The Habitat of Australia's Aboriginal Languages: Past, Present and Future 9783110197846, 9783110190793

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The Habitat of Australia’s Aboriginal Languages

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Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 179

Editors

Walter Bisang Hans Henrich Hock (main editor for this volume)

Werner Winter

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

The Habitat of Australia’s Aboriginal Languages Past, Present and Future

edited by

Gerhard Leitner Ian G. Malcolm

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.

앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines 앪 of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The habitat of Australia’s aboriginal languages : past, present, and future / edited by Gerhard Leitner, Ian G. Malcolm. p. cm. ⫺ (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 179) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-019079-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Australian languages ⫺ History. 2. Pidgin English ⫺ Australia. 3. Aboriginal Australians ⫺ Education. 4. Languages in contact ⫺ Australia. I. Leitner, Gerhard. II. Malcolm, Ian G. PL7001.H33 2007 4991.15⫺dc22 2006034600

ISBN 978-3-11-019079-3 ISSN 1861-4302 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ” Copyright 2007 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Acknowledgements This book owes its existence to a long-standing collaboration between the two editors that goes back to the early 1990s. It began thanks to a grant of the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee awarded to Gerhard Leitner in 1995– 96. Subsequent funding came from the Academic Visitors’ Program of Edith Cowan University in 2002 and from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2003. That support enabled Gerhard Leitner to produce a two-volume study of Australia’s languages habitats and to focus on the language habitats of Aboriginal Australians. Ian Malcolm was central to the establishment of close links with Aborigines in Western Australia and to gain insights into Aboriginal cultural practices, today and in the past. The support of the Freie Universität Berlin and of Edith Cowan University has made it possible for Ian Malcolm to come to Berlin where he co-taught a course on the Aboriginal language habitat and where he was able to visit with a group a students the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine (Moravians) in Herrnhut, Saxony, Germany. This long-standing collaboration has led us to formulate the idea of a joint edited publication on the Aboriginal language habitats. It was meant to reflect a common approach to the themes of the book and to include leading experts in the field in Western Australia and across the nation. We are grateful to those who have so enthusiastically taken up that proposal and we are particularly grateful to the many Aboriginal Australians who have given us their advice. The editors gratefully acknowledge the support from Dr. Anke Beck, the chief linguistics editor of Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, and her staff. September 2006

Gerhard Leitner, Berlin Ian G. Malcolm, Perth

Table of contents Acknowledgments................................................................................................v List of Authors.....................................................................................................xi Introduction Gerhard Leitner and Ian G. Malcolm .................................................................1 An overview of Australian traditional languages Harold Koch .......................................................................................................23 Yolngu language habitat: Ecology, identity and law in an Aboriginal society Michael Christie ................................................................................................57 Indigenous languages: Transitions from the past to the present Michael Walsh ...................................................................................................79 Language maintenance, shift – and planning Graham McKay ................................................................................................101 Linguistic responses to contact: Pidgins and creoles John Harris.......................................................................................................131 Aboriginal English: Restructured variety for cultural maintenance Ian G. Malcolm and Ellen Grote .....................................................................153 Aboriginal language habitat and cultural continuity Farzad Sharifian...............................................................................................181 The Aboriginal contribution to Australia’s language habitat Gerhard Leitner................................................................................................197 Issues and policies in school education Gary Partington and Ann Galloway ...............................................................237 Bridging the language gap in education Ian G. Malcolm and Patricia Königsberg ......................................................267 Aboriginal English in the criminal justice system Diana Eades .....................................................................................................299

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Aboriginal language habitat in research and tertiary education Rob Amery .......................................................................................................327 Tyikim/Blekbala perspectives on language Terry Ngarritjan-Kessaris and Linda Ford ...................................................355 Name and author index ....................................................................................371 Subject index ....................................................................................................378

Authors Gerhard Leitner is Professor in the Institute for English Philology in the Free University of Berlin. Ian G. Malcolm is Emeritus Professor and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Education and Arts, Edith Cowan University Harold Koch is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Head of the School of Language Studies at the Australian National University. Michael Christie is Associate Professor with the Learning Research Group in the School of Education at Charles Darwin University Michael Walsh is Honorary Associate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Graham McKay is Associate Professor and Head of the School of International, Cultural and Community Studies at Edith Cowan University. John Harris is Translation Consultant with the Bible Society in Australia. Ellen Grote is Post Doctoral Scholar in the School of International, Cultural and Community Studies at Edith Cowan University. Farzad Sharifian is Lecturer in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University. Gary Partington is Professor in Kurongkurl Katitjin, School of Indigenous Australian Studies at Edith Cowan University. Ann Galloway is Post Doctoral Fellow in Kurongkurl Katitjin, School of Indigenous Australian Studies at Edith Cowan University. Patricia Königsberg is Manager, ABC of Two-Way Literacy and Learning in the Department of Education and Training, Western Australia. Diana Eades is Honorary Fellow in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics in the University of New England. Rob Amery is Lecturer in Linguistics in the School of Humanities at the University of Adelaide. Terry Ngarritjan-Kessaris is Lecturer in Kurongkurl Katitjin, School of Indigenous Australian Studies at Edith Cowan University. Linda Ford is Lecturer in the School of Education in the Faculty of Education, Health and Science at Charles Darwin University.

Introduction Gerhard Leitner and Ian G. Malcolm Australia’s Aborigines are a group of peoples that attract deep interest worldwide but are, despite the wealth of information available, little understood. Though a mere 2.5 per cent of Australia’s current population, they are important far beyond their demographic strength. Their symbolic association with their long past history is willingly adopted by Australia and its writers to claim a history that reaches beyond colonization. Aborigines have suffered massive losses in a short period of time. Yet some of their cultures, religions and languages have survived, have been revived or re-created – in some regions more than in others – in a form that represents Australia’s Aborigines of today. Despite on-going controversies, they have found a place inside the socio-cultural context in which they had been forced to exist. Research into a range of aspects of their language heritage is extensive. There are authoritative studies for many fields we are concerned with that provide great depth. But many studies are compartmental, focusing on their topic and ignoring what holds across language types or sociolinguistic issues. Many studies are not readily accessible or incompatible in content, approach or style with other publications. Many researchers, students and the public inside and outside Australia wish to have the ‘broad picture’, a comprehensiveness in coverage that is academically founded, yet accessible to the non-specialist. The editors thought that a volume by leading experts that would bring the overview and depth in exemplifying major themes would help overcome the shortage in accessible information on Australia’s Aborigines. It should point to parallels in related disciplines and world regions and show that the language habitat of Aboriginal Australians can fruitfully be studied and taught either from an Australian angle, from that of other world regions or from a theoretical angle. 1. Background, motivation and goal The backbone of the understanding of the current Aboriginal language habitat is, of course, the nature of contact that began with the colonization of the continent in 1788. Contact has had pervasive effects on the development of languages within their (prior) socio-cultural and historical contexts – or, in other words, their habitat. Over a long period of migration, colonization

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brought with it a plethora of languages that had had to settle. And as English was rising to its current status as Australia’s national language (see Leitner 2004a), a hierarchical texture emerged that has left little secure and enduring space to other languages, be they Indigenous or non-English migrant. There is no space here to develop that theme, which is a matter of political history and of particular disciplines (see e.g. Jupp 1988; 2001; Leitner 2006) , in detail here. Yet, to the extent that the documented social history relates to language, we will mention it below and several chapters in this book cover further details. What we do want to emphasize at the beginning of this preface is that the history of contact is neither restricted to colonization, nor is colonization confined to British colonization, nor to Australia. Contact was embedded in a long history of European exploration. Post-colonial developments cannot be isolated from the history in other world regions that were affected by colonization throughout the 19th century, nor from the development of scientific disciplines and of general social and cultural politics. The linguistic solutions found for language or communication problems always drew on similar solutions to those found in other parts of the world. In the paragraphs below we will relate some of the details of the pre-colonial period in Australia (which, incidentally, overlapped with the colonial one to the mid 1830s). Rockpaintings in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory depict the ships of European explorers and prove that Aborigines there had seen European ships skirting their land in search – unbeknown to them – of the terra australis, the mythical southland, which was ‘their land’, after all (see Leitner 2006; Morwood 2002). It was not the first contact Aborigines had with the outside. Macassan fisherman had come from Sulawesi, a part of Indonesia today, but their coming was more focused: they looked for the trepang, a much sought after commodity in China. Contact with them introduced an Arabic-Malay pidgin, which was used in the Asian-Arabic trading network north of the continent. When the Portuguese managed to upset that commercial network, a Portuguese-Arabic-Malay pidgin was introduced. The northern edges of Aboriginal Australia were thus in touch with the outside world. But how far their experiences and the knowledge of Asian and European explorers spread inland, and whether they reached the south-east, where the first penal colony was set up in 1788, we don’t know. It is unlikely that they spread that far, but recounts did spread south-west and south-east. European explorations led to the occasional contact that shaped our knowledge of Aboriginal Australia and co-determined the way contact was established and maintained during the early colonial period, at least. The history of pre-colonial contact is told well in, e.g., Kenny (1995), Marchant

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(1998) and Dyer (2005). The Dutch Willem Jansz had discovered Cape York in 1602, and the Spaniard Luis Váez de Torres found the ‘Torres Strait’ passage in that same year. It was now clear that the land he and Jansz had found was not a part of New Guinea. The Dutch continued to be active between 1616 and 1644 and mapped (but did not explore) many coastal regions. Abel Tasman, who had discovered New Zealand, Tonga and Fiji, discovered Van Diemens Land in 1642. Several decades later, Willem de Vlamingh found the Swan River, the site of Perth, in Western Australia in 1697. The British William Dampier set foot on the continent’s west in 1688 and again in 1699. The French renewed their involvement by the middle of the 18th century. Jean-François de La Pérouse, Hyacinthe de Bougainville, Nicola Baudin are well-known names in the latter part of the 18th and the early decades of the 19th centuries. They visited Australia’s south-east at about the same time as Captain James Cook and Joseph Banks did in 1770 (see Leitner 2006). A fair amount of the fauna and flora and the topography of the land in coastal regions were known before colonization. Some experiences with Aborigines had been had and related widely in Europe. That had led to two opposing images. The French Paulmier de Gonneville, who had been believed to have found the terra australis on his voyage in 1503, wrote of a people with a feudal political system, an agricultural economy and village life that was ‘known’ or at least comprehensible to Europeans. They could not have been Aboriginal Australians. But de Gonneville’s picture stimulated interest in exploration and a view of Aborigines as a ‘comprehensible’ people. The Dutch were the first to actually establish contact, but their descriptions focus only on physical appearances, nutrition, weapons, etc. One gets little detail on the character of the people, let alone their language. William Dampier’s depiction of the people was more detailed – but also very unfavourable: The Inhabitants of this Country are the miserablest People in the World. The Hodmadods of Monomatapa [South Africa, GL] though a nasty People, yet for Wealth are Gentlemen to these; who have no Houses, and skin Garments, Sheep, Poultry, and Fruits of the Earth... And setting aside their Humane Shape, they differ but little from Brutes. (fr. Kenny 1995: 107)

He went on to describe parts of their material culture and added one of the rare remarks on spiritual culture: “I did not perceive that they did worship any thing” (fr. Kenny 1995: 107). On one occasion, he and his crew wanted to carry small barrels of water to their ship. As this was a heavy job, they wanted Aborigines to do it. But, he wrote, “all the signs we could make were to no purpose, for they stood like Statues, without motion, but grinn’d like so many Monkeys, staring one upon another: For these poor Creatures seem not accus-

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tomed to carry Burthens.” (fr. Kenny 1995: 109). Dampier and his crew failed, though Aborigines presumably knew what they had wanted. Interaction was not achieved. Dutch reports were similarly negative. Gonzal, who came to Cape York in 1756, described a scene of more real interaction, but progress was stopped when his crew tried to kidnap some Aborigines. So without much interaction, a view formed of Aborigines as being ‘primitive savages’, barely human. The help explorers got from was often left untold. Such views were popularized in fictionalized travel reports and other ways and influenced the public’s views. An opposing picture formed at much the same time and compared Aborigines with the peoples of the Pacific islands, who had been known earlier. They were seen as the ‘noble savages’, in other words, as a primitive people close to the earth, happy, unfalsified by culture. That image was transferred to Aborigines and, too, made its way into literature such as the novels of Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe and others; it proved to be so enduring that it is often alluded to in the popular dramatic fiction and TV films. The image is often attributed to James Cook, Joseph Banks and the French of the 18th century. Their voyages were carried out in the context of significant progress in science and the growing interest in primitive cultures worldwide. The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge had been founded 1660. It had not given much advice to Dampier, but the scientific grid it developed was given to Cook. It was a guide for explorers so that they knew what to look out for and how to classify their observations. The goals of the Royal Society were paralleled by the short-lived Société des Observations de l’Homme (1799–1804) in France (Dyer 2005); German science took a different path and was more connected to the work of individual scholars (Veit 2004). Along the lines set out by such societies, one of du Fresne’s lieutenants, for instance, described in 1772 a scene when they were observed landing by the ‘Diemenlanders’: M. Marion ... made two sailors undress and go ashore, unarmed, carrying with them some small presents such as mirrors, necklaces etc. The Diemenlanders, seeing them acting thus, put their spears on the ground and with several gestures which marked their joy and contentment, came leaping to meet them, singing and clapping their hands. Our sailors reached the shore; they [the Aborigines] presented them with fire and then, as if to recognize this good welcome, [the sailors] handed out the trinkets they had brought. The thing that impressed them most was the mirror... The Diemenlanders could not leave looking at them ...; often they stopped to do this and on each occasion there were new expressions of astonishment... (fr. Kenny 1995: 135)

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Du Fresne’s report seems as factual as Cook’s had been. Accommodation, a well-known psychological concept, enabled explorers to gain acceptance and to observe the customs of Aborigines. They gained some knowledge of language; their descriptions have not been studied yet. Conflicts arose due to misunderstandings and prevented a deeper acquaintance of Aboriginal people. Like d’Entrecasteaux, Arthur Phillip stood in the tradition of the ‘noble savage’. Aborigines tended to avoid contact and Phillip doubted “whether it will be possible to get any of those people to remain with us, in order to get their language, without using force; they see no advantage that can arise from us that may make amends for the loss of that part of the harbour in which we occasionally employ the boats in fishing.” (HRA I 1788–1796: 96). It is worth quoting the advice that Lord Morton, the President of the Royal Society, had given to James Cook and Joseph Banks, the scientific advisor. It must have influenced Phillip’s behaviour and attitudes towards Aboriginal people:1

– To exercise the utmost patience and forbearance with the Natives of the – – – – –

several Lands where the Ship may touch... They are human creatures, the work of the same omnipotent Author, equally under his care with the most polished Europeans; perhaps being less offensive, more entitled to his favor. They are the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several Regions they inhabit. No European Nation has the right to occupy any part of their country, or settle among them without their voluntary consent.... But the Natives ... should be treated with distinguished humanity, and made sensible that the Crew still considers them as Lords of the Country... Lastly, to form a Vocabulary of the names given by the Natives, to the several things and places which come under the Inspection of the Gentlemen. (fr. Kenny 1995: 70–74)

Along these lines Joseph Banks wrote this: Thus live these I had almost said happy people, content with little nay almost nothing. Far enough removed from the anxieties attending upon riches, or even the possessions of what we Europeans call common necessaries: anxieties intended maybe by Providence to counter-balance the pleasure arising from the Possession of wishd for attainments, consequently increasing with increasing wealth, and in some measure keeping up the balance of happiness between the rich and the poor. (fr. Kenny 1995: 133) 1. Banks was to be the president of the Royal Society from 1788 to his death in 1820.

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Cook had written: from what I have said of the Natives of New Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturbed by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life... (fr. Kenny 1995: 132f)

There lay a gulf between Dampier and Cook. The French representations of early contact, too, reflect the image of the noble savage but the French stopped their explorations in the 1830s. Arthur Phillip’s task of establishing friendly relations with Aboriginal people was made hard by their refusal to interact. With a sense of exasperation he wrote that The natives still refuse to come amongst us.... I now doubt whether it will be possible to get any of those people to remain with us, in order to get their language, without using force; they see no advantage that can arise from us that may make amends for the loss of that part of the harbour in which we occasionally employ the boats in fishing. (HRA, vol. 1, 96)

Phillip felt compelled to turn to kidnapping. The most famous kidnappee, Bennelong, was apparently a willing learner of English and has been credited as the source of an Aboriginal English jargon to have sprung up in the early 1790s that facilitated communication during the early expansion. It spread quickly, acquired local features in various regions in the course of exploration and settlement, and eventually influenced the pidgins in Melanesia. At the end of the 19th century it creolized; it decreolized during the second half of the 20th century in parts of the north. The 220 years which followed the beginning of colonization thus brought pervasive change to the Aboriginal cultures and societies. These changes are mentioned in the contributions to this volume whenever they are relevant to a particular issue. Generally speaking, solutions to communication problems were determined solely by the colonizers up to the mid-1960s, when Aborigines began to be active participants in the society. We have left further details of the history of these changes to individual authors, but will mention those that were crucial to linguistic developments at this point:

Introduction

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– the decline and loss of many traditional Aboriginal languages, while those – – – –

that have been retained (at various levels of competence) have changed dramatically under the impact of contact the rise of a few Aboriginal language-based lingua francas the impoverishment of Aboriginal multilingualism and its reduction to a form of bilingualism that includes (varieties of) English as one of its components the emergence and growth of a variety of English closer to, but still distinct from, that of the settlers, i.e. Aboriginal English the formation of a new (post-colonial) Australian language habitat that integrates Aboriginal languages

Indigenous2 languages are thus able to be seen as embedded in continuous contact from – to simplify matters somewhat – colonization till today. We want to explore how they have changed accordingly, in terms of internal structure, status, and use. We will integrate powerful theoretical linguistic studies with a perspective of contact-induced change and with the research on language shift, maintenance, recovery and documentation. A major and enduring part of the response to contact was the rise of contact languages, i.e. pidgins, creoles, lingua francas and ethnic varieties. Most of them were English-based; while they began as enforced and involuntary responses, and served the communicative needs with the white, European political and military power and with the settlers, they soon came to be used amongst Aborigines themselves. We are interested in tracing their origins and how they developed into adopted languages that serve to express Aboriginal identities. A particular area is the impact the Aboriginal habitat has had on English and the contemporary Australian habitat as such. The fourth area looks at the largely English-dominated public domain and how the Aboriginal habitat and its languages repertoire fares. We highlight areas that have been found to pose particular problems, such the legal domain, the education system from the primary to the tertiary sector and teacher training. Of course, the wide scope of a book like this requires simplification and exemplification. That we have done. It also requires that the language stories are related to a consensual outline of history that would ’date’ the developments since 1788. Though a difficult task, it is worth trying, and there are several proposals that correlate with linguistic interests, such as Jupp (1988; 2. The term Indigenous, usually capitalized, is sometimes used as an alternative to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. In this volume the term Aboriginal will usually be used with the same inclusive reference.

