In other words speakers make do with their Acquired Communicative Variety and do not extend their competence to standard MG (see figure 17.2). Furthermore, at an inter-generational level the fact that the usage of MG by Australian-born bilinguals (see table 17.3) depends on the encouragement of family members has implications for the language used by their Greek-born parents. The speech of Greek-born mothers who stay at home is influenced by their school-age children who converse in English (Tamis 1985b). Their MG speech shows a higher incidence of lexical and semantic transfers. In other words, for second and subsequent generation bilinguals the language learned process is inhibited by the already contracted Acquired Communicative Variety of their parents, from which they draw extensively. Their linguistic repertoire has been reduced to a restricted number of lexemes because the concepts and names that they need to signify in their family environment are limited. After interviewing Greek-born bilinguals and their Australian-born children in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne, I
Modern Greek in Australia
261
found that certain words which parents no longer used were not intelligible to their children, e.g. patdri - 'loft', nikeloma - 'nickel', avdntzo 'advantage', and tavlds - 'wooden tray' were known only by secondgeneration bilinguals whose parents employ them. On the contrary, lexemes used by parents, even on an idiolectal basis, are employed by their children as well, for example duzina - 'dozen', kaQistiko - 'living room', dragoQike - 'it became stiff', and avyatisma - 'increase', were commonly used. Furthermore, Greek-Australian bilinguals tend to maintain the ethnolectal forms established by older generations of immigrants and it is via the Greek community that the influence of English is brought to bear on the Greek-born individuals (Tamis 1985b: 208ff). This is evidenced by the fact that certain transfers which were used by Greek immigrants 40 years ago and have now fallen into disuse in contemporary Australian English are still used today by migrants who arrived subsequently and even by Australian-born bilinguals, for example, the words bodzis, bodzaria and its plural bodzaries (< 'bodgie' < 'to bodge'). It was used to refer to a 'vagabond' in thefifties.According to the Oxford English Dictionary (vol. 1: 962), it is derived from the archaic regional verb to bodge - 'to be dressed in a clumsy way'). Other examples include tripenja <'three pence' (now a five-cent coin) and biploselino < 'two shillings' (now a twenty-cent coin), these are in common use amongst individual bilinguals of all generations. Thus, the process of attrition can be avoided if the domains of language use are extended to cover school, church and possibly work place. By expanding the function of MG, Australian-born bilinguals need not rely on the contracted ACV of their parents, but on the fuller ethnolect and in certain cases on standard Modern Greek. Nevertheless, the stability of the Australian MG ethnolect in the present bilingual situation should be viewed with respect to factors such as level of literacy obtained in standard MG, socio-economic and political power of the Greek community, its geographic and social mobility and the social integration of its members within the mainstream English-speaking community. Over the last decade children have been given more opportunities to express themselves in MG in public settings. The sense of 'inferiority' experienced by early immigrants and their children speaking their home language has faded away. MG is considered to be important as a community language for its educational value and not just for ethnic or cultural reasons. In 1986 Brunswick Grammar-St Basil School, a bilingual school in Melbourne operated by the local Greek community network, attracted 12 per cent non-Greek background students in its first year of operation, whereas state-run bilingual schools in Collingwood and Richmond in the same city admitted a large number of non-Greek-speaking students in their bilingual programme. The educational value of MG is
262
ANASTASIOS TAMIS
further illustrated by the high popularity of MG amongst students of Anglo-Australian background who attend tertiary courses on and in MG. Bardis' conviction (1976: 29) that because MG is a highly inflected language, it is 'exceedingly difficult for children to learn' should be regarded with suspicion. It is well known that attitudes towards language and culture also play important roles in language learning.
18 Language variety among Italians: anglicisation, attrition and attitudes CAMILLA BETTONI
18.1
Language shift
In the 1986 Census, about 430,000 out of almost a million people of Italian descent declared that they used Italian regularly. From these figures alone, language shift to English appears to be rapid, particularly in the Australian context, where Italians are the largest non-English speaking ethnic group. They also tend to live close to one another in dense concentrations, and have a long history of immigration. Shift seems even faster if patterns of language usage are analysed in more detail. From Clyne (1982: 27-56) we learn that in the first generation language shift increases from 5.4 per cent among the older population to 11.7 per cent among the younger immigrants. In the second generation, it increases from 18.5 per cent among children of intra-ethnic marriages, to 81.2 per cent among children of inter-ethnic marriages. Furthermore, in the second generation, language shift increases with age, dramatically so when children leave home in their twenties, and to an even greater extent in their later years when their parents die. Thus, Italian is mainly a language used by older parents and younger children. Given that Italian immigration almost ceased some ten years ago, we might easily predict that when the former die and the latter grow up there will be little Italian regularly spoken in Australia. Apart from these broad census figures and some general observations scattered throughout the literature on Italian in Australia (see Bettoni, Crino and Kinder 1986: 197-202), little is known about the details of language shift and its social determinants. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the main reason for its rapidity is the fact that very few Italians in Australia speak the 'same language'. The Italian language as spoken in Italy consists of popular and regional varieties. While one might have been expected it to become homogenised or koineised in Australia, instead, onefindsthat it is further threatened by different degrees of anglicisation and attrition. Most importantly, the attitudes towards these non-standard varieties are generally negative.
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CAMILLA BETTONI
18.2 Language mixing
Most first-generation migrants have an Italian dialect as their first language. In dealing with the Italian situation it should be made clear immediately that by 'dialects' we do not mean either social or geographical varieties of the Italian language, but separate languages which differ from Standard Italian and from each other to the extent of being mutually unintelligible if they belong to non-adjacent areas. Monolingualism in a dialect is characteristic of the lowest socioeconomic classes, but most migrants are upwardly mobile people and can also speak some Italian. When they do so, however, their Italian is both regional, that is, spoken with a heavy local accent, and popular, that is, characterised by morphosyntactic simplification, logical agreements and hypercorrections peculiar to speakers whosefirstlanguage is a dialect and whose familiarity with the Standard is limited. Although poorly represented in Australia numerically, other varieties of Italian should also be mentioned here because of their great social importance. Middle-class Italian, like popular Italian, is also regional, especially in the oral and informal registers. Where it differs most from lower-class Italian is in the absence of popular morphosyntactic features. Standard Italian is mainly a written, formal variety (for an updated discussion of popular, regional and Standard varieties of Italian, see Holtus and Radtke 1983, 1985; Lepschy 1983; and Mioni 1983; and for a broader view of the Italian sociolinguistic situation, see Mioni and Arnuzzo-Lanszweert 1979). English is thus generally a third language for Italian migrants. As it is usually acquired later in life, it remains their weakest language, even though it is the most relevant to economic success and their future in Australia. In the new contact situation, given the pressure for acculturation to Australian life, their new language interferes conspicuously with their old. This happens almost exclusively at the lexical and semantic levels (see, among others, Andreoni 1967; Rando 1968; Comin 1971; Bettoni 1981). Second-generation Italian children learn their parents' dialect first, but as soon as they socialise outside the home and enter the education system, English becomes dominant. Italian is their weakest language, because in Australia ethnic languages are rarely used outside the home domain and there is little incentive to learn their higher varieties. Furthermore, in the home dialect there is little need to learn to express everything, so when uncertain or in difficulty, the second generation readily turns to Italian or English. Italian intrudes into their dialect because the functional differentiation between the high and the low variety has collapsed. English, on the other hand, dominates as the high variety by virtue of its all-pervasiveness outside the home. If a tight control of dialect-Italian alternation and lexical transference are the most conspicuous characteristics of thefirstgeneration, those of the
Language variety among Italians
265
second are dialect-Italian mixing and an ever increasing amount of English transference of all kinds. While little research has been carried out on the mixing within the ethnic varieties (see, however, Rubino 1987), something more is known about transference (see Bettoni 1981). In the second generation, lexical and semantic transfers from English multiply; new lexical transfers are not integrated into the recipient dialect or Italian variety; and the rare code-switches of the first generation become more numerous and longer. New phonic, prosodic, syntactic and pragmatic transfers develop. The two brief conversations in examples (1) and (2) between an interviewer and a first-generation migrant and his son illustrate this progressive anglicisation between the two generations. (In the transcription, upper case distinguishes English sounds and words.) (1) NR: senta/ allora lei si chiama . . . GP: g poletto {listen I so your name is . . . G. Poletto) (2) NR: e di nome come si chiama? AP: il mio nome e andreino / ANDREINO (and what's your first name? my name is Andreino j andreino) In (1) the father uses only one transfer in the form of an English pragmatic rule when he gives only the initial of his first name. In (2) his son uses three transfers. Despite the interviewer's use of si chiama in the question, he does not reply with mi chiamo but with il mio nome e, which is a caique modelled on the English phrase. He further transfers a pragmatic rule by offering the spelling of a word, and finally adds phonic transference by pronouncing the letters with Australian sounds. This remarkable increase of English transference is not the sole aspect of the anglicisation of children's speech. Less conspicuous, but more revealing, is the fact that the same types of transfers used by different generations perform different functions. While the first generation can alternate new English transfers with their vast range of old Italian items in order to create expressive effects that are rhetorically controlled, the second generation cannot freely exploit both codes. They are obliged to use English items in order to make sure that basic communication is achieved. In the excerpts in examples (3) and (4), the same English transfer is used for different reasons by a first-generation woman and a second-generation young man. (3) eh / ne ho sistitri di anni adesso (EH / 1 am sixty-three-years-old now) (4) OH YEAH anche il DADDY e morto che avea / aveva settanta / otto anni / si settanta / THAT'S SEVEN EIGHT ISN'T IT?
(Oh yeah Daddy died too when he was / was seventy / eight years old yes / seventy / that's seven eight isn't it?)
266
CAMILLA BETTONI
In (3) the English numeral is used for emphasis, as it seems highly unlikely that a woman who immigrated at 35 and speaks English poorly will have forgotten how to say her age in Italian. In (4) the young man needs to check with English his shaky knowledge of Italian by adding the English translation. 18.3 Language attrition The inevitable consequence of a wider use of English, both in terms of language shift and in terms of transference, is attrition of the ethnic language. How does Italian erode? Givon (1979) has argued that both phylogenetically and ontogenetically language develops from a primitive pragmatic mode to an elaborate syntactic mode. He has further claimed that these two modes are similarly distributed into three contrastive pairs of human communication: pidgin versus Creole, child versus adult, and informal versus formal language. Using this framework I have shown that Australian-Italian erodes in the direction of the pragmatic mode (Bettoni 1985, 1986). This reflects three things: second-generation Italians learn their ethnic language under the dominance of English; in monolingual English-speaking schools they are not given the opportunity to develop their native Italian; and they are not encouraged to develop it on their own because they need it only in the informal family domain. Compared to the more developed language of their parents, the more simplified and informal language of the children tends to be delivered at a slower rate with lots of pauses and repetition; to involve a simplified and reduced morphology, and favour loose paratactic constructions; and to exhibit a greater amount of internal variation and inconsistency. The short excerpts in examples (5) and (6) show some of the main features of second-generation Italian: (5) YEAH me piaso / mi vo a SYDNEY TECH / mi studia notte / mi piaso cosita studiare notte e lavoro / giorno / il giorno se lungo pero mi piaso / e se / NEW FRIENDS amichi mi ho fatto / ah- su TECH e se VERY GOOD / me piase THanto (Yeah I like it /1 go to Sydney Tech /1 study at night /1 like it like that studying at night and working / during the day / the day is long but I like it / and it's /1 made new friends / ah- at Tech / and it's very good /1 like it a lot) (6) YEAH si sposa ed e R / ritornaTHa da italia / ah- andato f fa fatto un giro co lui na trovare so parenti in italia ndato / tre mesi cred che sia andato / esa / e- quando e ritornata / ah diceva che piaceva multo italia (Yeah she got married and / came back from Italy / went did did a tour with him went to see his relatives in Italy went / three months I think
Language variety among Italians 267 she went / she / and / when she came back / she said that / she liked Italy a lot) All sorts of hesitation phenomena slow down the pace of delivery. Silent and filled pauses, drawls and stutters are evident in the transcription. Repetitions recur frequently in (5) when me piaso is repeated three times. Word change also occurs in (5) when FRIENDS is changed to amichi, as well as in (6) when andare is changed to fare un giro. Such concentration of different hesitation phenomena cannot be explained solely by normal and inevitable difficulties in planning and executing speech, but suggest greater than average time and effort spent in verbalising the message. Both (5) and (6) show that morphological rules are weakening. In the former excerpt, amichi generalises a rule of plural formation by changing only the final vowel and maintaining the velar sound of the singular (cf. Standard Italian amid). In the latter, an interesting pattern emerges in the agreement of the past participle. With the sole exception of sia andato (which is a subjunctive), the past participle of an intransitive verb canonically agrees with its subject only when the auxiliary is regularly present (e R / ritornarHa and e ritornata), but remains invariable when the auxiliary is deleted (andato repeated twice). The children's preference for paratactic rather than hypotactic constructions is not so easy to illustrate with such short excerpts. Suffice it to say here that in the second generation subordination is not only rarer but also simpler. It is limited to first degree subordinate clauses, such as casual perche and temporal quando clauses. If the subjunctive mood or rarer conjunctions are required, the children switch into English, as illustrated in example (7). (7) NR: e a casa cosa parli? GT: parlo inglese / MOSTLY ENGLISH YEAH / EXCEPT WHEN I WANT TO MAKE MYSELF UNDERSTOOD
NR: e quindi italiano o veneto con chi lo parli? GT: ah / a casa parlo / non parlo italiano / UNLESS I'VE GOT TO MAKE MYSELF UNDERSTOOD YOU KNOW
(NR: and at home what do you speak? GT: I speak English / mostly English . . . NR: and so with whom do you speak Italian or Venetian? GT: ah / at home I speak / 1 don't speak Italian / unless . . .) Internal variation and inconsistency, on the other hand, abound even in (5) and (6). The verb piacere, although in all four cases it refers to the speaker's present likings for a singular subject, is used in three different forms within the same utterance: me piaso, mi piaso and me piase (cf. Standard Italian mipiace). At the phonic level both texts alternate Italian dentals with Australian alveolar ones, the latter complete with allophonic
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aspiration when their position would require it in English. At the lexical level, FRIENDS and amichi occur side by side. It goes without saying that when first-generation Italian is oral and informal, it too will share many features with second-generation Italian. Adults do not lose the pragmatic mode as they progress towards a more syntactic one. It is the same too with language mixing and transference. It is a question not so much of discrete features categorically present or absent in the two generations, as of a continuum which presents noticeable degrees of variation. Furthermore, whereas the first generation can control both modes and exploits them according to the situation, the second generation is left with no choice, and is compelled to keep on using a pragmatic mode as communicative needs become more complex and are better served by a syntactic mode. A vicious circle obtains: a child-like, undeveloped, inadequate tool is abandoned; through lack of use it deteriorates even further. Can this vicious circle be broken? 18.4 Language attitudes There are two opposite ways of looking at this mixed, anglicised and eroded language of the second generation. One is purist and stresses its shortcomings, not only vis-a-vis the language of the first generation, but also vis-a-vis Standard Italian in Italy. The other is more generous and stresses its undeniable, if limited, communicative achievements. In a multicultural nation such as Australia, any language resource should be treasured, and the younger generation should be praised for using their ethnic language as much as possible. This in turn will ensure that bilingualism is not only maintained but also expanded. Thus a congenial environment is created for rewarding language practice. Indeed Italians, unlike the French for example, have a reputation for showing delight at any attempt by foreigners to speak Italian, for praising them and encouraging them to further learning. This is certainly what happens when Australianborn Italians visit their relatives in Italy. Other ethnic communities, however, such as the Greek, have accepted more or less permanently some of the most common transfers from English, and tend to 'correct' outsiders who use the original forms (Afendras 1981: 180-1; and Tamis, this volume). The Australian Italian community, by contrast, shows little clemency towards transgression from the purist norm, as evidenced by the results of matched-guise experiments, which measured attitudes towards ten different language varieties (Bettoni and Gibbons 1988, and see also Pauwels, chapter 15, this volume). Within the Italian community, regional Italian and Australian English are clearly the preferred varieties. Both varieties score positively, not only for the more prestigious, power-oriented traits such as wealth and education, but also for those traits such as simpatia (likeability) and
Language variety among Italians
269
mateship which more obviously related to group solidarity. Light Mixtures, that is, language varieties characterised by some English lexical transference well integrated into popular/regional Italian bases, elicit unmarked, neutral responses for most traits. When they are kept 'pure', dialects too score close to the mean for solidarity traits, though less well for power traits. On the other hand, when dialects alternate with some Italian and English code-switches to form Heavy Mixtures, they are strongly stigmatised for all traits. The speakers are considered to be unpleasant, uneducated, poor, unreliable and ugly. Long-entrenched pre-migration prejudices condemning the dialects and favouring Standard Italian combine in Australia with new post-migration attitudes stigmatising English transference. This results in excessive purism. A new continuum emerges which has at one end the dialects with heavy code-switching, and at the other extreme, both English and Standard Italian, with the latter free from English elements. By assigning their best ratings to both English and a 'pure' regional Italian (their closest variety to the Standard, but also the least common and spontaneous within their community), Australian Italians have clearly indicated their desire to break out of the narrow confines of both their original Italian dialect and their new Australian mixed codes. At the same time, however, by assigning their worst ratings to the Heavy Mixtures (the most widespread varieties among the younger generation), they indicate their despair at ever fulfilling this desire. 18.5
Conclusion
The gap between the prestigious varieties of Standard and regional Italian on the one hand, and the despised mixed codes actually used within Italian homes on the other, is too great to be bridged without help. Further research on Italian in Australia should show how schools can intervene and break the vicious circle of spiralling attrition. If Australia is seriously interested in maintaining its language resources, its schools should first accept whatever varieties of their mother tongue the children bring into the classroom, and then develop these varieties along the pragmatic-tosyntactic and dialect-to-standard paths. Up to now, on the contrary, institutional language maintenance programmes have either ignored or overestimated the children's home language. In thefirstcase, children from Italian homes have been placed in beginners' classes and condemned to boredom, if not to sheer frustration and dismay when they realise that their own variety is much more useful to them than the bookish language of the anglophone teacher. In the second case, Italian children have been placed in advanced classes and punished for not mastering a more adult, formal language. In either case, it is not surprising that maintenance programmes have so far failed to arrest widespread attrition and rapid shift to English.
19 First generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland: language maintenance and language shift JACQUES DOUCET
19.1 Introduction Although research projects have been carried out on several Slavic languages in Australia (see, e.g. Kouzmin 1988), very little has been written on the language and speech of Serbian and Croatian immigrants in general or in particular states. This chapter presents the results of a survey of firstgeneration speakers living in Queensland. It seeks to determine which factors facilitate the maintenance of their native tongue or, on the contrary, lead to a shift to Australian English. 19.2 Is Serbo-Croatian a language? Some 135 years after the Vienna Convention, where a draft for the creation of a common Serbo-Croatian language was drawn up, the battle among language varieties and literary languages still rages today inside Yugoslavia and outside wherever Yugoslav-born subjects have settled. Its origin is both political and linguistic. Although Macedonian, which is very close to Bulgarian, qualifies as a distinct language in the 1974 Federal Constitution of Yugoslavia for external political reasons, the same document only implicitly recognises that Serbian and Croatian are separate languages. Article 269 says that 'Federal laws and other general acts of the organs of the Yugoslav Federation are to be promulgated in the languages of the nations recognised by the Constitutions of the Federated Republics'. The famous 'Declaration about the name and position of the Croatian literary language', published in Zagreb newspapers in mid-March 1967, demanded 'the unambiguous parity and equality of the four literary languages: Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian', which provoked the ire of the League of Communists and led to the expulsion of Ljudevit Jonke, a prominent professor and signatory of the declaration. However, it is now
First generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland
271
common to refer to 'Serbo-Croatian' in Belgrade and 'Croato-Serbian' in Zagreb so as not to aggravate the continuing dispute. 19.3 The language community
Because Yugoslavia is a multilingual and multicultural country where no fewer than 17 nationalities are recognised, the determination of language use is a fairly hard task when these populations are transplanted. As the question on 'language used regularly' was not asked in the 1981 Australian Census, there are no recent figures available on the numbers of SerboCroatian speakers in Australia and in its several states. The 1976 Census provides some details on languages other than English as it included questions on 'use of individual languages', 'language same as birthplace', 'birthplace of parents' and so on, but it is unreliable because of a gross error in the interpretation of'Slovene' in the entry, 'language same as birthplace'. An unfortunate confusion arose between 'Slovene' and 'Yugoslav'. Whereas Slovenian is the official language of the Federated Socialist Republic of Slovenia, Yugoslav as a nationality and language does not exist. It is a citizenship category and nothing else. One might suppose that many people preferred to call their native tongue 'Yugoslav' when responding to the census taker. The 1971 Yugoslavian Census also shows that 273,077 persons identified themselves as 'Yugoslavs'. Most were federalists who thereby refused to state their ethnic origins. It is, however, doubtful that 3,194 persons out of a total of 5,387 Yugoslav-born residents of Queensland would refuse to identify themselves ethnically to the census taker in 1976. In particular, one would not expect this of first-generation Serbs and Croats. How could there possibly be only 611 persons in Queensland then who declared that their native tongue was SerboCroatian? All these problems in the interpretation of responses reveal a rather poor awareness of the ethnic composition of Yugoslavia on the part of the Australian census analysts. Despite such difficulties, however, I relied on data given to me by the different parishes and ethnic organisations to estimate the number of first generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland to be approximately 4,685, that is, 87 per cent of the total. The other 13 per cent of Yugoslavborn residents include speakers of Albanian, the 'Shiptars' from Kosovo and Metohija, speakers of Hungarian from Vojvodina, speakers of Macedonian and Turkish from Macedonia and speakers of Slovenian from Slovenia. These figures are considerably lower than those given by Clyne (1982: 149) for New South Wales and Victoria, respectively, 57,666 and 55,789. Assuming that the ratio of first-generation Serbo-Croatian speakers remained unchanged up to 1981, there were about 5,692 of them in Queensland then.
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JACQUES DOUCET
19.4 Language behaviour of first-generation Serbo-Croatian speakers
In order to have as precise as possible an image of the language behaviour of Serbo-Croatian native speakers, I sought to determine the social domains in which they used Serbo-Croatian and/or English. Accordingly, I was concerned with the possible replacement of Serbo-Croatian by English in some domains and with the progressive shift to English in others.
19.4.1 Methods of investigation I approached 140 Yugoslav-born subjects to obtain information on their habitual language use. Most of them (90 per cent) were regular members or guests of ethnic organisations; 107 identified themselves as Serbs and 33 as Croats. While 127 lived in the Brisbane Metropolitan area, 12 regularly resided in Mareeba shire in north Queensland and one lived in the outback; 13 informants had arrived in Australia before the age of 12 and were thus considered as generation Ib subjects. One informant who had migrated at the age of 15 but had never lived with Serbo-Croatian native speakers was also considered to belong to generation Ib. Of the 140 questionnaires, only 120 could be processed. The remaining 20 forms were either inadequately or partiallyfilledin for unknown reasons. Of the forms used, 106 were from generation la speakers, that is, those who migrated after age 12, the remainder being from generation Ib. The degree of language maintenance or shift was established through the consideration of three sets of factors recommended by Fishman et al. (1966: 425-34) and used by Jutronic (1976) and Stoffel (1982) in similar studies. These are: (a) Media variables: speaking, writing, reading and listening comprehension; (b) Domains of language use: the family, the neighbourhood, the community, the workplace, and social services; (c) Situational variables: formal, informal and intimate speech. Although self-report data can be questioned because of differences in individual judgements and often wide discrepancies between what is said and what is actually observed, I found it to be a fairly reliable source of information in the light of my extensive observation of the linguistic behaviour of the informants. 19.4.2 Profile of the survey group Of the 140 informants, 105 (75 per cent) had migrated to Australia between 1951 and 1970; 101 (72.1 per cent) were.between 26 and 40-years-old when
First generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland
273
they settled in Australia; 82 (58.6 per cent) were skilled or unskilled industrial workers at the time of the survey; 15 (10.7 per cent) were farmers; 13 (9.3 per cent) were executives, teachers or physicians; 18 (12.8 per cent) were housewives and/or retired. 19.43 Assessment of bilingual skills 19.4.3.1 Media variables The informants were asked to rate their proficiency in both Serbo-Croatian and English on a scale ranging from native to basic competence in response to the question, 'How well do you speak, write, read and understand Serbian (or Croatian) and English?' The scale was 1 = very good; 2 = good; 3 = fair; 4=poor; 5 = bad. Among generation la informants, it appears that passive command of English is far superior to active command. Writing is the least mastered medium; more than 60 per cent rated their writing abilities as poor or bad. They also gave very low ratings to their oral skills: 45 per cent said they had only an elementary proficiency in this medium. This can be explained by the generally low educational and cultural background of the group. None of the informants had very good English on arrival and very few were able to benefit from the classes organised by the Migrant Services in Brisbane since their primary concern was to gain employment quickly. For their part, generation Ib informants rated their proficiency in spoken English highly. In fact, their speech had the accentual characteristics of mainstream Australian English varieties. In that respect, they have much in common with the Australian-born Serbo-Croatian speakers. They all rated their writing skills as 'very good' and 'good', which is reasonable, for all of them had received formal schooling in Australia at least up to grade 10, three of them having a university degree. Conversely, they rated their proficiency in Serbo-Croatian perceptibly lower than did their generation la fellow-countrymen, particularly in their writing skills, which were not developed after leaving Yugoslavia. The relatively low percentage of generation la informants who rated their oral skills in their first language as 'very good' (84.9 per cent compared with 92 per cent for aural comprehension) reveals language consciousness more than a shift. Many informants said they were fully aware of the modifications in their vocabulary due to the influence of the host society. Their evaluation, although subjective, shows an imbalance in the linguistic situation to the benefit of Serbo-Croatian. This should be remembered when and if a comparison is made with first-generation Dutch, German and Lithuanian immigrants living in Queensland. In order to gauge the usage ratio between Serbo-Croatian and English, I also asked my informants to indicate what items they write, read and listen to and in which language.