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2001), Aboriginal websites, Leitner (2004a/b; 2006; this vol.) and, from a different angle, Ramson (2002). This collection will look at the way the changes that have affected the Indigenous language habitat correlate with socio-political history. We will integrate theoretical linguistic studies and develop a perspective of contact-induced change. There is, as we have said at the beginning, a vast body of knowledge on all of the relevant areas that contributors could rely on. While research often focuses on Australia, contributors have turned to studies on analogous situations in the United States, Canada, the Pacific and elsewhere to bring out the fact that the themes of this book go beyond Australia. The American context is particularly instructive since Australia was never isolated from developments there. A case in point is Wiley’s (2000) study of the history of language policies in the colonial and independent USA that compares well with what happened with regard to Aboriginal languages in Australia. Much the same is true of educational policies, the impact of Indigenous languages on English and the entire habitat, etc. Before elaborating on the topics and the overall structure of the book, we must turn to a brief overview of past and current research. The online database edited by Gerhard Leitner, Brian Taylor and Clemens Fritz (2006) provides access to the depth and breadth of research into most themes of this book. 2. Survey of past research We will survey past research with a bias in favour of studies relevant for this collection. Given its scope, we will look at (i) socio-political and historical studies that include the whole, pre-colonial history of Australia and studies on Aboriginal settlement and diffusion; (ii) studies of the structure and development of traditional Aboriginal languages that include changes that have occurred as a result of contact; (iii) studies on Aboriginal contact languages; and (iv) studies on language-related issues in the public arena of Australia. To begin with the first area, there are excellent surveys of the pre-historic period, settlement and diffusion, etc. Settlement theories are crucial to the provision of the social dimension to linguistic studies that focus on the relatedness of languages. Morwood (2002) is a good and accessible book, which includes coverage of various theories of settlement. Horton (1994; 1999) relates interesting and accessible information and relate to language issues. As to the pre-colonial period of exploration, one might turn to the popular, but highly informative studies by Kenny (1995), Marchant (1998) and Dyer (2005); the latter is specifically on the explorations of the French. The period of colonization and the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia is

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a matter of historical and political science, and we refrain from selecting titles (see Jupp 1998; 2001). Regarding the limited field of Aboriginal-white contact, we will mention some that have a link to language issues: Harris (1991; this vol.), Leitner (2004b; 2006; this vol.) and Koch (this vol.). The origin, relatedness and texture of Aboriginal languages throw up central questions in linguistic typology that reach far beyond Australian Linguistics, as the field is called in Australia.3 The history of research is covered in many places such as Blake (1991) and recently Bowern and Koch (2004), and Koch (this vol.). The comparative-historical paradigm, which maintains that (one large set of) Aboriginal languages represent a single type that descends from a single ancestor, unrelated to any other language family or type outside the continent, represents the dominant research paradigm. Bowern and Koch (2004) is an authoritative collection of papers on the PamaNyungan languages but says nothing about the non-Pama-Nyungan languages. That gap is filled by Evans (2003). These editors maintain that this typology of languages is firmly established and finds increasing linguistic and other support. Dixon (2002), in contrast, maintains that there is no way of finding enough evidence to reconstruct a proto-Australian language that could serve as the mother from which all established languages have descended. All one can do is to establish small ‘families’ and typological clusters. Though he has been criticized heavily in Bowern and Koch (2004), we do not think he is as negative on genetic relationships as O’Grady and Hale (2004) make him appear. Even if he were wrong, it would be incumbent on those scholars to relate their findings to a theory of settlement and dispersion across the continent along the lines of Indo-European studies. There is a large number of descriptive studies of individual languages worth pointing to. Dixon and Blake (1991) contains a range of papers as do the two studies mentioned above. More accessible to non-experts are the older monographs by Blake (1991) and the recent (and popular) one by the Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia (SSABSA 1996). In-depth studies of a range of features can be found in Evans (2003), Bowern and Koch (2004), Dixon (2002), Schultze-Berndt (2000) and elsewhere (see also Harris, this vol.). Contact has led to contact languages throughout the continent, as we have said above. Some of them stabilized while remaining auxiliary languages, others have become creoles; most have disappeared. There is a considerable interest in contact languages in creolistics, and numerous studies on Aboriginal pidgins and creoles address topics such as the social history of 3. Leitner’s (2000; 2001a) use of this term refers to the study of all Australian languages.

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contact, the rise of the Sydney pidgin, its spread across the continent and its influence on the emergence of Kriol and Torres Strait Creole. Harris’s (1986) strength is social history; Troy (1990; 1993) is strong on linguistic documentation of the Sydney region. The spread across the continent as well as the role of outside contact with the South Pacific is brought out in the contributions to Wurm et al. (1996) and was further explored, for instance, by Simpson (2000) in the collection edited by Siegel (2000) and by Tryon and Charpentier (2004). A more popular account of Indigenous and contact languages is Walsh and Yallop (1993). Regarding Aboriginal English, Eagleson, Kaldor, and Malcolm (1982) is still the classic study of Aboriginal English in the east and west of the continent. Malcolm’s continuing work (e.g. 1994; 1996; 1999; 2002a/b) provides enhanced understanding of Aboriginal English discourse and semantics and their educational implications. The recent decade or so has seen convergent trends in linguistics. One is socio-cultural studies that focus on entire regions or language ecologies and propose a habitat approach to understand their dynamics and the changes that have been, or are, taking place (e.g. Mühlhäusler 1999; Wurm et al. 1996; Leitner 1998; 2004a/b). Such a perspective calls for an integrative perspective that does not isolate language(s) from the context of all the other languages used in a society. It maintains that languages must be studied within the sociocultural, political, and economic contexts in which they are used and in which they function. The second development is what might be referred to here as socio-cognitive theory that starts with concepts like schemata and explores the possibility of cultural-linguistic continuity in light, or despite, of radical changes to a language habitat. One might mention Malcolm (2002a), Malcolm and Sharifian (2002) and Sharifian (2005). Both trends focus on applied domains such as language educational policy in the social services, the law and other domains. They also suggest that policies on language and communication must be sensitive to socio-cognitive and cultural dimensions in order to be successful. Finally, tertiary education and the input it provides into secondary and primary education support the so-called Regional Studies approach (Leitner 2000–2001a), which, on the language side, benefits from socio-cultural and socio-cognitive approaches. Regional Studies are compatible with socio-political, economic and cultural history and lend themselves to feeding into related areas, where English was and is a prominent player such as North America, South-East or East Asia. The impact that Aboriginal and contact languages have had on English has been an important topic in studies on mainstream Australian English and has been pursued, for instance, in Ramson (1966; 2002), Dixon et al. (1990), Leitner (2001b/c; 2004a), and Leitner and Sieloff (1998). Australian dictionaries

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such as the Australian National Dictionary (1988) are good sources. The reciprocal angle of contact, i.e. the impact that English has had on Indigenous languages, has been explored in Siegel (2000), Bucknall (1997), SSABSA (1996), Sharpe (1993) and Harkins (1994). These studies show that Aboriginal languages have changed more dramatically than English has – an area, incidentally, that finds its correlate in Clyne’s (2003) and Clyne and Kipp’s (1999) studies of language contact with migrant languages in Australia or in de Bot and Clyne’s (1994) investigation of third generation migrants. While linguistic and sociolinguistic topics have attracted much attention, the demographic, linguistic, socio- and psycho-linguistic details of language attrition and loss, the shift to English and the growth of Indigenous lingua francas have not gone unnoticed. Schmidt (1990), McKay (1996), Lo Bianco and Rhydwen (2001) have offered insightful analyses of these processes and have, at times, triggered language policy development or led to revisions. Applied linguistic areas in education, teacher training, the legal domain or support structures for language maintenance, revitalization, recovery or mere documentation and relevant policies were first integrated into a coherent framework in Lo Bianco (1987). Many specific studies have been done independently on teacher-awareness, teacher-in-service training and other themes (Eagleson, Kaldor, and Malcolm 1982; Malcolm et al. 1999a–b, Cahill 1999). Critical analyses of the introduction of literacy into Kriol and Indigenous languages have come from Rhydwen (1996), Black (1993) and others. The classroom realities of the teaching of Indigenous languages in Aboriginal schools and the educational issues underlying school education have been at the centre of a collection edited by Hartman, and Henderson (1994). Harris (1990), Partington (1998) and Beresford and Partington (2003) are important educational studies. Fesl (1993) describes the social and political circumstances of language loss from the point of view of an Indigenous person. Those and many other studies contribute the background for the themes of this book. Eades (1995) is a collection of papers on the problems of Aboriginal Australians in the legal domain which has contributions on interpreting, courtroom discourse, the law background, the role of non-standardism, etc. The legal domain has become aware of intercultural communication problems and Fryer-Smith (2002) is a handbook for professionals in the field in Western Australia; it is also available on the internet. Similar books have been produced by the Supreme Court of Queensland and elsewhere. Cook (2002) is a policy-oriented study on language and communication needs in interpreting.

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3. Content, structure and scope of the book There is, then, a large body of past research that a book like this can rely on. In order to establish an integrative focus, we will derive three principles of selection from past research that will help create a cohesive framework and select from past research. The first is that the book is structured around the (types of) languages used by Aboriginal Australians; the second that selections are made on the basis of, or make reference to, what has been retained in one form or another in Indigenous languages or been carried over into contact languages and Aboriginal English. Closely related are the features that have been lost. The third principle will contrast with the second in showing the influence from (varieties of) English (or, in the case of pidgins) from Macassan pidgin. A survey of Indigenous languages will thus look at the modifications that have taken place in these languages and what of them has been carried forward into pidgins, Kriol and Aboriginal English. In highlighting continuity, modification, loss and adaptation at the levels of linguistic organization and use, we can avoid the perception that language(s) or types of languages had just co-existed more or less independently of one another and, at best, show up as belonging together at the level of parole. The underlying theme, viz. that they symbolize a language habitat will thus come out more strongly. The papers by Harold Koch, Michael Christie, and Michael Walsh provide the background to traditional Aboriginal languages, showing what is known about their origin(s), diffusion and convergence in the pre-colonial period and the changes that have taken place since. Harold Koch and Michael Christie also survey the debates about a proto-Aboriginal language, and the various conceptions of the origin of these languages and the hypotheses about the social history of settlement, diffusion, etc. In the coverage of the levels of linguistic organization these papers and John Harris are to be selective and consider those features that re-appear in the guise of contact languages, mentioning significant features that have been, or are being, lost in the processes of language attrition and loss. Farzad Sharifian and Ian Malcolm and Ellen Grote look in detail at the conceptual cognitive structures activated in discourse and text in Aboriginal languages and grounded in the texture of languages. They are focused on cognitive lexical structures that have been investigated from that angle. Graham McKay discusses the loss, maintenance, recovery or documentation of Indigenous languages from national or state language policy perspectives and the efforts being undertaken (or not) by communities themselves. That is to include demographic data and socio-

Introduction

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psychological or cultural dimensions. While it includes issues common to all Indigenous languages, it is placed best in the context of traditional languages. John Harris, Farzad Sharifian, and Ian Malcolm and Ellen Grote also look at contact languages – mainly those based on or including English, but making reference to the few Indigenous ones that emerged in the 19th century and to the impact of the Macassans during the Dutch-dominated south-east Asian region of the 18th and 19th centuries. Like the authors referred to in the preceding paragraph John Harris will survey the field, including social history and connections with the wider South Pacific and Atlantic pidgins. To that end, the contribution will look at evidence, linguistic and otherwise, in support of the Australian-origin hypothesis and the outreach to the South Pacific. It will cover the time to the mid-20th century, which will be dealt with more fully in other contributions in this section. Ian Malcolm and Ellen Grote will focus on Aboriginal English, the central variety in much of the continent, discuss its origin, structure, regional, social and stylistic stratification, and provide background to current educational and other domains of planning. From a linguistic angle, these papers will focus on its distinctness from other language types; they will also show what affiliates it with mAusE on the one hand and Kriol (and its precursors) on the other. Farzad Sharifian will continue the theme of linguistic and cultural continuity by developing the concept of Indigenous schemata. His treatment will expand it, in not being limited to Aboriginal English but in discussing those schemata in traditional languages and Kriol. Gerhard Leitner will turn to the other side of the contact coin and look at the influence Aboriginal languages have had on mainstream Australian English. While influences have largely been lexical, it will re-iterate periods of influence and the shift from traditional and (early) pidgins as donor languages to the more persistent role today of Aboriginal English and the fact that there is a limited amount of code-switching even amongst non-Aboriginal speakers. Having dealt with traditional and contact languages throughout Australia’s history, the papers by Gary Partington and Ann Galloway, Ian Malcolm and Patricia Königsberg, Diana Eades, and Rob Amery will come to language policy and planning, predominantly a research area of the last forty years – if policy is conceived of as conscious political attempts to influence behaviour. Gary Partington and Ann Galloway will begin with language and education and include a discussion of underlying and changing philosophies about curricular objectives, didactics and methodologies. The emphasis will be on current issues in light of the language diversity of Aboriginal Australians, the choices that have been made, the problems in implementation and in developing Aboriginal participation and control. They will include a brief history

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of Aboriginal education. Ian Malcolm and Patricia Königsberg will move forward and address specifically linguistic aspects of curriculum design and methodology and will take account of the co-presence of the Indigenous and non-Indigenous elements in the Australian language habitat. In light of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the acute problems that Aborigines face in the legal domain (court room, etc.) Diana Eades will show how Aboriginal cultural and other beliefs and practices affect that domain, and what has been and needs to be done to provide equality. She will include the Aboriginal practices of dispute settling and other legal issues. Rob Amery will return to the Introduction and outline the relevance of this book to tertiary and secondary education. He will include a discussion of teaching materials in use, internet resources and review the international context that deals with native, minority groups. The editors are aware that a book like this must include the perspectives of the people whose language habitats it describes. While that will be taken note of in all sections, Terry Ngarritjin-Kessaris and Linda Ford, two Aboriginal academics with experience in diverse language habitats, will bring out what Aboriginal Australians think of the ways their language habitat has changed as a result of the practices and policies of the past 40 or so years, and what challenges there are for the future. These authors will express their views and comment from their own perpective and as members of Indigenous speech communities which are still more often perceived as the subject of research than as the source of researchers and research agendas. The last word in this collection, which will be in response to the contributions of the other authors, will belong to them. They have been encouraged to write in their own style rather than conforming to non-Indigenous discourse conventions. There is, the editors would stress at this point, nothing that is uncontroversial in relation to the Indigenous language habitats and the changes that have occurred since colonization and the policies that have been set in place over the past several decades to promote the maintenance and partial reconstruction of Aboriginal languages. Even the views on the pre-colonial past cannot escape controversy. A situation like this is, of course, not confined to Australia and similar controversies can be seen in the context of America’s ancestral languages and the language and educational policies in the USA and Canada. In light of these controversies, the editors have taken care to commission papers from experts that can cover the respective fields and bring out dominant views; they have left it to them to focus on what they think is right and a way forward. We are aware, in particular, that the emerging general emphasis of the authors of this volume on the valuing of contact languages alongside Indigenous languages in Australia, and on the incorp-

Introduction

15

oration of these languages into literacy and education, is not universally shared. As Rhydwen (1996: 50, 123) has reported, there are non-Aboriginal people working in remote areas who dismiss Kriol as “shit language” or “bastard language,” while some Aboriginal people themselves, especially those fluent in other languages, see some forms of Kriol and Aboriginal English as “yalabala tok, ‘speech of Aboriginal people of mixed descent’” (1996: 101) and reject the maintenance of a language which “doesn’t lead anywhere” (1996: 124). While allowing for the fact that Indigenous language policies and practices need to be responsive to community views, and, in particular, Indigenous community views, and will therefore differ from situation to situation, we have attempted here to regard the Aboriginal habitat as one which will continue to change, and we consider that the input of research which is inclusive of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal inputs can contribute positively to the management of such change. As the outline of the goals, content and scope and of the wider research context suggests, this collection of commissioned papers will be of interest to a wide range of readers. We might mention general and typological linguists with an interest in the effects of language contact on smaller and endangered languages, students of English and Anglicists who take an interest in the effects of contact with Indigenous peoples, the rise of contact languages such as pidgins and creoles or ethnolects, and the internal pluricentricity of English. We are thinking of applied linguists, and especially of those working in the domain of language planning, education, and the law; they will find ample material that compares well with analogous situations elsewhere in the world. Scholars in Australian Studies will find what is needed to cast a language angle on the Indigenous and white dimension. Last, but not least, this collection will benefit scholars working in related fields where a traditional language habitat has been upset by colonization (or in other ways) and where endangered languages co-exist alongside contact and dominant languages; where grass-roots and high-level political attempts are being made to bring about change that guarantees the survival of languages in a new habitat. Australia is but one of many cases. And that property will benefit those that teach in the key areas of this collection of papers. References [AND] Australian National Dictionary, The 1988 Edited by W. S. Ramson. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

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Beresford, Quentin and Gary Partington (eds.) 2003 Reform and Resistance in Aboriginal Education: The Australian Experience. Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press. Black, Paul 1993 New uses for old languages. In Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia, Michael Walsh and Colin Yallop (eds.), 207–223. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Blake, Barry 1991 Australian Aboriginal Languages. A General Introduction. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. [2nd ed.] Bot, Kees de and Michael Clyne 1994 A 16-year longitudinal study of language attrition in Dutch immigrants in Australia. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 15 (1): 17–28. Bowern, Claire, and Harold Koch (eds.) 2004 Australian Languages. Classification and the Comparative Method. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Bucknall, Gwen 1997 Nyangumarta: Alive and adapting. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 20 (1): 43–56. Cahill, Rosemary 1999 Solid English. East Perth: Education Department of Western Australia. Clyne, Michael 2003 The Dynamics of Contact Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clyne, Michael, and Sandra Kipp 1999 Pluricentric Languages in an Immigrant Context: Arabic, Chinese, Spanish. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Cook, Michael 2002 Indigenous Interpreting Issues for Courts. Carlton, Vic.: AIJA, The Secretariat. Dixon, Robert W. M. 1980 The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [esp. chapter 8 on “Classification of Australian languages”] 1997 The Rise and Fall of Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002 Australian Languages. Their Nature and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Dixon, Robert W. M., and Barry Blake (eds.) 1991 The Handbook of Australian Languages. Vol. IV. The Aboriginal Languages of Melbourne and Other Grammatical Sketches. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Dixon, Robert W. M., William Ramson, and Mandy Thomas 1990 Australian Aboriginal Words in English: Their Origin and Meaning. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Dyer, Colin 2005 The French Explorers and the Aboriginal Australians. 1772–1839. St. Lucia, Qld: Queensland University Press. Eades, Diana (ed.) 1995 Language in Evidence. Issues Confronting Aboriginal and Multicultural Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Eagleson, Robert D., Susan Kaldor, and Ian G. Malcolm 1982 English and the Aboriginal Child. Canberra: Curriculum Development Centre. Evans, Nicholas (ed.) 2003 The Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia: Comparative Studies of the Continent’s Most Linguistically Complex Region (Pacific Linguistics 552.) Canberra: Australian National University. Fesl, Eve 1993 Conned! St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press. Fryer-Smith, Stephanie 2002 Aboriginal Benchmark for Western Australian Courts. (AIJA Model Indigenous Benchbook Project). Carlton, Vic.: Australian Institute of Judicial Administration Incorporated. [http://www.aija.org.au/ online/ICABenchbook/Intro.pdf, accessed 5 July 2004] Harkins, Jean 1994 Bridging Two Worlds. Aboriginal English and Crosscultural Understanding. St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press. Harris, John 1986 Northern Territory Pidgins and the Origin of Kriol. (Pacific Linguistics C-89.) The Australian National University, Canberra. 1991 Kriol – the creation of a new language. In Language in Australia, Suzanne Romaine (ed.), 195–203. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Harris, Stephen 1990 Two-Way Aboriginal Schooling. Education and Cultural Survival. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Hartman, Deborah, and John Henderson (eds.) 1994 Aboriginal Languages in Education. Alice Springs: Institute of Aboriginal Development Press. Horton, David 1994 The Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History, Society and Culture. 2 vols. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. 1999 Aboriginal Australia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. [The map is also on http:// www.foundingdocs.gov.au/pathways/index.htm, acc. 15 June 2004.] [HRA] The Library Committe of the Commonwealth Parliament 1914 Historical Records of Australia (Series I, Volume 1, 1788–1796, etc.). Commonwealth of Australia. Jupp, James (ed.) 1988 The Australian People. An Encyclopedia of the Nation, its People and their Origins. Sydney: Angus and Robertson Publishers. 2001 The Australian People. An Encyclopedia of the Nation, its People and their Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [2nd ed.; rev. ed. of 1988] Kenny, John 1995 Before the First Fleet. The European Discovery of Australia. 1606– 1777. Kenthurst, NSW: Kangaroo Press. Leitner, Gerhard 1998 Australiens Sprachökologie, in Australien. Eine Interdisziplinäre Einführung, Rudolf Bader (ed.), 215–262. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. 2000 Australian Linguistics – A module in Australian Studies, Part II. Australian Language Matters 9 (1): 11–12, 14. 2001a Australian Linguistics – A module in Australian Studies, Part III. Australian Language Matters 9 (2): 13, 17. 2001b Lexical frequencies in a 300 million word corpus of Australian newspapers: Analysis and interpretation. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 5 (2): 1–32. 2001c The Aboriginal contribution to mainstream Australian English. A corpus-based study. In Text – Varieties – Translation, Albrecht

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Neubert, Wolfgang Thiele, Christian Todenhagen (eds.), 93–115. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag. Leitner, Gerhard 2004a Australia’s Many Voices. Australian English – the National Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2004b Australia’s Many Voices. Ethnic Englishes, Indigenous and Migrant Languages. Policy and Education. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2006 Die Aborigines Australiens. München: C.H. Beck Verlag. Leitner, Gerhard, and Inke Sieloff 1998 Aboriginal words and concepts in Australian English, World Englishes 17 (2): 153–169. Leitner, Gerhard, Clemens Fritz, and Brian Taylor (eds.) 2006 Language in Australia and New Zealand. A Bibliography. 1788–2005. On-line and CD-ROM. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [http://www. ausbib.mouton-content.com/, accessed 17 July 2006 ] Lo Bianco, Joseph 1987 The National Policy on Languages. Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service. Lo Bianco, Joseph, and Mari Rhydwen 2001 Is the extinction of Australia’s indigenous languages inevitable? In Can Threatened Languages be Saved?, Joshua Fishman (ed.), 391–422. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Malcolm, Ian G. 1994 Discourse and discourse strategies in Australian Aboriginal English, World Englishes 13 (3): 289–306. 1996 Observations on variability in the Verb Phrase in Aboriginal English. Australian Journal of Linguistics 16: 145–165. 1999 Aboriginal English: From contact variety to social dialect. In Processes of Language Contact. Case Studies from Australia and the Pacific, Jeff Siegel (ed.), 123–144. Montreal: Fides. Malcolm, Ian G. 2002a Aboriginal English Genres in Perth. Mount Lawley, Western Australia: Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research and Institute for the Service Professions, Edith Cowan University. 2002b Aboriginal English: What you gotta know. Literacy Learning: The Middle Years 10 (1): 9–27.

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Malcolm, Ian G., et al. 1999a Two-way English. Towards More User-friendly Education for Speakers of Aboriginal English. East Perth: Education Department of Western Australia. 1999b Towards More User-Friendly Education for Speakers of Aboriginal English. East Perth: Education Department of Western Australia and Centre for Applied Language and Literacy Research, Edith Cowan University. Malcolm, Ian G., and Marek Koscielecki 1997 Aboriginality and English. Report to the Australian Research Council. November 1997. Centre for Applied Language Research, Edith Cowan University, Perth. Malcolm, Ian G., and Farzad Sharifian 2002 Aspects of Aboriginal English oral discourse: an application of cultural schema theory. Discourse Studies 4 (2): 169–181. Marchant, Leslie R. 1998 France Australe. The French in Search for the Southland and Subsequent Explorations and Plans to Found a Penal Colony and Strategic Base in South Western Australia 1503–1826. Perth: Scott Four Colour Print. McConvell, Patrick, and Nicholas Thieberger 2001 State of Indigenous Languages in Australia – 2001. (Second Technical Paper Series No. 2, Natural and Cultural Heritage.) Department of the Environment and Heritage, Canberra. [http://www.deh.gov.au/soe/ techpapers/languages/, accessed 23 June 2004] McGregor, William B. 2002 Verb Classification in Australian Languages. (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 25.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. McKay, Graham 1996 The Land Still Speaks. Review of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Language Maintenance and Development Needs and Activities. [Report Commissioned by the Australian Language and Literacy Council] Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Morwood, M. J. 2002 Visions from the Past. The Archeology of Australian Aboriginal Art. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin. O’Grady Geoffrey, Ken Hale 2004 The coherence and distinctiveness of the Pama-Nyungan language family within the Australian linguistic phylum. In Australian

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Languages. Classification and the Comparative Method, Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (eds.), 69–92. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Partington, Gary (ed.) 1998 Perspectives on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education. Tuggerah, NSW: Social Science Press. Ramson, William S. 1966 The Currency of Aboriginal Words in Australian English (Occasional Paper 3). Sydney: Australian Language Research Centre. 2002 Lexical Images. The Story of the Australian National Dictionary. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Rhydwen, Mari 1996 Writing on the Backs of the Blacks. Voice, Literacy and Community in Kriol Fieldwork. St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press. Schmidt, Annette 1990 The Loss of Australia’s Aboriginal Language Heritage. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. [SSABSA] Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia 1996 Australia’s Aboriginal Languages. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Schultze-Berndt, Eva 2000 Simple and Complex Verbs in Jaminjung: A Study of Event Categorisation in an Australian Language. (Max Planck Institute Series in Psycholinguistics 14.) Nijmegen: Eva Schultze-Berndt. Sharifian, Farzad 2001 Schema-based processing in Australian speakers of Aboriginal English. Language and Intercultural Communication 1 (2): 120–134. Sharpe, Margaret 1993 Bundjalung: Teaching a disappearing language. In Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia, Michael Walsh, Colin Yallop (eds.), 71–84. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Siegel, Jeff, (ed.) 2000 Processes of Language Contact. Studies from Australia and the South Pacific. Saint-Laurent: Fides. Simpson, Jane 2000 Camels as pidgin-carriers: Afghan cameleers as a vector in the spread of features of Australian Aboriginal pidgins and creoles. In Processes of Language Contact: Studies from Australia and the South Pacific, Jeff Siegel (ed.), 195–244. St Laurent, Canada: Fides.

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Troy, Jakelin 1990 Australian Aboriginal Contact with the English Language in New South Wales: 1788 to 1845 (Pacific Linguistics B-103.) Department of Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra. 1993 Language contact in early colonial New South Wales 1788 to 1791. In Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia, Michael Walsh and Colin Yallop (eds.), 33–50. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Tryon, Darrell, and Jean-Michel Charpentier 2004 Pacific Pidgins and Creoles. Origins, Growth and Development. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Veit, Walter (ed.) 2004 The Struggle for Souls and Science. Constructing the Fifth Continent: German Missionaries and Scientists in Australia. [Occasional Paper Number 3, Strehlow Research Centre]. Northern Territory Government, Alice Springs. Walsh, Michael, and Colin Yallop (eds.) 1993 Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Wiley, Terence G. 2000 Continuity and change in the function of language ideologies in the United States. In Ideology, Politics and Language Policies. Focus on English, Thomas Ricento (ed.), 67–85. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Wurm, Stephen A., Peter Mühlhäusler, and Darrell T. Tryon (eds.) 1996 Atlas of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas. 3 vols. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

An overview of Australian traditional languages Harold Koch 1. Introduction Some 250 languages1 are thought to have been spoken in Australia at the time that the continent began to be settled by the British in 1788 (Dixon 2002: 2). It is these languages that I am calling the traditional languages of Australia, as opposed to new forms that have developed since 1788 through the changed linguistic ecology that was introduced by the coming of European people with their language(s). By the present time all surviving Australian languages have been affected by the presence of English and the cultural changes that came in the wake of colonization . In this paper I give an outline of the history of the documentation of these traditional languages (in section 2), describe what has been considered to be their historical relationships (in section 3), and present their salient typological features (in section 4). In section 5 I use the point of view of placenames to highlight their changing linguistic habitat. 2. History of research This section gives a short history of research on Australian languages. Other overviews are Capell (1971), Wurm (1972: ch. 2), and Dixon (1980: 8–17).2 The Australian languages first came to the attention of European scholars, ironically, when their habitat was contacted by the intrusion of outsiders who 1. The term language is used here in the linguists sense of a lect or set of lects that are considered not to be mutually intelligible with other lects (in contrast to dialects of a language, which are mutually intelligible). Aboriginal people (and in fact nonlinguists in general) typically do not conceptualize language in the same way (see Dixon 1980: 33; 2002: 4-5 for traditional languages and Rhydwen (1996) with respect to creole languages). 2. McGregor (forthc.) has called attention to the fact that much of the work that has been done on past investigators is from the perspective of the relevance of their results to present-day concerns, rather than with a view to understanding their work on its own terms and in the context of their social and intellectual climate. McGregor (ed., forthc.) aims to redress this deficiency.

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brought with them an alien language. Wordlists were collected in 1770 by members of Captain James Cook’s expedition to the South Pacific. While repairing their ship, the Endeavour, Cook’s crew was in contact with Aboriginal people of the group who spoke the Guugu Yimidhirr language. One word popularized from this source and adopted into European languages was kangaroo, which was the name of a species of marsupial (Haviland 1974; 1979). When a British penal colony was established at Port Jackson (Sydney) in 1788, wordlists of the Sydney language were collected by a number of officials and naval officers. One of these, Colonel William Dawes, began a systematic study of the grammar, but his results remained largely unknown until relatively recently (Troy 1992; 1993). Meanwhile, Aboriginal people of the Eora tribe began learning English and a pidgin language developed, with input from English, Pacific jargon, and the Sydney language. This NSW Pidgin was widely used as the European frontier moved beyond the Sydney region from 1813, and it absorbed vocabulary from other New South Wales languages such as Wiradhuri (Troy 1994; Amery and Mühlhäusler 1996). The documentation of Aboriginal languages was largely confined to wordlists, “spelled in the normal ‘English’ fashion which has bedevilled practically all recording of Aboriginal languages until the twentieth century” (Capell 1971: 662). The collection of wordlists continued for the first century of European settlement. The largest published collection was in Edward M. Curr’s (1886–87) The Australian race, which includes three volumes of lists of up to 120 words for a great many localities of Australia. Many of these were supplied by settlers, policemen, missionaries, etc. For some languages this is the only documentation available. Attempts to describe the grammar (as opposed to the vocabulary) of Aboriginal languages began with missionary Lancelot Threlkeld’s work on the language of the Awabakal people of Lake Macquarie near Newcastle NSW (Threlkeld 1834). Further grammars were written by missionaries on such languages as Kamilaroi of New South Wales (Ridley 1875), the Kaurna language of South Australia (Teichelmann and Schürmann 1840) and the language of Encounter Bay, South Australia (Meyer 1843). In the first decade of the 20th century a large number of sketches, mostly of languages of southeastern Australia, were published by the surveyor R. H. Mathews.3 About the same time Walter E. Roth, a doctor and Aboriginal protector, started to write descriptions of several Queensland languages. These early grammatical descriptions – in fact most grammars written up until about 1950 – were generally written in the framework of Traditional 3. See Koch (forthc.) for an analysis of Mathews’ system of grammatical description.

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Grammar, which developed in Western Europe out of the work of Greek, Roman, and medieval grammarians. This framework was familiar to any educated person who studied the grammar of English or the classical or foreign languages that were taught in the schools of Europe or colonial Australia. These grammars fail to give a realistic picture of the grammar of the languages – although it must be admitted that their writers, some of whom had experience of languages from other parts of the Pacific, did recognize the presence of some categories that were unfamiliar to European languages – such as the dual number, inclusive and exclusive distinctions in personal pronouns, and a separate (ergative) case to mark the subject of transitive verbs. A renewed interest in the documentation of Australian languages and an increase in the professional quality of linguistic descriptions followed from the research and teaching of Arthur Capell in the Department of Anthropology at Sydney University from the 1930s, from the involvement of missionary linguists of the Summer Institute of Linguistics from the 1950s, from the establishment of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS, later AIATSIS) in Canberra in the early 1960s, and from the founding of linguistics departments in Australian universities in the late 1960s, and the 1970s. Grammatical descriptions were published through Sydney University’s Oceania and Oceanic Linguistics monograph series (Strehlow 1942–1944; Smythe 1952; Douglas 1964; O’Grady 1964); Monash University’s Linguistic Communications series (Blake and Breen 1971; Breen 1973); AIAS in Canberra (Holmer 1966; Glass and Hackett 1970; Osborne 1974; Chadwick 1975; Yallop 1977; Crowley 1978; Hudson 1978; Hansen and Hansen 1978; Heath 1978; Heath 1984); Pacific Linguistics in Canberra’s Australian National University (Blake 1979; Heath 1980a; Williams 1980; Tsunoda 1981; Hercus 1982; Rumsey 1982; Wordick 1982; Merlan 1983; Oates 1988; Hercus 1994; Hosokawa 1991; Dench 1995; Nordlinger 1998; Patz 2002; Evans 2003; Pensalfini 2003; Sharp 2004; Kite and Wurm 2004; Breen 2004); Dixon and Blake’s (1979; 1981; 1983; 1991; 2000) Handbook of Australian Languages; and from the 1970s by international publishers such as Cambridge University Press (Dixon 1972; 1977; Donaldson 1980; Austin 1981), Mouton de Gruyter (Capell and Hinch 1970; McGregor 1990; Merlan 1994; Evans 1995; Harvey 2002), and Lincom Europa (McGregor 1996; Dench 1998; Terrill 1998). 3. Historical relations among the Australian languages In this section I summarize the changing understanding of the historical relations among the Australian languages. For the history of historical

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classifications, see Koch (2004a), on which the following is largely based. For details of recent approaches see Evans (2003) and Bowern and Koch (2004a). Relatively early in the history of Australia observers noted the resemblances among the Australian languages that were known from the more settled parts of the country (i.e. the eastern and southern parts), and proposed that this was evidence of common origin (Grey 1841, cf. Dixon 1980: 11–12). Speculation then proceeded on the presumed origin and direction of the prehistoric spread of Aboriginal people, with language playing a role in the debates. Authors such as Curr (1886–87) and John Mathew (1899) argued on the basis of linguistic resemblances for an African vs. South Asian origin. These debates are of historic interest only, since they were not based on sound methodology. The first large-scale classification of Australian languages was undertaken by the Vienna-based scholar Father Wilhelm Schmidt in the first decade of the 20th century, published in Schmidt (1919). His aim was to establish, on the basis of an exhaustive compilation of available material, an internal classification of all the Australian languages, which he considered to be a necessary prerequisite for any claims about relationships with languages outside the continent. His main conclusion for the highest level of classification was that the Australia languages do not, as had always been believed, represent an essentially homogeneous group of languages. On the contrary, although by far the largest part of Australia is filled with languages which despite many differences are nonetheless connected by strong common elements, nevertheless the whole of the north of Australia contains languages which do not present any lexical relationship and only very few grammatical relationships with that larger group or even with each other. (Schmidt 1972: 4)

Schmidt’s large genetic grouping was labelled the “South Australian languages”; it consisted of all the languages of the southern half of the mainland, except for Aranda in the central area, and included eastern languages as far north as the base of Cape York Peninsula.4 The first academic linguist based in Australia, Arthur Capell, after surveying many of the languages of northern Australia, reasserted the case for the genealogical unity of all the languages of the Australian continent. There can, however, be no doubt that the languages of Australia, even including those of the Northern Kimberleys, belong to one family. What Professor Radcliffe-Brown said of Australian social organization may be said 4. For a critique of Schmidt’s methodology see Koch (2004a).