. Media variables
Ib
ian 84.9%) 11.3%) 3.8%)
(1.9%) 17%) 35.8%) 32.1%) 13.2%)
Reading
Writing
Speaking
Ib
la
7(50.0%) 4(28.6%) 3(21.4%)
88 (83.0%) 14(13.2%) 4(3.8%)
5(35.7%) 4(28.6%) 5(35.7%)
12(85.7%) 2(14.3%) — —
— 13(12.3%) 29(27.3% 39(36.8%) 25 (23.6%)
11 (78.6%) 3(21.4%) —
Ib
la 91 (85.8%) 15 (14.2%) —
7 35 32 18 14
(6.6%) (33%) (30.2%)
07%)
Understanding la
Ib
6(42.9%) 3(21.4%) 5(35.7%)
98 (92.4%) 6(5.7%) 2 (1.9%)
6(42.9 5(35.7 3(21.4
13(92.9%) 1 (7.1%) — —
13(12.3%) 47(44.3%) 38 (35.9%) 8(7.5%)
14(100% — — —
(13.2%)
Written items Serbian/Croatian
60.4%) 80.2%) 28.3%)
Serbian/Croatian 4- English
Ib
la
Ib
8(57.1%) 1(7.1%)
31 (29.2%) 15 (14.1%) 44 (41.5%)
2(14.3%) 5(35.7%) 3 (21.4%)
English
No answer
Ib
la
Ib
6(5.7%)
8(57.1%)
13(12.3%)
7 (50.0%)
5(4.7%) 6(5.7%) 19(17.9%)
4(26.8% 1(7.1% 3(21.4%
la
iends/relatives in Australia; 2: letters to relatives in Yugoslavia; 3: shopping lists
First generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland 275 19.43.2 Written items The majority of generation la informants use Serbo-Croatian in correspondence to friends and relatives, whatever their country of residence. The higher frequency of those reporting the use of both languages (29.2 per cent) represents in fact a grouping of informants who are clearly conscious of letting lexical transfers slip into their texts. There is, however, a slight shift to English (12.3 per cent) in the writing of shopping lists, which reflects the influence of the language of the host society. Generation Ib informants present a different pattern. An overwhelming majority of subjects prefer English when writing shopping lists and letters to friends and relatives in Australia. Use of Serbo-Croatian, however, remains dominant by necessity when writing to relatives in Yugoslavia. 19.4.33 Printed items The data in table 19.3 show that nearly all generation la informants (89.6 per cent) read the Serbian/Croatian press printed in Australia, whereas only half of generation Ib reported reading an ethnic newspaper regularly. This pattern retards the process of linguistic acculturation as it alerts and reminds readers of the structures which are least resistant to the influence of English, even if the effect is of short duration. The fairly high percentage of informants who read newspapers and magazines printed in Yugoslavia indicates a continuing interest in homeland issues. Considering the generally low educational background of informants, the low percentage of those reading books in Serbo-Croatian regularly should not be viewed as surprising. In Queensland particularly, the scarcity of books in Serbo-Croatian is a factor to be reckoned with. Only a few academics or physicians, just seven people, reported that they read literary or scientific publications in Serbo-Croatian, which mostly come from Yugoslavia. English, contrary to expectation, is on the way to gaining parity with Serbo-Croatian in the press domain. The reading of dailies and popular weekly papers plays an important part in the acquisition of English by generation la informants and thus strengthens the lexical and syntactic potential provided by radio and television. 19.43.4 Listening practices Radio broadcasts in the native tongue are very popular, particularly among the generation la informants, as can be seen in table 19.4. A loosely conducted survey showed that virtually every immigrant listened to the three programmes, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, regardless of ethnic origin. These ethnic radio programmes, more than records and folklore shows, keep alive lexemes and syntactic structures rarely used in the home domain to a much greater extent than do phonograph records and folklore
Table 19.3. Serbian/Croatian Printed in Yugoslavia
Printed in Australia
l 2 3
No answer
Printed elsewhere
la
Ib
la
Ib
la
Ib
la
Ib
95 (89.6%)
7 (50.0%)
39(36.8%) 19(17.9%) 4(3.8%)
3 (21.4%) 4 (28.6%) 3 (21.4%)
12 (11.3%)
2(14.3%)
7 (6.6%) 87(82.1%) 102(96.2%)
2(14.3%) 10(71.4%) 11(78.6%)
1: newspapers; 2: magazines; 3: books
Table 19.4. Listening practices Serbian/Croatian -1- English
Serbian/Croatian la 1 2 3
7(6.6%) 75(70.8%) 42 (39.6%)
Ib -
English
No answer
la
Ib
la
Ib
la
Ib
94 (88.7%) 23 (21.7%) 58 (54.7%)
6 (42.9%) 6 (42.9%) 5(5.7%)
3(2.8%) 8(57.2%) 6(65.7%)
4(38.6%) 8(47.2%) 9(64.3%)
2(1.9%)
4(28.6%)
1: radio broadcasts; 2: records; 3: musical entertainment
First generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland 211 performances. This is particularly true of the Croatian programmes which used predominantly pre-recorded releases and telexes from Tanjug, the Yugoslav press agency. Ethnic radio is also the major public source of information for those immigrants who have difficulties in understanding spoken English (7.5 per cent). Generation la is influenced by the massmedia of the host society, although to a lesser extent than generation Ib. Radio, records and cassette tapes and musical entertainment impose the language of the dominant group. Radio, in particular, is an insidious instrument for the propagation of English since people can stay tuned in to it all day long without necessarily understanding everything that is said or sung. Generation Ib respondents, although much more attracted by the items presented in English, are none the less interested by those presented in Serbo-Croatian. This can be deduced from the percentages in the entry 'Serbian/Croatian + English'. 19.4.4 Domains of language use Informants were asked to state which language they usually speak in five different groups of domains: family relations; neighbourhood and community relations; workplace and professional relations; social services; and automatisms and inner speech. While obviously many other domains can be identified, these best characterise the bilingual setting under scrutiny. The percentages in table 19.5 are representative of the total of effective answers. This implies, for instance, that only the 12 married generation Ib informants were considered when the ratio of language use between spouses was asked for. Table 19.6 summarises the distribution of the two languages in writing, reading and listening, as well as in the five speaking domains, in order to determine the pattern of dominance. 19.4.4.1 Analysis of domains The domain of family relations is an essential field of inquiry as it is generally the last one to remain unchanged before partial, then complete shift to language of the dominant group. My study shows that SerboCroatian remains dominant in both oral and written communication in the family domain. However, in the narrower home domain, acculturation is noticeable during interaction between spouses since 11.1 per cent of generation la informants declared using both languages. This percentage needs interpretation. Considering the low ratings the informants attributed to their oral skills in English, it is reasonable to infer that 11.1 per cent of the married informants are conscious of transferring items or whole sequences of English into their speech in Serbo-Croatian. This phenomenon is more
Table 19.5. Domains of language use Serbian/Croatian -1- English (%)
Serbian/Croatian Domains
Family relations
Social relations Neighbourhood Community
Professional relations
Administration Dept. of Immigration Other Depts. Automaticisms and inner speech
Situation
Conversation Husband/wife Parents/children Gd. pts/gd. chldn Conversation Fellow countryman Immediate neighbour Conversation At weddings At christenings At parties and functions Conversation Socialising with peer Professional with peer Both with superior Transaction Inquiry Inquiry Counting quickly swearing dreaming
English (%)
•
V / 0/
la
Ib
la
Ib
86.6 72 57.1
75 54.5 20
11.1 17,6 31.4
89.6 10.3
78.5 7.1
28.9 23.3 66.2
25 18.2 60
89 69.2 11 75 4.7 44.3 33.7 81.8
Irr.
la
Ib
la
Ib
16.6 36.4 40
2.2 10.3 11.4
8.3 9.1 40
(16) (38) (71)
(2) (3) (9)
10.3 27.3
14.3 21.4
— 62.2
7.1 71.4
— —
— —
64.9 67 25.6
66.6 72.7 20
6.2 10.6 8.1
8.3 9 20
(9) (12) (20)
(2) (3) (4)
41.6
11
25
—
33.3
—
(2)
16.6 8.3
17.6 10
33.3 8.3
13.2 79
50 83.3
— —
(2) (2)
— — 21.4 25 66.6
20.3 21.2 32 51.6 13.6
66.6 7.7 35.7 41.6 22.2
4.7 74.1 23.6 14.7 4.5
33.3 92.3 42.9 33.3 11.1
(42) (21) — — (18)
(11) (1) (3)
Table 19.6. Dominance configuration Media
Situations
Situational variables la
Writing
Reading Listening Family relations
Social relations Neighbourhood Community Community Professional relations
Administration Dept. of Immigration Other Depts. Automaticisms and inner speech
Letters to friends/relatives in Australia Letters to relatives in Yugoslavia Shopping lists Newspapers Magazines Books Radio Records Musical Conversation Husband/wife Parents/children God parents/god children Conversation Fellow countryman Immediate neighbour At weddings At christenings At parties and functions Conversation Socialising with peer Professional with peer Both with superior Transaction Inquiry Inquiry Counting quickly Swearing Dreaming
Dominance configuration Ib Serbian/Croatian; both
English; both
Serbian/Croatian
Serbian Croatian; both
Both; Serbian/Croatian Serbian/Croatian; English Serbian/Croatian; English Serbian/Croatian); (English) Both; Serbian/Croatian Serbian/Croatian; both Both; Serbian/Croatian
English; both English; Serbian/Croatian English; Serbian/Croatian English; Serbian/Croatian Both; English English; both English; both
Serbian/Croatian Serbian/Croatian Serbian/Croatian; both
Serbian/Croatian Serbian/Croatian; both Both; English
Informal
Serbian/Croatian English; both Both; Serbian/Croatian Both; Serbian/Croatian Serbian/Croatian; both
Serbian/Croatian; both English; both Both; Serbian/Croatian Both; Serbian/Croatian Serbian/Croatian; both
Informal Formal Formal
Serbian/Croatian Serbian/Croatian; both English; (both)
Serbian/Croatian; English English; both English
Formal Formal Intimate Intimate Intimate
Serbian/Croatian; both English; both Serbian/Croatian; both both; Serbian/Croatian Serbian/Croatian; both
both; English English English; both both; English Serbian/Croatian; both
Informal
Informal
Brackets indicate that language use is inferior to 20 per cent.
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noticeable during interaction between parents and children, enrolled in primary and secondary schools. While it remains the primary code for communication within the family, Serbo-Croatian is none the less challenged by English: 10.3 per cent of generation la informants reported that they used English predominantly when discussing school work and extracurricular activities with their children whereas 17.6 per cent declared they used 'mixed speech' (Serbo-Croatian + English). The shift to English is even more notable in every-day interaction between grandparents and grandchildren, possibly because of exogamous marriages contracted by second-generation Serbo-Croatian subjects. The children of Australian-born parents have only a passive knowledge of Serbo-Croatian and they usually answer in English when addressed in Serbo-Croatian. This might explain why a number of grandparents shift to English altogether. The relatively low percentages of grandparents who declared using Serbo-Croatian with their grandchildren, 57 per cent for generation la and 20 per cent for generation Ib, tend to confirm this hypothesis. It appears that three factors influence the choice of language in the family domain: the topic, the age at arrival and the kin relationship. Here the sex of the older relative might also be a factor contributing to either maintenance or shift. Older grandmothers invariably address their grandchildren in Serbo-Croatian (6 out of 6), whereas grandfathers in the same age group fluctuate between the two languages with a preference for English (3 out of 5). As far as the domain of neighbourhood and family relations is concerned, there is no dominant ethnic language in the neighbourhood (taken to be a suburb). While Serbo-Croatian is still the only code used between fellow-countrymen who live in the immediate vicinity, English is dominant on the street and in public settings, which reflects the absence of ghettoes. This is seen in the 1976 Census. Whereas the whole SerboCroatian-speaking population in the Brisbane City statistical division was estimated at 4,685 persons in 1976, the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine counted roughly 4,025 Serbo-Croatian speakers (Clyne 1982: 25). In the long run, it is probable that the very low ratio of Serbo-Croatian speakers to the total urban population, around 0.38 per cent, will contribute to language shift in the second generation. Within the Serbo-Croatian speaking community, there are also quite a few spouses and affinal relatives from other groups to be considered. We have already hinted that exogamous marriages contracted in the second generation promote the penetration of English into the family setting. Although Serbo-Croatian remains the only code used among generation la subjects, English is necessary for communication between relatives whose native tongues are different. This is recognised in a frequent answer: Govorim Srpski (Hrvatski) Hi Engleski, zdvisi na kojemjeziku mi govore. - 'I
First generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland
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speak Serbian (Croatian) or English, it depends on which language they speak to me.' There is no doubt that the domain of organisational life contributes to language maintenance, as demonstrated earlier, even though some situations already favour the pattern of Serbo-Croatian + English. Generally, Serbo-Croatian monopolises all types of interactions between generation la and Ib subjects alike, but English gains importance. As in the neighbourhood, the key factor determining language use is the ethnic origin of the interlocutor and, collaterally, role relations. My results suggest that Serbo-Croatian remains a functional code in professional relations and in certain types of situations encountered in the workplace. It is habitually spoken between peers in both formal and informal situations, although it undergoes displacement when interaction takes place between generation Ib subjects, particularly when the topic is strictly professional. Observation shows that speaking about technical matters entails the use of lexical transfers, which can trigger the production of sequences in English. Otherwise, the use of English is restricted to exchanges with monolingual English speakers and speakers of other languages. During informal conversations, a large proportion of male informants who migrated in the 1950s and 1960s showed awareness of the necessity to become proficient in both spoken and written English in order to gain professional advancement. It appears therefore that in this domain, more than in any other, English is perceived as the door to occupational prestige and economic success. A complete displacement of Serbo-Croatian in formal situations, although unlikely to occur among generation la subjects, is conceivable for older generation Ib subjects. At present, three factors determine language use in this domain: the identity of the interlocutor, his status and to a lesser extent, the topic discussed. English is necessarily the dominant language in the domain of social services, but many generation la subjects with limited English communicative competence prefer to deal with Serbo-Croatian-speaking public servants who work in the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs or with Yugoslav-born officers who work in government offices or ethnic organisations. In such cases, Serbo-Croatian is the only code used during transactions. As in the two preceding domains, the identity of interlocutors determines the choice of language used. Most generation Ib informants reported that they use English in the wider public transactional domain, and they do not need the assistance of bilingual officers. Although its scope is limited, this domain promotes language maintenance as it puts Serbo-Croatian speakers in situations where they can practise a higher register of the language than the one they commonly use at home or with peers. Certain speech routines represent a domain where English already
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challenges Serbo-Croatian. A substantial percentage of informants count quickly and use telephone numbers in English: 32 per cent of generation la informants use both Serbo-Croatian and English in this way and 24 per cent claimed they use only English. With respect to swear words, the percentages of informants using both languages are even higher - 52 per cent and 42 per cent for generation la and Ib, respectively. By way of contrast, dreams are reported as dreamt in Serbo Croatian. 19.5 Conclusion My results show the following pattern of language use among first generation Serbo-Croatian speakers: (a) Writing and reading are the most retentive media. (b) The family and organisational activities are the domains most conducive to maintenance, whereas the workplace and professional and social services domains are the least retentive. (c) Situations in which informal speech is appropriate are more favourable for maintenance than those which call for formal and intimate speech. All in all, however, there is no marked functional difference between the two languages except perhaps in the family domain. Otherwise, both codes are used in a wide range of domains and situations, although unequally. Only ethnic identity and generation gap determine the choice between them. In comparison withfirst-generationDutch immigrants who shift rapidly to English (44.9 per cent in Queensland, according the 1976 Census, see also Pauwels, chapter 15, this volume) but can be considered as bilingual subjects all the same, the Serbo-Croatian sample is characterised by a bilingualism of opportunity. English, in the majority of situations, is used only when strictly necessary. Therefore, there is no communal bilingualism. It is usual to find in bilingual and diglossic communities that the high code is typically associated with formality and the low one with informality. Yet we have seen here that both Serbo-Croatian and English can be used in formal and informal situations. Generation la is thus a group tending towards bilingualism without diglossia. Generation Ib assigns somewhat distinct functions to the two languages. Serbo-Croatian is dominant in the more personal and intimate domains, for example, the family setting and with relatives, the community and inner speech, whereas English is the language preferable in the workplace and in the professional and social services domains. Again, there are no clear-cut separations among situations. Both Serbo-Croatian and English are used in formal and
First generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland
283
informal situations. At most, it could be said that spatial and/or contextual diglossia are more characteristic of generation Ib subjects. A comparison with the results obtained by Jutronic (1976:181,185-6) in Steelton, Pennsylvania and by StofTel (1982: 134-8) in northern New Zealand reveals that in Queensland there is better retention of SerboCroatian in reading and writing and in the family and organisational domains. This can be explained by the recent date of immigration of most of our informants. Whereas 88.5 per cent of my informants migrated from the 1960s onward, Stoffel's migrated between 1917 and 1936. Whereas 92 per cent of my informants were aged between 20 and 60, Jutronic's were 75 years or older. It is likely that the existence of an already large third-generation group is a factor that promotes extensive changes in language use. As more exogamous marriages are made, the language of the host society becomes the vernacular code even in the family setting, and Serbo-Croatian is restricted to interaction between first-generation spouses, but even this is not exclusive of English. In Queensland, no great difference was observed between the Serbs and the Croats. Both ethnic groups strive to maintain their language, each for separate sociohistorical reasons. They regard language maintenance as vital to religious and ideological continuity. The associated beliefs and attitudes perpetuate the ethnic rifts which have plagued the homeland for ages. In this sense, the two language varieties are ethnic-centred. Among both groups, two factors affect language maintenance: age at arrival and educational level. Cross-tabulation between age at arrival and educational level showed that the younger the informants immigrated and the higher their educational level gained in Australia, the greater their shift from Serbo-Croatian. This is the general pattern, though notable exceptions exist. A few subjects with onlyfiveyears of formal schooling in Yugoslavia who arrived in Australia in their late twenties reported that they used Serbo-Croatian exclusively wherever and whenever possible. Observation confirmed this. Generally speaking, exogamous marriages, although rare, favour language shift, particularly when one of the spouses is monolingual in English. Place of residence does not seem to be a relevant factor in this study case. The language behaviour of rural dwellers, Dalmatians and Islanders living in North Queensland, is not significantly different from that of the urban residents, other things being equal. Clearly, one factor alone cannot bring about language maintenance or language shift, but a combination of factors can. As a whole, immigration during early childhood, exogamous marriage, secondary or tertiary education completed in Australia and lengthy residence in Queensland lead to a partial language shift in several domains and promote a more positive
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attitude towards the core values of the Anglo-Australian society. Oddly enough, this dramatic change does not entail an overt rejection of the ethnic heritage. In contrast, immigration during adulthood, endogamous marriage, primary education completed in Yugoslavia, relative recency of immigration, combined with strong religious and/or political feelings, contribute to strong language maintenance, as observed among the generation la informants. This is the dominant pattern in the Queensland Serbo-Croatian speaking community. Although complete language shift must be an extraordinary phenomenon among first generation immigrants anywhere, data based on crosstabulation between 'birthplace' and 'language used regularly' (1976 Census) show that Yugoslav-born persons living in Queensland display the second highest shift in Australia after those living in Tasmania - 16.6 per cent and 20.29 per cent respectively. Although the Queensland Yugoslavborn percentage lies much closer to those given for first-generation immigrants from Greece and Italy than to those concerning the Maltese and the Dutch, it is strikingly well above the percentages given for Yugoslav-born persons living in Victoria (8.37 per cent) and New South Wales (9.24 per cent). This might well be accounted for by the very low ratio of the Yugoslav-born to the total state population, 0.26 per cent for Queensland as against 1.68 per cent for Victoria and 1.30 per cent for New South Wales in 1976. An analysis of the speech of 40first-generationSerbo-Croatian-speaking immigrants does not contradict these findings. Acculturation proceeds quickly, as measured by the frequency of lexical transfers from English (though this should not be considered the sole yardstick for assessing language shift). There is, however, a point where the number of lexical transfers makes utterances cumbersome and even impairs understanding, but such is not the case in Queensland yet. The average percentage is 3.64 per cent across a range of 0.33-8.96 per cent for our sample. This is much higher than the 'relative incidence' of 1.6 per cent noted by Albin (1976) in the speech of his Yugoslav-born informants living in San Pedro, California. Although there is no rapid loss of ethnic identity among first-generation Serbo-Croatian speakers, the absence of positive language policy and practice towards ethnic language maintenance in Queensland exposes the two varieties to extensive erosion in the second generation. In view of the general pressure to conform to Anglo-Australian monoculturalism and with children subjected to compulsory formal schooling under prevailing mainstream values and attitudes, one may reasonably fear that the peer group core value system will disappear with the passing of the firstgeneration immigrants. The survival of Serbo-Croatian in Queensland would then seem to rest on a few motivated individuals.
Part IV Varieties of Australian English
20 A survey of regional usage in the lexicon of Australian English PAULINE BRYANT
20.1
Background to the Australian survey
A pilot study on regional variation in the lexicon pf Australian English (Bryant 1985) found clearly defined usage regions in Australia, namely, Western Australia, south-east South Australia, the Victorian usage region which included Tasmania and part of southern New South Wales, and New South Wales and Queensland (which form a fairly homogeneous region). The borders of these regions do not coincide with the State borders. The evidence for regional variation in Australia was sufficiently strong to warrant a full-scale survey. This chapter reports an innovative methodology necessitated by constraints of time and money as well as by conditions peculiar to Australia. It covers thefirsttwo stages of the full-scale survey, making comparisons with surveys done in other countries, and examines some early results. The Australian survey compares most closely with the United States surveys, as conditions in Australia are more like those in the United States than elsewhere. For example, both have fairly recent European settlement, with thefirstsettlers drawn from the same country, comparable geographical size, and larger usage regions than in other countries. Chambers and Trudgill (1980: 108) note that 'in more recently settled regions, like inland North America and Australia, it is becoming apparent that dialect features tend to be shared over relatively great distances when the settlement history goes back only one or two centuries'. The Australian survey differs from the American ones in several ways. One is that it covers the whole of the country, rather than dividing it into smaller areas. Another is that it investigates only lexical items, with phonological and syntactic variation being collected only coincidentally. Regional phonological variation is being investigated by Bradley (1989). Furthermore, the Australian survey is being conducted by one person rather than a team of researchers. A final difference is that there is not as much regional variation in Australia as in
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the United States, a fact obvious even to a casual observer. Most Australians know three or four words with regional variation, though, in fact, there are at least 70. 20.2 The stages of linguistic surveys
In other projects, several more or less clearly recognisable stages can be discerned. The first stage is the initial collection of the corpus of lexical and other items to be used in the survey. American and Japanese surveys exemplify two opposing approaches to initial data collection. The American surveys used material collected in a more or less haphazard way, over many years, by observers who published word lists in American Speech and Dialect Notes. For comparison with English dialects, Ellis's Early English Pronunciation (1889), including his 'Classified Word List', was also used. In all, 54 papers of direct relevance for dialect research were published in American Speech from itsfirstissue in 1926 until the early field testing for the first survey in late 1931. Further papers were published before the later surveys were begun. The earliest version of the list which formed the basis of the first American survey contained 915 expressions covering lexical, syntactic and phonological variation. This number was reduced to 819 after trials of the material (Kurath 1939: 148-9). The Japanese Seto Inland Sea project, by contrast, set out to collect items systematically, with trained researchers spending six years on initial data collection (Fujiwara 1970: 51). Both methods of initial collection, haphazard or systematic, resulted in a corpus of lexical items which were known more or less reliably to have regional variation. The second stage is to verify the items initially collected, to see whether they are in fact regionally distributed. It would be a waste of resources and time to include them in a survey, only to discover that they did not vary regionally at all, but were perhaps synonyms, or nonce usages, or mistaken reports. The verification stage in other surveys was usually done in a selected small geographical area with a limited number of informants. The final stage is to do the survey over the whole of the area under investigation, using the items that passed the verification stage. It can be done by one person, as in France, by teams of people, as in the United States, or by postal questionnaire, as in Germany and Scotland. 20.3 Initial data collection in Australia The Australian study also followed these three stages: initial data collection, verification andfinalsurvey. However, it was innovative in three aspects: the means by which the corpus of initial data was established; the data collection technique used in the verification and final surveys; and the
Regional usage in the lexicon of Australian English
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way in which informants were found. In Australia there was no preexisting body of data to draw on. The initial collection of data therefore formed the first stage of the Australian project. This corresponds to the compilation, presumably from several years' observation, of the word lists published in American Speech.
The earliest data used in the pilot study for this project were collected incidentally first in northern New South Wales then later in southern New South Wales, which enabled comparisons in usage to be made between the two areas. At first, these appeared to be simply interesting curiosities, without systematic differences in usage. Later, observations of some South Australian speakers showed that there were further, more marked, differences, and it began to appear that there might be regional patterns of usage, in spite of the received wisdom at that time that Australian English was homogeneous. Others interested in Australian English, such as Baker (1966: 342-9) and Gunn (1970: 64-5), had speculated on whether there might be regional variation, and had suggested items worth looking at. In fact, many of these items do not have regional distribution, for example, sweets ~ pudding ~ dessert, or lemon butter ~ lemon cheese; or are no longer in current use, for example, morning sticks - 'kindling', vest - 'singlet', or jackass 'kookaburra'. This left very little reliably known data on which to base a regional survey. Initial data collection methods, such as long-term haphazard collection or systematic collection by a team of researchers, used in other countries' surveys were not suitable for use in this project. Other methods were therefore developed. The project's location in Canberra made it possible for personal observation to be the main source of initial data collection. It is a demographic characteristic of Canberra, the national capital, that most of the adult population have come from elsewhere in Australia. Likely items heard were followed up with questions to the user to elicit exact information on regional distribution. Opportunities were also taken to apply the same procedures interstate. In addition, a list of resource people known to have moved to Canberra from interstate was compiled. These were asked what usages they had noticed were different in Canberra. In all, about 180 people provided oral information for initial data collection. The initial items were classified into categories of words that were likely to have regional variation, as given in table 20.1. Some of the categories are the same as the ones in the American surveys, for example, the weather, topography, roads, food, flora and fauna, the home, clothing, although the American surveys covered additional categories, such as numerals, expressions of time, illness and death, personal characteristics and emotions, domestic animals and calls to animals. Some items covered by these categories occurred in the Australian data but were not numerous
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Table 20.1. Initial data collection for the survey of regional variation in the lexicon of Australian English Total no. of references
Category
No. of items
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.
29 27 22 41 28 27 31 109 26 13 77 15 47 11 5 10 8 11 159
57 71 28 136 127 129 83 576 185 99 226 37 77 25 25 59 24 54 252
696
2271
Birds Fish and shellfish Animals and insects Plants School Children's activities Houses Food Clothing Personal items Household items Vehicles Rural terms Occupations Weather Roads and roadsides Geographical features Businesses and services Miscellaneous
Totals
enough to form separate categories. They were placed in the miscellanous category. A questionnaire based on these categories was compiled for use with interstate informants. They were asked the names of things in each category in the place where they grew up. Questions such as 'What weeds grew in the area where you grew up?' were asked, and informants were also asked to draw the items. The questionnaires served five purposes: they provided new regional names for known items; provided new items with regional names; confirmed data already given orally by informants; established the extent of usage regions; and collected new data in an openended section at the end of the questionnaire. In all, 109 peoplefilledin the questionnaire. A fourth data collection method involved a search of newspapers, periodicals and books. This was less successful. People do not always write as they speak, and particularly in material for publication they are likely to use what they think is the 'correct' word rather than the word they normally use. A second doubt is whether the authors are using the appropriate local word for the region where the article or story is set, or whether they are using their own words, and do not know there is a local word. Thirdly,
Regional usage in the lexicon of Australian English
291
recognition is difficult. Is an unknown term the name of an unknown item, or is it an unknown regional name for a known item? Because of these doubts (which also apply to oral usage on radio and television) printed material was not used as a source of initial data collection. A wider range of sources was needed. An appeal through the ANU Reporter (1983) for people to come forward with regional usages, was taken up by the interstate media and brought in 271 letters from all parts of Australia volunteering regional information. About 560 people contributed the initial data on which the project is based. This was added to the data I personally collected. The most frequently reported item was cozzies ~ bathers ~ togs (American: bathing suit; British: swimming costume), with 97 mentions, and the most frequently reported category was food, which drew 576 mentions. Altogether 696 items were mentioned a total of 2271 times. 20.4 Verification of initial Australian data The second stage of the project involved sifting out items which were not regional from the total of 696. The main criterion for selecting items for this verification stage was frequency, but this was moderated to some extent by my own judgement. Items mentioned only a few times, or with conflicting reports went into the verification stage. In addition, a few items not reported in the initial data collection stage were included, e.g. straw broom ~ millet broom and garbage bin (American: garbage/trash can; British: rubbish bin) because they seemed likely candidates for regional variation. In all, 186 items were included in the verification surveys. This stage corresponds to the testing of the initial data in various parts of New England in the United States in 1931-3 (Kurath 1939: 149), and on selected islands over a four-year period in the Japanese project (Fujiwara 1970: 51). Ideally, a similar procedure would have been followed in Australia, but lack of funding and the size of the country made it impossible to test most of the material in the areas in which it is used. 20.4.1
Canberra-based verification surveys
The verification stage was initially carried out in Canberra with informants from all states, rather than going to a selected small area, and used recollected rather than current usage of regional terms. As previously noted, the adult population of Canberra consists largely of people who have moved from interstate, and hence are able to provide information about lexical usage in their home towns. These people provided the pool of informants for the Canberra-based verification surveys, which were largely
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carried out at the Australian National University and Canberra College of Advanced Education. The surveys were carried out in Orientation Week, and were mainly intended to reach students who had recently arrived from their home towns to study in Canberra. Some had left their homes as recently as three days before. However, many people who had been in Canberra longer were also surveyed as they passed. Experience had shown that people's memories of home-town usage were excellent, provided they had lived in their home towns throughout their school years. This was a necessary criterion for including them in the verification surveys. The informants ranged in age from 17 to 61. In addition to the students in Orientation Week, some interested individuals and community groups were also surveyed later. The usual methodology in this stage of the research is for informants to be interviewed and asked a series of questions designed to elicit the regional information, or to be sent a questionnaire. In this survey, large numbers of informants had to be dealt with at once, as the surveys at Australian National University and Canberra College of Advanced Education, where the majority of informants were found, were carried out in a single day at each place. This did not allow for individual interviews, and a means of ensuring adequate questionnaire response had to be devised. A display was set up, consisting of a large box on which werefixednumbered colour photographs of the items to be tested. This attracted many students, who had the purposes of the survey briefly explained to them and were then invited to take part if they met the criterion of home-town residence during school years. They supplied their answers on forms with numbered spaces corresponding to the numbered photographs. At the end of the form there was an open-ended question asking for further information on regional variation, and for details about the informants themselves. After the Orientation Week surveys, the same display was used with some interested community groups. Later, the photographs were transferred to an album for use with individual informants. The pictorial format of the questionnaire had other advantages beside attracting informants and being suitable for use by groups as well as individuals. Using pictures removes any ambiguity about which item is intended. It also overcomes the danger of putting words into people's mouths when the item is described in oral and written questions, does away with the sometimes daunting task for the informant of reading a written questionnaire which asks for a lot of information, and is attractive enough to keep informants interested while they supply the information. The only disadvantage is that while it is ideal for eliciting data about nouns, frame sentences as well as pictures need to be used, for other parts of speech. For example, to elicit the verbs lock, latch or snib, there was a picture of a hand engaging the latch under a door handle, with the frame sentence, 'She is
Regional usage in the lexicon of Australian English
293
ing the door'. Fortunately, almost all the lexical items under investigation were nouns. Three annual surveys were carried out in this way, testing a total of 186 items, 13 of which appeared in more than one survey. The three surveys had 175, 304 and 288 informants respectively. This gave a total of 767 informants who verified the initial data. Of these, 80 per cent gave recollected usage of their home-town speech (excluding informants who had grown up in Canberra, who were over-represented in the sample). There was also information from 362 informants who did not meet the length of residence requirement but who added to the initial data. Map 20.1 shows the regional distribution of one item from the first verification survey. The symbols for the lexical items are displayed in a grid divided into quadrants. The two on the left are for female informants, the two on the right for males; the upper two are for informants under 40, and the lower two for informants aged 40 and older. This allows aspects of sociolinguistic information to be combined with traditional dialectology. The item is a small red variety of sausage usually eaten with tomato sauce (ketchup) at parties. Over most of Australia the 'frankfurt' names predominate, with the 'saveloy' and 'sausage' names as lesser-used synonyms. However, in Queensland, the main name is 'cheerio' (11 out of 18 responses), with minor use of synonyms. Moreover, 'cheerio' is not used elsewhere. This item shows a clear enough pattern of regional distribution to be included in the final survey. 20.4.2
Field verification survey
As a check on the validity of the results of the Canberra verification survey in which some out-of-area responses had been given, a small field verification survey was also carried out. The area chosen was where New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia meet, where there should be characteristics of all three States' usage, though not necessarily coinciding with the State boundaries. As part of the same survey, the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, which was expected to have homogeneous usage, was also investigated. This field survey aimed to check how the results of the surveys carried out in Canberra with informants' usage remembered from their home towns, correlated with usage actually gathered in those towns. This would show how accurate the Canberra verification surveys were (or how accurate people's memories are), and whether usage has changed. This survey in a small geographical area can be regarded as an intermediate stage between stage two, the verification work, and stage three, the final survey. From the first two Canberra verification surveys, 42 items were selected, all of which showed either definite or probable regional variation in the
NEW
,/SOUTH
AU ST RALi A • 4
frankfurts frankfurters franks ¥ cocktail frankfurts cocktail franks " • party frankfurts -i> party franks little frankfurts • saveloys V savs 4 cocktail saveloys cocktail savs
i
1
•
Nariel Creek* li
V ICTOR I A
WOevonport .