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also of Australian languages: “In spite of the diversity of the various systems a careful comparison reveals them as being variations of a single type. ” (Capell 1937: 58) They differ as widely, both in structure and in vocabulary, among themselves, as do their speakers in physical features, yet there remains a basic similarity in certain structural elements and a small but obstinate basic vocabulary... It is therefore safe to assert that the Australian languages are in the ultimate at least as much a unity as the Australian people... (Capell 1956: 2–3)

Capell identified a small but recurrent set of some 50 vocabulary items plus a few grammatical forms that he labelled “Common Australian”; he posited a historical relationship between Australian languages but claimed it was not possible to reconstruct an ancestral “Original Australian” language in any great detail (Capell 1956: 3). The next major classification resulted from an initiative of Carl Voegelin of Indiana University, survey work in the years 1959–1961 by Kenneth Hale, Geoffrey O’Grady, and Stephen Wurm, and collaboration into the mid-1960s by these three researchers plus Carl and Florence Voegelin. The classification was based primarily on the comparison of vocabulary: Virtually all attention is focused on cognate densities derived from comparison of the hundred items of a Swadesh-type lexical list in pairs of named communalects. (O’Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin 1966: 23)

However, the researchers’ familiarity with the grammatical forms and structures also informed their classification. Languages and groupings of languages were named after local words for “person” or “man”, following the practice of Schmidt, with the inclusion of a suffix -ic or -an for larger groups. A hierarchy of linguistic classes (dialect, language, subgroup, group, family, phylum) was established on the basis of percentage of vocabulary shared on the test list. It was provisionally assumed that these groups reflected historical relations, although the scholars who established the classification advocated that the history needed to be confirmed by the kind of evidence used in what is called “the comparative method”. [O’Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin 1966] contains a preliminary classification of Australian languages based on cognate densities calculated by Hale, O’Grady and Wurm, in which the authors make a plea for the future consideration of types of evidence additional to that of lexicostatistics, in order that a balanced perspective of Australian historical linguistics might be achieved. (O’Grady 1966: 71)

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This classification scheme, as revised in (Wurm 1972), posits that all the Indigenous languages of Australia are related in one macrophylum (or superfamily) – with the exception of the languages formerly spoken in Tasmania5 and the Miriam language of the eastern Torres Strait Islands, which is known to be related to Papuan languages of the Kiwai family on the adjacent region of Papua New Guinea. This agrees with Capell’s assumption of the unity of the mainland languages. The scheme includes 28 language families, with the greatest diversity being found in north-western and north-central Australia. But they also recognize one very wide-spread language family, which they named “Pama-Nyungan”6, which includes all of Schmidt’s “South Australian languages”, plus the Arandic subgroup in central Australia, languages of northwest Queensland, an enclave of “Yolngu” languages in northeast Arnhem Land in the north-central region, and, significantly, all the languages of Cape York Peninsula – Hale had shown that the seemingly aberrant languages in this area had merely undergone drastic sound changes which made them look (or rather sound) different from their unaltered relatives (Hale 1964; 1966b; see also papers in Sutton 1976). The classification has undergone some alterations since the 1960s, with some languages being reclassified from Pama-Nyungan to non-PamaNyungan or the reverse, other families or subgroups being united or further differentiated, etc. as languages have become better described and as the comparative method has been applied to more languages. The Pama-Nyungan family has been further supported by reconstruction of features of its protolanguage (Alpher 2004; Koch 2003; and its status has been accepted by most comparative Australianists – a notable exception being R.M.W. Dixon (1980; 2002). The genetic unity of all mainland languages is widely assumed, on the basis of cognate verb roots (Dixon 1980) and pronominal forms (Blake 1988), although this has not been conclusively demonstrated as yet.7 The classification of non-Pama-Nyungan languages in northern Australia has 5. The speakers of languages once spoken in Tasmania were separated from the mainland thousands of years ago by the rise of sea levels which created Bass Strait. For an assessment of the Tasmanian linguistic situation see Crowley and Dixon (1981). 6. This name derives from the names of the component linguistic groups of the far north-eastern and south-western areas – Paman and Nyungan respectively – on the pattern of language family names such as Malayo-Polynesian or Indo-European. 7. One of the aims of Dixon (1980) was “to provide the beginnings of a proof that all the languages of Australia [with a few possible exceptions] are genetically related” (1980: xiv). The position taken in Dixon (2002), on the other hand, is agnostic about this genetic unity and sceptical about the possibility of ever establishing the wider genealogical (vs. areal-typological) relations among Australian languages.

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changed considerably, but there are still some 20 separate families recognized whose relation to one another has still not been established authoritatively (see Evans, ed., 2003; Evans 2005). We are not yet in a position to answer the old question of the external relations of Australian languages. Given the former existence of land bridges connecting northern Australia to the island of New Guinea up until some 10,000 years ago, it is very likely that a deep historical relation existed between Australian and Papuan languages. The comparative linguistics of Papuan languages is still in its early stages (Pawley 2006). It is to be hoped that continuing progress in comparative research on both sides of the divide may eventually provide some confirmation of this expectation. It should be borne in mind, however, that the comparative method is usually thought to be incapable of reconstructing beyond a time depth of some 5–10,000 years. Given that Sahul (the New Guinea plus Australian land mass) has been populated by humans for at least 50,000 years, we cannot expect to ever recover anything like a complete picture of its linguistic prehistory. 4. Typology of Australian languages In this section I give an overview of the structural features of Australian languages. Further discussion can be found in Dixon (1980; 2002), Yallop (1982), Blake (1987), and McGregor (2004). 4.1. Phonology It has long been clear to many investigators that the Australian languages are much more similar to one another than any of them are to European languages. The details of their phonological systems, however, did not become clear until the second half of the twentieth century, well after the development of phonemic theory in the first half of the century. It is now clear, as shown in Dixon (1980) and Yallop (1982), that most languages share a common phonemic inventory, with some variation between languages. The vowel system usually includes three vowels, i, a, u, with or without a length contrast. Some languages have in addition e or o. The consonant system usually lacks a voicing contrast, lacks fricative phonemes, includes two rhotics – a tap/trill and an approximant – and a set of at least four nasals, and distinguishes apical (tongue-tip) and laminal (tongue-blade) articulation in coronal consonants. This last feature noticeably involves a difference in the active articulator, the tongue, which has a concave shape for apicals and a convex

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shape for laminals. Languages differ in whether or not they have a second set of apical consonants – post-alveolar or retroflex consonants – that contrast with alveolars, and whether or not they have contrasting dental and prepalatal articulations among the laminal consonants. The typical consonantal system is shown in Table 1, where parentheses are put around the place of articulation features that are absent in some languages. The typical orthography is used. Table 1. Typical consonantal system of Australian languages Bilabial Stop Nasal Lateral Trill/tap Approximant

p m w

(Laminodental) th nh lh

Apicoalveolar t n l rr r

(Apicopostalveolar) rt rn rl

Lamino(pre)palatal ty ny ly

Dorsovelar k ng

y

This is the majority pattern. There are some Australian languages that have in addition: sets of stop consonants that contrast in voicing or length, fricatives, prestopped nasals (pm, tn, etc.), prestopped laterals (dl), glottal stop, or rounded consonants. The phonotactic patterns are also widely shared. Words tend to be at least two syllables (or morae) long, have primary stress on the first syllable, require words to begin with consonants, disallow word-initial consonant clusters, have restrictions on the class of consonant (if any) that can occur finally, limit word-internal consonant clusters to two consonants, allow heterorganic clusters such as nk, np and even rnk, rnp and nyk, nyp. 4.2. Grammar Grammatical features vary more widely, but still show many commonalities. With respect to parts of speech, languages largely lack articles, prepositions, conjunctions, numerals, and a clearly distinct class of adjectives. They express a lot of grammatical information within words rather than by means of separate grammatical words such as articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs. The word-internal device is usually suffixation. Nouns typical inflect for a large number of cases. Where case and number (dual or plural) are both expressed by means of suffixes, there is separate expression of each; i.e. the word structure is agglutinative, like that of Turkish el-ler-de ‘hand-Plural-Locative’) rather than fusional like Latin (amic-ǀrum ‘friend-Genitive:Plural’).

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4.2.1. Case Case is the most important grammatical category affecting nominal words. Cases indicate the role that noun phrases play within larger constructions. They fulfil the functions of word order in English in that they mark grammatical relations of subject and object. They also express the functions of English prepositions such as of, for, at, to, from, with. See Blake (1977) for an overview of case in Australian languages. To describe the core grammatical relations involving subjects and objects in Australian languages we need a threefold terminology. Australianists distinguish three grammatical relations: subject of a transitive verb (A), subject of an intransitive verb (S), and object of a transitive verb (O) – see Dixon (1980; 2002). The case that marks the subject of a transitive verb is called Ergative; the case that marks an intransitive subject is called Nominative, and the case marking an object is Accusative. (This differs from most European languages, where the “nominative” case marks both transitive and intransitive subjects; consequently early grammarians such as R.H. Mathews sometimes called the Ergative the “Nominative-Agent” case.) However, not all nominals formally distinguish all three cases. It is fairly usual for (especially non-human) nouns to have the same form to express both the S and O functions, and in this role to have no overt case suffix. This combined form, which syncretizes the nominative and accusative cases, is sometimes called the “Absolutive” case form. On the other hand, personal pronouns often have separate expression for the accusative case but syncretize the nominative and the ergative cases. In many languages certain personal pronouns, especially the first and second singular, have separate forms (sometimes suppletive) for all three cases.8 Table 2 illustrates, using the Kaytetye language of Central Australia, the case syncretisms typical of nouns and pronouns and suppletion in the pronouns.9 8. I am using the case terminology proposed by Goddard (1982) and Blake (1985). Others, especially R.M.W. Dixon and his students, use a terminology that, instead of keeping the case names constant and describing overlaps in terms of syncretism, gives separate labels to the syncretized forms; in this system different nominal paradigms have different case systems: ergative (A) vs. “absolutive” (S/O); “nominative” (A/S) vs. accusative (O); and a 3-way system with ergative (A), accusative (O), and an unnamed case for just S-function. Note that in this system “nominative” is used for an A=S function, and there is no name for the case form that expresses only the S-function. 9. Note the allomorphy in the ergative and locative cases of ‘dog’ vs. ‘old man’. This is typical of many languages; however the homophony between the ergative and

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Table 2. Case syncretism in Kaytetye Case name Ergative Nominative Accusative Dative Locative

syntactic A S O

‘dog’ alekele aleke Aleke alekewe Alekele

‘old man’ erlkwenge erlkwe erlkwe erlkwewe erlkwenge

2Sg pronoun nte nge ngkenge ngkenge ngkengele

3Sg pronoun re re kwere kwere kwerele

Another typical case is the instrumental (‘with, by means of’), whose marking is often identical with the ergative for nouns but not pronouns: the ergative-instrumental case form has sometimes been called the “operative” case form. A dative case expresses ‘for’: in some languages, such as Kaytetye, it is marked identically to the accusative case for personal pronouns. Typical local cases are locative (‘at’), allative (‘to’), ablative (‘from’), and sometimes perlative (‘through, across’). A relatively common function, which may be expressed by a suffix or the ablative or locative, is the “aversive”, which indicates something to be avoided (‘(afraid) of the dog’, ‘(build a hut) as protection from the rain’, ‘(walk around the edge of camp) to avoid my mother-in-law’). Some cases mark the relation between a noun phrase and another nominal. These include the genitive or possessive (‘of, belonging to’), the proprietive, sometimes called comitative (‘having’), and the privative (‘lacking/without’). It is possible to get double case marking, where a noun already marked for proprietive or possessive is further marked by a case indicating the grammatical relation of the larger constituent; e.g. ‘the boy with the hat (boy hatPropriet.-Ergat.) gave meat to the wife of the old man (old man-Poss.-Dat.)’. (See Dench and Evans (1988) and Plank (1995) on double case marking.) 4.2.2. Number Three contrasting values are usually expressed within the number category – singular, dual, and plural. It is personal pronouns that express the number distinctions most consistently. Nouns, especially those denoting inanimate objects, typically do not require the expression of number. If it is expressed by means of a suffix, this is typically closer to the stem than is the case suffix. locative case forms is unusual, and is here the result of regular sound changes that transformed both ergative *-lu and locative *-la to -le and both ergative *ngku and locative *-ngka to –nge (see Koch 2004b) – the vowel e is shwa.

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4.2.3. Kinship categories Kinship plays a large role in grammar, as it does in the social structure of Aboriginal communities (see Heath, Merlan and Rumsey 1982; also Sharifian this vol.) In many languages kin nouns can be marked for the person from whose perspective the kin relationship is reckoned. Heath (1982: 13) has called this “propositus”. Kin terms in some languages express the person but not the number of the propositus; i.e. ‘my/our’ vs. ‘your’ or ‘his/her/their father’. Another kin-related category has been called the dyadic marker (Merlan and Heath 1982). This marks a set of relatives defined by a reciprocal relation; thus a term glossed ‘mother-DYAD’, such as Dhuwal ngandi-’manyji (Merlan and Heath 1982: 113), refers to a mother and her child(ren).10 4.2.4. Personal pronouns Personal pronouns typically distinguish three persons (1st, 2nd, and 3rd) and three numbers (singular, dual11, and plural). Only about half of the languages distinguish between masculine and feminine in the third person, and if they do, it is confined to the singular number.12 Most languages make a distinction (either morphologically or syntactically) in first person dual and plural pronouns between inclusive and exclusive forms; in some languages the inclusive form is transparently ‘we-you’ or the exclusive is ‘we-he/she’ or ‘we-me’13. A few languages make further distinctions in non-singular pronouns according to the kin relations between the referents – same or different generation level, same or different moiety, spouses, etc. (Hale 1966a; Schebeck 1973; Koch 1982). Table 3 (next page) illustrates the distinctions made among Kaytetye first person non-singular pronouns between dual and plural number, inclusive and exclusive, and social dimensions derived from kinship relations.

10. In the Aboriginal English and Kriol of the Northern Territory this function is expressed by a term -gija derived from English (to)gether (Sandefur 1979; Koch 2000a). 11. Australian pidgins and creoles have distinctive dual forms derived from two fellows, you two fellows, me and you or you and me. 12. Australian pidgins and creoles never distinguish gender in third person pronouns. 13. Australian pidgins and creoles in the Northern Territory distinguish between inclusive forms yunmi or minyu and exclusive forms such as mipala (< me+ fellow), minalabat (< me+allabout).

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Table 3. Nominative case forms for ‘we’ in Kaytetye

Dual Inclusive Dual Exclusive Plural Inclusive Plural Exclusive

Same Patrimoiety ayleme aylene aynangke aynenangke

Same Patrimoiety aylake aylenake aynake aynenake

Opposite Patrimoiety aylanthe aylenanthe aynanthe aynenanthe

4.2.5. Deictics In some languages the role of third person pronouns is largely taken by deictic words. The word class of deictics can be considered a nominal class, since they inflect for case and often number, without a clear distinction being made – as in English – between pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Deictics inherently distinguish at least between proximal (‘this’/‘here’) and distal (‘that’/ here’) forms, but in many languages there is a three-way distinction, which in-ludes a ‘yon’ form. Deictics in Australian languages may mark further nuances such as invisibility, relative degree of elevation, or differences in precision (‘right here’ vs. ‘somewhere around here’). (See Dench (1995) for a description of deictics in one of the languages of the Pilbara in WA.) 4.2.6. Interrogative and indefinite Another class of nominals is interrogative-indefinite forms. The same forms typically indicate both ‘what’ and ‘something’, ‘who’ and ‘someone’, ‘where’ and ‘somewhere’. The ‘who’ form often refers to a name and corresponds rather to ‘what name’; it is presumably the origin of Kriol wanim ‘what’. 4.2.7. Verbal categories Verbs typically inflect for tense, aspect and mood by means of suffixes. These may differ for different classes of verbs. Thus, as in Latin, verb conjugations need to be recognized for many (but not all) Australian languages. Table 4 gives an example of verbal inflectional paradigms in a language that has four inflectional classes or conjugations – the Yankunytjatjara dialect of the Western Desert language – based on the description in Goddard (1985).14 This 14. The spelling has been adapted to the system given above in Table 1.

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language shows a perfective (Pfv) and imperfective (Ipfv) aspectual contrast in past tense and imperative mood. It also shows that verbs can inflect for negation. There are numerous verb forms that indicate nominalizations and subordinate clause functions. Purposive is a typical Australian verb category that marks a subordinate clause as the purpose of the action in the main clause (e.g. ‘go hunting in order to kill a kangaroo’). In many languages such clauses can be used as main clauses; then the verbal form indicates a modal value such as the speaker’s intention (‘I will’ – almost a future – or ‘let’s’) or a mild obligation ([subject] ‘should’). The aversive category, also called apprehensional or evitative, indicates an undesirable event that should be avoided: as a subordinate inflection it occurs on the verb in a ‘lest’ clause; in a main clause it is usually translated by might; e.g. ‘Don’t go walking in the dark, lest a snake bite you’ or “A snake might bite you”. The form labelled Process on Table 4 (next page) is a derived verb stem, formed by compounding with the verb kati- which otherwise means ‘carry’, that marks motion associated with the verbal action. One use in Yankunytjatjara is ‘VERB while going along’. The expression (by inflection, compounding, or verb phrases) of motion that occurs concurrent with, prior to, or subsequent to the main action expressed by the verb stem is relatively common in Australian languages, where the phenomenon is called “associated motion” or “associated path” (see Koch 1984; 2006; Tunbridge 1988; Wilkins 1991; Simpson 2001).15 Valence-changing processes are marked in the verbs of many languages. Reflexive and reciprocal are typically marked by a suffix (often the same suffix for both functions) in the verb. There is typically no passive voice – the subject noun phrase is simply omitted. Some languages have an antipassive construction, in which a direct object is omitted or downgraded to an oblique grammatical relation; apart from involving different case-marking on the relevant noun phrases, this construction may be registered by a suffix in the verb, as happens in Dyirbal (Dixon 1972). Affixes marking applicative constructions – where a non-object is promoted to direct object status – are found in some the northern languages. (See table on next page.) A feature of many languages of the northwestern and northern parts of the continent is a bipartite verbal structure in which verbal meanings are expressed by the combination of an inflected verb – which may occur separately – and an uninflected word, which is called by various terms including preverb, coverb, particle (Dixon 2002: 184–7). In these languages 15. For the transfer of this feature from Kaytetye to the Aboriginal English of Central Australia, see Koch (2000a).