Map 20.1 Regional distribution of Cheerio ~ Frankfurt etc.
* Launceston
N E W TH
S O U T H
W A L E S
AUSTRALIA
Clare- .Mintaro
Darlington Po Coleambally U rayBri 9e
g^Str"aln¥bynT L
f
Parrakie
Lameroo Oaklands ^|D_ , Tocumwal Finley
T
^E.Henty Culcairn.olo ~i •Walla Walla Corowam .„ Jindera-(5-
Rutherglen Tr-AlburyDD|oD gWodonga
Map 20.2 South-East regional distribution of Dink ~ Dinky ~ Donkey
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PAULINE BRYANT
New South Wales/Victoria/South Australia border area. Ideally, four people would have been interviewed in each place, one man and one woman under 40, and one of each over 40. In practice, in some places fewer than this number were interviewed, particularly in small country towns visited at weekends. On average, three people were interviewed per town in 55 towns. Most (73 per cent) of the informants met the length of residence criterion of having lived in their town from the time when they started until when they left school. Indeed, most had lived there all their lives. Thus, their usages are considered current. Most of the informants fell into two socioeconomic groups, shopkeepers and shop assistants, but a few were farmers, housewives, etc. Informants were interviewed individually, using the same photographs that had been used in the Canberra verification surveys, and the interviewerfilledin their answers on the same type of form. Map 20.2 displays the results for one item investigated in thefieldsurvey. The item refers to the practice among children of one giving another a ride on the bar of a bicycle. It can be used as both a noun ('Andrew is giving Matthew a dink') and a verb ('Andrew is dinking Matthew'). The hollow symbols represent the terms used in the second of the Canberra verification surveys, and the black symbols of the same shape represent the same terms found in the field survey. The Canberra verification survey covered the whole of Australia, but the results from that survey are shown only for the area covered in the field survey. Moulamein in southern New South Wales appears to be the southern limit of 'double', which is used in central and northern New South Wales and Queensland. The term 'dub', which is used in Temora, Cootamundra and Junee, is also used to the east and north-east of these towns in an area not covered in the field survey. In Victoria 'dink' is used almost without exception. It is also used in the South Australia town of Mt Gambier and in the southern part of New South Wales. Both these areas have close ties with Victoria, being originally settled from that State and having strong trade links with it. In South Australia the picture is more complex. 'Dinky', which is the principal term used east and south of Adelaide, is also used in southern Western Australia. Thus it is the distinctive term for the centralsouth and south-west of the country. 'Donkey' is used only in a confined area of South Australia, mainly to the north and west of Adelaide, with some overlap in the 'dinky' and 'donkey' areas. Along the Victoria/South Australia border north of Mt Gambier, there is no influence across the State border, in spite of the proximity of some of the towns, for example, Pinnaroo (South Australia) and Murrayville (Victoria). Bryant (1989b) contains more detailed results from the final survey. Thefieldsurvey results correlate well with the recollected usage from the Canberra-based surveys, though with the comparatively small numbers of informants for each item in each area no statistical test of correlation was
Regional usage in the lexicon of Australian English
299
attempted at that stage. Some out-of-area usages were given by the current speakers surveyed; for example, Victorian dink used by some South Australian speakers in areas with no links with Victoria. Discrepancies which in the Canberra-based surveys had been attributed to faulty recall now appeared to be at least partly genuine out-of-area usage which is apparently characteristic of Australian English. 20.5 The final survey
The verification surveys had confirmed the existence of the four regions suggested by the pilot survey, and had better defined their extent. The regions were now defined as the South-West (roughly the southern part of Western Australia), the South-Centre (roughly South Australia), the South-East (roughly Victoria, Tasmania and the southern part of New South Wales), and the North-East (roughly Queensland and the part of New South Wales not included in the South-East; see Bryant 1989b). The tasks of the final survey were to delineate the borders of the regions more precisely, and to do as comprehensive a coverage as possible of the rest of the country. From the 186 items tested in the verification surveys, 72 items went into the final survey. Of the remaining items, the variation in naming was mainly synonymy, for example,pillow case "pillow slip. These items had been reported as having regional variation, and so deserve further investigation at a later stage. Thefinalsurvey was conducted in two stages, as the verification surveys had been,firstin Canberra, then in thefield.It began with a coarse-grained coverage of the country, conducted in Canberra as before, but this time other venues around Canberra were also used, as well as a network system of contacts. Most of these informants gave recollected usage as in the Canberra verification surveys. However, two additional sources of informants were available in Canberra for the final survey. The first was the Australian Bicentennial Castrol World Rally in Canberra in March 1988 to which participants travelled from all over Australia. The second was the Visitors' Information Centre, which for many interstate visitors is theirfirststop in Canberra. At both these venues, speakers who were current users of their home-town language were interviewed. From all these sources, using both recollected and current usage, an adequate coverage of most of Australia except the States furthest from Canberra was achieved. Obviously areas nearest to Canberra provided the greatest number of visitors, so that New South Wales and Victoria, which in any case are the most populous States, were best represented. This was important for definition of the border areas of the South-East region. The trial surveys had shown that these were the most complex borders, so it is
SOUTH
AUSTRALIA NEW
r* * r!\:
• • •
Slide Slippery dip Slippery slide Limit of 'slide' -• Southern and eastern limits of 'slippery dip'
Map 20.3 Slide
SOUTH
WALES
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PAULINE BRYANT
fortuitous that the majority of the informants in the final survey came from that part of the country. By the end of the Canberra-based stage of the final survey it had become obvious that these borders were even more extensive and more complex than previously thought. Near the junction of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia for some items; further east, it was not always between the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers as the trial surveys had suggested, but for some items as far north as the Lachlan River; and nearer the coast, the Great Dividing Range appeared to have a barrier effect. These findings were the result of covering more towns in the final survey than in the verification surveys. The second stage of the final survey consisted of four field trips to define these borders more exactly. Thus, in these areas a fine-grained survey of the type conducted in the field verification survey was carried out. The informants interviewed on these field trips were current users. In both parts of the final survey, Canberra-based and in the field, a total of 845 informants was interviewed, 325 of them current users, and 540 recollected users. 20.6
Preliminary analysis of the final survey
Some work was done on a sample of 18 items from the final survey to analyse out-of-area usage (see Bryant 1989b for a discussion of how areas, and therefore out-of-area usage, were defined). Of current users, 1.5 per cent used out-of-area terms, compared with 3.5 percent of recollected users in the same areas, that is, there was a 2 per cent error rate among recollected users. Even this figure may be on the high side as some responses classified as out of area may turn out with further work to be part of minor sub-areas. It is safe to say that the error rate for recollected usage is 2 per cent at the worst. Because the total number of current users was higher in the final survey than in all the trial surveys combined, (325 compared with a total of 243), it was possible to eliminate the 2 per cent error rate by basing the findings principally on current usage, with recollected usage providing supplementary information. Of the 42 items included in the field verification survey, 36 were among the 72 used in the final survey. As 116 of the informants from that survey had provided current usage, their data were included in the final survey. This gave the following:
Regional usage in the lexicon of Australian English Field survey Final survey Total
Current 116 325
Recollected use Not included 520
441
520
303
At present, the data from the final and field surveys are being analysed, starting with the South-East region. Map 20.3 shows the distribution in the South-East region of the regional term for one item, based on current usage only from the final and field surveys. Heteroglosses (see Chambers and Trudgill 1980: 103-5, and Bryant 1989b for a discussion of heteroglosses as used in this analysis) for the northern limit of the South-East term slide, and the southern and eastern limits of the North-East/South Central term slippery dip are shown. 20.7
Conclusion
A number of issues posing methodological problems have arisen in the course of this project. Three points, one specific to Australia and two of wider applicability, are of particular interest. First, out-of-area regional usage in Australian English is a phenomenon which confuses the identification of regions and needs further investigation. Second, the use of recollected usage, in the verification surveys, is remarkably reliable, with at worst 2 per cent of responses being incorrectly recalled. Third, the pictorial questionnaire technique, developed for use with groups of informants and also used with individuals, has advantages not found in other methods of data collection.
21 Finding a place in Sydney: migrants and language change BARBARA HORVATH
21.1
Introduction
When migrants enter their new country, they are immediately faced with the sometimes daunting task of finding a place to live. Studies of urban settlement patterns record that migrants often are concentrated in certain parts of cities; Little Italy and Chinatown in New York City may be among the better-known ethnic communities in the world, but they are far from unique. Ethnic neighbourhoods give migrants a place in the new country where they can speak their own language and obtain the goods and services they need to maintain to some degree the way of life they grew up with. Ethnic communities are not entirely separate entities, however, built on the edge of town. They are created within the confines of the host community, occupying areas once exclusively the domain of the host community or areas vacated by other, often more upwardly mobile ethnic minorities. Initially, the hosts may be attracted by some of the innovations brought in by the migrants, notably the food and the festivals, but it is rare for the hosts to hold the ethnic communities in high regard. Nevertheless, whether the host is attracted or repelled, infindinga place for themselves, migrants bring about quite often dramatic changes in the host community. Equally as daunting for migrants, but not as consciously undertaken, is the task offindinga 'place to speak' within the host speech community. The ethnic neighbourhood can never totally recreate the conditions of the home country. Cultural patterns cannot remain unchanged, the migrants cannot fail to join the speech community of the host. It is not a matter of simply learning to speak the host's language; the migrant must find a sociolinguistic niche to occupy. In locating themselves sociolinguistically, they also have the same potential for changing the character of the speech community as they have for changing its social geography. The role of migrants as agents of language change should be a particularly fascinating one for sociolinguists. However, all too often
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migrants, particularly first-generation migrants, are defined out of the field of interest; they are not considered to be members of the speech community because they do not speak the language as native speakers. This approach to defining a speech community is reminiscent of the early dialect geographers who wanted to include only those members of the speech community who best represented the speakers of an earlier form of the dialect and accordingly choose primarily rural, elderly folk for their studies, for example, Kurath's study of English in the New England region of the US. Sociolinguists interested in language change in progress have concentrated on urban communities where the actual processes of language change in progress can best be seen. It is not often, however, that the role of the migrant is focused upon. Too often only native speakers of the language are included in the study, and this may well overlook important sources of change within the speech community. Sydney is a multilingual speech community, largely as a result of immigration since the end of the Second World War. The most numerous groups of migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds from the late forties and fifties are the Greeks and Italians, but many other European language groups came during this period. New languages are continually added to the speech community as Australia accepts migrants and refugees from countries suffering political upheaval, for example, Spanish from Latin America, Arabic from Lebanon, and Vietnamese and Chinese from Vietnam. All of the languages are replenished by speakers who enter under the family reunion scheme which is part of the current Australian immigration policy. Support for multilingualism and multiculturalism is the overt policy of the Government (see Ozolins, this volume); the Government funds a radio station in Sydney, for instance, which broadcasts in 60 languages. English, as would be expected, occupies a privileged place in the multilingual policy. All speakers are encouraged to speak English and there is an extensive adult English as a Second Language programme sponsored by the Government. Few can choose to ignore English because it is the language of government, most of the media, education, and work. In this chapter I will examine how migrants and their children enter into the English speech community, that is, how they begin to fit into the sociolinguistic patterns that are already well-established in the community, and what effect, if any, they have on those patterns. 21.2 Australian English: the 1940s Fortunately we have available good descriptions of Australian English (AE) at the time just prior and during the early phase of the major migrations of non-English speaking people to Sydney and the rest of
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Australia. Although there are earlier writings to be found about AE, the academic study of AE began in the 1940s with the work of Mitchell (1946). Along with his colleague, Delbridge, he was responsible for the first major description and empirical study of AE (Mitchell and Delbridge 1965). Since the forties there has been a steady flow of research on AE, with studies of phonological and lexical variation accounting for the better part of the published work. From the very beginning of this research tradition, the variability within AE has been recognised as of major interest. Mitchell and Delbridge have found very little disagreement with their division of AE into three major types, Broad, General and Cultivated. Although one might quibble that the labels embody too much subjective evaluation, they do correctly suggest that Broad has the least overt prestige, Cultivated the most, and General occupies a middle position. The focus of the study of AE from the start has been on the variable pronunciation of a subset of the vowels. Some descriptions of consonant variation exist and researchers usually associate particular variants of the consonants with the varieties of AE as described by Mitchell and Delbridge. However, variation in the vowels, (iy), (ey), (ow), (ay), (aw), and (uw) (see table 21.1 for their phonetic realisations) has traditionally been regarded as the main differentiators of the three varieties of AE. Mitchell and Delbridge (1965a: 15) reported the following distribution for the three varieties: Broad General Cultivated
34% 55 % 11 %
21.3 Australian English: the present The description here summarises some of the results of a sociolinguistic survey of the Sydney speech community more fully reported in Horvath (1985). In this survey linguistic data was collected from 177 speakers using the typical sociolinguistic interview developed by Labov and his associates; the social characteristics that were built into the sample included ethnicity (Anglo-Celtic; Italian; and Greek); social class (lower working class; upper working class; and middle class); age (teenagers and adults their parents' age); and sex. 213.1
Determining the sociolects
The Sydney speech community was divided into sociolects by using a principal components analysis of the vowel variables (iy), (ey), (ow), (ay) and (aw). Table 21.1 gives the phonetic description of the variants. The
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307
Table 21.1. The phonetic variants of selected AE vowels
(iy) (ey) (ow) (ay) (aw)
Cultivated
General
Broad
Ethnic Broad
[31] [AI]
[3" I]
—
[81]
[AVI]
[am]
[AVUI]
[ai]
[ a " i]
[an]
[XD]
[D I] [aeb]
[a" •] [am] [DI] [ED]
phonetic description basically follows that of Mitchell and Delbridge (1965: 80-4) and Bernard (1970), except that some additions had to be made for an adequate description of the variation found in this set of speakers. An additional variety had to be identified and in keeping with the AE tradition in giving labels to varieties which give some sense of social interpretation, we have labelled this variety Ethnic Broad (EB). It is 'broader than broad' in two senses: (1) if one acknowledges a relationship among the variants of the vowels such that the direction of change is from the Cultivated to the Broad, then the EB variant represents a further step in the change pattern, and (2) it has even less prestige than Broad. In fact, whereas it could be argued that Broad AE enjoys covert though not overt prestige, Ethnic Broad enjoys neither. In addition, since many of the speakers spoke English with a decided accent, we needed to be able to distinguish those vowels which were clearly part of the AE system from those that were probably the product of interference from the first language. We therefore included a category called Accented to carry this distinction, but did not characterise it phonetically. By using only linguistic data and excluding social information, we are able to identify groups of speakers who share similar patterns of variation in their pronunciation of the selected vowels. Once the patterns of variation have been determined, the social and linguistic distribution within each group can then be described; we define these groups as sociolects. Each sociolect, then, consists of patterns of linguistic variation and patterns of social variation. The principal components analysis yields two major subdivisions among the speakers in the sample; these subdivisions have been labelled the core and the periphery of the speech community. Further subdivisions can then be made: two sociolects in the periphery and four in the core. The appropriateness of the labels will become apparent once the distribution of the vowels and speakers is described.
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BARBARA HORVATH
21.3.2 The periphery Of the 177 speakers, 47 are identified as being in the periphery. The distribution of each of the variants for each of the vowels for the two sociolects are shown in the histograms in figure 21.1. The primary difference between the two peripheral sociolects is the degree of accented variants; Sociolect 1 is much less integrated into the AE speech community and Sociolect 2 is more integrated, where integration is a measure of the proportion of vowels in a peripheral sociolect which are clearly part of the AE system. The social characteristics of these two sociolects is also of interest. All of these speakers are adults and are either Italian or Greek; it is not true, however, to say that all of the Italian or Greek adults are in the periphery. In fact, ten are in the core speech community. The major social characteristic separating the two sociolects is ethnicity: 62 per cent of Sociolect 1 are Greeks and 71 per cent of Sociolect 2 are Italians. Mitchell and Delbridge categorised speakers to arrive at their determination of the numbers of speakers of the three varieties. For a number of reasons, however, we categorised individual occurrences of the vowels by the speakers. As we can see from the histograms, if we were to label Sociolect 1 'Accented' we would be failing to notice the occurrence of substantial numbers of variants that were not accented. However, in order to compare our study with the Mitchell and Delbridge study, all of the vowel data have been aggregated in table 21.2 and the overall percentage of each variety for the two sociolects is shown. Clearly the major differences between the two is not only in the amount of accented vowels but also the use of the Ethnic Broad, Broad and General variants. Notice that there is almost an equal amount of Cultivated variants in the two sociolects. We will return to discuss the interpretation of these differences after we have examined the core sociolects. 21.3.3 The core The core consists of 130 speakers; the distribution of the variants for the five vowels is shown in histograms in figure 21.2. The most obvious differences between the core and the periphery are the absence in the core of any Accented variants; surprisingly there are no Ethnic Broad variants. This principal components analysis shows this relationship between the core and the periphery as a definite split, hence the labels. On the other hand, the relationship among the four sociolects is quite different; that these sociolects form a continuum rather than clearly defined separate dialects is shown in the decrease of the number of Broad variants as one goes from Sociolect 1 to 4 and the increase in the number of
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309
Table 21.2. Percent distribution of vowel variants in the peripheral sociolects Vowel variant
Sociolect 1 (%)
Sociolect2
Cultivated General Broad Ethnic Broad Accented
18.32 3.82 1.04 4.07 72.74
17.89 11.33 7.83 20.56 42.39
(iy) ' (ey) ' (ow) ' (ay) ' (aw)
(iy) ' (ey) ' (ow)' (ay) ' (aw)
SOCIOLECT 1
SOCIOLECT 2
Figure 21.1 The linguistic structure of the sociolects in the periphery Cultivated variants from Sociolect 1 to 4. The General variants peak in Sociolect 2 and 3. Once again we see clearly that there is no variety in which only one of the variants is present and all the others absent. In fact, there was not a single speaker in the sample who used only one variant of any of the vowels studied. The social characteristics of the four sociolects are quite complex. The
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BARBARA HORVATH SOCIOLECT 1
100%
S0CI0LECT2 100%9080 70 6050 40 30 2010-
(iy) • (ey) ' (ow)
(ay) ' (aw)
0
SOCIOLECT 3 100%
C'
(iy) ' (ey) ' (ow)' (ay) ' (aw) SOCIOLECT 4
100%9080 70605040302010-
(iy) ' (ey) T (ow) 1 (ay) ' (aw)1
0
(iy) F (ey) ' (ow)' (ay) ' (aw)
Figure 21.2 The linguistic structure of the sociolects in the core
Migrants and language change 100%
100%
80
80
60
60
40
40
20
20
311
0 1
2 3 GENDER
4 Sociolect 1
2
3 AGE
100%
100%
80
80
60
60
40
40
20
20
0 1 2 3 4 Sociolect 1 SOCIOECONOMIC CLASS
2 3 ETHNICITY
4
Figure 21.3 Distribution of the social characteristics across the core sociolects
graphs infigure21.3 show the importance of sex differentiation. Sociolect 4 at the Cultivated end of the continuum consists entirely of females, and males dominate Sociolect 1 at the Broad end. I will examine the ethnic dimension of this variable further. Middle class speakers increase from the Broad to the Cultivated end and working class speakers decrease. However, it is age and ethnicity that are the most interesting variables in addressing the question of how it is that migrants find a place in the host speech community. First of all, it is important to recognise that the core is over-represented by teenagers, despite the fact that we began with an evenly distributed sample, that is, 30 speakers each in three ethnic groups and two age groups. (In fact we ended up with only 27 Italian adults, which totals 177 speakers instead of the expected 180.) This accounts for the fact that teenagers dominate all core sociolects except for Sociolect 4. There are also more Anglo-Celtics among the 130 core speakers since all 60 are in the core and there are only 30 Italian and 30 Greek teenagers plus the seven Greek and three Italian adults. The most relevant patterns on the ethnicity graph are the dominance of Anglo-Celtics in the Broad sociolect and the Greeks in the Cultivated.
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Table 21.3. Percent distribution of Anglo-Celtic speakers over the three varieties of AE Sydney
Broad General Cultivated
Mitchell and Delbridge
Adults
Teenagers
34 55 11
27 67 7
20 76 3
Table 21.4. Percent distribution of Greek and Italian speakers over the three varieties of AE Sydney
Broad General Cultivated
Greeks
Italians
3 87 11
6 91 3
Let us begin to assess how migrants enter the speech community by examining each ethnic group in turn. First of all, let us compare the Anglo-Celtic group in the core with the Mitchell and Delbridge distribution across the three varieties, as shown in table 21.3. The adult speakers in the Sydney study should be more or less from the same generation since Mitchell and Delbridge collected their data from teenagers in about 1960. For the sake of comparison, core Sociolects 2 and 3 have been combined. We can take the distribution of Anglo-Celtic adults across the three varieties to be roughly equivalent to the patterns found by Mitchell and Delbridge. There are a number of differences in the way data was collected and analysed in the two studies so it would be a mistake to take such a comparison too seriously. The differences between the Sydney adults and teenagers is important; whereas two-thirds of the adults are in the General category, three-quarters of the teenagers are. Both the Broad and the Cultivated varieties would appear to be losing speakers from this ethnic group. If we now add the Greek and Italian teenagers as well as the ten Greek and Italian adults who are in the core, as in table 21.4, we can see whether the distribution patterns are the same as the Anglo teenagers. If so, this would indicate that once in the core the members of these ethnic groups are indistinguishable from the members of the host speech community.
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Table 21.5. Percent distribution of all ethnic groups across the four core sociolects Ethnic groups Anglo-Celtic
Greek
Italian
Sociolect
Adults
Teens
All
All
1 2 3 4
27 30 37 7
20 53 23 3
3 38 49 11
6 58 33 3
(Broad) (General) (General) (Cultivated)
The move toward the General variety is even more noticeable among the other two ethnic groups, with the Italians being almost entirely within the General sociolect. Quite interesting is the very low representation of both groups in the Broad category compared to the Anglo-Celtic teenagers. Also interesting is the number of speakers among the Greeks who are in the Cultivated variety; they represent the highest percentage in this variety of all the ethnic groups. In fact, the differences between the three ethnic groups can be shown to be even more distinctive when we separate the two sociolects which we combined to compare the results with the Mitchell and Delbridge findings, as in table 21.5. The Italians (which includes all the teenagers and three adults) and the Anglo-Celtic teenagers are alike in their patterning except that the Italians are not represented in Sociolect 1 to the same degree. However, the Greeks show themselves once again to be quite different; well over half of them are to be found at the Cultivated end of the continuum compared to only about a quarter of the Anglo-Celtic teenagers and just over one-third of the Italians. This pattern alone would be justification enough to claim that the Italians and the Greeks remain distinctive within the core community. However, when we examine once again the sex variable we see an even more striking difference. The male/female distinction is a very important one for the Anglo-Celtic speakers, for both adults and teenagers, but for the Greek and Italian teenagers, it is not. 21.4 Inter-generational variation
According to variationist accounts of language change such as Labov (1966) a) language change proceeds quantitatively; b) the process of change is linguistically and socially structured;
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c) social evaluation is the motor of change; d) inter-generational variation is a surrogate for change over time: each generation moves a change along 'one step'. What needs further discussion within the variationist paradigm is the role of the host community in urban settings where there is a high influx of migrants. It is possible to interpret the failure to include migrants in sociolinguistic studies as a presumption that it is the host community that sets the parameters for how a change will proceed. Migrants from nonEnglish speaking backgrounds, or rather their children, become Aussies by losing their accents and falling in step linguistically with their social counterparts, that is, in this case with Anglo-Celtic Australians of similar sex and social class backgrounds. As we have seen so far, the second-generation Italians and Greeks remain distinctive to some degree. One pattern that is definitely not followed is the distinction that Anglo-Celtics make between males and females which is a distinction long noted in AE studies (Horvath 1985; Mitchell and Delbridge 1965; McBurney quoted in Ellis 1887). Let us look at the inter-generational variation between the three ethnic groups and then take up the central question of how migrants enter into a speech community and what effect they have on that community's patterns of sociolinguistic variation. The differences between the Anglo adults and teenagers is more or less the expected one; there is a gradual shifting away from the highly marked ends of the continuum and a movement toward General with the sex differences being maintained. One of the major differences between the Greek adults and teenagers, though dramatic, is expected: the teenagers do not speak with a Greek accent. The Greek adults are also very low on the use of either the Ethnic Broad or Broad variants of the vowels and so are the teenagers. The Greek adults, both in the periphery and in the core, have a distinct preference for the cultivated end of the continuum and so do the teenagers. These two ethnic groups, the Greeks and the Anglo-Celtics, demonstrate the expected linguistic patterns. The younger generation moves the pattern of vowel variation along 'one step'. The Italian teenagers, however, do not meet the expected intergenerational pattern, except that they too do not speak with an accent. Although the use of Ethnic Broad and Broad vowels make up over a quarter of the adults' linguistic behaviour and there is also a fair representation in the Cultivated variety, the teenagers move away from both of these vareties and are to be found almost entirely in the two General varieties. If we assume that the development of the Ethnic Broad variety moves the Australian English pattern along 'one step' (as I have argued elsewhere), then the Italian teenagers are taking two steps backwards and in so doing jump ahead of their Anglo counterparts.
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We have already seen that the second-generation Greeks do not simply fall in line sociolinguistically with the supposed Anglo-Celtic trendsetters; the Anglo-Celtics are moving away from the Cultivated end of the continuum and it is the Greeks who are breathing new life into it. I have identified three intergenerational patterns: 1) Anglos follow the previous generation as expected; 2) Greeks follow the previous generation but this is not expected because instead they should follow their Anglo counterparts; 3) Italians do not follow the previous generation nor do they behave like their Anglo-Celtic counterparts; instead they jump ahead of the Anglo-Celtic teenagers by moving not one but two steps away from the ends of the continuum.
21.5 The speech community and change in progress The two generational model of change that emerges from the analysis of the patterns of variation in the study of the Sydney speech community is shown in figure 21.4. In the first generation, migrants form satellite or peripheral speech communities which may be attached to the host speech communities at different places. Recognising that there is variation in the first generation migrants, nevertheless, we can say that by and large the Italians 'attached' themselves at the Broad end of the AE continuum and the Greeks at the Cultivated end. However, the Italian first generation can be described as being more integrated into the AE speech community than the Greeks for two reasons. Firstly, overall they use more vowels that are clearly part of the AE system. Secondly, they add a new variant to the AE vowel continuum. The first-generation Greeks, by contrast, use a very small proportion of AE vowels and the majority of the AE vowels are Cultivated. In the second generation we see that all of the speakers are fully within the host speech community, that is there are no more accented vowels and, importantly, no EB variants of the vowels. Ethnicity, however, remains a distinctive social variable for this second generation. They do not, for instance, maintain the linguistic importance of the sex variable and they have a different distribution over the vowel continuum. We can also see what impact this influx of the children of migrants has had on the host community. The very highly stigmatised variant EB is clearly avoided by the children of Italian migrants; the children move right away from the Broad end of the continuum. The development of the EB variant may well have acted as an impetus for the Anglo-Celtic teenagers to move away from the Broad end of the continuum as well. Although Broad has been overtly stigmatised almost from the beginning, it has been maintained largely as a male-dominated variety with covert prestige. The Cultivated end of the continuum appears always to have had a minority of
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FIRST GENERATION
SECOND GENERATION
ACCENTED ENGLISH
THE AUSTRALIAN I ENGLISH CONTINUUM
Figure 21.4 The sociolinguistic relationship between migrants and their hosts: an intergenerational model
speakers. Without the newcomers to this sociolect, the Greeks, it may well have withered away. This might be called the 'cultural cringe' variety. It is regarded by Australians to be the closest to British Received Pronunciation and therefore the most acceptable and the one with overt prestige. The rise of nationalism which is nowflourishingin Australia, so that England is no longer regarded as 'home' as it was widely thought to be in the 1940s, has resulted in a more positive social evaluation of the General, though not the Broad, variety. The Greeks, however, having no particular associations, either positive or negative, with England, simply regard the Cultivated end of the spectrum as the dialect of AE having prestige. The Australians, on the other hand, have redefined what it means to speak 'real Aussie English' as General. In the discussion so far it is the speech community that has played a key role. In the past the notion of the speech community has not been particularly well theorised. Studies of New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Norwich and Belfast more or less assumed that the people living in the confines of the city could be regarded as members of the speech community, unless of course they were clearly a subculture within that city, such as the Blacks of Harlem or Washington, DC where they were
Migrants and language change
317
considered a separate speech community. In the study discussed here it was necessary to begin by questioning the assumption that everyone who lived in Sydney belonged to the same speech community. That questioning has led to a better understanding both of how migrants enter into a new speech community and of how they affect the patterns of variation and change in the host community. I began this chapter with reference to how migrants situate themselves geographically in the host community. It is interesting to find in the geographical literature corroboration for the notion of integration into a speech community as well as specific corroboration for the notion that the Italians and the Greeks differ with respect to the degree of integration into the AE speech community. In the social atlas of Sydney Horvath and Tait (1984) use an index of residential segregation which measures the extent to which the geographical distribution of a subpopulation differs from that of the total population. An index of 0 means that the subpopulation is perfectly integrated and an index of 100 indicates total segregation. In Sydney the least integrated ethnic group is the Vietnamese, the most recent migrants, with an index of 79; third generation or greater Australians have an index of 19. The Greeks in Sydney have an index of 55 on this measure and the Italians 45. Sociolinguists may well have gone too far in drawing a distinction between themselves and dialect geographers. Perhaps it is time to reconsider the relationship between sociolinguistics and social geography; migrants trying to find a place in Sydney certainly ignore neither.
22 Gender differences in Australian English ANNE PAUWELS
22.1
The study of sex/gender1 differences in language
Prior to the emergence of 'feminist linguistics' in the mid-1970s the exploration of the differences in linguistic behaviour of the sexes had featured primarily in anthropological and later in sociolinguistic studies. Anthropologists observed some phonological, grammatical and lexical contrasts in a range of 'exotic' languages where the sex of the speaker or addressee determined the choice of the linguistic form. Such differences were usually referred to as sex-exclusive differences (for a more detailed account, see, e.g. Bodine 1975; Brouwer et al. 1978; and Coates 1986). Sociolinguists studying urban dialects of European languages presented evidence of sex-preferential differences at the phonological, syntactic and prosodic levels (for a selective survey of English language studies, see Coates 1986). Despite various shortcomings of explanatory and methodological nature in earlier anthropological and sociolinguistic studies with respect to the gender issue (see Cameron and Coates 1985; Coates 1986; and Milroy 1987), such studies provided and still provide a substantial database for the analysis of gender differences in language within a feminist linguistic framework. Over the past 15 years psycholinguists, pragmalinguists, conversational analysts, etc., have also increasingly become interested in a more serious study of the differences and similarities in the linguistic behaviour of the sexes (see Thorne, Kramarae and Henley 1983). In addition to the study of isolated language variables, for example, gender differences in pronunciation, attention is also being paid to differences in the communicative competence of men and women, in their speech styles, for example, politeness phenomena, topic choice, turn-taking behaviour, interruptions, questions and directives, and to the acquisition of gender-specific speech styles. Another major strand in feminist linguistic research concerns the
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representation of the sexes in the language system, that is, the relationship between ideology, gender and the language system. Many languages are found to exhibit in their structures a gender bias (against women in favour of men). This androcentrism in language is often experienced negatively by female language users. In relation to this issue, the following aspects are usually examined: areas of sexism/androcentrism in language, effects of androcentrism on language users and proposals for eliminating gender bias in language. 22.2 The study of gender differences in language in Australia Language and gender/sex research in Australia focuses on similar issues as the ones outlined above and also shows similar trends in development. The multicultural and multilingual nature of Australian society allows the issue to be studied in relation to a multitude of Aboriginal/indigenous and immigrant/'transported' languages as well as cross-culturally. Sexexclusive markers and speech styles can still be observed in some Aboriginal languages (see e.g. Dixon 1980). The role of women and men in the process of language contact and language shift to English is being examined for indigenous and non-English speaking speech communities from sociolinguistic, social psychological and anthropological perspectives (see, e.g. Callan and Gallois 1982; Callan, Gallois and Forbes 1983; Evans 1986; Pauwels 1987b; Schmidt 1985; Troy 1987; and Horvath, this volume). The study of sex differences at the phonological and grammatical levels and the analysis of sexism in Australian English have so far gained most attention. More recent developments in Australian language and gender research include the study of gender specific speech styles 2 and of the linguistic change occurring as a consequence of feminist language planning as well as analyses of the reactions towards such change (e.g. Davies 1987; and Pauwels 1987a). The focus of this chapter will be on gender differences in phonology, grammar, prosody and lexis in Australian English. The data for this survey have come mainly from sociolinguistic studies of Australian English carried out over the past 20 years. (See Pauwels 1987c for other aspects of language and gender in Australia.) 22.3
Gender differences in Australian English
Data on gender differences in the use of Australian English have derived predominantly from wider variationist studies focusing on phonological and grammatical variation in a more general manner. Unfortunately, Australian data on sex-specific speech styles and on speech strategies used by women and men in various linguistic environments are very scarce. This
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is partly due to the fact that discourse and conversational analytic studies have so far emphasised the differences related to social class or ethnicity more than to those related to gender. Gender differences focus more prominently in recent studies adopting a systemic linguistic approach. This survey shall be limited tofindingsregarding gender differences in language below and at sentence level. Generally speaking, Australian findings on the gender distribution of (morpho-)phonological and some syntactic variants closely resemble the findings of American and British studies. Women are found to use the prestigious or standard variants of certain phonological and grammatical variables more than men. This should not come as a great surprise as the studies from which thesefindingshave sprung have all employed more or less the same methodology and the situation of women in these three societies is comparable. Thefirstmajor (pre-sociolinguistic) study to look at gender and language was that of Mitchell and Delbridge (1965), in which the speech of Australian adolescents was investigated. The vowel variants of/i/, /u/, / ei/, /ou/, /ai/ and /ao/ were regarded by Mitchell and Delbridge as the main differentiators of the Australian English varieties: Cultivated, General and Broad Australian. Cultivated Australian was regarded as the variety closest to British Received Pronunciation (RP) and Broad Australian as the variety furthest removed from RP. Male adolescents were found almost exclusively in the Broad and General categories of Australian English, whereas female adolescents were more evenly distributed over the three categories, as in table 22.1. A recent large-scale study examining variation in Australian English as spoken in Sydney (Horvath 1985) revealed that Anglo-Australian female teenagers and adults were more likely to employ the cultivated or general variants of the vowels than their male counterparts. Small-scale studies on /ai/ (Scott 1982) and /si/ (Constantinidis 1982) also found that girls and women used more prestigious (cultivated) variants than boys and men. Consonant variation has received less attention in the literature and has been linked less strongly with gender. Horvath (1985), however, found that [f] for [0], /h/ deletion and the flapped variant of/t/ were all closely associated with male speakers, while the aspirated /t/ was a feature of female speakers. Furthermore, the palatalisation of /t, d, s, z/ was recorded by Horvath as more frequent among male than female speakers. Postvocalic /r/ variants showed little gender link. The phonological variation of the verb morpheme -ing ([in], [in] or [an]) was also found to be associated with gender (see, e.g. Bradley and Bradley 1979; Horvath 1985; Ingram et al 1985; Shnukal 1982b; and Shopen 1978). Females consistently used the [in] pronunciation more than males. The variants of-ing as in thing, something, that is, [in] and [ink] were less clearly
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Table 22.1. Gender and major differentiators of Australian English varieties
Girls (53%) Boys (47%)
Broad
General
Cultivated
10% 24%
33.5% 22%
9.5% 1%
Source. Adapted from Mitchell and Delbridge 1965: 88.
gender-linked. Shnukal (1982b) though found some differences: men used the [ink] variant more, but this was not significant. Horvath (1985: 102) even noted that 'the [ink] variant stands out among all the other variants in that it is the only one that cannot be said to be either a male or female speech characteristic'. The tendency for female speakers to use more standard-like variants has also been confirmed at the grammatical level (see, e.g. Eisikovits 1981; and Shnukal 1978). Eisikovits (1981), for instance, investigated a set of grammatical variables among 40 working-class adolescents in Sydney. These included past tense and past participle marking of the lexical verb, the use of perfective have, the be or get passive, the use of multiple negation, subject verb agreement, is/are, was/were, dorit\doesrit, variant nominal constructions, me/my, and some aspects of clause syntax, for example, the use of what clauses to express comparatives, as in She does more than what Karen does. She discovered that the boys not only were more likely to use the vernacular variants than the girls but, as they grew older, also increased their use of such variants. Girls, on the other hand, showed a marked decrease in the use of non-standard/vernacular variants between the ages of 13 and 16. Differences between the sexes in this area of language use seem to vary somewhat among the varieties of English. Studies of grammatical variation in American English (see, e.g. Fasold 1972; Feagin 1979; and Wolfram and Christian 1975) did not reveal marked gender differences. Cheshire's study of Reading English (1982), however, did show gender differences similar to those found by Eisikovits in Sydney. Explanations for observed gender differences in the use of certain phonological and grammatical variables have been rather minimal. This is probably related to the nature of the projects from which most data have come: 'quantitative' or 'correlational' sociolinguistic studies provide descriptions of the relationship between linguistic and speaker variables, for example, age, social class, and sex, in order to obtain insights in the processes of language change. The question why a particular variant is closely associated with a certain group of speakers is of no immediate relevance to the main goal of such studies. If attempts at explaining
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women's greater use of standard/prestigious variants and men's greater use of vernacular/non-standard variants are made, these usually refer to the notions of status and solidarity put forward by Trudgill (1972). Women's greater sensitivity to prestigious linguistic forms (hence their greater use of such variants) can be attributed to their inferior social status in society. Since they do not have the same avenues as men to acquire status in society, for example, through education, employment, income, etc., women perceive the use of standard language forms as a way of acquiring status. Men's use of vernacular variants can be seen as expressing solidarity especially among the working class. Such forms are maintained as they may hold covert prestige for their users. The validity of such an explanation has recently been challenged on a number of grounds. As far as methodology is concerned, the model of social class membership used in variationist studies is unsatisfactory for the classification of women. Also, if marking prestige motivates women, why don't female partners of men in high-status occupations simply imitate the language of their male partners (for further criticisms, see, e.g. Cameron and Coates 1985; and Coates 1986). It seems more fruitful to seek explanations for persistent gender differences in Australian English by referring to the notion of social network (see e.g. Milroy 1980 and Cheshire 1982). Despite some problems with the calculation of the network strength score for women (see e.g. Cameron and Coates 1985), the social network approach seems to have a greater explanatory potential as it attempts to explain differences by referring to the controlling influence of the networks with which men and women are associated. Sociologists, historians and other commentators on social mores and societal structures in Australia (e.g. Conway 1971; Encel et al 1974; and Summers 1975) have repeatedly remarked upon the persistence since early colonial days of extreme division and differentiation between the sexes in this country. This rigid division of the sexes undoubtedly has an effect on the types of social contacts/networks women and men have and possibly on their linguistic behaviour. Also the strength of such cultural stereotypes of Australian men and women as the 'Ocker'3, the 'Damned Whore' and 'God's Police' (see Summers 1975) should not be underestimated in affecting the perception of what constitutes appropriate linguistic behaviour for the sexes in Australia as well as the actual linguistic behaviour of at least Australian adolescents (see Eisikovits 1981). 22.4
Gender and intonation
According to Lakoff (1975), the use of a rising terminal contour in responses to questions, to which only the speaker knows the answer, is characteristic of female speech. She interprets this 'question intonation' as
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an expression of uncertainty, that is, the speaker is seeking approval or confirmation of what she is saying, or deference. Quite a few studies set out to verify the gender specificity of this intonational pattern (e.g. Conley et al. 1978; Edelsky 1979; McConnell-Ginet 1978a; and O'Barr and Atkins 1980), but failed to come up with clear evidence in favour of this claim. For instance, Edelsky's experiment showed that the use of the rising terminal was equally infrequent in female as male students. O'Barr and Atkins' study of courtroom language showed that the use or non-use of rising intonation in declarative contexts is more a marker of speakers' social status (powerless or powerful) than of their sex. Australian research on intonation has focused on the increasing use of the High Rising Terminal (HRT) (also referred to as Australian Questioning Intonation (AQI)), which seems to be a relatively recent innovation in Australian English. Its occurrence is not restricted to responses to questions but can also be found in other contexts, for example, in narratives and descriptive speech (see Guy and Vonwiller 1984; Guy et al. 1986; and Horvath 1985). The social distribution of the HRT in Australian English indicates that female working-class adolescents are the most frequent users of this rising intonation. Yet, the difference in use between women and men is not very great: 60 per cent for women as opposed to 40 per cent for men, (Guy and Vonwiller 1984). There is no clear evidence from these Australian data for the gender specificity of this feature. As far as the interpretation of the HRT is concerned, Lakoff's suggestion that it signals deference and/or insecurity found some confirmation in the context of the interview situation. Australian working-class teenagers used the HRT frequently with female middle class (adult) interviewers. In other contexts, the HRT had other meanings, for example 'signalling the speaker's request for a heightened participation of the listener' (Horvath 1985: 132). 22.5
Gender and words
Examinations of the Australian lexis which made up a substantial part of philological and linguistic research well into the 1960s,4 provided very few details of possible gender differences. This is due, at least partly, to a male bias which characterised many of these studies. Idiomatic expressions, colloquialisms, slang, etc., which characterise the language of predominantly male groups, e.g. shearers, football fans, or are associated with male activities became the subject of careful examinations in a series of reports by the Australian Research Centre. The folklinguistic belief that colloquial and slang use of one's language is a predominantly male prerogative undoubtedly also played a role in this preoccupation with examining men's use of slang. As a consequence, the data on women's use of such
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phenomena in Australia is extremely limited. Keesing's (1982) collection of the slang of Australian women Sheilaspeak, and families, Familyspeak, is to my knowledge the only one to date to record female use of slang. The collection which is based on the author's own use and observations of women's slang as well as on some reports by other women, clearly shows that Australian women not only have a rich array of specifically female slang terms at their disposal but also use a good deal of them in their daily lives. Keesing furthermore points out that the meanings associated with specific slang expressions which are used both by men and women may be gender-specific, especially with regard to sexual terminology. For example, the meaning attached by men to the colloquial use of the verb Ho scrape' is 'to have sexual intercourse'. For women, colloquial 'to scrape' is synonymous with 'having a curette/an abortion'. Male bias is further present in the fact that such specific female interpretations go largely unnoticed in collections of Australian slang. 22.6 The politics of address The issue of address, which is among the primary resources for the realisation of social (including gender) relations, is being examined in depth by Poynton (1981, 1982, 1985). Working within a systemic linguistic framework, Poynton 5 distinguishes between approximately 36 categories of terms of address, including kinship and honorific titles, different types of names, solidary, approbatory and derogatory terms and analyses them in relation to the tenor dimensions of power, contact and affect. According to Poynton, the most striking observation about the terms of address in Australian English and their use is that the whole system is fundamentally skewed or asymmetrical, especially in relation to gender. She (1981: 10) notes: 'for only six out of the thirty-six categories which have been distinguished are the same (or parallel) terms available for both males and females, to be used in the same contexts and with the same, or similar meanings (apart from the sex difference itself)'. Address between males and females in public contexts is often asymmetrical/non-reciprocal reflecting power differences. A male superior may address his female secretary by either her first name or an endearment, but she will have to address him as Mr . . . or by his first name. There also seems to be a difference between men and women in the use of first names. If full forms of first names are not used, for example, Robert, Christine, James, Catherine, adult males will be addressed mainly with a monosyllabic truncated form of the full name, for example, Rob/Bob, Jim. Adult females, on the other hand, are more frequently addressed by the diminutive (mainly -y suffix) of their name, e.g. Chrissy/Chrissie, Cathy. Although diminutives are commonly used to
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children of both sexes, boys often come to see them, sometimes at an early age, as girls' names and reject them (Poynton 1985: 82). It seems that 'women, like children, can be addressed in public with conventionalised intimate forms to a greater extent than is permissible to men' (Poynton 1985: 82). Poynton ascribes this practice to the greater contactability of women (and children) in western cultures. This is further manifested in the practice of men (often complete strangers) addressing women in public by a variety of endearments, approbatory or derogatory terms. Asymmetry also characterises some categories of address. Men seem to have at their disposal a greater range of terms with which to address both men and women. Especially in the area of solidary terms and derogatory names, women 'miss out'. There are no female equivalent terms for mate or sport. Whereas men have a large range of derogatory terms available for denigrating women as women, women do not have access to a large set of words for denigrating men as men. Many of Poynton's findings regarding the 'gender' politics of address in Australia confirm the observations of overseas researchers (see, e.g. Kramer 1975; McConnell-Ginet 1978b; Stanley 1977; and Wolfson and Manes 1980).
22.7
Conclusion
In this chapter I have shown that the linguistic behaviour of Englishspeaking women and men in Australia closely resembles that of men and women in other parts of the English-speaking world. Women are more likely than men to use standard variants of certain phonological and grammatical variants. There is also some evidence for a genderdifferentiated use of slang and colloquial expressions. The system of terms of address in Australian English has been shown to be skewed, especially in relation to gender. Recent advances in language and gender research in Australia include the collection and analysis of data on gender differences in female and male discourse and conversational patterns and on the acquisition of gender specific language behaviour. Notes 1. Although, technically speaking, the term 'sex' has been used to refer to biological characteristics of the sexes and 'gender' to refer to social and cultural phenomena, the terms 'sex' and 'gender' are often used interchangeably. In relation to the study DTlinguistic behaviour of women and men, the term 'sex' is often preferred, because 'gender' is already a technical term in linguistics. In this article, the terms 'gender' and 'sex' will be used concurrently to describe the differences between men's and women's speech. 2. Anne Thwaite (University of Sydney) is currently working on a project analysing the speech strategies of women and men in a variety of contexts.
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3. Delbridge (1977) gives the following description of 'Ocker': 'good-hearted uncultured Australian working man, usually in early manhood, devoted to football and beer, with an apparently strong preference for male social company, a contempt for culture, a low estimation of women (who should be kept in their place), a cheerful aggressiveness in speech, and a markedly broad Australian accent.' 4. The aim of most lexical studies was to study the occurrences of words and phrases which are characteristically Australian in form. 5. Although Poynton acknowledges the importance of prosodic and grammatical features in the analysis of terms of address, she concentrates on the lexical realisations.
Part V Public policy and social issues
23 National language policy and planning: migrant languages ULDIS OZOLINS
23.1
Introduction
Explicit concern for an official language policy in Australia is of recent origin. It has been a focus of attention for language professionals, policy makers and others for only the last decade. However, language policy has had a longer history in Australia, and during the learly part of this century, when previously multilingual elements in the Australian population were overwhelmed by an assertive Australian monolingualism (see Clyne, chapter 14 this volume, and Walsh, this volume), language policy was one of many methods of control of both Aboriginal and migrant populations (see Fesl 1988). In the case of migrant languages, extensive controls over their institutionalisation evolved not only from general social antipathy towards alienness, but also more specific worries over alien languages and populations in wartime. Clyne (chapter 14, this volume) has summarised the pre-World War II restrictions on 'foreign languages' in school systems, school curriculum, and publishing of newspapers. Libraries stocked almost exclusively English language publications, and interpreting services were nonexistent. Following in the spirit of these policies, restrictions on the use of foreign languages in broadcasting were introduced in 1952. These policies were based upon a particular view of the nature of (white) Australian society, and a belief that monolingualism was essential for social cohesion. With such social and numerical dominance of Australian English, there was neither need nor provocation to make declarations of national language policy. Significantly, however, these policies and perspectives on language were to change, sometimes dramatically, over the 40 years of postwar immigration. Post war language policy in Australia is situated within the wider context of shifting government policy in a range of ethnic affairs issues. The federal government's constitutional responsibility for immigration has always
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encompassed a policy reach into post-arrival services, defined at times narrowly (e.g. migrant reception, settlement services, direct language services for new arrivals). However, at other times, it has been defined quite broadly to include the total range of policies that affect migrants in Australia, and interaction between migrants and host culture. Compared with some, Australian governments have always been extremely interventionist in their approaches to particular social groups. Both Federal and State governments are heavily involved in direct provision of services, and the detailed regulation and control of other ostensibly private areas. This interventionist stance has brought its own kind of response: a growing mobilisation on ethnic affairs and demands for new sets of government interventions and services. An emphasis on centralisation and government delivery of service could also in time be exploited for a call for national perspectives on language policies. I shall briefly trace the evolution of ethnic affairs policy, and the growing language issue, in the decades of postwar migration, particularly with reference to migrants of non-English speaking background (NESB). 23.2 Migrants, language and social policy
Martin (1978) has outlined three gradually evolving phases in the reception given to the massive postwar migrant influx. The first phase, from the beginning of the migration programme to about the mid-1960s, is characterised by a belief in the essentially unproblematic assimilability of the migrant. Martin (1978: 27) describes the prevailing attitudes towards migrants as being 'lucky to have found a home in Australia, coming from the tensions and economic desolation of postwar Europe: they were essential to economic growth and they were assimilable'. This assimilation perspective had definite consequences for language. Firstly, in order to guarantee assimilation, an extensive English as a Second Language programme was instituted for adult migrants. This consisted at times of English classes in staging camps in Europe, shipboard classes, classes at migrant reception centres in Australia, continuation classes and English lessons by radio. The methodology adopted, the direct method, or 'Situational English', specifically shunned bilingual approaches to language learning. In view of the prevailing social theory of rapid assimilation, course organisers were encouraged to teach linguistically and nationally mixed classes to prevent back-translation and first-language use (Pitman 1952). Yet while this programme was instituted for adults, it was considered that no provision needed to be made for NESB children. It was expected that they would pick up the language quickly and easily from their Australian peers. Official reports loudly attested to the wisdom of this
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policy, the most notable being conducted for the Immigration Advisory Council by Judge Dovey in 1960. This study surveyed school principals throughout Australia, and reported that migrant children 'overwhelmingly' settled well into Australian schools, were academically achieving as highly as their Australian classmates, and rarely causing behavioural problems in school. The very few migrant children who were not doing well at school were identified by the report as those who persisted in speaking their first language at home. Dovey implored parents to speak English at home for the educational good of their children (Australia, Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council 1960). The Dovey report was replete with methodological inconsistencies and questionable relations between evidence and conclusions (Price 1960), but it stands as a very significant reflection of the linguistic and social attitudes towards migrants at the time. Migrant groups, confronted by such a set of language policies, were cautious but quietly insistent about maintaining their languages and establishing language maintenance institutions. Despite the restrictions, newspaper publishing in languages other than English (LOTEs) was undertaken by all migrant groups of any size and concentration. Most migrant communities, who were more directly concerned with language maintenance for the future, also established and continued to support parttime, after-hours schools for their children. These were run (usually voluntarily) by members of the community and presented a curriculum of largely language study, perhaps with some cultural or religious aspects as well. These particular schools were little noticed and even less understood by Australian public institutions. Gradually they acquired the generic name of 'ethnic schools'. Despite scarce resources, their continued existence (and later subsequent growth in numbers) demonstrated the determination of these groups to maintain their language into the next generation. The second phase Martin identifies is a period from around the mid1960s to the early 1970s when perceptions of migrants changed as a result of the growing evidence of severe social and economic disadvantage of the migrant population. Whereas they had tended to be seen as a group happily benefiting from the opportunities provided by Australian society, surveys began to show that migrants (then largely from Southern Europe) had distinctly low prospects for mobility. Considerable ethnic stratification was found in the workplace, with migrants concentrated heavily at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy. Moreover, their children, far from being the unproblematic population described by Dovey, were now concentrated in overcrowded and under-resourced inner-urban schools and often did poorly at school. The migrant, and migrant education in partidular, were now beginning to be defined as a problem (Martin 1978).
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Immigration ministers of the late 1960s, Snedden and Lynch, recognised these albeit unintended consequences of the migration program and officially buried the rhetoric of assimilation and promoted instead a concept of integration. Australia's highly visible migrant communities had clearly not been absorbed into Australian society as previously envisaged. Snedden sought to bring about policy changes in line with this change of rhetoric. He directed his department's attention to failings in services to new settlers and urged attention particularly to educational matters, where he had found an almost complete lack of official data on the performance of migrant children. Sensing the beginning of political restlessness among the migrant communities themselves, Snedden and Lynch initiated developments in several areas of language policy (Martin 1978). Interpreting services were identified as an area requiring government provision and control, to ensure both adequacy of service and minimal standards for practitioners. Thus, planning was undertaken for the Federal Government's Emergency Telephone Interpreter Service (see 23.5). With the Immigration (Education) Act 1971 the Federal Government sponsored thefirstwidescale and systematic teaching of English as a Second Language to migrant children, funding English as a Second Language teachers, teacher training and later some capital costs. This constituted a deliberate break from previous ideas that migrant children would pick up English without formal tuition. Moreover, although the methodology adopted by this Child Migrant Education programme was again the direct method (with at this stage no bilingual element), the programme was to have an influence on language issues far beyond that of English as a Second Language teaching alone. The raising of the question of the educability of NESB children made it possible, as we shall see, for other definitions of 'migrant education' to be raised and debated. Language teachers also began during this period to mention language maintenance as a possible objective of language teaching in schools. This represented a departure from previous views of foreign language education, which held that foreign language learning was of intellectual/cultural value (especially for the elite), but at the same time shunned the languages spoken by migrants in Australia. The case of Italian (the language of Australia's largest NESB population) is instructive here (see also Bettoni, this volume). While there were moves to establish Italian as a legitimate school subject in earlier decades, these earlier advocates were careful to place language maintenance issues distinctly second to traditional arguments of the cultural and intellectual benefits of language study. Italian was thus primarily advocated on similar intellectual/cultural grounds that had underpinned the traditional place of French and German. For some teachers, the advent of a migrant population added a certain potential for learning of particular languages, as in this suggestion from a 1956 Victorian modern language teachers' conference:
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in districts where there is a large migrant community, the language of that group could be taught in schools. For example, in an area where there are a number of Italian migrants, Italian could be taught, not of course for the benefit of the Italian children, but for that of the Australians who would have the opportunity of using a foreign language actively, of appreciating a foreign culture and thereby helping in the assimilation of migrants into the community' (Babel, no. 3, 1950: 33). Language teaching would retain its traditional clientele and purposes, but now would be made more alive by the presence of a population that could be practised on. The language would not, 'of course', be taught for language maintenance purposes. However, by the 1960s language maintenance aspects also began to be stressed by advocates of Italian (McCormack 1964). In 1964 Clyne took up McCormack's suggestions regarding Italian and generalised this to speak of the need for the wider study of what he called 'migrant languages' (a new term), not least for the direct benefit of recognising and respecting migrant cultures and languages, and promoting bilingualism. Clyne (1964) in particular argued against the contemporary view that bilingualism would be harmful to children, or would serve to retard assimilation of migrants into Australian society. The third stage of response to the migrant presence in Australia Martin dates from the early 1970s and characterises as being the development of perspectives of multiculturalism. This concept of multiculturalism has provoked a plethora of interpretations, with its ideological force being of far greater consequence than its detailed denotation. Several different strands have contributed to this phenomenon, and battles over the desirability or meaning of multiculturalism reflect these varying antecedents. Some, such as Grassby, Minister for Immigration (1973-4) in the Whitlam Labour government, stressed recognition of the value of migrant cultures, of the migrants' contribution to Australia and the development of a unique national identity marked by diversity within the greater unity of the 'family of the nation', and the benefit of welcoming cosmopolitan elements into Australian culture. Grassby (1973) was also one of the first public figures to stress the value of maintaining one's first language. Ethnic groups themselves became more active over this time. For example, a widely representative Migrant Workers Conference in Melbourne in 1973 (followed by similar events in other cities) spelled out a set of demands relating to industrial, welfare, legal and educational issues, including the release of an important Statement on Migrant Languages and Cultures, which set out language needs encompassing the teaching of English, support for language maintenance, and the aim of language learning for all Australians (Migrant Workers Conference 1973). A followup Migrant Education Action conference in Melbourne in 1974 further detailed language education demands. These moves also led to the development of representative community structures for ethnic groups,
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with the establishment of Ethnic Communities Councils in Sydney and Melbourne in 1974-5, who from this time maintained a conspicuous presence in policy discourse on ethnic affairs. The Liberal Party, upon return to government in late 1975, explicitly declared its ethnic affairs interest by reconstituting the old Department of Immigration as the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. In 1977 it set up the first comprehensive inquiry into the wide range of postarrival services for migrants. This inquiry, under its Chairman Galbally, saw multiculturalism as a leitmotif that could guide policy in the various areas of welfare, education, communications, direct language services and other policy areas that impinged upon the well-being of migrants, not only in their initial period of settlement but also in their longer-term residence in and contribution to Australia (Review of Post-Arrival Programmes and Services to Migrants, 1978). Its rhetoric was not that of cosmopolitanism or migrants rights, but rather the development of an attitude of multiculturalism, stressing social cohesion and migrant participation in mainstream Australian society. In programmatic terms it stressed the coordination of post-arrival services, including language services, that had grown in an ad hoc manner, and brought disparate policies under a unifying rationale. The report was published in ten major community languages as well as in English. While multiculturalism remained a hotly contested issue by critics both of the left (Lepervanche 1980; Jakubowicz 1986) and right (Knopfelmacher 1982; Chipman 1985), the years since Grassby have seen significant development in aspects of language policy under this rubric of multiculturalism. I shall now look in turn at broadcasting policy, education and language services, to see the growth and conflation of some of the interests that would lead eventually to a national language policy. 23.3 Broadcasting policy and languages other than English
It is the area of broadcasting which has perhaps most controversially brought issues concerning languages other than English (LOTEs) into politics, given the heavy degree of government regulation and involvement in all aspects of Australian media. With restrictions on broadcasting in foreign languages throughout the 1950s and 1960s, such broadcasting was marginalised and by the early 1970s was generally heard on only a few, usually rural, radio stations. Broadcasting policy, however, was to be an area of keen interest for the Whitlam Labour government (1972-5). Firstly, it considerably expanded and diversified existing broadcasting modes and outlets, created a new Public Broadcasting sector and an FM sector, and gave new licenses under already existing powers. Migrant groups were to take advantage of several of these developments.