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the inflecting verbs are much fewer in number than their uninflecting partners, and have rather generic meanings – if a separate meaning can be discerned. They are typically the etymological verbs for basic actions such as ‘hit’, ‘carry’, ‘go’, ‘see’, etc. It has been argued by Schultze-Berndt (2000) and McGregor (2002) that the inflecting verbs have a classifying or categorizing function. In some languages the inflecting verb has lost its separate identity. Table 4. Yankunytjatjarra verb paradigms NG-class ‘hit’ pupuwa pungu pungangi punganyi pungama pungkuku

Gloss Verb stem Imperative Past (Pfv) Past (Ipfv) Present Imperative Future Characteristic pungkupayi Nominalization pungkunytya pungkula Serial form pungkuwiya Negative pungkunytyaku Purposive pungkupayingka Aversive pungkunytyikitya Intentive Circumstantial pungkunytyala Post-Circum- pungkunytyityangka stantial Process

pungkukati-

Ø-class ‘talk’ wangkawangka wangkangu wangkangi wangkanyi wangkama wangkaku

L-class ‘bite’ patyapatyala patyarnu patyaningi Patyarni Patyanma Patyalku

N-class ‘put’ tyutyurra tyunu tyunangi tyunanyi tyunama tyunkuku

wangkapayi

patyalpayi

tyunkupayi

wangkanytya wangkarra

patyantya Patyara

tyunkunytya tyunkula

wangkawiya

patyalwiya

tyunkuwiya

wangkanytyaku

patyantyaku

tyunkunytyaku

wangkapayingka

patyalpayingka

tyunkupayingka

wangkanytyikitya

patyantyikitya

tyunkunytyikitya

wangkanytyala

patyanytyala

tyunkunytyala

wangkanytyityangka

patyanytyityangka

tyunkunytyityangka

wangkakati-

patyalkati-

tyunkukati-

4.2.8. Person-number marking Australian languages do not necessarily mark subject person and number in the verb – unlike many European languages. Nevertheless some languages of south-eastern Australia do attach subject (and even object) clitic pronouns to verbs and many other languages attach them to the first word of a sentence or to a particle. R. H. Mathews (1903: 259) referred to languages with enclitic

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subject pronominals as being of the “Thurrawal type”, as opposed to those without such clitics, which he labelled the “Kamilaroi type” (see Koch forthc.). Capell (1972) called languages with clitics attached to clause-initial elements, “affix-transferring” – as if the person-number markers belonged as affixes to the verb and were transferred to another element of the clause. Example (1), from Dhurga on the southeast coast of New South Wales, illustrates enclitics on the verb. (1)

Gungara-mbaraga dhambul=ag=in. possum-PLURAL see:PAST=1SgSubject=3PlObject ‘I saw a lot of possums.’ (Eades 1976: 63)

Example (2), from the Hunter River–Lake Macquarie language spoken near Newcastle, NSW, illustrates enclitics on the first element of the clause: (2)

Wollung tia noa wiréa. [Threlkeld’s original spelling] /walang=tya=nhuwa wiraya. [my phonemic interpretation] head=me=he hit ‘He hit me on the head.’ (Threlkeld 1834: 108)

Example (3), from Walmajarri in the northwest, illustrates enclitics hosted by a second-position auxiliary or catalyst, here glossed as Modal Root 1. (The plural subject is marked by a discontinuous set of enclitics.) (3)

Nyurra-warnti ma=rna=nta=lu nyanya nganampa-rlu. you-PL MR1=1Su=2Ob=PlSu see:PAST wePL:Ex-ERG ‘We all [exclusive] saw you.’ (Hudson 1978: 60)

4.2.9. Prefixing languages Many languages of northern Australia belong to a so-called prefixing type (Capell 1962). These languages are characterized by having verbal pre- and suffixes. Prefixes typically mark the subject person-number, mood, and often object person-number. Prefixing languages, which mark subjects and objects on the verb, use what Nichols (1984) calls a head-marking strategy of indicating grammatical relations, while languages that use only case-marking on nominals follow a dependent-marking strategy. Languages which use both case and clitic subject and object markers use a dual strategy. Many of these northern languages also indicate a number of noun classes. The class of third person subjects and objects may also be indicated in the pronominal prefixes.

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This is shown in example (4), from Nunggubuyu. Here the noun is prefixed for one of the five non-human classes; the same class is marked, cumulatively with the marker of third plural object, as a prefix on the verb. (4)

ngarra-majbarrwarr wangi-nga-ng CL-python CL: 3PL-eat-PAST1 The olive python ate them. (Heath 1980b: 25)

The structure of verbs in prefixing languages can be further elaborated by the incorporation of nouns, as in (5), or by reduplication, as in (6). (5)

ngu-rulbu-warnaga-ny 3SgM:CL-back-hold-PAST1 He held it by the back. (Heath 1980b: 21)

(6)

ma-wulu-wulany-jirryirra-ny CL-REDUP-blood-drip-PAST2 blood dripped down (Heath 1980b: 17)

4.3. Syntax A few characteristics of the syntax of Australian languages will be noted – in addition to what has already been covered. The order of constituents in a sentence is flexible, although many syntactic features are characteristic of SOV typology. Grammatical relations, as noted above, are indicated by case marking on nominals or by cross-referencing on the verb. Even elements that are construed as members of the same noun phrase are not necessarily adjacent; this has led to Australian languages being described as “non-configurational” (Hale 1983). Nouns and pronouns can often be omitted if their referents recoverable from the context.16 Various types of non-verbal clauses typically occur in Australian languages. The order of the subject and predicate is variable, with the predicate often coming first. Most languages lack a copula verb, but use an overt stance verb (‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’) if a verb is required.17 16. See Koch (2000b) for a discussion of how this feature of Australian languages may have contributed to the grammar of Australian Pidgin, in particular the development of -im as a marker on transitive verbs and -fela/pela on adjectives. 17. Australian pidgins and creoles also dispense with a copula, or use a stance verb derived from English sit down.

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Noun phrases typically have modifiers following the modified noun – e.g. ‘dog big this’. A widespread feature of noun phrases is the inclusion of a generic noun preceding a more specific noun – such as ‘animal kangaroo’, ‘(vegetable) food yam’, ‘fire ashes’. These generic nouns fulfil a classifying role, and seem in some languages to have been the source of classifying prefixes (see papers in Dixon 1982). Many of the languages of the north have systems of noun classification, usually signalled by prefixes on the noun itself or on agreeing words. For a description of some of these systems, see Harvey and Reid (1997). Similar to the Generic Specific construction is a Part Whole construction. The typical way of expressing the relation between the whole and a part is by simple juxtaposition – ‘man leg’, etc. – without the marking of the whole as a possessor. A third noun phrase construction involving juxtaposition is the “inclusory construction” (Singer 2001), which denotes a group plus a specific member; thus instead of using a conjoined expression such as ‘I and my elder brother’, one mentions the group and a particular member, as example (7) from Kaytetye shows.18 (7)

aylene alkere-ye 1Du:Ex elder.brother-my ‘my elder brother and I’

4.4. Lexical semantics 4.4.1. Some general characteristics In this section I describe briefly some of the characteristics of the lexicon and semantics of Australian languages. The degree of lexical elaboration in many semantic domains differs from that of European languages. Kinship, environment, space and direction19, and ceremony are areas that have well-developed vocabularies, whereas the vocabulary of numerals and colour are relatively simple. Aboriginal vocabularies often make semantic distinctions not made in English (e.g. ‘hit with held instrument’ vs. ‘hit with a missile’, ‘hole in 18. This syntax is reflected in Aboriginal English expressions such as Topsy mintupala ‘Topsy and I’, where mintupala is the Pidgin first person dual exclusive pronoun (Koch 1985: 186–7). 19. Elaborated systems of cardinal direction have been described for Warlpiri and Gooniyandi by Laughren (1973) and McGregor (2004: 210–11) respectively.

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ground’ vs. ‘hole in a spear’, ‘dry grass’ vs. ‘green grass’, ‘older brother’ vs. ‘younger brother’, ‘paternal grandfather’ vs. ‘maternal grandfather’). On the other hand they may unite in the same term senses that are separated in the lexicon of English, such as: ‘cooked’ and ‘ripe’, ‘stone’ and ‘hill’, ‘sit’ and ‘stay’ or ‘be at’, ‘tree’ and ‘stick’, ‘finger’ and ‘hand’, ‘deaf’ and ‘mad’. Regular polysemies are found between “potential” and “actual” senses20 such as: ‘wood’ and ‘fire’, ‘breast’ and ‘milk’, ‘guts’ and ‘faeces’, ‘animal’ and ‘meat’, ‘hit’ and ‘kill’, particular tree species and ‘spear’, etc. 4.4.2. Kinship vocabulary The terminology of kin relations is fairly elaborate in most Australian languages, and is structured quite differently from that of English.21 Many languages, for example, distinguish: four grandparental terms – ‘father’s father’, ‘father’s mother’, ‘mother’s father’, and ‘mother’s mother’ – and make a distinction between what are “uncles” and “aunts” in English – ‘father’s brother’ is different from ‘mother’s brother’ and ‘father’s sister’ from ‘mother’s sister’; sibling terminology likewise often differentiates between ‘older’ and ‘younger’ brothers and sisters; some languages even use different terms according to whether they are used by a male or a female speaker. On the other hand, Australian kin terminologies often collapse distinctions made in English; such as those between: ‘mother’s sister’ and ‘mother’, ‘mother’s child’ and ‘man’s sister’s child’, ‘brother’ and ‘father’s brother’s son’ (i.e. parallel cousins), ‘father’s father’ and ‘father’s father’s brother or sister’, or even ‘father’s father’ and ‘man’s son’s child’ (i.e. grandparent and grandchild linked by two male parental relations). Finally, some Australian languages have special kin terms that index not only the relationship between two relatives but also the relationship of these to the speaker; for example a special term for ‘wife’ is used when speaking to someone of one’s parent’s generation (see esp. Laughren 1982; McConvell 1982). 4.4.3. Environment As is to be expected in the languages of traditional hunter-gatherers, the vocabulary that describes the physical environment is rich. Each language includes many specific terms for the kinds of trees, shrubs, mammals, birds, 20. The terms “actual” and “potential” are from Dixon (1980: 103). 21. For kinship terminology, see Scheffler (1998), and Heath, Merlan, and Rumsey (1982).

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lizards, snakes, etc. which are found in their habitat. Most of these terms are unanalysable; i.e. they cannot be broken down into separate forms meaning ‘X+tree/bird/snake’, etc. Natural species may be classified by their inherent properties (e.g. woody plants vs. herbs), by their locality (i.e. topographic zone where they are found, such as hills vs. plains, water, etc.), or by their usefulness to human beings (as ‘meat’, ‘vegetable food’, ‘medicine’, etc.). Individual members of species of creatures that are important as food sources may be terminologically distinguished according to their size, sex, or stage of life (see Rudder 1978/9; Waddy 1982; Walsh 1993). 4.4.4. Bodypart metaphors A prevalent characteristic of Aboriginal vocabularies is the extension of bodypart terms to other uses. These include, as in many languages, topographic references; e.g. ‘leg’ for ‘creek’, ‘head’ for ‘hill’, ‘back’ for ‘ridge’, ‘forehead’ for ‘bluff’, etc. Less predictable meanings are conveyed by expressions using bodyparts for emotions and mental processes. Terms derived from ‘ear’ are typically used for understanding (Evans and Wilkins 2000); terms for ‘stomach/belly’, ‘eye’, ‘nose’, etc. are also included in many expressions of emotion (see e.g. Turpin 2002; Walsh 1995). 4.5. Non-verbal communication Although it is not strictly part of language, non-verbal aspects of communication in Aboriginal languages deserve some mention. Gestures are widely used to supplement oral discourse: the serious study of this has only begun recently and there are few results to report beyond conference presentations. More is known about manual signs, which were widely used across the continent and differ considerably between Aboriginal groups; a number of older studies are collected in Umiker-Sebeok and Sebeok (1978). In an area of north-central Australia, among the Warlpiri people and their neighbours, there is a relatively highly developed auxiliary system of communication based on signs. This has been intensively studied by Adam Kendon (1988). This is used especially by widows during a period after their bereavement when they are subject to a total speech ban. Kendon found that this system differs in interesting ways from the sign languages of deaf communities: it is more directly based on the spoken language.

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5. Aboriginal traditional languages in a changing habitat: exemplified by placenames One aspect of traditional Aboriginal languages – and one that relates the languages to the physical environment in which its speakers are located – is the vocabulary of placenames. Every language includes hundreds of placenames marking localities within the traditional territory of its speakers. Placenames typically allude to significant events of the Dreamtime, the creative period of origins in the traditional Aboriginal belief system. This part of language is typically overlooked in linguistic descriptions: grammars may include a short section on the grammatical features of placenames, but dictionaries rarely include many placenames. Important exceptions are Dixon (1991) and the Bardi dictionary compiled by Aklif (1999), which at the insistence of the community includes a 24-page “Place Names Inventory”, including associated maps.22 When Aboriginal languages came into contact with English the lexical items which were borrowed into English were predominantly from the semantic domains of flora, fauna, Aboriginal artefacts and culture (Dixon, Ramson, and Thomas 1990; Leitner, this vol.). Placenames are not usually discussed among the loanwords from Aboriginal languages into English. Nevertheless a great number of placenames from Aboriginal languages entered into the early colonial system of geographical nomenclature, as the names of towns and especially pastoral properties. In fact, an early SurveyorGeneral of the New South Wales colony, Thomas Mitchell, gave explicit instructions that Indigenous placenames should be used wherever possible – provided they were “euphonious”. Moreover, many early settlers first selected and occupied land before it was officially surveyed, and they had Aboriginal placenames available as handy labels when they applied to have their occupation officially registered (see Windsor forthc.). The consequence of this practice is that for those parts of Australia that were settled early we have great numbers of placenames that (often imperfectly) reflect names from the Aboriginal languages once spoken in the area, many of which are otherwise poorly documented.23 In fact Aboriginal-derived placenames serve (along with flora-fauna terms) to give a unique flavour to the vocabulary of Australian English. 22. The Bardi dictionary and dictionary supplement contain 535 different placenames (Bowern forthc.). 23. A notorious exception is the state of Tasmania, where almost no traditional placenames were adopted by early settlers (Plomley 1990: 3).

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There has for decades been a general interest in the “meaning” (i.e. etymology) of placenames of Aboriginal origin and there are available popular books of dubious reliability that purport to supply this information (e.g. Reed 1977) and dictionaries that give more authoritative information (Appelton and Appelton 1992; Clark and Heydon 2002). Recent interest in placenames has been stimulated, arguably, by official recognition of Indigenous rights to their traditional lands, through the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act of 1976 and the nationwide Native Title legislation of 1993. Research on behalf of land claims under the Northern Territory legislation has documented a host of named sites of significance in traditional Aboriginal law. (To gain rights under this law Aboriginal groups had to prove traditional associations with sites on the land that were of spiritual significance in their tradition.) In recent years a number of Australian states, through their Geographical Names Boards, have introduced a dual naming policy, whereby traditional Aboriginal placenames can be legally recognized, alongside the name established in the introduced naming system (see Windsor forthc. for policy in New South Wales). Some twenty sites in Sydney Harbour, many of which were documented by officers in charge of the original British colony from 1788, have now received official status. Further descriptions of the reinstating of traditional Aboriginal names (as well as discussions of traditional naming systems) can be found in papers in Hercus, Hodges and Simpson (2002) and Hercus and Koch (forthc.). The recognition of further placenames is one aspect of the revitalization of some languages which have largely ceased to be spoken. For other efforts, see Amery (2000), Walsh (2005), and McKay (this vol.). The relation between the traditional Australian languages and the imported English languages continues to evolve. Placenames are an interesting indicator of this evolution. 6. Conclusion It is a pity that so few of the Indigenous languages of Australia have remained strong to the present day, and that not more of them were documented more thoroughly while they remained in a thriving state. Nevertheless the main outlines of their typological structure and historical relations are discernible from the documentation that we do possess – with the exception of the languages of Tasmania. There has been an upsurge of interest in traditional languages in recent decades, especially for reasons of cultural heritage, which has given relevance to all previous documentation, whatever its inspiration or quality.

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References Aklif, Gedda (compiler) 1999 Ardyooloon Bardi Nganka: One Arm Point Bardi Dictionary. Halls Creek, W.A.: Kimberley Language Resource Centre. Alpher, Barry 2004 Pama-Nyungan: Phonological reconstruction and status as a phylogenetic group. In Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (eds.), 93–126. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Amery, Rob 2000 Warrabarna Kaurna! Reclaiming an Australian Language. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger. Amery, Rob, and Peter Mühlhäusler 1996 Pidgin English in New South Wales. In Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, Stephen A. Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler and Darrell T. Tryon (eds.), 33– 52. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Appleton, Richard and Barbara Appleton 1992 The Cambridge Dictionary of Australian Places. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Austin, Peter 1981 A Grammar of Diyari, South Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blake, Barry J. 1977 Case Marking in Australian Languages. (Linguistic Series 23) Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 1979 A Kalkatungu Grammar. (Pacific Linguistics B-57.) Canberra: Australian National University. 1985 Case markers, case and grammatical relations: An addendum to Goddard. Australian Journal of Linguistics 5: 79–84. 1987 Australian Aboriginal Grammar. London: Croom Helm. 1988 Redefining Pama-Nyungan: Towards the prehistory of Australian languages. In Aboriginal Linguistics 1, Nicholas Evans and Steve Johnson (eds.), 1–90. Armidale, NSW: Department of Linguistics, University of New England. Blake, Barry J., and J. G. Breen 1971 The Pitta-Pitta Dialects. (Linguistic Communications 4.) Melbourne: Monash University.

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Bowern, Claire forthc. Naming Bardi places. In Aboriginal Placenames Old and New, Luise Hercus and Harold Koch (eds.). Canberra: Pandanus Bowern, Claire, and Harold Koch (eds.) 2004 Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 249.) Amsterdam: Benjamins. Breen, John Gavan 1973 Bidyara and Gungabula Grammar and Vocabulary. (Linguistic Communications 8) Melbourne: Monash University. 2004 Innamincka Talk: A Grammar of the Innamincka Dialect of Yandruwandha with Notes on Other Dialects. (Pacific Linguistics 558.) Canberra: Australian National University. Capell Arthur 1937 The structure of Australian languages. Oceania 8: 27–61. 1956 A New Approach to Australian Linguistics (Handbook of Australian Languages Vol. 1). (Oceania Linguistic Monographs 1.) Sydney: University of Sydney. 1962 Some Linguistic Types in Australia (Handbook of Australian Languages Vol. 2). (Oceania Linguistic Monographs 7.) Sydney: University of Sydney. 1971 History of research in Australian and Tasmanian languages. In Current Trends in Linguistics Volume 8: Linguistics in Oceania, Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), 661–720. The Hague: Mouton. 1972 The affix-transferring languages of Australia. Talanya 1: 5–36. Capell, Arthur, and Heather E. Hinch 1970 Maung Grammar: Texts and Vocabulary. The Hague: Mouton. Chadwick, Neil 1975 A Descriptive Study of the Djingili Language. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Clark, Ian D., and Toby Heydon 2002 Dictionary of Aboriginal Placenames of Victoria. Melbourne: Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages. Crowley, Terry 1978 The Middle Clarence Dialects of Bandjalang. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

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Crowley, Terry, and Robert M. W. Dixon 1981 Tasmanian. In Handbook of Australian Languages, Vol. 2, Robert M. W. Dixon and Barry J. Blake (eds.), 395–421. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Curr, Edward M. 1886–1887 The Australian Race: Its Origin, Languages, Customs, Place of Landing in Australia, and the Routes by Which it Spread Itself Over that Continent. Melbourne: J. Ferres, Government Printer. Dench, Alan Charles 1995 Martuthunira: A Language of the Pilbara Region of Western Australia. (Pacific Linguistics C-125.) Canberra: Australian Ntional University. 1998 Yingkarta. (Languages of the World/ Materials 137.) München: Lincom Europa. Dench, Alan Charles, and Nicholas Evans 1988 Multiple case marking in Australian languages. Australian Journal of Linguistics 8: 1–48. Dixon, Robert M. W. 1972 The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 9.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1977 A Grammar of Yidiny. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 19.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1980 The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1982 Where Have All the Adjectives Gone? And Other Essays in Semantics and Syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1991 Words of our Country. Stories, Place Names and Vocabulary in Yidiny, the Aboriginal Language of the Cairns-Yarrabah Region. St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press. 2002 The Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, Robert M. W., and Barry J. Blake (eds.) 1979 Handbook of Australian Languages Vol. 1. Canberra: Australian National University Press. 1981 Handbook of Australian Languages Vol. 2. Canberra: Australian National University Press. 1983 Handbook of Australian Languages Vol. 3. Canberra: Australian National University Press.

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Dixon Robert M. W., and Barry J. Blake (eds.) 1991 Handbook of Australian Languages Vol. 4: The Aboriginal Language of Melbourne and Other Grammatical Sketches. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 2000 Handbook of Australian Languages Vol. 5: Grammatical Sketches of Bunuba, Ndjebbana and Jugu Nganhcara. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Dixon, Robert M. W., William S. Ramson and Mandy Thomas 1990 Australian Aboriginal Words in English: Their Origin and Meaning. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Donaldson, Tamsin 1980 Ngiyambaa, the Language of the Wangaabuwan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Douglas, Wilfrid H. 1964 An Introduction to the Western Desert Language: A Pedagogical Description of the Western Desert Language, Based on the Dialect Spoken at Warburton Ranges, Western Australia. (Oceania Linguistic Monographs 4.) Sydney: University of Sydney. Eates, Diane Kelloway 1976 The Dharawal and Dhurga Languages of the New South Wales South Coast. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Evans, Nicholas 1995 A Grammar of Kayardild: With Historical-comparative Notes on Tangkic. (Mouton Grammar Library 15.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2003 Bininj Gun-wok: A Pan-dialectal Grammar of Mayali, Kunwinjku and Kune. (Pacific Linguistics 541.) Canberra: Australian National University. 2005 Australian languages reconsidered: A review of Dixon (2002). Oceanic Linguistics 44: 242–286. Evans, Nicholas (ed.) 2003 The Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia: Comparative Studies of the Continent’s Most Linguistically Complex Region (Pacific Linguistics 552.) Canberra: Australian National University. Evans, Nicholas and David Wilkins 2000 In the mind’s ear: The semantic extensions of perception verbs in Australian languages. Language 76: 546–592.

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Glass, Amee, and Dorothy Hackett 1970 Pitjantjatjara Grammar: A Tagmemic View of the Ngaanyatjara (Warburton Ranges) Dialect. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Goddard, Cliff 1982 Case systems and case marking in Australian languages: A new interpretation. Australian Journal of Linguistics 2: 167–196. 1985 A Grammar of Yankunytjatjara. Alice Springs, N.T.: Institute for Aboriginal Development. Grey, Sir George 1841 Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-west and Western Australia, During the Years l837, 38 and 39: With Observations on the Moral and Physical Condition of the Aboriginal Inhabitants. London: T. and W. Boone. Hale, Kenneth 1964 Classification of northern Pama languages, Cape York Peninsula, Australia: A research report. Oceanic Linguistics 3: 248–264. 1966a Kinship Reflections in Syntax: Some Australian Examples. Word 22: 318–324. 1966b The Paman Group of the Pama-Nyungan phylic family: Appendix to XXIX. Anthropological Linguistics 8: 162–197. 1983 Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1: 5–47. Hansen, Kenneth C., and Leslie E. Hansen 1978 The Core of Pintupi Grammar. Alice Springs, N.T.: Institute for Aboriginal Development. Harvey, Mark 2002 A Grammar of Gaagudju. (Mouton Grammar Library 24.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Harvey, Mark, and Nicholas Reid (eds.) 1997 Nominal Classification in Aboriginal Australia. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Haviland, John B. 1974 A last look at Cook’s Guugu Yimidhirr word list. Oceania 44: 216–232. 1979 Guugu Yimidhirr. In Handbook of Australian languages Vol. 1, Robert M. W. Dixon, and Barry J. Blake (eds.), 26–180. Canberra: Australian National University Press.

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Heath, Jeffrey 1978 Ngandi Grammar, Texts and Dictionary. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 1980a Basic Materials in Ritharngu: Grammar, Texts and Dictionary. (Pacific Linguistics B-62.) Canberra: Australian National University. 1980b Nunggubuyu Myths and Ethnographic Texts. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 1982 Introduction. In Languages of Kinship in Aboriginal Australia, Jeffrey Heath, Francesca Merlan, and Alan Rumsey (eds.), 1–18. Sydney: University of Sydney. 1984 Functional Grammar of Nunggubuyu. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Heath, Jeffrey, Francesca Merlan, and Alan Rumsey (eds.) 1982 Languages of Kinship in Aboriginal Australia (Oceania Linguistic Monographs 24.) Sydney: University of Sydney. Hercus, Luise A. 1982 The Baagandji Language. (Pacific Linguistics B-67.) Canberra: Australian National University. 1994 A Grammar of the Arabana-WangkangurruLlanguage of the Lake Eyre Basin, South Australia. (Pacific Linguistics C-128.) Canberra: Australian National University. Hercus, Luise A., Flavia Hodges, and Jane Simpson (eds.) 2002 The Land is a Map: Placenames of Indigenous Origin in Australia. Canberra: Pandanus Books in Asssociation with Pacific Linguistics. Hercus, Luise A., and Harold Koch (eds.) forthc. Aboriginal Placenames Old and New. Canberra: Pandanus Holmer, Nils M. 1966 An Attempt Towards a Comparative Grammar of Two Australian Languages. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Hosokawa, Komei 1991 The Yawuru Language of West Kimberley: A Meaning-Based Description. Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National UniversityPhD thesis. Hudson, Joyce 1978 The Core of Walmatjari Grammar. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

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Kendon, Adam 1988 Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semiotic and Communicative Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kite, Suzanne, and Stephen Wurm 2004 The Duungidjawu of Southeast Queensland: Grammar, Texts and Dictionary. (Pacific Linguistics 553.) Canberra: Australian National University. Koch, Harold 1982 Kinship categories in Kaytej pronouns. In Languages of Kinship in Aboriginal Australia, Jeffrey Heath, Francesca Merlan and Alan Rumsey (eds.), 64–71. Sydney: University of Sydney. 1984 The category of ‘associated motion’ in Kaytej. Language in Central Australia 1: 23–34. 1985 Non-standard English in an Aboriginal land claim. In Cross-Cultural Encounters: Communication and Mis-Communication, J. B. Pride (ed.), 176–195. Melbourne: River Seine Publications. 2000a Central Australian Aboriginal English: In Comparison with the Morphosyntactic Categories of Kaytetye. Asian Englishes: An International Journal of the Sociolinguistics of English in Asia/Pacific 3: 32–58. 2000b The Role of Australian Aboriginal Languages in the Formation of Australian Pidgin Grammar: Transitive Verbs and Adjectives. In Processes of Language Contact: Case Studies from Australia and the Pacific, Jeff Siegel (ed.), 13–46. (Champs linguistiques.) Montreal, Canada: Fides. 2003 The case for Pama-Nyungan: Evidence from inflectional morphology. In Proceedings of XVII International Congress of Linguists, Prague, Czech Republic, July 24–29, 2003: CD-ROM, E. Hajiþová, A. KotČšovcová, J. Mírovský (eds.). Prague: Matfyzpress, Univerzity Karlovi . 2004a A methodological history of Australian linguistic classification. In Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (eds.), 17–60. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 2004b The Arandic subgroup of Australian languages. In Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (eds.), 127–150, and 575–580. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 2006 Languages of the world: Kaytetye. In The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 6, Keith Brown (ed.), 170–172. Oxford: Elsevier. forthc. R. H. Mathews’ schema for the description of Australian languages. In The History of Research on Australian Aboriginal Languages, William B. McGregor (ed.), Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

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Laughren, Mary 1973 Directional terminology in Warlpiri. Working Papers in Language and Linguistics 8 (Launceston College of Advanced Education): 1–16. 1982 Warlpiri kinship structure. In Languages of Kinship in Aboriginal Australia., Jeffrey Heath, Francesca Merlan and Alan Rumsey (eds.), 72–85. Sydney: University of Sydney. Mathew, John 1899 Eaglehawk and Crow: A Study of the Australian Aborigines Including an Inquiry into their Origin and a Survey of Australian Languages. London: David Nutt. Mathews, Robert H. 1903 Languages of the Kamilaroi and other Aboriginal tribes of New South Wales. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 33: 259–283. McConvell, Patrick 1982 Neutralization and degrees of respect in Gurindji. In Languages of Kinship in Aboriginal Australia., Jeffrey Heath, Francesca Merlan and Alan Rumsey (eds.), 86–106. Sydney: University of Sydney. McGregor, William B. 1990 A Functional Grammar of Gooniyandi. (Studies in Language Companion Series 22.) Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1996 Nyulnyul. (Languages of the World/Materials 88.) München: Lincom Europa. 2002 Verb Classification in Australian Languages. (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 25.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2004 The Languages of the Kimberley, Western Australia. London/New York: RoutledgeCurzon. forthc. Introduction. In The History of Research on Australian Aboriginal Languages, William B. McGregor (ed.). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. McGregor, William B. (ed.) forthc. The History of Research on Australian Aboriginal Languages. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Merlan, Francesca 1983 Ngalakan Grammar, Texts and Vocabulary. (Pacific Linguistics B-89) Canberra: Australian National University. 1994 A Grammar of Wardaman, a Language of the Northern Territory of Australia. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Merlan, Francesca, and Jeffrey Heath 1982 Dyadic kinship terms. In Languages of Kinship in Aboriginal Australia, Jeffrey Heath, Francesca Merlan and Alan Rumsey (eds.), 107–124. Sydney: University of Sydney. Meyer, Heinrich August Edward 1843 Vocabulary of the Language Spoken by the Aborigines of the Southern and Eastern Portions of the Settled Districts of South Australia, Preceded by a Grammar. Adelaide: James Allen. [“Aborigines” is spelt with lower case “a” in the title, GL] Nichols, Johanna 1984 Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language 62: 56–119. Nordlinger, Rachel 1998 A Grammar of Wambaya, Northern Territory. (Pacific Linguistics C140) Canberra: Australian National University. O’Grady, Geoffrey N. 1964 Nyangumata Grammar. (Oceania Linguistic Monographs 9.) Sydney: University of Sydney. 1966 Proto-Ngayarda phonology. Oceanic Linguistics 5: 71–130. O’Grady, Geoffrey N., Carl F. Voegelin, and Florence M. Voegelin 1966 Languages of the world: Indo-Pacific fascicle 6. Anthropological Linguistics 8: 1–199. Oates, Lynette 1988 The Muruwari Language. (Pacific Linguistics C-108.) Canberra: Australian National University. Osborne Charles R. 1974 The Tiwi Language. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Patz, Elisabeth 2002 A Grammar of the Kuku Yalanji Language of North Queensland. (Pacific Linguistics 527.) Canberra: Australian National University. Pawley, Andrew 2006 Papuan languages. In The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Keith Brown (ed.). Vol. 9: 162–171. Oxford: Elsevier. Pensalfini, Robert 2003 A Grammar of Jingulu, an Aboriginal Language of the Northern Territory. (Pacific Linguistics 536.) Canberra: Australian National University.

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Plank, Frans (ed.) 1995 Double Case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme. New York: Oxford University Press. Plomley, Norman J. B. 1990 Tasmanian Aboriginal Place Names. (Occasional Paper No. 3.) Launceston, Tas.: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. Reed, Alexander W. (compiler) 1977 Aboriginal Words and Place Names. Adelaide: Rigby. Rhydwen , Mari 1996 Writing on the Backs of the Blacks: Voice, Literacy and Community in Kriol Fieldwork. St Lucia, Qld: Queensland University Press. Ridley, William 1875 Kámilarói, and Other Australian Languages. Sydney: Thomas Richards, Government Printer. Rudder, John 1978/9 Classification of the natural world among the Yolngu, Northern Territory. Ethnomedezin/Ethnomedicine 5: 349–360. Rumsey, Alan 1982 An Intra-Sentence Grammar of Ungarinjin, North-Western Australia. (Pacific Linguistics B-86.) Canberra: Australian National University. Sandefur, John R. 1979 An Australian Creole in the Northern Territory: A Description of Ngukurr-Bamyili Dialects (Part 1). (Work Papers of SIL-AAB B3.) Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Schebeck, Bernhard 1973 The Adnjamathanha personal pronoun and the ‘Wailpi kinship system’. Papers in Australian Linguistics 6: 1–45. Canberra: Australian National University. Scheffler, Harold W. 1978 Australian Kin Classification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, Wilhelm P. 1919 Die Gliederung der australischen Sprachen: geographische, bibliographische, linguistische Grundzüge zur Erforschung der australischen Sprachen. Wien: Mechitharisten-Buchdruckerei. 1972 Classification of the Australian Languages. (Translated by D. Clark, Ms.) Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

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Schultze-Berndt, Eva 2000 Simple and Complex Verbs in Jaminjung: A Study of Event Categorisation in an Australian Language. (Max Planck Institute Series in Psycholinguistics 14.) Nijmegen: Eve Schultze-Berndt. Sharp, Janet Catherine 2004 Nyangumarta: A Language of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. (Pacific Linguistics 556.) Canberra: Australian National University. Simpson, Jane 2001 Preferred word order and the grammaticalization of associated path. In Time Over Matter: Diachronic Perspectives on Morphosyntax, Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King (eds.), 173–208. Stanford: Centre for the Study of Language and Information. Singer, Ruth 2001 The Inclusory Construction in Australian Languages. Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Melbourne University, BA Honours thesis. Smythe, W. E. 1952 Elementary Grammar of the Gumbáinggar Language (North Coast, N.S.W.). (Oceania Monographs 8.) Sydney: Australian National Research Council. Strehlow, Theodor G .H 1942–1944 Aranda Phonetics and Grammar. (Oceania Monographs 7.) Sydney: Australian National Research Council. Sutton, Peter (ed.) 1976 Languages of Cape York. (Research and Regional Studies No. 6.) Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Teichelmann, Christian G., and Clamor W. Schürmann 1840 Outlines of a Grammar, Vocabulary, and Phraseology of the Aboriginal Language of South Australia, Spoken by the Natives in and for Some Distance around Adelaide. Adelaide: Thomas and Co. [Reprinted in facsimile, 1982, by Tjintu Books, Largs Bay, Adelaide]. Terrill, Angela 1998 Biri. (Languages of the World/Materials 258.) München: Lincom Europa. Threlkeld, Lancelot 1834 An Australian Grammar Comprehending the Principles and Natural Rules of the Language as Spoken by the Aborigines in the Vicinity of Hunter’s River, Lake Macquarie, and. New South Wales. Sydney: Stephens and Stokes, Herald Office.

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Troy, Jakelin 1992 The Sydney language notebooks and responses to language contact in early colonial NSW. Australian Journal of Linguistics 12: 145–170. 1993 Language contact in early colonial New South Wales. In Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia, Michael Walsh and Colin Yallop (eds.), 33–50. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. 1994 Melaleuka: A History and Description of New South Wales Pidgin, PhD thesis, Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. Tsunoda, Tasaku 1981 The Djaru Language of Kimberley, Western Australia. (Pacific Linguistics B-78.) Canberra: Australian National University. Tunbridge, Dorothy 1988 Affixes of motion and direction in Adnyamathanha. In Complex Sentence Constructions in Australian Languages, Peter Austin (ed.), 267–283. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Turpin, Myfany 2002 Body part terms in Kaytetye Feeling Expressions. Pragmatics and Cognition 10 (2): 271–305. Umiker-Sebeok, D. Jean, and Thomas .A. Sebeok (eds.) 1978 Aboriginal Sign Languages of the Americas and Australia, Vol. 2, Part III: Australia. 257–440. New York: Plenum Press. Waddy, Julie 1982 Biological classification from a Groote Eylandt Aborigines point of view. Journal of Ethnobiology 2: 63–77. Walsh, Michael 1995 Body parts in Murrin-Patha: Incorporation, grammar and metaphor. In The Grammar of Inalienability: A Typological Perspective on Body Part Terms and the Part-Whole Relation, Hilary Chappell and William B. McGrego (eds.), 327–380. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1993 Classifying the world in an Aboriginal language. In Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia, Michael Walsh and Colin Yallop (eds.), 107–122. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. 2005 Indigenous languages of southeastern Australia: Revitalization and the role of education. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 28 (2): 1–14. Wilkins, David 1991 The semantics, pragmatics and diachronic development of ‘associated motion’ in Mparntwe Arrernte. Buffalo Papers in Linguistics 91: 207–257.