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Secondly, in order to counter what it saw as the Australian Broadcasting Commission's (ABC) elitist and culturally outdated role, it created new radio stations for the ABC to assume new roles. The new Melbourne station, 3ZZ, was specified as an access station, attracting a variety of social groups with often non-mainstream points of view. With their relatively good organisation and access to a constant audience, ethnic groups became one of the dominant presences on 3ZZ, eventually occupying over half the air-time of the station (Dugdale 1979). Finally, following the activism of Grassby, the government set up its own radio stations using migrant languages. These stations, 2EA in Sydney and 3EA in Melbourne, had at first a primarily information role, to inform migrant groups about new government programmes, for example, health insurance, Social Security, learning English, etc., but they also gradually developed more general programming in LOTEs, but with less direct community involvement than did 3ZZ. The Fraser Liberal government (1975-83) followed up these initiatives with some innovations of its own. It closed the politically uncomfortable 3ZZ, but expanded the role of the EA stations, and slowly allowed a greater community input into the appointment of broadcasters and programme coordinators. The EA stations were entirely devoted to LOTE broadcasting, with programme time allocated roughly in line with the proportion of speakers in the population, but with a minimum time allotted to even the smallest groups. A small news unit supplied material that could be used by the LOTE programmes (Special Broadcasting Service 1979). With increased commitments to maintaining and developing broadcasting in LOTEs, both major political parties at the 1977 elections promised 'ethnic television'. This initiative was strongly supported by the Galbally Report and became a politically highly visible and much contested issue from that time. The Government sought tofindan appropriate mechanism to control ethnic broadcasting and, with the ABC reluctant to take this on, it established the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in 1978 with responsibility for the EA stations and powers to develop 'multilingual television'. There were few models anywhere in the world, however, that gave guidance as to what 'ethnic television' would be. As with 'ethnic radio', would this mean a television station catering largely to particular ethnic groups and involving them in programming? Over the years 1978-80, whqn the television station did finally appear, a subtle change took place in its description. The station was defined no longer as 'ethnic', but as 'multilingual' (the more neutral definition in the legislation). Finally and most publicly, as 'multicultural television', it appeared in a form far removed from that of ethnic radio. Beginning transmission in Sydney and Melbourne in October 1980, Multicultural Television Channel 0/28
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provided programmes largely from overseas. The majority of these were in LOTEs and subtitled in English by the station's own subtitling unit. An English-language news and current affairs service was also provided, often presenting issues from aspects of multicultural life in Australia. A small production unit made and contracted local programmes. For the Government, 0/28 provided both a highly innovative and well-received experiment in broadcasting, and a policy headache, with virtually continual battles over the appropriate forms of control over the station and its programming format (Leong 1983). While the station has attempted to cater to a variety of tastes and interests, some of its programmes have been accused of being too similar to those of the ABC. The ABC at one stage even coveted SBS television, which under ABC control was envisaged as a Channel 4 type station including multicultural and LOTE programmes among other quality programmes. From another direction, the commercial television networks which had provided a few hours of programmes including some LOTEs (variety/travelogue programmes) gave these up at the end of 1984, arguing that these needs were now adequately catered for by SBS (Patterson 1986). SBS thus often found itself in a political cross-fire. For the migrant communities, Channel 0/28 represented a highly significant recognition of the importance of other cultures and languages in Australian society. At the same time, the lack of community input into the organisation made them critical of SBS. By the early 1980s, Ethnic Communities Councils felt that the EA network was inadequate for the variety of radio needs among ethnic communities, and moved to make greater use of public broadcasting outlets. Because of quite significant shifts from time to time in wider broadcasting policy, broadcasting in LOTEs has struggled to maintain a clear place for itself politically and bureaucratically, even if it has achieved a by now significant presence in the broadcasting spectrum. In 1986 the Hawke Government decided, ostensibly on grounds of cost, to give control of SBS to the ABC, a decision that provoked a furious reaction. Once more SBS became the subject of party politics: under intense pressure, and not wanting to cede the running of ethnic affairs to the Liberal Party once more, the Hawke Government spectacularly reversed this decision on the eve of the 1987 elections, and moved after that to legislate for SBS as a permanent body. This move has been the first promise of a secure future for SBS after a decade of precarious existence. While this has ensured the survival of SBS into the 1990s and the loss of some of its marginal status, new government imperatives of privatisation and increasing economic rationalism have also imposed the need for SBS television to find sponsorship (as distinct from advertising) to supplement its federally provided budget. SBS, an initiative justified on grounds of
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multiculturalism, is now inextricably caught up in wider mainstream issues of public and private broadcasting. 23.4 Education policy, multiculturalism and migrant languages After the highly political and visible area of broadcasting, education was the most significant area of public policy to be affected by changing responses to the migrant presence. Martin (1978) documents a diversity of definitions of just what 'migrant education' should be from the very beginning of Child Migrant Education in 1971. The problems identified in the 1960s of poor school performance and low self-esteem of migrant children now suggested a variety of responses to practicing teachers. She (1978: 125) points to five distinct areas that developed out of concern for migrant education: the teaching of English; bilingual education; teaching of community languages, multicultural education; and ethnic schools. In turn, each of these areas has seen accelerating development and policy shift over the last decade. I shall leave aside Martin's category of 'multicultural education*, which dealt mainly with non-language issues. The teaching of English programmes have during this time remained the single largest commitment by Federal and State governments to the education of migrants, and provision of effective English teaching has always been insisted on by ethnic organisations. This aspect of migrant education was never established in Australia under the rubric of'bilingual education', and always maintained its essentially monolingual methodology. The sheer diversity of languages among the migrant population, with no one clearly dominant linguistic group, was a compelling argument for this choice. Yet the assessment of outcomes of Child Migrant Education has continually been scanty and guarded. In a series of reports reviewing the achievement of English as Second Language programmes and their desired future development in the early 1980s, Campbell (1984) drew attention to the inadequacy of current provision. Most radically, he pointed to shortcomings in English as a Second Language methodology even among specialist teachers and facilities, and the need to take more seriously the learner's first language. He called for greater utilisation of bilingual methodologies and care for the continuity of conceptual development of all students (Campbell 1984). Bilingual education has, pace Campbell, usually been recognised in Australia as an enterprise distinct from English as a Second Language teaching, even where the aim of bilingual teaching has been essentially transitional. To date, while there have been some isolated bilingual experiments in relation to migrant languages, the most comprehensive programmes have developed since 1973 in relation to Aboriginal education, where language maintenance has usually been an important
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objective (see McConvell, this volume). Bilingual education involving migrant languages evolved first out of concern for the educational disadvantage of migrant children. It was tried in some schools of high migrant density in the early 1970s (Claydon 1973, 1975). Rado's work over the last decade has developed bilingual materials for these programmes, and her field research on bilingual programmes has shown language maintenance to be a goal valued by the participants themselves which leads to more successful overall educational outcomes (Rado 1975; Rado and Foster 1984). More recently, some schools have tried bilingual education for language enrichment, for example in the Bayswater project in Melbourne, where bilingual education in English and German has been used by a number of primary schools with only a small minority of German-speaking children (Clyne 1983). A small number of schools have also introduced bilingual methods for teaching newly arrived children (especially Chinese and Vietnamese) or longer-established groups who value language maintenance, for example, Greeks. While these relatively scattered experiments in bilingual education have in some cases been impressive, reviews of multicultural education have stressed the minimal impact that bilingual education has had in terms of influencing education practice and reaching significant numbers of children (Cahill 1984; Australia, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs 1986). However, the effect of these programmes has extended well beyond their still limited reach in numbers of children affected. It has become a serious proposal in policy discourse, raising often controversial questions of methodology and educational priority. The teaching of community languages has become perhaps the most prominent area outside of English as a Second Language when considering the diversity of'migrant education'. It has been an area in which the policy imperative of multiculturalism can perhaps be most clearly exemplified in providing an element of migrants' own culture as part of school curriculum. Initiatives stemming from Grassby's time as Minister for Immigration led to the formation in 1974 of the Mather Committee to investigate explicitly the teaching of migrant languages in schools. Its report noted the general decline of language learning in secondary education, and the paucity of language learning in primary schools. Only about 8 per cent of primary schools provided such programmes, with some whole systems of primary education providing no language teaching at all. The report also noted that the range of languages taught was still extremely limited, and this had direct consequences for NESB children wanting to study their own languages. Only 1.4 per cent of NESB primary and 10 per cent of NESB secondary students were studying their first language. At this time, more primary-age school children studied their language in ethic schools than in their primary schools (Australia, Committee on the Teaching of Migrant
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Languages in Schools 1976). The report made wide-ranging recommendations on teacher-training, the need for greater availability of languages at the higher secondary and tertiary levels, recognising the importance of language maintenance for NESB populations and the value of learning migrant languages as a general educational objective. While the report was not directly acted upon by the government, all of its major concerns were taken up by a variety of other institutions in the late 1970s. From 1976 onwards there was increasing activism on this front from the Schools Commission, a body charged with administering Federal funds to the various school systems. Following Gallbally's recommendations, the Schools Commission funded a Multicultural Education Programme (MEP) and adopted a guideline that half of the funds of this programme should be directed towards the teaching of community languages. Teacher training issues were also addressed from the mid-1970s, and for the first time there was training for language teachers in primary schools (Whitton 1975), as well as for bilingual teachers in secondary schools (Lewin-Poole 1977). The range of languages offered to secondary students grew to include all the widely-spoken languages in Australia. State education departments also became more involved in the field in the late 1970s, initiating curriculum development and in some cases specifically appointing community language teachers to develop programmes. As a result of pushing by ethnic communities and language teachers, the range of languages offered for final end of school examinations expanded until it gradually encompassed most migrant languages. In its 1980 review of multicultural and migrant education, the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs (AIMA), an independent policy advice body, recommended the expansion of language offerings in tertiary education and argued the need to develop these languages at the highest level to give them status and give their students a chance of educational continuity (Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 1980). Finally, the early 1980s saw the development in several States of comprehensive policies on language education, to which I shall return shortly. Finally, Martin points to the increased salience of ethnic schools in educational discourse. These had previously been conducted almost in secret by ethnic communities, and at times were regarded with suspicion by the regular education systems for distracting pupils from their day schools and above all from the learning of English. These ethnic schools were, however, treated sympathetically by the Mather committee, the Schools Commission and subsequent bodies, all of whom called for increased cooperation with this sector and attention to resource needs. AIMA recommended in 1980 that these schools should receive a Federal grant of A$30 per student per annum in the light of their massive contribution to language learning (AIMA 1980). Norst's (1982) study attested the great
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vitality of these schools and in particular, their rapid growth in almost all language groups in the previous decade. To make a radical break from previous perceptions, Norst also recommended that these schools be renamed 'Community Language Schools', an interesting retreat from the description of'ethnic'. This was treated coolly by some of these schools, which were concerned with teaching not only language but also cultural and in some cases religious aspects which they felt could not be expected to be handled appropriately by the regular school systems. 23.5 Language services in Australia Language services were developed considerably from the early 1970s, both in terms of direct service provision, and regulation and planning. Following pressures to respond to migrant settlement difficulties at this time, the Government's first significant step was to provide an innovative service through the Emergency Telephone Interpreter Service. The service opened in February 1973 to provide a facility for interpreting (originally in eight languages) over the telephone in broadly defined situations of'emergency', for example, medical, police, critical welfare and hazard. The system allowed for conference calls and, as its equipment and range of languages improved, a considerably more sophisticated system of hook-ups and referrals. The 'Emergency' was dropped from its title in 1974, and thus, the Telephone Interpreter Service (TIS) became a general interpreting resource for community, as well as business and commercial needs. To supplement its telephone work, TIS also provided an on-call service of personal attendance by interpreters in situations of community interpreting (medical, legal) which could be booked in advance. The provision of this general interpreting service, which by the mid1980s was responding to nearly 200,000 calls per year, also provoked increased interest in specialist interpreting services, for example, legal, health, mental health and education. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s a number of specific services were established, often with federal assistance as a consequence of the Galbally report. Regulation of the interpreting profession was considered after the initial services were established and were finding difficulties in attracting suitable staff. Worries over the quality of interpreting in self-help situations and through private agencies also continued to exist. The Committee on Overseas Professional Qualifications, charged with determining the suitability of overseas-trained personnel for education and employment in Australia, considered the problems of interpreting. It noted that while interpreting was a recognised profession overseas, there was no system of training, accreditation or professional recognition in Australia. There was an urgent need to create a profession that not only met obvious interpreting
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needs vis-a-vis NESB migrant communities, but also provided for Australia's external interpreting needs. The Committee proposed a gradation of interpreting levels and recommended accreditation and training procedures to ensure qualified practitioners (Australia, Committee on Overseas Professional Qualifications 1978). The first training courses were established concurrently with the Committee's deliberations in 1974-5, and in 1977 the Federal Government established the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) to take on formally the work of establishing and regulating the profession. N A ATI's focus has been on accreditation and training for the whole range of languages in Australia, including Aboriginal languages. Its strategies included establishing a testing programme for candidates at various levels, getting recognition on the part of government and private bodies of the need for qualified practitioners, establishing minimal criteria for employment, and increasing training facilities to supply qualified interpreters. Language needs have also been met in the public service by the wider use of bilingual staff, formalised at the federal level through the granting of a language allowance for officers who use a LOTE in contact with the public in their work. This is linked to NAATI accreditation levels, thus providing an essential backup service to regular interpreting services. Historically, Australia has also suffered from a severe shortage of language resources for diplomacy, trade and foreign relations. For example, Australian embassies particularly in Europe and Asia have been heavily reliant upon the hiring of local nationals to perform interpreting and some public contact duties, a point that has been often raised in parliamentary debates on the diplomatic service. This has constantly raised the question of why the rich linguistic resources brought to Australia through immigration have not been put to effective use in Australia's international relations. As there was general reluctance to post the few diplomatic staff born in other countries to that country (even if they spoke that particular language), and given the generally low level of recruiting of speakers of other languages, the problem remained an enduring one for the diplomatic service, despite the incentive of a language proficiency allowance (Hall 1959; Australia, Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence 1979). Apart from the incentive of the language allowance, the diplomatic service did make use of some overseas and Australian language schools, including from time to time the intensive language training facility at the Royal Australian Air Force at Point Cook. Based upon similar models of military language academies overseas, this facility was created in World War II to meet critical language shortages, particularly in Japanese, Russian and South-east Asian languages. It continued in peacetime to meet
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the changing language needs of defence and, increasingly, other governments departments (Turner 1983). Also in the 1950s and 1960s the Federal Government expanded its own Australian National University's facilities in Asian and other major international languages. Concerns about external uses of languages were important in moves to establish a national language policy. With increasingly diversified and in particular increasing Asian migration in the late 1970s and 1980s, the distinction between 'migrant' languages and 'strategic' or 'Asian' or 'foreign' languages began to be less clear cut and came increasingly to be questioned. Australia had to husband all its language resources, for both internal and external uses. 23.6 Moves for a National Policy on Languages
Over the past decade, Australia's distinctive contribution to language policy has been the evolution of a National Policy on Languages. Reflecting many of the policy concerns already mentioned, the move for such an overarching policy also brought with it new coalitions of language interest groups, and to some extent moved concern for language into a broader context and away from migration issues discussed so far. Moves for a national policy arose in the late 1970s. A number of language interest groups began to push for greater coordination of disparate policies, and a much better organised set of language professional groups and ethnic and other organisations began to identify common concerns and push for government response. The foundation meeting of the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA) in 1976 called for a national language policy, and a joint submission from ALAA and the Australian Linguistics Society in 1978 requested the government to establish a committee to advise on language policy. Individuals such as Ingram (1979) and Quinn in a series of editorials in Babel, also actively promoted this cause (Ozolins 1984). The professional language associations at this time had several motives in becoming interested in language policy at this level. First, there was widespread recognition of the continuing decline of language teaching in schools, despite the newfound interest in migrant languages and the persistent efforts to promote the teaching of Asian languages in schools. Secondly, the various language professional groups also found a common forum to meet and exchange views in ALAA, which brought together groups concerned with diverse issues, for example, Aboriginal languages, second language learning, English as a Second Language, and language services. This diversity of interests was to have a strong influence on the ultimate scope of the national policy. Finally, the linguists moved closer to the political arena by recognising joint interests with the ethnic com-
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munities, with whom some prominent individuals, for example, Clyne, had had a long involvement. This united front of language professionals and a political lobby group such as the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils (FECCA) came together most decisively in 1981, when at their annual congresses both organisations placed national language policy as top priority, and organised a detailed campaign to convince the Federal Government to act. FECCA lobbied the Government and set up a series of forums through its State organisations on language policy. ALAA organised among the language professional associations, and a joint body was formed - the Professional Language Associations for a National Language Policy (PLANLangPol), which in parallel to FECCA's activities also organised forums to discuss issues for a national language policy. The work of these coalitions and their successful lobbying has been discussed elsewhere (Ozolins 1985). The language lobby focussed particularly on the Federal Department of Education, concerned as it was with aspects of many of the issues canvassed by the groups, as well as the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. The Department of Education serviced the Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts, whose Chairman, Baden Teague, was well disposed towards language policy, and there was general endorsement of this issue as one suitable for the committee. The Senate committee took on this issue in May 1982, and the Department of Education issued a comprehensive background paper Towards a National Language Policy' at the same time (Australia, Department of Education 1982). There were several striking features of this concerted move for a language policy that gave the eventual Senate inquiry and subsequent developments their peculiarflavour.Most of all, these moves for a national policy covered aspects of all languages used in Australia, and importantly, this also meant English. While in the late 1970s the main focus for policy had been on addressing issues to do with languages other than English, the increasing cross-fertilisation of interests and the ubiquity of Englishrelated concerns gradually led to a change in what the envisaged policy would encompass. Also important here was the strong desire to take the national policy away from minority concerns and bring it into the mainstream of public life, which necessarily meant dealing with English. Thus adult literacy, the status of Australian English, English as a mother tongue, racism and sexism in language, as well as English as a Second Language, became part of the scope of the Senate Committee's inquiry. This made the Australian national policy initiative very different to such initiatives as the President's Commission on Foreign Languages and International Studies in the United States, which was oriented largely to foreign language teaching interests.
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The Senate Committee received submissions from some 230 parties, held 20 days of public hearings, and deliberated for over two years before finally reporting in December 1984. The submission process itself was of great importance, giving an exhaustive panorama of the state of various language issues at the time. While many submissions pursued their sectional interests, most stressed the need for comprehensive policies. There was a general view that a national policy must look adequately at all language needs in Australia, and be mindful of the many diverse social functions played by language. The Committee's report, A National Language Policy (henceforth ANLP) was favourably disposed towards a great many of the issues placed before it. Because it was cautious in recommending items of large expenditure, it concerned itself largely with establishing principles for further action and indicating areas of greatest need. It recommended that a national language policy have the objective of guaranteeing the following to all Australians (ANLP: Recommendation 1): competence in English maintenance and development of languages other than English provision of services in languages other than English opportunities for learning second languages Beyond this, the report was rather uneven in its consideration of the various areas. Surprisingly perhaps in the light of the importance of English in the background to the inquiry, its sections on English were relatively incomplete. It deferred to much other recent work on English as a Second Language, but in the teaching of English as a mother tongue it showed little feeling for the issues, and perhaps lacked expertise in the area. The report was not, and could not hope to be, Australia's equivalent to the Bullock Report (1975). It was, however, more forceful on issues of adult illiteracy among English mother tongue speakers (ANLP: chapters 3-6). The most impressive and certainly most impassioned section of the report was on Aboriginal languages. Acutely aware of the uniqueness of these languages, and their current fragile situation, the report urged a comprehensive range of initiatives, especially the development of bilingual education and the better representation of Aboriginal interests in media planning. The central role of community consultation in all aspects of Aboriginal languages was repeatedly stressed (ANLP, chapter 8). The section relating to migrant languages, particularly chapter 11 on Teaching Languages Other than English, was by comparison rather mild and cautious in its conclusions, reflecting the considerably greater degree of division and differences of priority within the field on specific areas of policy and methodology. Thus, while it generally supported moves to increase language learning in schools and recognised the importance of
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language maintenance to ethnic communities, it was more equivocal on specific measures such as proposals for bilingual education. Here, submissions and representations to the Committee had revealed important differences in attitudes to the desirability and practicality of bilingual programs. Goverment departments and agencies tended to be selective in their support, seeing it as possibly suitable for Aboriginal and recently arrived students, especially adolescents, and seeing the aim of such programs as essentially transitional. Some dismissed the possibility of effective maintenance programmes, but this was strongly contested by other submissions, particularly the Ethnic Communities Councils and practitioners from the few bilingual maintenance programmes that had been established in Australia. In relation to external language needs, the report noted considerable complacency among government bodies and businesses in Australia, who in submissions to the Committee had tended to play down the issue of language and were reluctant to identify needs and goals. The report warned this was a short-sighted view that would harm Australia in its relations with the outside world. The Senate Committee report, however, had little immediate follow-up, and delays in its release and subsequent response meant that many language activists devoted themselves to other areas of language policy that seemed to bring more fruitful response. However, the concern for a broadly based national language policy also affected the way these issues were now addressed at State levels. In Victoria, for example, languages gained increased prominence through the Labour government's appointment of supernumerary teachers to teach community languages in primary schools, as a direct result of its multicultural education election pledges. Also in Victoria, a working group headed by Lo Bianco produced a document in 1985, The Place of Languages Other Than English in Victorian Schools', that outlined needs across the primary and secondary sectors for language teaching, and set up principles of operation of the expanding number of programmes in primary schools. It stipulated, for example, that at least 3 hours per week needed to be devoted to language study if courses were to be worthwhile, so that language programmes would not be token nods towards multicultural policy, but legitimate school subjects demanding commitment (Victoria, State Board of Education and the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Migrant and Multicultural Education 1985). Similar policies were developed in other States, and an active National Advisory and Coordinating Committee on Multicultural Education provided policy initiatives at the Federal level as part of the Multicultural Education Programme (National Advisory and Coordinating Committee on Multicultural Education 1987). In these State moves it was important that the issue of language teaching
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was defined as the teaching of languages to all pupils. It was constantly stressed that the teaching of languages was not a concern for NESB pupils and their parents alone. The Victorian 1985 policy document made the important symbolic break of moving from reference to 'community languages' to the broader languages other than English', the term used in all subsequent documents (Lo Bianco 1989). Alongside these State initiatives, language interest groups continued to push for a response to the Senate inquiry. Responding to this pressure, Education Minister Ryan in 1986 appointed Joseph Lo Bianco to advise what steps should be taken to realise a national policy on languages. The Lo Bianco report (Australia, Department of Education, Lo Bianco 1987) was a focused, implementation-oriented document compared to the more philosophical Senate Committee inquiry. Lo Bianco tried to establish clear guidelines for priority initiatives and monitoring of future language policy. It accepted the direction of much of the Senate Committee's recommendations, and devised four overall strategies to guide language policy (Lo Bianco 1987: 70): the conservation of Australia's linguistic resources the development and expansion of these resources the integration of Australian language teaching and language use efforts with national economic, social and cultural policies the provision of information and services in languages understood by clients. The Lo Bianco report attended to implementation strategies for all the areas covered in the Senate Committee report, but also added particular emphases of its own. In education, while arguing the importance of all languages and supporting the efforts needed to maintain and develop them, it took a strong stand on priorities and identified nine 'languages of wider teaching' that would be targeted for major curriculum development, teacher training and concentration of resources. The nine languages were Standard Chinese, Indonesian/Malay, Arabic, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. Lo Bianco also gave a stronger emphasis than the Senate Committee report to external language needs, as reflected in the mix of priority languages, pointing out that many of the languages important externally to Australia were also important in social life in Australia. As a national monitoring and policy development organisation, Lo Bianco recommended the establishment of an Advisory Committee on Australian Language Policy. The report was also careful to take account of Australia's system of federalism and included statements from all States and Territories on their own language policies, as well as recognising State initiatives in recommending that under the proposed Australian Second
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Language Learning Programme, States develop major curriculum and material projects in certain languages on behalf of other States. Lo Bianco was careful to stress that while language policy was an integral part of multicultural policy, it was not exclusively a matter of multiculturalism alone. He presented language policy as an interest in its own right, with importance both to Australia in its internal affairs as well as relations with the rest of the world. It was this faith in the integrity of language policy per se that was to be tested in subsequent developments. Whatever Lo Bianco's intentions, however, the report was born in a period of intense political conflict, and the subsequent developments in language policy have been hostage to political concerns in ways perhaps little envisaged previously. The report served, in turn, as both a political saviour for the Hawke government, and later as an almost unwanted obstruction to the Government's own views on language. The report was released at a time when the Government, through a series of cutbacks in spending in its 1986 budget, had cut English as a Second Language programme, axed the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs and the Multicultural Education Programme and, as already mentioned, moved to amalgamate the SBS with the ABC. This created a furious reaction in the community, and slowly over the next six months the Government reversed most of these decisions. When it called an election for May 1987, Prime Minister Hawke finally agreed to continue SBS as a separate entity, and released the Lo Bianco report as an important element in his government's ethnic affairs policy. This effort was aimed specifically at winning back the vote of ethnic groups - an ironic turnabout for a policy which Lo Bianco had tried to de-ethnicise. The government promised to implement the National Policy on Languages, and fund it for A$28 million for a period of three years, and upon its re-election moved to substantiate this promise. The government set up an advisory committee, but with one notable change that distorted Lo Bianco's original intention. The body set up was the Australian Advisory Council on Languages and Multicultural Education (AACLAME). Multicultural education was tacked on to offer the Government a way of recovering from the 1986 cuts (Ozolins 1988). AACLAME started operation in late 1987, and had under its umbrella five major programmes: the Australian Second Language Learning Programme, the National Aboriginal Languages Programme, the Adult Literacy Action Campaign, the Multicultural and Cross-cultural Supplementation Programme, and the Asian Studies Programme. After the 1987 elections and the founding of AACLAME, however, Government rhetoric began to change quite dramatically, with both Hawke and Education Minister Dawkins (responsible for AACLAME) very publicly promoting Asian languages, and, in the case of Dawkins,
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expressing little interest in any other languages. With economic arguments very much to the fore, this stance on the part of leading politicians also reflected a growing split between Asian language interests and those of other languages. This led to a deterioration of the previous coalition among language interest groups and common interest in a broad national policy. The situation became so openly polarised that Hawke was compelled to reassure FECCA at its 1988 Congress that the Government would not make 'artificial distinctions' between trade languages and others. However, with Hawke and Dawkins promoting exactly this distinction elsewhere, it seemed to be the case that ethnic affairs interests relative to languages would be promoted at election times, and economic interests the rest of the time. This pattern was to be repeated at the 1990 elections, with the narrowly returned Hawke Government promising, as part of its ethnic affairs policy, the continuance of a national policy on language. With the conservative parties seemingly losing interest in this issue and in ethnic affairs generally by this time, the Hawke Government was able to capitalise on these issues in a closely fought election: indications of long-term commitment, however, are more difficult to ascertain. AACLAME thus had to battle to assert itself against a relatively unsympathetic Minister and Government. Despite this, AACLAME continued to speak for language policy, particularly through its publication Vox', and by vigorously pursuing a number of issues in its broader role in policy advice. In 1989, part of its budget was allocated to create a Languages Institute of Australia, to be run on a collaborative basis utilising expertise in language research, language testing and language technology in Australia's major tertiary institutions, with a central secretariat in Melbourne. AACLAME itself, however, with funding guaranteed for a three-year period only, faces an uncertain future. This survey has shown the very strong development of language policy in Australia in many areas, and the patterns of response to migrant languages over four decades of mass migration. Migrant languages have established themselves in Australia as living languages but also importantly as politically active languages. While the vitality of these languages must primarily be a question of the efforts of the particular language communities themselves, the development of detailed policy in so many areas that affect their public and institutional use ensures that language policy will remain a critical intervening variable in their maintenance, change or decline. Future generations will be dependent upon the effectiveness of these policies to ensure that these languages continue to have adequate status and support in the Australian context.
24 Social class differences in the lexicon DAVID CORSON
24.1
Introduction
In this chapter I will present evidence to show that there is little difference between secondary-school children from various social backgrounds in England and Australia in terms of access to high status and specialist lexes of the language. The written language of Australia and its specialist oral counterpart has developed in parallel with the written language elsewhere. Turner (1966: 67), for example, writes: 'the coincidence of English and Australian written idiom is not a natural phenomenon, but is cultivated by literature in its widest sense'. For much of Australia's history, most books and even most magazines encountered by children were written and produced in the United Kingdom. More importantly perhaps, the examples of diction found in those sources were routinely pointed to as exemplars of 'good English' to be adopted in schools and in later life. Increasingly too in the twentieth century, Australian English made contact with other branches of English. Ramson (1972: 44) points to the lexicon of the scientist as the greatest single influence on the vocabulary of English: 'And it matters little whether the scientist is English, American or Australian. The specialist vocabulary of his particular branch of scientific enquiry acknowledges not regional but professional boundaries.' Later Ramson highlights the immediacy in contemporary communication between the different parts of the English-speaking world. So completely do occupational vocabularies today cut across regional boundaries, that the distinctively Australian element in our vocabulary has become proportionately far smaller than it once was. Linguistic stratification, even across continents and oceans, has increasingly become a function not of region but of one or another sociological variable. In particular, social class, as determined by occupation and income, has become a vital factor in setting the boundaries of shared linguistic features. This has not always been the case. Pre-Industrial Revolution social relations, in countries of the Old World, were vertical
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ones. Peasants, as a result of their shared experiences and situations, had more in common with those above and below them in the social hierarchy than with their peers elsewhere, and this commonality extended to the language available to them. In this chapter I explore differences in social group lexes drawn from Australia and England. My aim is to demonstrate that Australian and English social group lexes have a great deal in common. It will also be possible to show that, at least in respect of the high status specialist lexicon of the secondary school, there is little difference between English English and Australian English. In presenting this comparison I shall draw heavily on work assembled for another purpose (Corson 1985). These studies were originally conducted for reasons of educational research and were specifically aimed at isolating a key linguistic mediating factor in educational failure. It follows, then, that in the process of introducing this material I shall inevitably be making statements germane to educational success and failure. 24.2 Social group lexes Social group lexes have no status as linguistic subsystems. They simply refer to the range of vocabulary, either passive or active, that is available to the members of identified social groups. The more attributes that are combined to state the sociological boundaries of the social group, the more specific the lexes pertaining to the group will be. The studies reported here and elsewhere (Corson 1985) indicate that there are different kinds of lexes available to children from different sociological backgrounds and the instruments described below are designed to measure some of those differences. This fact is consistent with other studies of linguistic variation. Labov's (1968, 1973) influential studies show that people from different sociological backgrounds speak different kinds of English which in many respects deviate systematically and regularly from one another. 24.2.1
Two approaches to measuring social group lexes
The instruments described below were first used among Yorkshire and London adolescents to measure oral lexes. Later they were reapplied in the Australian context to measure the written and spoken lexes of certain groups of children from Sydney and the Illawarra region of New South Wales. 24.2.1.1 The measure of passive vocabulary The Measure of Passive Vocabulary examines access to certain semantic fields by presenting orally 49 words, each bracketed with a keyword, to
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subjects who are invited to use each pair of words in one original sentence. Each keyword suggests the semantic field relevant to the target word. Seven fields are dealt with representing the seven educational knowledge categories identified by Hirst (1974), as representative of the map of specialist knowledge spanned by the contemporary school curriculum. Hirst's map of the curricular knowledge categories was adopted in these studies because of its wide (though not total) acceptance by educationalists. His scheme for categorising knowledge and experience is derived from the different ways that statements are formulated in each mode; each mode has its own logic for testing statements made within it. Hirst argues that while these seven modes are not constant or eternal, they do provide a mapping system for specialist knowledge as it is presently perceived. His headings for each of these seven modes, in slightly modified form, provide the themes for the seven semantic fields into which lexemes are grouped within the study. These fields are: formal logic and mathematics; the physical sciences; the human sciences; ethics; aesthetics; religion; and philosophy. Each sentence produced, if meaningful within the relevant semantic field, confirms the subject's grasp of the target word. Whether or not the target word is embedded only in the passive vocabulary of the subject, the context encourages its public articulation. The Measure itself performs the retrieval process. The words are delivered to subjects; they hear them uttered by another individual; their use by subjects is appropriate to the context of situation; the topic is apparently left to the subjects themselves to choose; and moderate encouragement to provide original sentences is resident in the relatively interesting experience of making up sentences from given component words. The measure relies on the postulations of the 'use theory' of meaning: knowing the meaning of a word is knowing how to use it in an original utterance. The meaning of a word is its use in a language. 24.2.1.2 The Graeco-Latin Instrument The Graeco-Latin (G-L) Instrument can be applied to either oral or written language. The researcher examines texts in order to measure the percentage of specialist words that entered English ultimately from Greek and Latin sources. Since these words are of a type that fill up the specialist knowledge categories of the secondary school curriculum, almost to the total exclusion of other types of word, the G-L Instrument is a complementary measure to the Measure of Passive Vocabulary. It measures active access to the specialist semantic fields. The application of the Instrument is a relatively simple matter, since the majority of G-L words in the language are unambiguous. Their origin is clear from their form, which usually betrays no change from the original apart from a modification of the suffix. Non-specialist words of G~L origin, whose antiquity and prevalence in English is such as to make them
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part of necessary, everyday language, are removed from the count by the operational rules detailed elsewhere. Those excluded words are mainly preRenaissance additions to the language that are chosen for equal use by language users in speech regardless of social class background. There are at least six features which attach to specialist words extracted by the Instrument which make them lexically 'difficult': (i) they possess a connotative meaning which is not extensional; (ii) they are often without suitable synonyms and may be defined only by the use of a number of other words and even then perhaps poorly; (iii) they give precision to texts and these may convey personal meaning more effectively than texts which lack them; (iv) they are not readily inserted in an abstraction ladder of superordinacy; (v) they allow their users to order thought where such an ordering of thought might not occur without the words themselves; (vi) they may be 'culturally determined' in that they represent meanings which are rarely readily translated word for word into the languages of other cultures. Plainly in the upper levels of education, as presently conducted, children cannot manage without a wide and ready access to specialist G-L words, although this tells us nothing about other words that might be distinctively common in the ordinary language lexes of those who are without a motivated specialist G-L vocabulary in the context of the school. In the Australian studies, both oral and written language were examined within two contexts: a descriptive task and an explanatory task. In the English studies only oral language was examined, again in the two contexts. Spoken or written texts, once collated, were transcribed and analysed using the G-L Instrument. The spoken texts were tape-recorded in response to an orally administered questionnaire. The written texts were gathered, after several weeks' interval in response to the same questionnaire in written form. 24.3 The research contexts
Children of 12 and 15 years were compared in each setting to measure development in adolescents who were on either side of the notional onset of Piaget's stage of formal operational thought, which tends to be first manifested in language use at adolescence, if at all. The children were matched in groups taken from much wider samples on the basis of their non-verbal reasoning scores, and cells consistent with accepted sociolinguistic cell size were drawn from the groups using the technique of 'systematic sampling'. The social class of children was determined by reference to the Registrar General's Classification of Occupations. There were no anomalous categories in applying this British register to the parents of children resident in Australia in this instance. Both parents' occupations were used wherever appropriate. All children
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had experienced common curricula without a Classics component. Great care was taken in choosing subjects whose experiences in formal education had been relatively homogeneous so that any variations in scores between groups on the instruments would not be significantly due to educational inequalities produced by the institution of education itself. Four schools were used in the studies proper: School Y is located near a small country town which itself is between six and thirteen miles from three large south Yorkshire cities. Its student population of about 1,500 children is drawn one-third from the town itself and two-thirds from the many small villages within a five mile radius. The area includes light industrial works, some mining industry, small farming and agriculture. The school has a strong blend of children from middle class and working class backgrounds, but no children of non-British descent. School L is a neighbourhood school in north London. Its 1,100 children include a strong mixture of children from the various social classes. School W is on the fringes of the iron and steel foundries which provide direct or indirect employment for much of Wollongong's population. In the postwar period Wollongong became a boom town with the regional population passing 200,000, swollen by the highest immigrant inflow of any Australian city. In the immediate region of School W 32 per cent of the population were born in non-English speaking countries. The 1,000 students included a small group of upper-middle-class Anglo-Australian children, many children of Macedonian (Yugoslavian) parentage, many children of Italian or Portuguese parentage and about 40 per cent poorer working class Anglo-Australians. The children from non-English-speaking families were themselves poorer working class by family background. They used their parents' native tongue as the language of the home in early childhood and were all received into their primary school in the 1970s as English as a Second Language students. School S is a prestigious but 'non-selective' private school for boys, set among the wealthiest of Sydney's northern suburbs. Because of its high fees, its reputation, its long waiting-list for entrants, and its favouring of the sons and brothers of old boys, School S is very selective. It attracts students who are exclusively upper middle class by family background.
24.4 Social group lexes: England and Australia compared The range of social group lexes in Australia and England, whose differences might be of significance to researchers, is wide indeed. The limitations of this study, then, are clear. It looks at only two areas of England and only one part of Australia that includes two cities on the central to south coast of
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New South Wales. However, the findings are sufficiently clear-cut to allow certain inferences to be made which might be generalisable. 24.4.1
Passive vocabulary
Figure 24.1 indicates that there is an approximately monotonic development within the 12- and 15-year age period for all social groups in their command of passive vocabulary. Children from the same social backgrounds in Australia and England are very similar in their access to passive vocabulary on this measure regardless of age. Using the Pearson Test of Correlation and comparing nationalities on total scores on the .Measure, that is, English or Australian, a negative correlation coefficient ( — 0.13) is returned. This means that it would be very difficult to predict subjects' nationalities from their total scores recorded on the measure, or alternatively, to predict scores from nationalities. In access to individual semantic fields or knowledge categories there is also no discernible difference. The improvement by age on the measure is for each group an increase in passive vocabulary of about 7 to 9 words. This seems a good indication of the rate at which passive vocabulary increases for children over this three-year developmental span. The upper-middle-class children in both countries begin ahead of the rest and maintain that lead. At 15 years, the upper-middle-class Sydney group, for example, outscore the poorer working-class Wollongong group with very high significance in mean scores on the Measure as a whole and also in their use of vocabulary in the semantic fields of ethics and aesthetics and with high significance in the other f\NQ fields. The upper-middle-class Wollongong group, who have shared the same primary and secondary school experiences as their poorer working-class peers, outscore the latter at 15 years with high significance in mean scores on the Measure as a whole and also in the semantic fields of logic and maths, aesthetics and philosophy. No significant differences in mean scores occur when comparing the Macedonian and Romance groups with the upper-middle-class Wollongong group. Some explanation of the Wollongong figures may be useful in answering the question: Why do the children of non-English-speaking poorer working-class backgrounds outscore their Anglo-Australian working-class peers so conclusively at 15 years? These immigrant children are certainly manifesting the effects of a heavy concentration on spoken English in their primary education through English as a Second Language courses which centred on the standard variety of Australian English. They may also be reflecting in their results on this measure an observable school achievement rate above their Anglo-Australian working-class peers which is due, in part at least, to strong parental influence towards success in schooling, common
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MC (Sydney) MC (London)
45
MC (Yorkshire) MC (Wollongong) WC (London) ROM (Wollongong) MAC (Wollongong)
40 WC (Yorkshire)
WC (Wollongong)
35
15
12 AGE
Figure 24.1 Line graph illustrating group means recorded on the measure by age and social group (N= 129). Key. Australian groups . English groups . MC (Sydney)=upper middle class Sydney (private school) boys; MC (London) = upper middle class London (comprehensive); MC (Yorkshire) = upper middle class Yorkshire (comprehensive); MC (Wollongong) = upper middle class Wollongong (comprehensive); WC (London) = poorer working class London (comprehensive); WC (Yorkshire) = poorer working class Yorkshire (comprehensive); WC (Wollongong) = poorer working class Wollongong (comprehensive); ROM (Wollongong) = Romance Language background (comprehensive); MAC (Wollongong) = Macedonian language background (comprehensive)
among closely knit immigrant communities and observed among Wollongong's immigrant iron and steel foundry workers. Furthermore, it is likely that the immigrant children are benefiting in their English from the transfer effects to be gained by true bilinguals who have their linguistic awareness and competence enhanced at an early age when the two conceptual frameworks represented by two distinct languages are integrated into the world view of one individual. It is clear that there are some important and educationally serious contrasts in the passive vocabularies of the Anglo-Australian and English
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poorer working-class children relative to others which may affect levels of comprehension and performance in the setting of the school. The fact that the 15-year-old poorer working-class Wollongong group mean is below that of the 12-year-old upper-middle-class Sydney group represents an important educational contrast at the level of passive vocabulary. This difference indicates that the poorer working-class children, in their final stages of schooling, have yet to develop even a passive command of certain aspects of a specialist lexis to which presumably they have had four years exposure in schooling. 24.4.2
Active vocabulary
Figures 24.2-5 present social group mean scores on the G-L Instrument in the four contexts (oral language, descriptive and explanatory tasks; and written language, descriptive and explanatory tasks). It will be seen that onlyfigures24.2 and 24.3 are directly relevant to the theme of this chapter, since the other figures do not include comparative information from England. Figures 24.4 and 24.5 are included, however, because they indirectly bear upon the theme of this chapter and also provide wider information about the Australian lexicon. Fromfigures24.2 and 24.3 it can be seen that active oral lexical selections in England and Australia are very similar at the two ages. Moreover, at 15 years there is a remarkable and statistically very strong parallel between the Australian and English social class groups. Plainly it can be concluded that at this age on this measure lexical selections occur according to horizontal sociological arrangements and not vertical ones; region is less important than social group background. This point is especially clear infigure24.3, where poorer working-class children, who are not immigrants from nonEnglish speaking backgrounds, are disinclined to use the high status lexes of the school even in an explanatory context which would seem to demand a use of vocabulary of this kind. Correlations of the subjects' scores in the G-L tasks with their nationalities (i.e. English or Australian) produced coefficients of only 0.22 for the oral descriptive (figure 24.2), of only 0.07 for the oral explanatory (figure 24.3), and of only 0.15 for total oral scores on the Instrument. An examination of figures 24.4 and 24.5 will also reveal that the Australian children perform with marked consistency across the written and oral tasks. This judgement is supported by correlation figures. Scores on the oral descriptive task with scores on the written descriptive task, and scores on the oral explanatory task with scores on the written explanatory task, returned coefficients of 0.49 (p= <0.000) and 0.57 (p= <0.000) respectively. Had the English children's written lexes been assessed there is no reason to expect that their written scores on the instrument would be
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MC (Wollongong) MC (London) MC (Sydney) ROM (Wollongong) MC (Yorkshire) MAC (Wollongong) WC (Wollongong) ^ WC (Yorkshire) — WC (London)
_J 12
15 AGE
Figure 24.2 Line graph illustrating group percentage means recorded on the G-L instrument by age and social group. Descriptive task-oral language (N= 129). For key, see figure 24.1 MC (London) MC (Yorkshire) MC (Sydney) MC (Wollongong) ROM (Wollongong) MAC (Wollongong)
WC (Wollongong) WC (London) W€ (Yorkshire)
15
12 AGE
Figure 24.3 Line graph illustrating group percentage means recorded on the G-L instrument by age and social group. Explanatory task-oral language (N= 129). For key, see figure 24.1 markedly different from their oral scores or would deviate much from those of their Australian peers. When we include in this discussion a correlation figure of 0.62 (p< 0.000) produced from a comparison of the written descriptive task with the written explanatory task, an important conclusion follows. There is considerable internal consistency among the scores of
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DAVID CORSON MC (Wollongong) ROM (Wollongong) MC (Sydney) MAC (Wollongong)
WC (Wollongong)
12
15 AGE
Figure 24.4 Line graph illustrating group percentage means recorded on the G-L instrument by age and social group. Descriptive task-written language (N = 80). For key, see Figure 24.1
MC (Sydney)
10
MC (Wollongong)
9
8
7 ROM (Wollongong) MAC (Wollongong)
WC (Wollongong)
15
12 AGE
Figure 24.5 Line graph illustrating group percentage means recorded on the G-L instrument by age and social group. Explanatory task-written language (N = 80). For key, see figure 24.1
Social class differences in the lexicon
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individual social groups across the four tasks; poorer working-class adolescents are not disposed to using specialist words in any of the four contexts examined in these studies. I return to this point below. In none of the four contexts is there significant difference between social groups at 12 years. At 15 years though social group differences become pronounced and very highly significant statistically. Poorer working-class children at 15 years use very much the same percentages of specialist words as do 12-year-olds as a whole, while other social group members increase their usage to levels of high semantic significance (when measured against percentages recorded in literary texts, in newspapers and in children's books ranked by reading age; see Corson 1985). At 15 years, the Macedonian and Romance groups, who are themselves drawn from poorer working-class immigrant families, perform well above the working class groups. Similar explanations to those offered under Passive Vocabulary may account for the relative success of these children on the instrument. It is possible that Anglo-Australian (and English) poorer working class children, who appear to use a lexis in which specialist G-L words are sparsely represented, do have a distinctive range of social group lexes of their own which the G-L Instrument does not measure and which are not used in the formal school context in any case. A thorough perusal of the transcripts from both countries, however, contradicts this view. There are few regional dialect words among oral samples taken from the English children, while Australianisms of any kind are rare in either the written or oral Australian texts. This may indicate the need to look at more informal contexts of language use, for example, informal peer group play. In the contexts examined here the semantic differences are much more deeply rooted than is suggested by mere group contrasts in vocabulary use. There seem to be important differences between groups in the individual underlying conceptual frameworks onto which specialist words map their meanings. Perhaps these differences are made inevitable by the differences in experiences and encounters with 'language in use' that are available to different social groups. More than this, it seems likely from morphological studies reported in the psycholinguistic literature that the structures in the mental lexicon that process words and map them onto their respective cognitive representations are developed as a result of experience of'words in use'. Children from backgrounds where specialist words and meanings are infrequently experienced could be late in developing appropriate structures for processing morphologically and semantically complex words. These matters are taken further elsewhere (Corson 1985). Nor does it seem likely that the 'context of the school' is interpreted differently by the different social groups and that this difference in interpretation affects lexical selection. The influence of the phenomenon of
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extralinguistic context as an important control on lexical selection, that might affect language users from different social groups in different ways, is not supported in this study. As already indicated there is a marked withingroup consistency across context and language mode in the selection of specialist words by groups of children from different social backgrounds. It is unreasonable to believe that the same effects of extralinguistic context would be at work in the distinct language activities of speaking and writing when wedded respectively to the distinct functions of describing and explaining and that these effects would be sufficient to homogenise across contexts the lexical dispositions of groups of children.
24.5
Conclusions
The social group lexes examined here reveal marked differences at 15 years which are linked both to the social class and the ethnicity of the users. Poorer working-class migrant children in the Illawarra from non-English speaking backgrounds seem in no significant way lexically disadvantaged when compared with English and Anglo-Australian upper-middle-class children. The lexis of English and Anglo-Australian poorer working-class children, however, at 15 years seems to be ill-suited for success in the setting of the contemporary comprehensive school, on the evidence of mean scores obtained on the Measure of Passive Vocabulary and on the G-L Instrument, and on the evidence of correlations of these scores with formal examination results (Corson 1985). The fact that the same social group members who performed least well as a group on a battery of instruments measuring lexical orientation also performed least well as a group on the most important and fundamental measures of school performance most of them will ever experience, confirms that the link between the lexical orientation of social groups and educational success or failure is a very strong one. Interpreting this link, and relating it to selection and evaluative processes as they are currently performed in schools, may go some way towards explaining the educational failure of certain social groups in English-speaking countries. Further research might concentrate on the design and use of measuring instruments for active vocabulary that do not search solely for the high status lexis of the school. Instruments could allow the characterisation of social group lexes for use in knowledge categories away from the academically specialist. A careful comparison of semantically 'equivalent' responses, given to some matching battery of questions, could enable researchers to detect a use of words in ordinary language that represents a lexis peculiar to one or other social group. Most important and urgent is the need to design and implement curricular and organisational changes in
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schools and school systems to make them fairer places for children of all backgrounds and to ensure the provision of a rich language environment for all children. It must be one which is suited to promoting all children's access to the lexicon of the language by establishing robust metacogniti ve skills, a rich and available store of words, and wide encounters with the conventions for their use (Corson 1990).
25 Plain English: some sociolinguistic revelations ROBERT D. EAGLESON
25.1
Introduction
Plain English, that is the use of ordinary everyday English in official documents, is not an innovation of recent decades. There have been repeated pleas for it down the centuries (see, for example, Sir John Cheke, 1557) and even more recently in well-known works such as Sir Ernest Gowers' Complete Plain Words (1954). The current drive for Plain English, however, dates from the 1970s and has its mainspring in the consumer movement. The recognition that consumers had rights and were not just a source of income for manufacturers and sellers not only led to better products but also eventually spread to aspects of language used in the documents which described products and services. Indeed, one of the first plain English documents came from a market survey conducted by Sentry Insurance in 1974. Responding to the consumer movement, the Company sought to discover the desires of its customers for insurance. One request, unexpected by the Company, kept emerging: the desire for a comprehensible policy. The Sentry Insurance car policy and the Citibank loan agreements which appeared in early 1975 are generally recognised as the first manifestations of the current plain English movement. Australia was not far behind these developments in the United States. The NRMA Insurance Ltd. issued itsfirstplain English car policy in 1976, and quickly thereafter converted all its other policies from traditional legalese to plain English. In 1977 the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales reworded its residential tenancy agreement. These documents quickly established the value of plain English in the Australian context. The conversion of the tenancy agreement exposed how legalese could conceal, even unwittingly, practices that were either unfair or heavily weighted in favour of one party. The expression of the same conditions in plain English left it in no doubt that they should be altered, even for those who had benefited from the older style conditions in the past.
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The NRMA policies demonstrated that plain English had advantages for companies as well as for consumers. The plain English policies led to fewer invalid claims, less litigation, higher efficiency, and faster training of staff. Plain English turned out to be more than an altruistic exercise: there were considerable financial gains to be had by the commercial enterprises themselves. Despite this, the practice of plain English remained very much in the private sector for the rest of the seventies. It was not until the early eighties that government departments, notably Social Services, stirred. After a series of seminars and investigations during 1983, in February 1984 the Australian Government declared a policy of plain English in official documents. In taking this step it was influenced more by developments which had taken place in official circles in the United Kingdom in 1982 through the White Paper Administrative Forms in Government (Cmnd. 8504) than the Executive Order 12044 which President Carter had proclaimed much earlier in 1978 in the United States. These early Australian ventures in plain English were largely imitative. Although Australian projects have contributed both in understanding and in practice, the motivation and basic principles have been derived from overseas. However in 1985 Australia took an important initiative. The Victorian Attorney-General gave the Victorian Law Reform Commission a reference To inquire into and review current techniques, principles and practices of drafting legislation, legal agreements and those Government forms which affect legal rights and obligations, in order to recommend what steps should be taken to adopt a plain English drafting style. Because of the strong influence the language of legislation exerts, with lawyers and officials not eager to depart too far from the wording of Acts and subordinate legislation even in correspondence, many in Australia and overseas have longed for such a development. There have been studies and investigations to bring about improvements such as the Renton Committee in the United Kingdom in 1975 and a few local efforts at plain English drafting, for example, in Montgomery County Council, Maryland, USA. None of these, however, has approached the comprehensiveness of the Victorian exercise. After a pilot project on the Coroners Act in 1985 had shown how much needed to be done and had led to the reference to the Law Reform Commission, activities in 1986 were devoted to looking closely at the language and design of Acts and other legal documents, and producing models and training staff. The outcome has been a report which has affirmed the viability of plain English for legislative drafting, and advanced proposals for its continued practice and a plan to have the 50 most
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important Victorian Acts rewritten in plain English over a period of five years. This endeavour would also provide opportunities for the training of legislative drafters. The report also contains a manual on plain English drafting and demonstration models of a range of legal documents, including the Companies (Acquisition of Shares) Act, a standard Mortgage over Business (in collaboration with the Law Institute), and an Agreement for Loans and Grants (with the Historic Buildings Council). The Companies Act, popularly known as the Takeovers Code, is particularly important as the original is recent. It dates from 1980, is lengthy (some 80 pages), and is generally acknowledged to cover complex and complicated policy. The exercise demonstrates that plain English can handle complex legislation over an extended passage. It is not restricted to general consumer-type documents nor to short bursts or individual sentences.
25.2
Plain English in legislative use
Although plain English has been establishing its value afresh in the last decade and although drafters protest a desire for it and a commitment to it, there has been a tardiness to practise it in legislation and other legal documents. Legislative drafters seem more intent on defending the prevailing practice, as if requests for plain English brought their competence into question, rather than on seizing the opportunity to abandon a faulty tradition which has exposed them to criticism and to embrace wholeheartedly a new one. Hence legislative drafters continually propose as reasons for the failure and incomprehensibility of Acts ill-conceived policies, inadequate instructions from sponsoring departments, and insufficient time (see e.g. Turnbull 1986). Each one of these arguments has validity and real substance. Drafters face undoubted difficulties, though no more than other writers face. Yet one cause of incomprehensibility is rarely mentioned, and if noted, generally played down, namely erroneous language practices. As studies in 1986 revealed, not all the weaknesses in language can be attributed to other causes. Some flow from underlying misconceptions about language. They can be overcome even if all the other difficulties remain. Section 25(3) of the Credit Act 1984 offers evidence in support of this claim: 25. (3) Where, by reason of sub-section (1), a tied loan contract is discharged when a contract of sale is rescinded or discharged (a) the credit provider is liable to the buyer for the amount (if any) paid by the buyer to the credit provider under the tied loan contract to the extent that it is discharged;
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(b) the supplier is liable to the credit provided for (i) the amount (if any) paid under the tied loan contract, to the extent that it is discharged, by the credit provider to the supplier; (ii) the amount paid under the tied loan contract, to the extent that it is discharged, by the credit provider to the buyer and paid by the buyer to the supplier; and (iii) the amount of the loss (if any) suffered by the credit provider by reason of the discharge of the tied loan contract; and (c) the buyer is liable to the credit provider for the amount (if any paid under the tied loan contract, to the extent that it is discharged, to the buyer by the credit provider, other than amounts paid to the buyer and paid by him to the supplier and, where the contract of sale is a contract of sale of goods or services (d) if the goods are in the possession of the buyer (i) where, before the rescission or discharge of the contract of sale, there was not a mortgage relating to the tied loan contract, the buyer shall deliver the goods to the supplier; or (ii) where before the rescission or discharge of the contract of sale, there was a mortgage relating to the tied loan contract to the extent that it is discharged, the buyer shall deliver the goods to the credit provider; and (e) if the goods are in the possession of the credit provider and no amounts are owed to the credit provider under paragraph (b), the credit provider shall deliver the goods to the supplier. Here are 345 words crammed into one sentence, and even though it is divided into paragraphs, and subdivided again into subparagraphs, these devices can bring little relief to its sheer complexity. To scratch only the surface of the convolution, consider the structure of (d)(i). It begins with a subordinate clause (line 27): Where, before the rescission . . . which follows immediately on another subordinate clause (line 26): if the goods are in possession . . . which follows on a third subordinate clause (line 24): where the contract of sale . . . which is coordinated with a fourth subordinate clause, introduced some 200 words earlier at the beginning of the subsection (line IX Where, by reason of . . . and which itself contains a subordinate temporal clause (line 2): when a contract of sale . . .