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Williams, Corinne 1980 A Grammar of Yuwaalaraay. (Pacific Linguistics B-74.) Canberra: Australian National University. Windsor, Greg forthc. The recognition of Aboriginal placenames in New South Wales (Australia). In Aboriginal Placenames Old and New, Luise Hercus and Harold Koch (eds.). Canberra: Pandanus. Wordick, Frank J. F. 1982 The Yindjibarndi Language. (Pacific Linguistics C-71.) Canberra: Australian National University. Wurm, Stephen A. 1972 Languages of Australia and Tasmania. The Hague: Mouton. Yallop, Colin 1977 Alyawarra: An Aboriginal Language of Central Australia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 1982 Australian Aboriginal Languages. (The Language Library.) London: Andre Deutsch.

Yolngu language habitat: Ecology, identity and law in an Aboriginal society Yolngu language habitat

Michael Christie The majority of Yolngu today live in large former mission communities along the far north-eastern coast of Arnhemland, Northern Territory, Australia. Most others reside on ancestral lands, and many of the “mission” Yolngu still regularly visit their country. Even those Yolngu who have lived on missions for several generations still celebrate an identity and practise a law1 through the traces of ancestral journeying, singing, dancing, ritual performances, talking, hunting, sleeping, cooking, eating and so on, which criss-cross through the Yolngu communities. People, their practices and their places continue to relate through the logics of long trajectories where arriving at each new place, the ancestors made the land recognisable to the people and other natural phenomena they left behind, before moving on, or finishing up. Every Yolngu grows up in a group, but groups are many and various and can be constituted in many ways at many levels. At the basic “anthropological” level, Yolngu belong to a patrilineal clan group. Each clan has its own places, speaks its own language, sings its own songs, and paints its own ancestral images. From a Yolngu perspective, the language and culture of each place is different precisely because its history, its topography and its biota (including of course its Yolngu) is different. This complex of peoples and places constitutes the Yolngu language habitat. Old people from whatever clan affiliation, continue to show their linguistic skills retelling the creation journeys, shifting from one language to the next as they recount the conversations of the creators as they moved from place to place: “Oh look yonder lovely sister, what do you think that might be?” “Oh we had better not go in that direction, I can hear the sounds of some sacred business belonging to another group of people over there”. Neither the shapes of the world nor the shapes of its languages are ontologically prior. They are coextensive and co-constitutive. This is a striking metaphysics when we compare it to a view of language as representing an objective pre-existing reality, which generally underpins our European philo1. Law is translated in Yolngu languages as ‘rom’, which also means appropriate customary ways of being and doing in the world.

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sophy of language. Mary Graham, speaking more generally of Aboriginal world views, puts it like this: “Aboriginal logic maintains that there is no division between the observing mind and anything else. There is no ‘external world’ to inhabit” (Graham 1999: 113). Languages in Yolngu society, like the habitats they sustain, are powerful and often dangerous. They produce realities as much as they retell them. Children grow up with a strong metalinguistic awareness, knowing from an early age never to pronounce the names of particular kin, to strenuously avoid the constitutive consequences of repeating the names of the deceased, and beginning to develop a facility with the circumlocutions that protect them from accidental incursions into the sacred/secret business under the control of elders2. Young Yolngu grow up hearing many different languages around them. Marriage is exogamous, so for a start, one’s mother and father speak different languages. Then one’s mother’s mother (and her brothers), who are key figures in one’s life, will in turn speak another language. When children reach early adulthood, they have traditionally been expected to take on their father’s language. They also will have as adults much to do with their mother’s business controlled to a large extent by her brothers who need to negotiate extensively with their sisters’ children who are caretakers or custodians of their land and lore. Yolngu children learn who they are as they learn the associations they inherit with various individuals and groups and by extension their languages, lands, and totems. The songs instantiate and validate the relations between entities in the environment (winds, animals, blossoms, plant foods, currents, etc) their ownership, and appropriate practices for dealing with them. Boys particularly learn increasing levels of sacred/inside information. They learn to discern the boundaries between the inside and the outside, and to use those boundaries for negotiations and exchanges of knowledge and resources. The boundaries are negotiated collectively through performance: painting, dancing, singing, carving, crying. (Women, unlike men, can cry through the songs of all their kin. Men sing only their father’s ancestral song). In each of those contexts, senior Yolngu are assessing the performances of others, and measuring up their truth claims against their own experience, their known histories and feelings. Except in the realm of the secret/sacred, 2. Conversely, Yolngu old and young are impressed by the almost complete lack of such awareness on the part of non-Yolngu who, while making good progress in learning to speak Yolngu languages, continue to show considerable retardation in their perceptions of the political and spiritual potentials of language.

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“everyone speaks from a position with an obvious, acknowledged, linguistically marked ancestral history, and the history and location of that position necessarily saturates any assertion made through language” (Christie and Perrett 1996: 63).3 This paper looks at published reports of a Yolngu school curriculum development process, and a Yolngu research and community health and education resource centre for some examples of how Yolngu elaborate this indissoluble link between language, ecology and “law” (i.e. rom). In two quite separate contexts, Yolngu have taken up arguments about health, education, law, ecology, sustainability, and governance, engaging their own ecological metaphors to elaborate identity, truth and appropriate behaviour, steering collaborative practice in a sensible, sensitive direction. “Only Yolngu really understand the metaphors which this land holds, but Balanda4 can learn about this too if they go about it in the right way.” (Marika-Mununggiritj 1991b: 18) Each in our own place, it is the ecology of places, people, other species, other connections, tropes, songs and dances, which mean everything for our being in the world, our religious life, our resource access, our partners, our descendents and our understanding of who we are and what we are to do. Some Yolngu writers whose published work is described here, feel constrained to remind us that the same language-place-mind ecology is at work for “Balanda, Chinese, Japanese and whatever other groups” (Guymun 2003: 3). Yolngu locate the foundation of a way ahead in the routine ways they understand and perform the reality of their world. I have been associated in some way (usually linguistically) with the routine practices (curriculum development, and documentation, health and identity research) which are described here. I offer a Balanda perspective of how in particular moments in particular places Yolngu have been able to teach Balanda in collaborative work. “These very stories reveal the work of our day to day lives, and we practise them as we carry our knowledge, confidence and skills into the bush and on to the beach.” (Garnggulkpuy 2002: 3). The two largest Yolngu communities are Yirrkala and Galiwin’ku. Both were established as Methodist missions in the 1930s. Yirrkala is at the north of the Laynha (the north west coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria). Galiwin’ku is on Elcho Island farther west from Yirrkala on the north eastern coast of Arnhemland. Both communities have a long history of collaboration with non-Yolngu including Macassans who regularly visited Yolngu from the 3. See also Muecke (2004: 163–8). 4. Balanda, Hollander, European.

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north for at least a hundred years before the first Europeans. Yirrkala Yolngu claim to occupy the home of Australian Aboriginal land rights, for it was here in the 1960s, that the Yolngu fought to prevent the establishment of a bauxite mine on their land. While the legal case was unsuccessful, it did lead eventually to the Aboriginal Land Rights Act of the Northern Territory (1976). By the 1980s, a successful program of bilingual education had been running at Yirrkala and Galiwin’ku schools for ten years. There were high levels of student attendance, many students attained commendable levels of literacy in the vernacular and English, many Yolngu teachers were well trained and joined the professional work force, Yolngu education staff worked within action groups to collectively influence curriculum policy and process, and there were generally favourable links between the schools and the communities which fed into the community workforce (clinics, essential services, housing, etc.). The story of how and why that all came unstuck is yet to be told. At its height, Yolngu teachers and elders were working excitedly to make Yolngu ways of knowing and contributing to the shaping and telling of good Yolngu education. From the discourses of bilingual education came the rubrics of ‘Aboriginalization’ and of ‘both-ways education’ (see below). 1. Feet and bones In a wave of Yolngu educational writing at the end of the 1980s, we find the Yolngu educators at the Yirrkala School embedding a commitment to knowledge in the local and the grounded. Djalkiri was suddenly a much utilized word in the classroom and in the interactions between Balanda and Yolngu workers on Yolngu curriculum development and implementation. Djalkiri means foot, footprint, foundation. In the Yirrkala classrooms, djalkiri was much performed. Young people read, wrote, painted, danced, mapped and otherwise re-presented their ancestral investment in land5. “Djalkiri shows us that the curriculum must be integrated, because people cannot exist independently of their environment.” (Marika-Mununggiritj 1991b: 18) The land “is our bone place containing foundations, customs and laws. They provide our Yolngu laws. They hold us together those Yolngu laws which we will hold on to and give to the children who are to come.” (Marika 2002) This work in the classroom around the metaphors of bones and footprints was paralleled by more academic work in the Literature Centre. See for example Raymattja’s detailed translation of the ancestral song celebrating the Rirrat5. The Yolngu word for this investment is balyunmirri. See Garnggulkpuy (2002).

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jingu hunter walking along the shore – muscles moving in his calves, footprints filling with water, then washed over by the tide (Marika-Mununggiritj 1989). See also Dhayirra’s paper on ‘Land and Body’, on the question of what Balanda mean by metaphor: Is our body a metaphor for our land, or does our land provide a metaphor for our body? (Yunupingu 1992). We know and are our own bodies through our land, and our land through our bodies. The metaphor of bones links land to governance. The Management group of the “Exploring the Connections” project at Galiwin’ku (see below) was designated its backbone. 2. Spring water and ashes Particular people’s footprints are located in particular places, they are a sign that someone has been somewhere. How do we understand the identities of those whose footprints we find in place? Through the water they drink each from their own place. Raymattja came from Yirrkala to CDU to deliver a lecture to Yolngu studies students on Yolngu knowledge. She continued to develop this link between water and identity. Milngurr, she says, refers to the fresh water springs which belong to particular people from particular groups in particular places. It connects the water in a baby’s head with the spring water on that baby’s land. Intelligence is located in responses to the rhythmic inflow and outflow of the spring waters specific to the child’s ancestral land: Milngurr ... water is Dhuwa6 water ... for all the Dhuwa Yolngu, and yet my own water is quite distinct, it is over at Yalangbara and Gulurunga, fresh water, created by those two sisters as they travelled ... they created the water that is Milngurr. (Raymattja points to the top of her head). This is what tells us about this water which we can feel within a newborn baby when it is young, a very young baby. On a child we will feel that soft, that area. And when we grow, our head is used for thinking... this Milngurr water determines how we will develop our mind for work and for living. Yes and that Milngurr also determines our feelings, how we feel, our emotions. For our thoughts and our spirit are in our heads, you see. And also it will explain knowledge, this water. (Marika 2002)7

The Rirratjingu child grows to learn that her habitat (hills, wells, rocks, springs, tides, species, songs etc) powerfully determines who she is. She 6. Dhuwa and Yirritja are the two moieties into which all Yolngu life is divided. 7. Translated from original Rirratjingu by Adrian Herron and Michael Christie

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knows that while she acts upon the environment, the environment has always already been acting upon her. They renew each other. The causal arrows blur. Around the Rirratjingu spring are Rirratjingu footprints. Not far form the Rirratjingu springs are the Rirratjingu ashes where the Rirratjingu ancestors cooked and ate. Groups of people are named by how and what and where they ate their totemic food (like turtle people singing about what their ancestral turtle people look like, with the turtle fat dribbling down their chins). All over the land are hearths8, where people of the land have collected since time was, to cook and eat what the land has given them and talk about these things. The philosophical work which attended the Yirrkala experiences recorded here often grew around campfires. The work around the cycad bread discussed further below, depends upon particular ancestral hearths in particular places. 3. Nests At Galiwin’ku on Elcho Island, Yolngu were drawn into research “exploring the connections” between Indigenous health and education. Elcho, like Yirrkala was established as a Methodist mission in the 1930s. Only a few people remember life before the missionaries. The Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health in Darwin was looking at the possible relevance to Aboriginal Australia of international research which had shown positive correlations between maternal education and infant health and survival in developing countries (see e.g. Tsey 1997). The CRC funded two Indigenous “exploring the connections” research projects, one of which was conducted by women from Galiwin’ku (Lowell, Lawurrpa, and Biritjalawuy 2000). Yes, they agreed in their report, there is a strong correlation between education and health, but the educational starting point for Yolngu must always be Yolngu historical (ancestral) connectedness. For Yolngu babies to be healthy, mothers must first and foremost have a strong level of traditional education, upon which depend both their success at school and the health of their infants. The Yalu is the basis of this good Yolngu education. The women researchers were mothers and grandmothers with a strong vision of links between clan groups as a key determinant of community harmony. While they were concerned about what happened at school, they were very conscious of 8. The common Yolngu word is lirrwi, literally ‘charcoal’, which refers to spots (adjacent to good hunting and ceremonial sites) where charcoal has built up from ancestral fires for millennia.

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the fact that, by 2001, only a relatively small proportion of the eligible children (less than 30%) were turning up at school each day. The school had troubles, and they were happy to help out at school wherever possible, but their concerns as community elders were wider and deeper. Schooling was only a part of their concern for the new generations. Perhaps the specific notion of yalu emerged because the original focus had been on women’s knowledge (see Tsey 1997). It was mostly women involved in the Centre, although men too were keen to emphasize the importance of maternal descent lines in the constitution of Yolngu identity and law. Women’s children always belong to a different clan group from themselves. (Marriage is exogamous, and children inherit their father’s moiety and clan affiliation.) Yalu speaks of the rights and responsibilities which accrue to an individual through his or her mother (and equally importantly their mother’s mothers). Feet and bones may be primarily determined by father, but major connectednesses lie beyond, through the yalu. Its everyday translation is ‘nest’. A bird’s nest is commonly called yalu. Yalu represents a place from which new identities are dispersed through the land. Two people from different clans and different places (different fathers, different personal histories), may share the same yalu. As women’s business, it has inside and outside levels: “The story is sacred. Men do not know, only women know! The name Yalu is about the making of the peoples. Relationship is very important here in the name Yalu. This name is a place and the place is inside and secret.” (Guymun 2003: 3–9) The Yalu Marnggithinyaraw Nurturing Centre started in 2000 soon after the CRC ‘exploring the connections’ project.9 Yalu Marnggithinyaraw literally means ‘the yalu for becoming knowing’. Rather like the curriculum development imperative at Yirrkala, the Yalu workers set out to redress a perceived cultural imbalance, to bring to light some critical perspectives which had long been clear to Yolngu but invisible or unrecognisable to Balanda. Here as at Yirrkala there was clear concern that Balanda institutions in the community had distracted Yolngu from their identity. Buthimang turned straight to his totem to represent his point of view: When the Balanda asks why (I listen to my mother’s mothers people from Dhalinybuy), he might look for the answer in the heron. What does it mean, he will ask? He might think that it is just an untrue story. But the Yolngu will tell him from his law, Yolngu law, developing in the community to bring about good ways of doing things ... these days. Everybody going to church and 9. The pilot project was funded by CRCATH, and later in 2001 supported through a grant from the Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services.

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Michael Christie listening, everybody at the council, sitting down, everybody at Mardhakal (homeland resource centre), everybody school, hospital, ALPA (the store) but forgot about his own law. But for me it starts from the Yalu, for council work, for Mardhakal, for the school, the hospital, the store, I can go though that (yalu). (Buthimang 2003: 34, 50–58) 10

We need to understand how we are produced as a subject by our natural/ cultural environment, before we can in return act appropriately upon it, including the relatively intractable bureaucratic structures which Balanda have brought11. “Balanda... will understand that Yalu is helping Yolngu by upgrading jobs, activities, sports, whatever.” (Djaati 2003). We all share various yalu (and the ‘banks’ of their resources) with people from different clan groups and faraway places. Yalu means... roots. People are spread out, doesn’t matter about the father’s clan, doesn’t matter where the father comes from, but ... whoever married from this Yalu then they have been building up... you (speaking to Wirrinywirriny) are very far away and your father made you closer (by marrying your mother), so you are a pandanus from another place that stands here facing into the sun. Yes, this a great story and you and all your brothers and sisters, you are from one Yalu bank, and I am from there too, I am telling you the same story. (Dhalnganda 2003: 1–10)

A young person needs to know first and foremost who his/her connections are. They need to know where to go for identity resources. We have heard those old people saying when there was trouble... ‘Hey, don’t come speaking to us like that or retaliating. You don’t belong to the group of all those other people from their ancestral lines. You are actually here from our own Yalu. You shouldn’t be speaking back to us like that and speaking roughly. And calling us strangers. You grew up not understanding and you can’t recognize the Yalu which belongs to us.’ And so you have answered 10. Emma Kowal, a postgraduate Yolngu Studies student, worked with Joanne Wirrinywirriny, other Yalu workers and community elders to elaborate the Yolngu philosophy of Yalu for the sort of work the Centre was developing. All quotes in this section can be found on the Yalu website which Emma produced. Select Yalu Marnggithinyaraw at http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/yolngustudies/. Refernce numbers refer to sentences from the translations by Wirrinywirriny and Michael Christie. 11. Many Yolngu have imagined the key to dealing with these unman-ageable powers to lie in learning ‘secret English’ whereby Balanda are able to make direct access to that power “which transcends the positionality of the speaker and claims its meaning from some … transcendent signifier.” (See Christie and Perrett 1996.)