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This labyrinth of clauses in (d)(i) forces readers to go back and forth several times to discover the syntactic structure and the relationships between the subordinate clauses before they can begin to absorb the material. This labyrinth is complicated enough in itself, but its difficulty is aggravated by its inclusion in the structure of 25(3), so that the clauses constitute only a small segment of the total subsection. Readers come upon them after having already negotiated a stretch of over 200 words and still have to reach the main clause which provides the context for interpreting them. The excessive complicatedness of the sentence results from compressing too many ideas and qualifications into the one sentence. No one would speak like this; nor would anyone write like this spontaneously. The sentence would have come into being only after a lot of effort in manipulating several sentences into one. It is contrived, and a piece of artifice. It is a product of time, not of a lack of time. We see this if we go back to the ideas underlying paragraph (d). They have the form of: What happens to the goods in a contract of goods and services? The buyer gives them to the supplier if there is no mortgage relating to the tied loan contract The buyer gives them to the credit provider if there is a mortgage. These ideas form a neat coherent group. They should have been expressed in a separate sentence: If the buyer also has any goods under a contract of sale for goods and services, he or she must deliver them to: (a) the supplier if there was no mortgage relating to the tied loan contract; or (b) the credit provider if there was a mortgage. Not only does this solution disentangle the conditional clauses from each other and relieve readers from having to hurdle a whole series of them, but more to the point in the present discussion, it would take much less time to write the ideas in this form than to merge them with the early part of 25(3). Moreover, the incorporation is unnecessary. There are a number of items in the revised version of (d) to tie it to the earlier part of 25(3), such as the definite article before buyer and the insertion of also. The cause of the incomprehensibility of 25(3) then has nothing to do with the complexity of content or pressure of time, but with faulty notions of sentence structure and cohesion in texts. These are matters in the control of drafters. The partiality for nominalisations demonstrates this point in another way: 222(2) In default of the appearance of the objector before the Tribunal for the purpose of review, the Tribunal shall . . . Accident Compensation Act 1985
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This is a transformation of: If the objector does not appear before the Tribunal . . . Writers and speakers are far more likely to start with this form and only move to the transformation later. In other words, it involves a second step in composition. If the drafters bypassed it, they would reduce their workload. Any loss of time wasted on it is a self-inflicted wound and cannot be blamed on others. When faced with adverbials, legislative drafters regularly place them between the modal auxiliary and the main verb: (4) If the liquidator or trustee does not comply with any provision of this section (or fails as trustee duly to pay the long service leave charges for which the liquidator or trustee is liable under sub-section (3)) the liquidator or trustee must to the extent of the value of the assets which have been taken into the liquidator's or trustee's possession and which are or have been available at any time for the payment of the long service leave charges be personally liable to pay the long service leave charges and is guilty of an offence. Construction Industry Long Service Leave (Amendment) Act 1985 (emphasis added)
There is no advantage to be gained from interpolating the adverbial like this. The practice forces readers into more than one reading because they cannot be expected to retain the auxiliary in short-term memory across a gap of 38 words, and even more on some occasions. But in addition to destroying the unity of the auxiliary and the main verb, the misplacement of the adverbial weakens the emphasis it should receive. It should have come at the end of its clause to receive end stress befitting the important part of the message it is conveying. The end position for the adverbial is the natural place for both readers and drafters. To locate it in a medial position again involves a type of transformation, an additional step in composing and this requires time. Drafters regularly fail to treat Acts as coherent texts and proceed as if each sentence occurred in isolation. The result is a mass of repeated material which readers have to scrape away to find the core message. Subsection 112(2) of the Mental Health Act 1986 illustrates what happens when the unity of a text is ignored: 112 (1) A community visitor is entitled when visiting a mental health service to (a) inspect any part of the premises; (b) see any person who is receiving treatment or other services unless that person has asked not to be seen; and (c) make enquiries relating to the admission, detention, care, treatment and control of residents; and (d) inspect any document or medical record relating to any patient or
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resident if he or she has given informed consent in writing and any records required to be kept by or under this Act. (2) Where a community visitor wishes to perform or exercise or is performing or exercising any power, duty or function under this Act, the person in charge and every member of the staff or management of the mental health service must provide the community visitor with such reasonable assistance as the community visitor requires to perform or exercise that power, duty or function effectively. The opening clause of (2), Where a community visitor . . . under this Act, is unnecessary: its content has already been stated in (1). Because (2) follows immediately on (1) and is part of the same section, it is more than obvious that it relates to (1) and could have appeared more briefly as: (2) Members of the mental health service must give any reasonable help that the community visitor requires to carry out these activities.1 This plainer version reveals that 112(2) lapses twice over. Not only does it ignore its obvious external connections with 112(1), but it also ignores internal connections. The last clause virtually repeats the material in the first clause. The subsection is tantamount to saying: (1) If X want to do Y (2) then Z must help X (3) when X is doing Y. It is overstatement to have both (1) and (3). Rather than adding to the precision of the text, the supercaution detracts from its sharpness and conceals the new information. It also expends a lot of the drafter's time and energy needlessly. What these illustrations disclose is a single commitment to getting the law right to the disregard of communication. Drafters would not compose sentences of 200 plus words and often 400 words, for example, if they had an equal concern to communicate as well as to be accurate. There is nothing to compel them to produce sentences of undue length constantly. There might be the occasional lapses (all writers are likely to falter under pressure), but there is nothing in these long sentences to suggest urgency. They may be clumsy as communication, but they are constructed grammatically and they give evidence of thought. They also testify to a limited view of the use of language. In this, legalese is at odds with plain English, which seeks both precision and comprehensibility. The lack of a practical consideration for the audience comes out not just in sentence structure but in a number of ways. The treatment of definitions is another glaring case. The Social Securities Act 1947 (Commonwealth) contains the definition:
Plain English: some sociolinguistic revelations 369 "unmarried person" means a person who is not married. Admittedly this has to be read in the context of the definition of married person which is presented earlier: "married person" includes a de facto spouse but does not include (a) a legally married person (not being a de facto spouse) who is living separately and apart from the spouse of the person on a permanent basis; or (b) a person who, for any special reason in any particular case, the DirectorGeneral determines in writing should not be treated as a married person. This may be very neat, but only from the drafters' point of view. Are readers to be expected to remember that unmarried person has an unusual sense whenever they come across it in the 177 pages of the Act, especially when the term is not identified in the text in any special way to show that it is a defined term? The drafters needed to take a different approach altogether and one which attended more sympathetically to the way in which general readers used the term. The Corrections Bill which was tabled in the Victorian Parliament in 1986 presented a strange sense of formal: 46
(1) A person who wishes to enter or remain in a prison as a visitor must, if asked, submit to a formal search. (2) In this section "formal search" means a search to detect the presence of drugs, weapons or metal articles carried out by an electronic or mechanical device. (3) If, when asked, a person does not submit to a formal search, a prison officer may prohibit the person from entering the prison or if the person is in the prison order the person to leave the prison immediately.
Not only does this definition wrench the word away from its accepted meanings, but the whole endeavour is a needless imposition on readers. Subsection (1) could have appeared as: (1) If asked, a visitor to a prison must submit to a search by an electronic or mechanical device for drugs, weapons, or metal articles. Subsection (2) could have been abandoned and subsection (3) modified to: If the visitor does not submit to the search, . . . Writing that is considerate to readers does not put them through unnecessary hoops. Legal and official writers often ignore this principle. They persist in presenting matters from the world view that is familiar to them rather than from the perspective of their readers. It is easy for writers who are lawyers, for example, to present events in terms of the legal system in which they operate daily. The Companies (Acquisition of Shares) (Victoria) Code does this in section 39(6)
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In a prosecution of a person for failing to serve a notice on a stock exchange under this section, it is a defence if the defendant establishes that . . .
In the switch from person to defendant the drafter is clearly beginning to visualise the event in a courtroom setting. It would have been much better if he or she had left the statement firmly in the everyday world in which the business readers would see themselves. All of the faults in writing and the obstacles to readability we have been discussing here are within the control of legislative drafters. They are not dependent on clear policies, complete instructions, or even time. In fact, the plainer style would take less time. The plain English version of the Takeovers Code occupies just over half the space of the traditional version (50 pages instead of 80), yet it covers exactly the same provisions. This is not to deny that other factors have influence on the quality of legislation, but what legalese just as forcefully discloses is the adherence by drafters to an unnatural form of language. Drafters are artificially adopting modes because they feel they should: this is how legislative language has always appeared. That drafters are often working against their natural bent is borne out by an experiment in Victoria. As part of a staff seminar, parliamentary counsel were asked if they could produce plainer versions of section 84 of the Credit Act 1984 84. A debtor who is liable to make payments in respect of two or more regulated contracts to the same credit provider shall, notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary, be entitled, on making a payment in respect of the contracts which is not sufficient to discharge the total amount then due under all the contracts, to require the credit provider to appropriate the amount so paid in or towards the satisfaction of the amount due under any one or more of the contracts, or in or towards the satisfaction of the amount due under any two or more of the contracts in such proportions as the debtor specifies and, if the debtor fails to make such an appropriation, the payment shall, unless the debtor and the credit provider otherwise agree, be appropriated in or towards the satisfaction of the amounts due under the respective contracts in the order in which the contracts were entered into.
What is revealing is that none wanted to keep the single sentence structure but some divided the material across two sentences, which they allocated to subsections, and some went further to three sentences. All rightly defended their new versions on the grounds of greater comprehensibility. They showed that even for them long sentences do not seem congenial and when freed from the force of custom, they can turn to other forms. They are not locked into legalese. That they practise it has nothing to do with necessity or solely external circumstances but much to do with the pressure of convention.2 Moreover, legislative drafters continually ignore their acknowledged
Plain English: some sociolinguistic revelations
371
masters. Gowers (1954, 1972, 1986), Dickerson (1965), Driedger (1949, 1976), Piesse (1976) and Thornton (1979), to mention the ones most frequently quoted, do not countenance the blemishes found in legislation. They decry long sentences, overloaded structures, improper definitions, etc. They are more flexible in their approach and do not insist on all sections and subsections consisting only of one sentence. The conflict between the drafters' declared regard for these writers on drafting and their practice is marked. It strongly suggests that they are more hidebound than principled in their approach to writing. They follow the tradition that has been set before them rather than good sense. That this is not too strained an assessment is demonstrated by their persistence with a medial position for adverbials, which as we have noted hinders readers and burdens drafters. Revealing is the fact that they do not seem comfortable with the practice themselves. This is illustrated by their erratic treatment of punctuation with these adverbials, as in: 4 (3) If an employer has after the appointed day and before the commencement day made a payment which should have been by reason of the coming into operation of this section, made by the Board out of the Fund and which would have been authorised by this Act to have been made from that Fund the employer is entitled to be reimbursed from the Fund the amount of that payment. Construction Industry Long Service Leave Amendment Act 1985 (emphasis added)
The comma after section is a mistake. It is not a proof-reading slip for there are other examples of the same phenomenon. The unnaturalness of the adverbial in this position has disturbed theflowof ideas and the drafter has become lost. The intrusion of the comma shows that drafters themselves are ill-at-ease with the adverbial in a medial position, and that this location does not come spontaneously to them. Why do they constantly put the adverbial there? The only reason can be because every drafter does so, not because of some principled approach to writing.
25.3
Conclusion
In the two years since the release of the Victorian report Plain Language and the Law there have been some promising developments. The Commonwealth Parliamentary Counsel office has adopted a policy of 'Clear English' and at least one major private legal firm has committed itself to plain language. It has already written a number of precedents in plain English and put them into operation in contracts and agreements. The hesitation or tardiness to practise plain English (if not opposition to
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it) bespeaks a real problem with professionals. It applies not only to lawyers but to doctors, architects, bureaucrats, literary critics, and indeed all professional groups. For all the community's emphasis on literacy, we seem to be achieving very poor results if we put as the measure of success clarity of communication. What is worrying is that it is the educated who appear to be afflicted with the disease of gobbledegook. They have a restricted view of language, allowing its communicative role and the rights of audience to be discounted. They are frequently trapped in their own linguistic conceits, enmeshed in words, deceiving themselves and others into believing that they are saying something. As enterprises to rewrite the Takeovers Code and insurance policies have shown, they are at times saying not what they intend, but the sheer convolution has hidden the error. The thrust for plain English reveals that ironically it is the professionals who are linguistically disadvantaged. While sadly they may be disadvantaging others in the community by not setting out their rights and responsibilities clearly, it is they who are in need to instant help. Until we address their problems, until we release them from false notions about language, until they can see the fallacies in the linguistic traditions they unthinkingly adhere to, the cause of clear communication will always be shaky. We need to penetrate deeply the processes of education and the moulders of social attitudes, especially those concerned with the training of the brightest. They are being given expert control of their subject matter but deprived of mastery of language to make the fruits of their knowledge available to others. Plain English is not just about helping the less well-educated and less fortunate in the community; it is also about releasing the more able. Notes 1. It might be argued that this wording is narrower in import than 'power, duty or function under this Act' of the original. The argument does not affect the point being made here, but if the original (2) is wider in scope, it should not be part of 112, but should form a separate section. 2. For confirmation of this view that professionals often adopt certain modes of writing because they feel it is expected, see Bardell (1978), Turk (1978) and Wales (1979).
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Wales, L.H. 1979. Technical Writing Style: Attitudes towards Scientists and their Writing. University of Vermont: Agricultural Experiment Station. Walker, A. and Zorc, D. 1981. Austronesian loanwords in Yolngu-Matha of northeast Arnhem Land. Aboriginal History 5: 109-34. Walker, R.F. 1981. The English spoken by Aboriginal entrants to Traeger Park School. Curriculum Development Centre Occasional Papers No. 11. 1983. The English used by Aboriginal children.Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 6(1): 64—76. Ward, Charles. 1976. Serbs and Croats in Milwaukee, Wis. General Linguistics 16: 2-3. Warlpiri Media Association. 1985. WarIpiri Language and Culture - Adaptation for Contemporary Needs. Warner, W.L. 1937. A Black Civilization. A Social Study of an Australian Tribe. New York: Harper and Brothers. Waters, N. 1913. Report of the Inspector of Police for 1912. Northern Territory of Australia: Report of the Administrator for the year 1912, 101-4. Watkins, C. 1962. The Indo-European origins of the Celtic verb. Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Weinreich, U. 1953. Languages in Contact. New York: Columbia University Press. Weist, R.M. 1983. The word order myth. Journal of Child Language 10: 97-106. White, N. 1978. A human ecology research project in the Arnhem Land region: an outline. Newsletter of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies 9: 39-52. Whitton, D. 1975. The migrant child and teacher preparation. Babel 11(3). Wildey, W.B. 1876. Australasia and the Oceanic Region. Melbourne: George Robertson. Wilkes, G.A. (ed.). 1988. A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms. Sydney. Willshire, W.H. 1896. The Land of the Dawning. Adelaide: W.K. Thomas. Wolfram, W. and Christian, D. 1975. Appalachian English. Arlington, Virginia: Center for Applied Linguistics. Wolfson, N. and Manes, J. 1980. Don't 'dear' me! In McConnell-Ginet, Borker, and Furman (eds.), 79-92. Wurm, S.A. (ed.). 1979. Australian Linguistic Studies. Pacific Linguistics (Series C54). Canberra: Australian National University. Wurm, S.A. and Hattori, S. 1981. Language Atlas of the Pacific Area Part 1. Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Japan Academy. Yallop, C. 1982. Australian Aboriginal Languages. London: Andre Deutsch. Yarwood, A.T. and Knowling, M.J. 1982. Race Relations in Australia. A History. Sydney: Methuen.
Index of topics
Aboriginal English, 2, 15, 19, 67-83 communication problems with Standard Australian English, 79-80; communicative strategies in, 84-93; discourse features, 77; grammatical features, 72-5; indirectness in, 87-9; interlanguage varieties in bilingual settings, 75; lexical features, 76-7; non-Standard, 96-9; northern creolespeaking communities, 75; northern and desert areas, 74; phonological features, 75-6; relation to pidgins and Creoles, 162, 165-73; roles and functions today, 81-2; sociocultural context, 85-7; structural properties, 71-7; studies of, 67-9; town and camp, 72; urban/metropolitan varieties, 13-4; variations in and sample texts, 77-9; vs. the Creoles, 69-71; written, 80-1 Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern territory) Act (1976), 94 Aboriginal language groups, 50-2 Aboriginal languages, 25-155 decline of, 2; influence on Australian English, 11; lexical resources, 43-5; loan words in English from, 45; national policy on, 344, 347; number of varieties, 62-5; oral tradition, 21; research periods, 31; richness of grammatical structure, 23-4; sexexclusive markers in, 319; teaching of as aid to acquisition of English; 7; written texts in, 46 Aboriginal Languages Association, 7, 81, 172 Aboriginal Pidgin English of Dunk Island, 165
Aborigines education, 7, 22, 337; land claim hearings communicative strategies, 94-103; language attitudes and language policy, 6-8; marginalisation of, 3, 6, 21; massacre of (1890s), 200-1; population, estimates of early, 27, 30; population (1788-1933), 6; of Tasmania, 6; voting rights, 6 accent, Australian acceptability of, 12; compared with RP, 10, 17 Accident Compensation Act (1985), 366 accommodation, by the court in land claim hearings, 100-1 accommodation strategies, 79, 92 by Aboriginal court witnesses, 99-100 acculturation, 284 'Acquired Communication Variety', of Greek, 258-61 acquisition bilingual language, 225; children's language, 106-17: in unstable bilingual situations, 154 adaptation theory, 148-9 address, politics of, 324-5 adequacy debate over pidgin and Creoles, 162-4; expressive, 163; referential, 162, 163 Administrative Forms in Government, 363 Adult Literacy Action Campaign, 347 Afghans, 170, 171 African languages, 35 Afrikaans, 22 age distribution of languages, 152 agglutination, 40, 104, 111 Alawa people, 201 Albanian, 226, 271
402
Index
Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada (APEC), 14 American Bible Society, 11 American English, attitudes towards, 17 American Indians, 21 American Revolution, 12 American Speech, 288 Americanisms, 17 Americans, 226 Anangu Pitjantjatjara, 52 androcentrism, 319 anglicisation, of Italian, 264-6 Anglo-Celtics, in Sydney, 306-17 animacy hierarchy, 39 Anindhilyakwa, 43 Ann Arbor Black English case, 83 anthropology 32, 35, 318 applied linguistics, 32 Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA), 342-3 Arabic, 215, 216, 226, 305, 346 archaeology, 35 argument ellipsis, 111 Armenian, 222 Arrernte, 47, 154 Asian languages, 342, 347-8 Asian Studies Programme, 347 Asians, 5 assimilation, 3-5, 6, 13-14, 20, 21, 23, 149, 330-1 and language shift 216-20 attitudes Aboriginal language, 6-8; and awareness of language contact phenomena, 236-8; Italian language, 268-9; language, 1, 224; towards American English, 17; towards multilingualism, 15 attrition Italian language, 266-8; paradigm, 224; second language in elderly bilingual, 225, 226 Australian Advisory Council on Language and Multicultural Education (AACLAME), 9, 347-8 Australian Broadcasting Commission, 10, 193, 335, 347 Autralian Bureau of Statistics, 217 Australian English in the 1940s, 305-6; autonomy of, 10-12; Broad, General and Cultivated, 10, 306, 320; compared with RP, 10, 316, 320; 'cultural cringe' variety, 316; determining the Sydney sociolects, 306-7; Ethnic Broad, 307; gender differences in, 318-26; migrants and language
change, 304^-17; new status of, 11-12; present, 306-13; regional usage in the lexicon, 287-303; sexism in, 319; varieties of, 2, 285-325 Australian Ethnic Affairs Council, 22-3 Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 7, 32, 165 Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs (AIMA), 339, 347 Australian Language, The (Baker), 10 Australian languages early studies, 30-2; grammatical characteristics, 38-40; in the modern world, 46-8; northern languages, 32; phonological characteristics, 40-2; relations with other languages, 35-6; southern languages, 32-3; vocabulary, 42-5; writing and texts, 45-6; see also indigenous languages Australian Linguistics Society, 342 Australian National Dictionary, 9-11 Australian Population and Immigration Council, 22-3 Australian Second Language Learning Programme, 347 'Australitalian', 223 Austrians, 221, 222, 242 Austronesian languages, 35, 36 Awabakal, 31 awareness and attitudes, 236-8 'Baby Talk', 148 Basques, 19 Bass Strait English, 164 Bible translation, 32, 46 Kriol, 202-3 bidialectalism, 82 Big Language of Western Cape York Peninsula, 50 bigness, 56 bilingual education, 337-8 and language maintenance, 47-8; legislation against, 217; and literacy, 46; programmes, 7, 172-3, 202; in USA, 14 Bilingual Education Act (1968), US, 14 bilingual schools, 105 bilingualism in Creole and the acrolect, 177; with diglossia, 144; function of language choice in 150-3; incidence of, 5; and language maintenance, 22; learnability issues, 153-5; of opportunity, 282; promoting, 333; stable, 144; transitional, 144; without diglossia, 282 Binding Principles (Chomsky), 24
Index Bislama, 172, 178 Vanuatu, 176, 177, 183 Bosnian, 275 'Broad Australian', 10 broadcasting Aboriginal, 7; accent, 10; policy and languages other than English, 305, 334-7 Broome Pearling Pidgin, 164 Brown Corpus of American English, 11 Bulgarian, 270 Bullock Report (1975), 344 Burmese, 216
Canadian partial immersion model, 220 Canefields English, 164, 166, 167, 172; see also Queensland Kanaka English Canton Pidgin English, 170 Cape Keerweer people, 51, 55-6 Cape York Creole, 70, 165 Cape York languages, 42, 50 case systems, in Australian languages, 38-9 cattle station pidign, 198 Celtic fringe, 19-20 Census (1933), 3 Census (1976), 5, 229, 241, 271 Census (1986), 215-16, 249, 263 Census (1988), language shift, 217-18 Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), 47 Central Australian Languages, 47 change: migrants and language in Sydney, 304-17; structural and sociolinguistic factors in language, 248 child language, 104-17 Child Migrant Education programme, 332, 337 children, separation from Aboriginal parents, 20, 169 Chileans, 222 Chinese, 198, 215, 226, 305, 338, 346 Chinese Pidgin, 164 Chinese Pidgin English, 160, 161, 170, 198 choice, language and solidarity or distance, 150; and style shifting, 146 churches Dutch, 243; German, 242; and Kriol, 195, 201-3; and multiculturalism, 220 Citibank loan agreements, 362 clans, and languages, 52, 55, 58-9 class see social class classification of Australian languages, 32-^: map, 34 'classless society' see egalitarian myth
403
classroom interaction, and miscommunication, 80, 91 code-switching, 16, 85, 92 between old and new languages, 152; Dutch and German, 245, 247-8; expressive or metaphorical, 145; social meanings in, 145; and sociolinguistic rules for use, 154 collaborative research, 32 colloquial usage, and gender differences, 323-4 colonial languages, 13 colonialism, internal, 18-23 Committee on Overseas Professional Qualifications, 340 Commonwealth, 13 Commonwealth Reporting Service, 94 communication non-verbal, 96; vertical, 161 communication failure, Aboriginal land claim hearings 101-3; see also miscommunication communicative competence bicultural, 85, 92; development of, 155; gender differences in, 318 communicative strategies, 84-5 Aboriginal in cross-cultural communication, 90-3; in Aboriginal English, 84-93; in Aboriginal land claim hearings, 94-103; non-verbal, 90 community dynamics, and language maintenance, 241-3 community languages see immigrant languages Companies (Acquisition of Shares) (Victoria) Code, 369-70 'complaint tradition', 16-17 Complete Plain Words (Gower), 362 computer assisted language teaching methods, 9 Construction Industry Long Service Leave (Amendment) Act (1985), 367, 371 consumer movement, 362 contact attitudes towards by Dutch imigrants, 228-40; with non-European languages, 2; research in language, 224; role of men and women in process of language, 319 contact language, pidgin as a, 160 contrastive pairs of communication, 266 conversation analysis, 320 convict settlement, 2, 12 Coroners Act (1985), 363 Corrections Bill (1986), 369 courtroom language, 90-1, 323 aboriginal land claim hearings, 94-103
404
Index
Credit Act (1984), 364-6, 370 creole active promotion of, 172-3; definition, 160 Creoles, 2, 13, 70, 157-212 adequacy debate, 162-4; Australian, 159-73: further research issues, 171-3; history of research into, 165-7; inventory, 164; origin and development of, 167-71; life cycle, 175-7; monogenesis vs. polygenesis, 178-9; vs. Aboriginal English, 69-72; white vs. black varieties, 171 creolisation Bickerton's bioprogram hypothesis, 177-8; extralinguistic factors in, 178; process, 160, 168, 175-7, 200-3 Croatian, 270 Croato-Serbian see Serbo-Croatian Croats, 283 cross-cultural communicative conflict, 225 cultural change, rapidity of and language shift, 148-9 cultural stereotypes, gender, 322 culture dominant, 18-23; non-language-centred, 248 Czechs, 223
Dovey Report (1960), 331 Dravidian languages, 35 Dreaming, the, 50, 66 Dutch language, 215, 216, 217, 219, 222, 224, 226, 228^0 attitudes towards by Dutch immigrants, 229-30; in Australia, 230-1; compared with German in Australia, 241-8; differences in structure from German, 245-8; structures common also to German, 243-5 Dutch people, 2, 273, 282, 284 Dutch-Australians, and Dutch nationals comparison of attitudes, 238-9 Dyirbal, 44, 50 Early English Pronunciation (Ellis), 288
East Coast Aboriginal Pidgin, 164 Eastern and African Cold-storage Company, 201 'educated Australian speech' (cultivated), 10 education and Creoles, 172-3; and Kriol, 195; problems of Aboriginal children, 68; see also bilingual education education policy, multiculturalism and migrant languages, 337-^40 education system and immigrants, 5, 22; and use of Dalmatians, 283 Aboriginal English, 82-3; western Danes, in USA, 248 information seeking strategies and Daruk people, 11 Aborigines, 92-3 deaf, language problems of the, 9 egalitarian myth, 4-5, 13 death, language, 30, 143 embassies, 341 decreolisation, 193 Emergency Telephone Interpreter Service deficit theory, 7 see Telephone Interpreter Service demographic situation, 215-16 English, 1 Department of Immigration and Ethnic and Australian English, social lexes Affairs, 334, 343 compared, 349-61; in diglossic dialect features, and settlement history, relationship with Torres Strait 287 Creole, 182; as dominant language, Dialect Notes, 288 2-5; influence on indigenous dialect stereotypes, mimics of, 57 languages, 46-7; new varieties of, 19; dialectology rates of shift to, 229; Standard, 16; Aboriginal, 55-9; linguist's, 59-62 use in comparative perspective: USA, Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, 9 UK and Australia, 12-17 diglossia, 242 English Language Act, California, 14 diplomacy, language resources for, 341 English as a second language, and varieties discourse analysis, 320 of Aboriginal English, 69 diseases, introduced, 27 English as a Second Language Displaced Persons (1949-51), 227 programmes, 193, 305, 330, 332, 337 Djamindjung, 37 cuts (1986), 218, 347 * domain, defined, 145 English-Polynesian jargons, 169 domain theory, 144—6 enrichment, bilingual education for diachronic, 149 language, 338 domains of language use, 272, 277-82 ergative-absolute systems, 38, 112 dominant culture, 18-23
Index Eskimo, 39-40 Estonian, 222, 225 ethnic affairs policy, stages in, 330-4 ethnic communities, 5 Ethnic Communities Councils, 334, 343, 348, 345 ethnic identity, 15-16 ethnic neighbourhood, and host community, 304-17 ethnic religious groups, 219 ethnic schools, 242-3, 331, 339-40 ethnicity, 15-16, 173, 182 and vocabulary, 360 ethnocentrism, European, 160 ethnography of speaking, 50, 84-93 ethnolect, 258-9 ethnolinguistic co-settlement, 216 European Economic Community, Directive on the education of migrant workers (1977), 21 exclusionist policies, European, 19-20 exogamy, 53, 219, 225, 243 family reunion scheme, 305 Federal Department of Education, 343-6 Federal Immigration Restriction Act (1901), 3 Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils (FECCA), 7, 343, 348 feminist linguistics, 318-19 Finnish, 225 Flemings, 222 focus markers, 109 folk model, of clan language varieties, 55 'foreign languages' in schools, 329 French, 215, 216, 217, 222, 225, 346 French-Canadians, 106, 222 functional choice theory of language shift, 150-3 Gaelic, Scottish, 20 Gagudju Association, 52 Galbally Report (1977), 335, 340 Garama, 37 gender ideology and language system 319; and intonation, 322-3; and words, 323^* gender bias, in language structure, 319 gender differences in Australian English, 319-22; in communicative competence, 318; in language, 318-19; in language in Australia study, 319; in speech styles, 318,319 German, 146, 148, 215, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228-9, 338, 346
405
compared with Dutch in Australia, 241-8; difference in structure from Dutch, 245-8; structures common also to Dutch, 243-5; supra-ethnic language community, 221 gold mining, 198 Good News Bible (Australian), 11 Graeco-Latin (G-L) Instrument, 351-2 grammatical characteristics, Australian languages, 38-40 grammatical structure, 23-4 'gratuitous concurrence', 91 Greek, 2, 215, 216, 217, 220, 225, 229, 268, 338, 346 changing structure in Australia, 258-62; Demotic, 251; situation in Australia, 255-8; see also Katharevousa Greek Orthodox Church, 251-2 Greeks attitudes towards language maintenance, 254-5; bilingualism, 249-55; modern in Australia, 249-62; in Sydney, 305, 308-17 group membership, multiple, 225 GUNAARLPELYU (Hypothetical Australian language), 41—2 Gunwinygu, 164 Gurindji, code-switching, 147: social arenas configuation, 152-3 Guugu Yimidhirr, 24, 44-5 anaphora in, 24 Hawaii Creole English, 177-8 Hebrew, 221, 225 Highland Clearances (1800-50), Scotland, 20 Hungarian, 109, 146, 148, 222, 271 Hungarians, 223 hunter-gatherer societies, 49 hypercorrection, 100 identity, Aboriginal, 73, 81, 82; and domain definition, 145; dual language, 53-5; language and, 52, 182, 224, 225 national and multiculturalism, 5 ideology, gender and language system, 319 immigrant languages, 13, 215-27 development of research methodology, 224-5; gaps in research, 225-6; and homeland links, 221-4; 'mainstreaming' of, 220; prospects, 226-7; relations with metropolitan countries, 221-4; see also migrant languages immigrants, minorities, 222-3
406
Index
immigration, and new language contacts, 2-5; to Sydney, 305 Immigration (Education Act) (1971), 332 immigration policies, and language shift and maintenance, 226 immigration programme (1947), 216-17 immigration rates, future, 227 Imparja television station, 47 impoverished languages, 163 Indian languages, 62 Indians, southern, 35 indigenous languages, 47-48 location map, 28-9 indirectness, in Aboriginal English, 86, 87-9, 91 Indo-European family, 36, 225 Indonesian, 346 Institute for Aboriginal Development, 7, 32,46 integration, 332-3 interactional networks, 225 interactional-variationist theory, 146-8, 151-2 interlanguage Aboriginal English as an, 162; variability in, 99-100 international relations, 341 interpreting services, 47, 218, 332 at Aboriginal land claim hearings, 95; specialist, 340 intonation Australian questioning intonation (AQI), 323; and gender, 322-3; high rising terminal (HRT), 322-3 Inuit, 39 Irish, 20, 226 Islander languages, 25-155 Israelis, 225 Italian, 2, 13, 215, 216, 220, 222, 224, 226, 346 anglicisation, 264-6; dialects, 264; language attitudes, 229, 268-9; language attrition, 266-8; language mixing 229, 264-6; Standard and regional, 264, 269; teaching and maintenance, 332-3 Italians language variety among, 263-9; in Sydney, 305, 308-17 Japanese, 191, 225, 341, 346 Japanese Seto Inland Sea project, 288 jargon, 160-1, 167 Jews, 221, 225, 242, 243 Jiliwirri, 50 Kaiadilt people, 30
Kala Lagaw Langgus see Kalaw Kalaw Ya Kala Lagaw Ya see Kalaw Kalaw Ya Kalaw Kalaw Ya, 35, 46, 118-42, 182, 185, 186, 187, 191 basic wordlist, 139-40; morphology, 121-5; phonology and orthography, 120-1; sample noun declensions and verb conjugations, 136-8; sample text, 141-2; syntax, 125-35 Kanaka English see Canefield English Katharevousa, 252 Khmer, 216, 226 Kija, 148, 154 Kimberley Language Centre, 7, 81 kinship relations, 49, 76, 85-6, 105, 163 Korean Bamboo Pidgin, 160 Kriol, 15, 19, 30, 69, 70, 195-203 and 'Baby Talk', 148; in court proceedings, 96, 101; lexical structure, 210-11; literacy in, 70-1; morphological structure, 206—8; phonological structure, 204-6; preEuropean context, 195-6; sociolinguistic rule, 99; syntactic structure, 208-10; variety of styles, 153; written texts in, 46 Kriol dictionary (Sandefur and Sandefur), 163 land, relations with language, 49-66 land claims, 15, 21 Aboriginal communicative strategies at hearings, 94-103; and miscommunication, 80, 173 land ownership, religious, 105 land rights legislation, 47, 52 Langgus, 180 language affiliation, 52-5 language centres, Aboriginal community controlled, 7 language community, compared with speech community, 64 language group', 50-2, 53 language names, 36-8, 51 language rights issues, 7, 173 language services in Australia, 340-2 see also interpreting services, translating services language switching, as predictor of language shift, 146, 147-8 Languages Institute of Australia, 9, 348 languages other than English (LOTEs) and broadcasting policy, 334-7; newspapers in, 331; teaching of 344, 346 languages of wider teaching', 346
Index Larrakia people, 197 Latvian, 217, 222, 227 Law Reform Commission, 363 learnability considerations, 154, 162 legislation, language of, 8, 362-72 legislative drafting, training in, 364-71 lexical transfers from English, 284 lexicography, 9-11, 32 lexicon regional usage in Australian English, 287-303; size of commonly used, 163; social class differences in the, 349-61 Limburgers, 219, 242 linguistic chauvinism, 21 linguistic ecology, 19 linguistic stratification, 349-61 linguistic structure, core and periphery in Sydney, 308-13 linguistic surveys American, 288; data collection in Australia, 288-91; Japanese, 288; stages of, 288; verification of initial Australian data, 291-9 literacy, 32, 45-6 adult, 344, 347; in Kriol, 70-1 Lithuanian, 222, 273 Lo Bianco report (1987): 'The Place of Languages other Than English in Victorian Schools, 8, 345-7 loan concepts, incorporation of, 47 LOB (London/Oslo Bergen) corpus of British English, 11 London Missionary Society, 169-70, 183 loss, language, 105 LOTEs see languages other than English loyalty, language, 221 Loyalty Island Pidgin English, 174 Mabuiag see Kalaw Kalaw Ya 'Macassan' Pidgin, 36, 196, 197 Macassarese Pidgin, 164, 168, 170, 171, 172 Macaulay's Minute on Education (1835), 21 Macedonian, 215, 216, 225, 270, 271 Macquarie Dictionary, 9, 11 Madhi-Madhi, 38 Madngele, 51 Magiti-Ge, 37 maintenance, 1, 47 of Aboriginal languages, 7-8; and bilingual education, 337-8 and community dynamics, 241-3; degree of language, factors in, 272; Dutch attitudes towards Dutch language, 228-40; factors in strength of immigrant language, 217-20; future
407
of language, 23-4; Greek language, 249-54; and language shift, 143-55; language teaching and, 332-3; of Serbo-Croatian, 270-84 Malak Malak language group, 51 Malay, 170, 346 pidginised, 164 Malay-Indonesian, 191 Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) languages, 35 Malayo-Portuguese, 172, 196 Maltese, 215, 216, 219, 226, 284 Mamu, 42 Mangarayi people, 201 Manilamen, 171 Mara people, 201 marginal passages, 230 marginalisation of minority languages, 19-23 Marri-Djabin, 36 Marri-Ngarr, 36 matched guise technique, 229 Mather Report (1974), 338-9 matrifiliation, 53 media, for Aborigines, 47 media variables, 272, 273-7 see also broadcasting Melanesian languages, 2 Melanesian Pidgin, 164 Melanesians of Queensland (Kanaka), 174, 175-7, 183 Mental Health Act (1986), 367-8 Meriam Mir (or Miriam), 35, 118, 155, 182, 183, 185, 186, 191, 192 message-sticks, 45 metropolitan countries, relations of immigrant languages with, 221—4 Migrant Education Action conference, Melbourne (1974), 333 migrant languages education policy and multiculturalism, 337-40; national policy and planning, 329^48 see also immigrant languages Migrant Workers Conference, Melbourne (1973), 333 migrants and language change in Sydney, 304-17; language and social policy, 330-4; of non-English speaking background (NESB), 330-4 Miriam see Meriam Mir miscommunication, between Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English, 70, 79-80 mission dormitories, 169 missionaries, 31, 168-9, 201 misunderstanding, cross-cultural, 90-3
408
Index
mixing bilinguals' perceptions of language, 228; Italian language, 264-6 modes, pragmatic to syntactic, 266-8 mother tongue maintenance see maintenance; negative image of, 164; teaching of, 21 Multicultural and Cross-cultural Supplementation Programme, 347 multicultural education, cuts to funding (1986), 218 Multicultural Education Programme (MEP), 339, 345, 347 Multicultural Television Channel, 335-6 multiculturalism, 6-8, 22, 333-4 and changing functions of community languages, 220-1; education policy and migrant languages, 337-40; and national identity, 5-8; policies and language shift and maintenance, 226-7 multilingualism, 52-5, 65, 144, 305 Australian attitudes towards, 15 Murrinh-Diminin, 37 Murrinh-Kura, 37 Murrinh-Patha, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43-4 Murrinh-Yuwan, 37 mythology, 50 nation-states, and linguistic borders, 18, 49 National Aboriginal Education Committee, 7 National Aboriginal and Islander Broadcasting Association, 7 National Aboriginal Languages Programme, 8, 347 National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI), 341 National Advisory and Coordinating Committee on Multicultural Education, 345 national language policy, 8-12, 82, 173 and planning, 329-48 National Language Policy, A, 82 National Policy on Languages, moves for a, 342-8 nationalism, 316 Native Welfare Conference (1961), 6 New South Wales Pidgin English, 162 Ngaanyatjara, 38 Ngalakan people, 201 Ngandi people, 201 Ngiyampaa, 69 'no' languages, 38 nominative-accusative systems, 38-9 Norfolkese, 172
norms, rhetorical and communicative conflict, 17 Northern Australian Pidgin, 169 Northern Territory Kriol, 162, 164, 165, 166, 170 Northern Territory Pidgin English, 165, 200, 201 noun classes, 44 noun phrases mixed case marking in, 38-9; Torres Strait Creole, 188 NRMA Insurance Ltd, 362-3 Numggubuyu, 201, 202 Nyanganyatjara, 38 Nyungar, 68 Nyungar Pidgin English, 167, 170 Oceanic languages, 178 Office of the Status of Women, 8 official documents, policy of Plain English in, 362-3 Ontarian French, 106 orthography, for Kriol, 70-1 see also spelling over-generalisation, children's, 112-17 Overland Telegraph, 198, 200 'Ozerisms', 12 Pacific Island Labourers Act (1901), 174 Pacific Pidgin English, 182-3 Pallanganmiddang, 31 Pama-Nyungan family, 33, 104, 118, 182 distinguishing features, 39-40 Paman languages of Cape York Peninsula, 60 Panjabi-English bilinguals, 228 Papuan indigenous pidgins, 167 Papuan languages, 35, 118-20 passive knowledge of a language, 43, 148, 153-4, 226 passive vocabulary, 350-1, 354 passivisation, second language, 226 Patois, used by British Blacks, 81 phonological characteristics, Australian languages, 40-2 phonological variation, regional, 287 phrase structure, derivative nature, 24 Piagetian development stages, 352 pictorial questionnaire technique, 292, 303 Pidgin, creolisation of the, 200-3 pidgin, 2 anglicised, 161-2; definition, 160; expanded, 161, 163; or Kriol, 70; stable 161, 168 Pidgin English, 159, 162, 165, 170, 172 pidgin Englishes rise of, 13, 196-9; stabilisation of, 199-200
Index Pidgin German, 170 pidgin-creole life-cycle, 175-7 pidgins, 157-212 adequacy debate, 162^4; Australian, 159-73: further research issues, 171-3; history of research into, 165-7; inventory, 164; origin and development of, 167-71; life cycles, 175-7; monogenesis vs. polygenesis, 178-9; role of substratum influence in development, 178; white vs black varieties, 171 Pintupi, 46, 47 Pitcairnese Creole English, 164 Pitjantjatjara, 38, 46, 47, 90, 91, 154, 164 Plain English in legislative use, 364-71; sociolinguistics of, 362-72 Plain English and the Law, 371 Plain English Movement, 8 planning feminist language, 319; language, 7-8, 81-2; and national language policy, 329^8 plantation Creole, 169 Plantation Pidgin Malay, 164 plantations, 174-9 pluralism, 1, 22-3 'police caution', and miscommunication, 79-80 policy of'Clear English', 371-2; implicit language, 20-3; language, 82-3; 218: and Aboriginal perspective, 6-8; public and social issues, 8-12, 327-72; Sydney language, 305, see also national language policy Polish, 109, 215, 216, 222, 225 politics of address, 324-5; and Creoles, 172-3 Polynesian languages, 2, 169 Polynesians, 183 polysynthetic languages, 39-40 Port Essington Pidgin English, 197 Port Jackson Pidgin, 170 Portuguese, 196, 216 Portuguese-Malay trade language, 172, 196 post-creole continuum, 69, 182 pragmatic transference, 225 pragmatics, 84, 85 prefixing languages, 32-3, 154 preposition phrases, Torres Strait Creole, 189 prestige and anglicised pidgin, 161-2; covert, 322; use of forms by women, 320 privacy, personal, 86, 87
409
Professional Language Association for a National Language Policy (PLANLangPol), 343 professional language asociations, 342-3 proto-Australian, 33, 36, 42 proto-Indo-European, 36 public policy, and social issues, 8-12, 327-72 Queensland Aboriginal English, 166 Queensland Aboriginals Protection and Restriction on the Sale of Opium Act (1897), 184 Queensland Kanaka English, 2, 160, 169, 170, 171, 174-9, 182 and the pidgin-creole life cycle, 175-7; pronominal marking, 178 Queenland Speech Survey (Flint), 68, 165 question forms, uninverted, 87 question structures, and Aboriginal English, 84, 87-8, 91 questions, misunderstood in land claim hearings, 101-2 Racial Discrimination Act (1975), 5 radio, Aboriginal, 7 Real Estate Institute, NSW, 362 refugees, and language maintenance, 219, 221-2 regional dialects, or social dialects, 49-66 regional usage in lexicon of Australian English, 287-303; out-of-area in Australian English, 303 register, choice of see style shifting registers, additional, 47 Registrar General, Classification of Occupations, 352 religions, immigrants of different, 223 Rembarrnga people, 201 Renton Report (1975), 363 residence groups, 53 residential segregation, index of, 317 reversion, first language, 225, 226, 243 ritual unity, 49, 50, 65 Romany, 222 Roper River Kriol, 164, 168-9 Royal Australian Air Force, intensive language training facility, 341 RP (Received Pronunciation), 10, 12, 316, 320 Russian, 220, 221, 224, 341 Russian-Jewish refugees, 221 Samoan Plantation Pidgin, 177 Sanskrit, 21 Saturday schools, ethnic, 242-3 Sauris, 153
410
Index
School of Australian Linguistics, 32, 46 schools, independent Aboriginal, 7, 22 Schools Commission, 339 Scots, 226 Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts, 'A National Language Policy', 344 Sentry Insurance car policy, 362 Serbian, 270 Serbo-Croatian, 146, 215, 216, 223, 225 bilingual skills, 273-7; domains of language use, 277-82; first-generation language behaviour, 272-82; in Queensland, 270-84; status as a language, 270-1 Serbs, 223, 283 settlement history, and dialect features, 287 settlement patterns and language shift and maintenance, 216, 226; urban Sydney, and language change, 304-17 sex differences see gender differences sex distribution, and creolisation, 176 sex-exclusive differences, 318 sex-preferential differences, 318 sexism, in Australian English, 8, 319 'shame', Aboriginal notion of, 89 shift dialect, vs standard language, 219; Italian to English, 263; language, 143-55: and age differences, 219-20; assimilation and, 216-20; factors in degree of, 272; functional choice theory, 150-3; gender differences in, 219-20, 319; and lingua franca, 30; rates of different ethnolinguistic groups, 217-20; of Serbo-Croatian, 270-84 see also death, language 'Shiptars', 271 sign language, 96 Sinhalese, 225 'Situational English' method of teaching, 330 situational variables, 272 slang use, and gender differences, 323-4 Slavic languages, 270 Slovenian, 270, 271 social class, differences in vocabulary, 9, 349-61 social dialects, or regional, 49-66 social group lexes, 350-2 England and Australia compared, 353-60 social issues, public policy and, 327-72 social network theories, 322 social policy, migrants, 330-4
social psychology of language, 224 Social Securities Act (1947) (Commonwealth), 368-9 sociocultural context, of Aborignal English, 85-7 sociocultural factors in language shift, 143-4 sociohistorical perspective, 2-5 sociolects, 306-7 sociolinguistics, 318 western pattern of stratification, 18-23 sociology of language, 224 solidarity, 322 Solomon Islands Pidgin, 172, 176, 177, 178, 183 South-east Asian languages, 341 South-east Australian Pidgin English, 199 Spanish, 215, 216, 222, 224, 305, 346 in USA, 12-13 spatial distribution of languages, and landowning groups, 18, 49 Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), 335-6, 347 specialist sub-languages, 163 speech community Australian in global perspective, 1, 18-23; and change in progress, Sydney, 315-17; core and periphery, 307-13; definition of, 64; migrants in a, 316-17 speech styles, and gender differences, 318, 319 spelling, anti-American, 17 see also orthography Sri Lankans, 226 Standard Australian English, 67, 82-3 attitudes to, 70; communication problems with Aboriginal English, 79-80 standard forms, use of forms by women, 320-1
standards, of'correct English', 16-17 status, 322 Statutes of Iona (1609), 20 Stories in Bilingual Situations, 202 structuralism, European, 19 Style Manual (Federal Government), 8 style shifting, 146-8 suffixing languages, 32-3 Summer Institute of Linguistics, 32, 46, 61, 167, 172 superordinate language, 149, 161 suppression, 100 SVO language, 187 Swabian, 219, 242 Swedish, in USA, 248 Swiss, 221, 242
Index switching, language, 65, 146 see also codeswitching Sydney speech community, sociolinguistic survey, 306-17 symbolic function, replaces communicative, 220
Takeovers Code, 370, 372 Tamil, 226 targeted learning, 70, 162 Tasmanian pidgin, 164 teacher education and language maintenance, 339; and use of Aboriginal English, 82-3; and use of Creoles in education, 173 teaching computer-assisted language, 9; language in schools, 342; of languages other than English, 344, 346; 'languages of wider', 346; of migrant languages in schools, 338-9; national policy on language, 345-6 Teaching of Standard English as a Second Dialect, 83 technologies, new, and languge shift and maintenance, 227 Telephone Interpreter Service, 218, 340 television, Aboriginal, 7 Templars, 242 testing, language, 9 Thai-English, 161 Timorese, 171 Tindale-Birdsall hypothesis, 49 'tip' into monolingualism, 152 Tiwi, 154 TokPisin, 160, 161, 183 Tongan, 226 topic of discourse, and domain definition, 145 Torres Strait broken, 164, 165, 166, 171, 173, 180 see also Torres Strait Creole Torres Strait Creole, 118, 155, 180-94 future developments, 192-4; history, 182-5; influence on speech of young urban blacks in Queensland, 194; lexicon, 191-2; morphology, 186-7; phonological structure, 185-6; syntax, 187-91 Torres Strait Pidgin English, 170 totemism, 37, 50, 59, 66 traditional language, words used in Aboriginal land claim hearings, 95-6 transference attitudes towards by Dutch immigrants, 228^0; patterns, 224, 225, 226, 230-4 translation services, 47
411
transplanted languages, other than English, 213-84 tribal map, 50 tribe, dialectal, 50 tribe/state analogy, 49 triggering, 230 trilingualism, 153 Turkish, 109, 111, 216, 226, 271 Ukrainian, 217, 227 universal grammar, 24, 160-1 'Universal Number One', 144-5 US English group, 14 usage regions, lexicon of Australian English, 287-303 variation and child language, 104-17; intergenerational in Sydney English, 313-15 verb phrases, Torres Strait Creole, 188-9 verbs, tense marking in Aboriginal English, 77-9 Vienna Convention, 270 Vietnamese, 216, 226, 305, 317, 338 vocabularies, occupational, 349 vocabulary active, English and Australian, 356-60; Australian languages, 42-5; passive, 43, 350-1, 354-6 Wandarang people, 201 Wanyjirra, 152 Warlpiri, 24, 47, 104^17 change in the pronominal system, 106-8; child language development, 108-17; early production data, 112-17; engineering for maintenance, 148; social setting, 104-5; syntactic structure non-configurational, 24; word order and case marking, 108-12 Wemba-Wemba, 38 Western Australian Pidgin English, 164 Western Desert language, 38, 143 White Australia policy, 1, 3-4, 176 Wik language group 54 (map), 56-62 Wik-Ep, 56, 57 Wik-Me'anh, 57 Wik-Mungkan, 56, 59, 61 Wik-Ngatharr, 56, 59 Wik-Ngenycharr, 51 word lists, published, 288 words, and gender, 323-4 writing and texts, Australian languages, 45-6 X-bar convention, 24
412 Index Yabula-Yabula, 38 Yagar Yagar see Kalaw Kalaw Ya Yankuntjatjara, 38 Yiddish, 222 Yidiny, 39 Yirr-Yoront, 40
Yolngu languages, 143 'Yugoslav', 271 Yugoslavian Census (1971), 271 Yugoslavian language community, 222, 271 Zionism, 221
Index of place names
Adelaide, 71, 260, 298 Adelaide River, 197 Africa, 169 Alice Springs, 71, 104, 154 Archer River, 65 Arnhem Land, 201 north-east, 36, 143, 150 Aurukun, 56, 61 Aurukun Shire, 65 Australian Capital Territory, 216 Austria, 145, 146, 242 Ayr, 176 Bamaga, 118, 180, 185, 193 Barunga, 202 Batchelor, 167 Bathuk, 37 Belfast, 316 Belgium, 146 Belgrade, 271 Belize, 172 Borroloola, 198, 200 Botany Bay, 12 Brisbane, 9, 170, 272 Britain, 1, 3, , 12, 13, 19, 32, 228, 363 Broome, 7, 164, 166, 167, 171 Cairns region, 49, 118 California, 284 Canada, 14, 145 ^Canberra, 289-302 Cape Keerweer, 55 Cape York Peninsula, 2, 33, 40, 60, 118, 166, 169, 180 Western, 50, 51, 55-66 Caribbean, 13 Carpentaria, 30, 63 Central Australia, 33, 96 Christmas Island, 164, 169 Cocos Islands, 164, 169
Cooktown, 31 Coolangatta, 45 Cootamundra, 298 Daguragu, 152 Daly River, Northern Territory, 51 Dandenongs, 246, 248 Darwin, 86, 197, 198, 200 Dunk Island, 165 East Africa, 145 Edward River, 56 Elsey Station, 198-9, 200 England, 2, 349, 353-60 Ernabella, 154 Erub, 171, 180, 182, 183, 186 Escape Cliffs, Adelaide River, 197 Europe, 19 eastern, 242 southern, 3 Finland, 8 Fort Dundas, Melville Island, 196 Fort Wellington, Raffles Bay, 196 France, 8, 19, 28 Germany, 242, 288 Giru, 224 Great Dividing Range, 302 Greece, 249, 284 Groote Eylandt, 43, 44 Halls Creek, 167 Hammond Island, 180, 182, 183 Hawaii, 177 Hochkirch see Tarrington Illawarra region, NSW 350 India, 21, 35, 145 Indonesia, 36
414 Index Ireland, 3, 20 Northern, 20 Italy, 284 Northern, 145 Jamaica, 73, 177 Junee, 298 Katherine, 198 Kendall River, 51 Kimberley, 77, 90, 169, 198, 202 Kimul, 37 Kosovo, 271 Kununurra, 45 La Trobe Valley, 246-8 Lachlan River, 302 Lajamanu, 104, 105 Lake Eyre, 53 Lake Macquarie, 31 London, 2, 350, 353 Loyalty Island, 174 Mabuiag Island, 118 Macassar, 196 Macedonia, 271 Mackay, 176, 177 Mallacoota, 45 Mareebashire, 272 Marquesas, 169 . Masig, 171, 180, 183 Melbourne, 9, 68, 71, 216, 225, 243, 254, 259, 260, 261, 334, 338 Melville Island, 196 Mer Island, 155, 180, 182, 183, 193 Metohija, 271 Mexico, 13 Millingimbi, 80 Moa, 171, 180, 182, 183 Montgomery, Maryland, USA, 363 Moreton Bay, 170 Mornington Island, 30 Moulamein, NSW, 298 Mt Gambier, 298 Murray River, 302 Murrayville, 298 Murrumbidgee River, 302 Netherlands, 8, 233-9, 241 New England, 291 New England University, 254 New Guinea, 174 New Hebrides see Vanuatu New Holland see Australia New South Wales, 5, 69, 166, 167, 168 199,216,271,284,287,362 northern, 289 southern, 287, 289
New York City, 316 New Zealand, northern, 283 Ngukurr, 200, 202 Norfolk Island, 164 Northern Australia, 145, 166, 169 Northern Territory, 7, 48, 51, 52, 68, 72, 94, 96, 164, 167, 170, 172, 195-203, 216 Norwich, 316 Numbulwar, 202 Oberwart, 148, 152 Ontario, 106 Pacific, 13 Palestine, 242 Palm Island, 68 Papua New Guinea, 27, 35, 160, 161, 167, 172, 183 Paraguay, 145 Parramatta, 45 Pennsylvania, 283 Perth, 71, 222 Philadelphia, 316 Philippines, 146 Pilbarra, 166 Pinnaroo, 298 Pitcairn, 172 Point Cook, 341 Port Essington, 170, 196, 197 Port Jackson, 168, 169, 199 Port Keats see Wadeye Puerto Rico, 13 Purma, 180, 183 Queensland, 3, 7, 12, 31, 68, 92, 164, 165, 173, 174-9, 180, 183, 185, 194, 198, 199, 202, 215, 216, 217, 270-84, 287 north, 55 south-east, 88, 91 Raffles Bay, 196 Roper Bar, 198, 200 Roper River, 198, 200, 201 Western 53 Roper River Mission see Ngukurr Roper Valley, 96 Saibai Island, 118 Saigon, 5 St Paul's Community, Moa, 180, 183 San Pedro, California, 284 Scotland, 20, 288 Seisia, 180, 185 Slovenia, 271 Solomons, 178 northern, 174
Index South Africa, 22 South Australia, 166, 216, 217, 293 south-east, 287 South Sea Islands, 169, 170 South-east Asia, 196 Spain, 19 Steelton, Pennsylvania, 283 Sulawesi, 196 southern, 36 Surinam, 177 Sweden, 8, 225 Switzerland, 242 Sydney, 9, 11, 68, 71, 72, 168, 216, 242, 243, 254, 255, 259, 260, 304-17, 320, 334, 350, 353 Tahiti, 169 Tangambalanga, 31 Tarrington, 223 Tasmania, 6, 15, 27, 166, 215, 216, 217, 284, 287 Temora, 298 Tennant Creek, 104 Thursday Island, 46, 118, 164, 170, 180, 183, 185, 193 Torres Strait, 35, 68, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 172, 180-94 Western, 27, 118^2 Townsville, 47, 118,224 Turkey Creek, 152, 154 Ugar, 180, 182, 183, 186 Uluru, 45
415
United Kingdom see Britain United States of America, 1, 3, 8, 12, 13, 222, 225, 248, 287, 288, 362-3 Vanuatu, 178 Victoria, 8, 31, 166, 170, 215, 216, 217, 242, 243, 252, 271, 284, 287, 298, 345, 363 Victoria Garrison, Port Essington, 196 Victoria River, 198 Vojvodina, 271 Wadeye, 30, 36 Waraber, 180, 183 Washington, DC, 316 West Indies, 169 Western Australia, 68, 166, 170, 173, 198, 202, 216, 217, 287 Western Desert, 143, 150 Wik region, 54 Willowra, 105 Wodonga, 31 Wollongong, 353 Yam, 180, 183 Yidiyi, 37 Yipirinya, 7 Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, 293 Yorkshire, 350, 353 Yuendumu, 105 Yugoslavia, 270, 271 Zagreb, 271