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back, and said ‘What is this Yalu thing?’ It is like a string, a string, like a tree with all its branches. From wherever we came. (Bepuka 2003: 16–21)

It provides security and resources. Yalu is a place or a group that claims itself as being rightfully for that area... own to choose, own to think, own to run the law or whatever. It also put(s) Yolngu into a place that they’ll think and feel comfortable within their own group of people, share ideas and make it work. If you have no yalu you are floating around or you are nothing. You are a person or a group that have no identity because yalu is identity too, strong identity for Yolngu. (Djaati 2003)

Two noticeable threads ran through the many stories which Emma and Wirrinywirriny collected. Yalu should not be understood to apply exclusively to Yolngu, and it is mobilized here as a heuristic specifically for the purposes of research, told “through the perspective of the workplace”: Everybody’s in place through this thing called Yalu, for Yolngu people and for Balanda and for others, others, others, each group giving birth to new generations though this thing that we call Yalu. And what? There is a big kinship network lying in there, in that thing called Yalu. You and I will grow up the children in their different individual groups, groups being renewed generation after generation inside these things called Yalu... Not just Yolngu but Balanda and Chinese and Japanese and whatever other sorts of groups. The name refers to their land, it has sacred meaning as well. And this idea is coming out into the open through what? Through Balanda research, through the work side of things, that’s bringing it out, they are learning as it becomes clear... I am just telling this story in the Balanda way through the perspective of the workplace. (Guymun 2003: 3–9)

Djati concludes his interview: Yalu is there to ... encourage you to be strong ... to tell you, don’t get carried away, don’t stick to only one side, Yalu is there to steer to right position, because without a pilot the plane goes down, crash. Yalu is just like a pilot, it steers your way ... tells you the way, the rightful way, so you are strong. That’s what Yalu is. (Djaati 2003)

4. Strings The Yalu Marnggithinyaraw Centre has become an active force for Yolngu health at Galiwin’ku. In 2002 a national study into community-based public

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health interventions chose Galiwin’ku as a research site. Garnggulkpuy and other Yalu workers, became involved as “associate investigators” into personal perceptions of “mastery and control”. They were to investigate “the extent to which people see themselves as being in control of the forces that importantly affect their lives.” (Pearlin et al. 1981: 340). As part of her study at CDU, Garnggulkpuy (2002) wrote a paper on Yolngu perspectives of mastery and control. Originally in Dhuwal, it was translated into English with a commentary.12 What follows is the abstract in seven sections, interspersed with some direct quotations from the translation.

– Introduction. Yolngu are distributed in distinct groups knowing their lives through ancestral songs etc.

We Yolngus people grew up and we learnt the various stories, we got them from the ceremonies, and the ancestral songs, from the mortuary rites, from the keening, and from many other sources. These very stories reveal the work of our day to day life, and we practise them as we carry our knowledge, confidence and skills into the bush and on to the beach.

– Yolngu from both the freshwater country and the saltwater country have

the full balance of carbohydrate and meat food through their individual skills and resources, and through sharing. Okay, we saltwater Yolngu, call ourselves good hunters because we can get meats from the sea, and fruit and vegetable from the bush. Other Yolngu belong to freshwater country, and the freshwater Yolngu will still get some of those things which the salt water holds, because the work and the resources are shared around..

– Our Wangurri song teaches Wangurri people how we should live our daily lives, as well as how we should see our world. Okay, and when a Yirritja person sings, they might sing for example, ‘That Wurarr group is going to see the long open beach Djaltji, Watjpalala, Gawunu, and Manurr lying there’. That implies that there is a lot of good meaty food there, and we will gather it successfully. That Wangurri (clan) song makes clear what the Yolngu hunter is to do, and prepares him for his search for the best and most efficient source of meat.

– It is our affiliation to particular groups and their affiliations to the natural and cultural world – places, species, and practices – which drives our knowledge and our behaviour. 12. Translations by Michael Christie and Garnggulkpuy, see Garnggulkpuy (2002).

Yolngu language habitat The law which is in their own song, is also for their mothers’ people and their (sisters’) children’s people, and so it makes connections through kinship to all the other various groups of Yolngu... And therein lies the work of sharing for each person, how we will continue to collect food, and share it. We are born alone, but we grow up in specific Yolngu ancestral groupings. Our understanding of our actions is individual to our particular groups.

– Within each group we have a particular way of talking about our collective knowledge as a clan, and we can see how that helps knowledgeable Yolngu keep the peace by directing people to consider themselves in terms of their ancestral affiliations. For example, we Wangurri clan Yolngu, we call our minds, our ‘Gayilinydjil’. If we got into a fight, and someone hits us on the head, then people will say of us: ‘They have seen her Gayilinydjil’. By speaking that way a Yolngu can work towards a peaceful solution which keeps everyone united, tied together by good faith, trust and confidence. They are not going to say: ‘she got bashed in the head’. That would be asking for trouble. People could get really angry. This principle applies to all Yolngu groups. To make our law work, we have to bring our heads back to thinking about our ancestral land, using those sacred ancestral names which take us back each to our own place.

– Within the mother-child clan relationship (yothu-yindi) our clan-based mindsets show us how to behave responsibly as children/caretakers and as mothers (like using peaceful Yirritja seawater for sorting out problems for our shark-like Dhuwa mother’s clan) We Wangurri people are the children of shark mothers, we are called the ‘shark fat’, we will look after our mothers’ mob through our law of the calm seawater called Betj because their mind is a shark’s mind, a confronting one, they just speak straight out to other Yolngu. They are very up-front.

– All Yolngu groups have names to link their minds into ancestral practice, in every aspect of everyday life from hunting to politicking, within and between groups. Even when Yolngu have passed away, our bodies are still sacred objects belonging to our own group. If I went off all by myself separating myself from my Yolngu group, they would still bring me back just as myself, through their singing of the sacred names, through their ceremonies, their sacred business, because if even I were to die, my body would still be a sacred object.

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5. Bread How can Balanda and Yolngu go forward together to build new worlds based equally on groundedness and connectedness? What is the process? In 1988, the Yolngu teachers at Yirrkala frustrated by the often peremptory style of non-Yolngu education officials, offered an analogy between the production of cycad13 bread and curriculum writing as a Yolngu perspective. There are appropriate ways of going about negotiating knowledge, which the Yolngu educators and elders were happy to share. Some years ago we were searching for ways of coming up with a Yolngu curriculum for our school. We needed something to expand our imaginations. Something which would lead us to do things in proper ways. We wanted to create a Yolngu curriculum which our community would feel was theirs. Two elders who were working with us, my older sister Gulumbu and her husband Djamika, told us to remember the process of ngathu (cycad). It could help us find the ways to do things which would produce a sustaining ‘bread’ for children. (Yunupingu 1994: 6)

At the end of each dry season, when there has been no rain for months, and when many foods are in short supply, Yolngu have traditionally gathered together for ceremonials and been sustained by bread made from cycad nuts. This bread has sacred aspects to it, and the nuts being poisonous, a complex preparation process is involved. The process entails

– going to particular religiously significant cycad groves – the right women selecting the right nuts in the right place at the right time. – – – –

Their roles have special names depending on their clan group and where they are. preparing a proper named space for the work cracking and sorting out the kernels, the whole ones and the split ones have different names and are sorted and treated differently. leaving them for a while to dry in the sun for careful, timely airing and consideration soaking in fresh running water for several days to leech out the poison; each place of preparation belongs to a particular group of people, and has its own name. In each place the flowing water has its own name. Natural

13. Cycas media – an ancient palm bearing poisonous nuts. It has many names. The CD dictionary of Yolngu languages has 49 entries under cycad, and there are many more which refer to clan-specific names for cycad palms, nuts, breads, grinding stones, waters, poisons, places, processes, parcels etc.

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processes purify the product. Each day in the process has its name. The poison has its various names, belonging to the owning clan groups, used in other contexts as a symbol of strength. The people who taste it have special names. grinding and preparing the dough on special stones, different nuts are used to prepare different sorts of loaves for different sorts of people. Children are not allowed to play around while they do this wrapping up the cycad bread in the right (totemically connected) sort of paperbark, preparing different shaped loaves with different names for different people roasting in the coals of the land from which it came – the lirrwi referred to above, each with its own name. distribution for food, and for ceremonial purposes. Its preparation and use, like all special totems, must be supervised by a caretaker or manager. 14

This ritualized and religious work is often given as a metaphor for due process: the right place, the right system, the right people, the right timing, the right techniques for each place, the right authority and supervision, the right roles, the specific names, the right song, dance and painting, the right distribution (Marika 1989; Watson and Chambers 1989; Yunupingu 1994: 6– 8). More recently, Marrnganyin, a Yolngu renal patient from Galiwin’ku, made a video using the cycad bread preparation story to illustrate the nature, function and process of dialysis.15 The machine does for the (sacred16) body what the cycad preparation process does for sacred bread. 6. Hunting In a further move which linked the idea of grounded ritualized practice (as in cycad preparation) with everyday clan based ‘doing the world’ (as in Garnggulkpuy’s Yolngu Balandi-watangumirr) Raymattja used an account of hunting practices, in an effort to identify schooling as a natural intelligent part of ongoing contemporary Yolngu life. Invited to contribute to an international journal on the sociology of language, she immediately turned to hunting metaphors explained to her and other teachers, by Daymbalipu Mununggurr, a famous educator from the mission days (Raymattja Marika-Mununggiritj and 14. This account is based on Marika (1989: 37–8). Notes by Michael Christie from a talk Raymattja was giving to the school staff. 15. See http://www.sharingtruestories.com/. 16. Refer to page 49 of Garnggulkpuy's paper concerning the sacredness of the body.

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Christie 1995). The process, always at once quotidian and sacred, begins with each new day’s work identifying and tracking traces in the environment – a sort of literacy – clouds, winds, tides, blossoms, footprints.17 There is work to be done identifying their consistency with our knowledge of history and place – ‘even if we can’t see the creators and the ancestors, we can still see... exactly where they have been, what they have left behind, their signs and reflections, their images and their way of life’ (1995: 61). When we read and understand, we can behave appropriately and consistently in such a way as to reproduce ... the lives of our ancestors, in the same way that allowed them to preserve our knowledge and our culture for thousands of years and bring it right up to the modern world. This is more than just copying – (it) has the effect of bringing our spiritual past to life again through modern behaviours. It also has an effect on ourselves – putting us ‘in tune with’ our spiritual past, shaping us like our ancestors... Yolngu education is not about young Aboriginal people following their ancestors like robots. And Yolngu education is not about young people learning to do just what they feel like. Yolngu education is learning to love and understand our homeland and the ancestors who have provided it for us, so as to create a life for ourselves reworking the truths we have learned from the land and from the elders, into a celebration of who we are, and where we are in the modern world. (1995: 61)

7. Lagoons In 1990, Raymattja was invited to deliver guest lectures at the University of Melbourne. Again she uses water to elaborate how “in teaching and learning there is always a dynamic interaction of knowledge traditions” (MarikaMununggiritj 1990: 48). Here again we find connections between land, body, and identity, but now the interactions of different waters are mobilized to describe cooperative and negotiative production. Even within the Yolngu polity, knowledge negotiations are always in a sense intercultural, because they always depend upon doing difference together: different land/people configurations, different language habitats, different authorities coming together. The same rules and principles that govern these Yolngu practices should be at work when Yolngu children find themselves in Balanda classrooms. 17. These processes in Djapu language are dhin'thun, lundu-nhama, and dhudakthun. (see Marika-Mununggiritj and Christie 1995: 59–62).

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Fresh water from the land, bubbling up in fresh water springs to make waterholes, and salt water from the sea are interacting with each other with the energy of the tide and the energy of the bubbling spring. When the tide is high the water rises to its full. When the tide goes out the water reduces its capacity... in this way Balanda and Yolngu traditions can work together. There must be balance, if not either one will be stronger and will harm the other. (Marika-Mununggiritj 1990: 48)18

Raymattja here is drawing upon an earlier episode in the 1980s, where she and community elders and educators were engaged at the Yirrkala school, to work on clarifying epistemological issues for Yolngu schooling. Elders from the Gumatj clan (her ‘mother’) introduced the notion of ganma to elaborate a theory of two cultures – Yolngu and Balanda – meeting together. Ganma is a particular confluence of sea water and fresh water in the mangroves at a Gumatj site called Biranybirany. Mandawuy Yunupingu, a Gumatj man and principal of the Yirrkala school, used ganma to talk about ‘both ways’ mathematics education. What Yolngu know about the salt and the fresh water... is something that is real and meaningful in the outside view and the inside view. The outside view is the everyday experience of how we relate to each other and the world in which we live: this understanding occurs when we actually touch, smell and taste things, and furthermore, we are told things by our old folks about the nature of what life is in our own world view. We know that salt and fresh water produce brackish water when they meet at the mouth of a river. This process is called in a number of names in Gumatj... it is the taste of the water and the process of mixing and the place in which both waters meet that is part of my reconnaissance for exploring the Ganma theory. (Yunupingu 1991)

Ganma, the still lagoon, may appear smelly and threatening to whitefellas, but it is full of life and very productive as a food source. Water is circulating silently beneath its surface; we can read the spiralling lines of foam on top. The swelling and retreating of the tides, and the wet and dry season fluctuations, can be seen in the two bodies of water. Each of them has its own life. This is the conceptual framework we are using to begin exploring that area where Balanda and Yolngu meet. This is where our children live, this is where we must look for relevance... The Ganma curriculum emphasizes the interface

18. She goes on to elaborate the use of the milngurr metaphor to understand teacherlearner interactions (p 49).

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What happens in a school where we have two different cultures, must mirror what nature achieves in the Ganma lagoon. For education to be genuine, natural and productive, both cultures have to be presented in such a way that each is preserved and respected. “It is like this, like salty and fresh are talking and explaining how we will differentiate bad and good law, at work, at play, out on the land” (Marika 2002: 3). What is produced by their interaction is unique, deep, inexhaustible, and always changing. Moment by moment we may work together, to read its surfaces19. 8. Performance How might this truly intercultural education work? A year or so after the ganma lagoon story was given by elders to Balanda and Yolngu working together on curriculum development a further quite different metaphor – garma – was mobilized. Ganma told how what we see in the mangroves helps us understand the interchange between the currents of Yolngu and Western life. Garma tells how this interchange can be created, supervised, assisted and evaluated within an educational institution. The key setting in which connections between people, and groups of people are made and maintained, where history is celebrated and reworked, where art is produced and displayed, and where songs and associated dances reproduce the ancestral work in the here and now, is the garma ceremony20. It was in theorizing the ceremony, and in applying aspects of ceremonial language and practice as metaphors to clarify the practices and principles of pedagogy, that the elders at Yirrkala community worked to expose and address the alienating and assimilationist practices of schooling. They, like the Yalu researchers further west, were concerned about an unbalanced curriculum which would turn their young people away from an ongoing consciousness of their ancestral identities. They were also concerned that their young people should learn the skills of Western mathematics, literacy etc through practices which in no way compromise their ancestral links to land and kin. “When we talk of bothways, we view both ways in terms of the Yolngu word garma” (MarikaMununggiritj et al. 1990: 46). 19. See further Christie (2000. 3–19). 20. Later taken up as the name of an annual festival run by Gumatj elders and their kin, and based on the principles of garma. See http://www.garma.telstra.com/.

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“Garma … is an open21 word … describing the format where a Yolngu learning environment begins” (Marika-Mununggiritj 1990: 43). It would be wrong and anyway impossible for a group of people to perform a ceremony for their own enjoyment and edification. People from other groups who are important to the particular ceremony must be invited, and made welcome. They will all have their jobs to do, and will be carefully supervised by particular others whose ancestral task it is to make sure things are done properly.22 Ceremonies are not easy things to arrange and perform. There are always private sacred and secret negotiations before and during the ceremony, and there may be old enmities beneath the surface. So an open ceremonial ground is provided – a space where people come together from different parts of the land, and perform the ancestral stories in song, dance and art in a visible, designated forum. This is the garma, the first necessary condition for a true Yolngu education. The garma always actually belongs to a specific group of course – its welcome as a place for others to work together is culturally defined. It has a history, and that history is relevant to the work performed there. There is no such thing as a place that doesn’t belong to someone, but the garma is set aside as a special sort of space – away from the sacred business, and in a place where people know they are welcome if they treat the place, its owners, its history and its visitors with respect. Youngsters must have people in authority (from both traditions) to tell them the stories of origins and history. Young adults must observe the work which is done by the elders and then perform themselves, through their histories and connections to provide at once images of unity, and elaborations of difference. They must learn to participate in these processes themselves, grow into responsibility for them, and learn to produce and discern the truths which emerge from them. 9. Nexus Having clarified a particular representation of process (ganma) and of negotiation in context (garma) in their work assisting curriculum 21. Open as opposed to secret. Garma as an adjective often distinguishes between the secret ceremonial spaces, names and practices, and their public manifestations. Eucation may begin as garma, but for particular individuals, it may end ‘inside’. 22. There are two types of people: those who share ownership of the ceremony in some way (usually because their own territory is on the same ‘dreaming’ track as their ceremonial hosts) and those who, through the totemic network of their mother’s people have some managerial or supervisory or facilitatory responsibility to fulfil.

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development, the Yirrkala Yolngu further extended their contribution to an understanding of human and non-human agencies working together in the ongoing creation of new realities. Galtha is at once a moment and a place, a process and a manifestation. Raymattja worked with the Yolngu and non-Yolngu Yirrkala school staff to explain the concept. All ceremonies are preceded by long and often fraught negotiations between stakeholders – people from other places who share the totems because they share a dreaming track, by virtue of their original creating totemic ancestors having passed through their territory. If it is, for instance, a morning star ceremony, there will always be at least two or three and sometimes up to a dozen different clan groups who have their own connections to the morning star and through these, to the people and places which are hosting the ceremony. The ceremony must be enacted in such a way that all their perspectives can be adequately represented and respected here and now, and they can sing, paint and dance their own special versions, distinguished as their own through their readable performances of their own identity – in concert with others of shared djalkiri and yalu. To ensure the effectiveness of this important intellectual and aesthetic work, the preceremonial discussions will decide the territory to be covered in the singing, the roles to be performed, and the tropes to be foregrounded, elaborated and celebrated in this particular ceremony, for these particular people, at this particular moment. When the boss of the ceremony is satisfied that the important stakeholders are satisfied, the plan is creditable and workable, and that the protocols for performance have been agreed, he will perform a short ceremonial act – the galtha – which marks the transition from the negotiations of the religious leaders and their minders, to the practical, grounded, community celebration of history and place through performance23. “History stays in the place where it has been made” (Marika-Mununggiritj et al. 1990: 38). Raymattja makes clear that the galtha in this sense is both a product and a catalyst for “the shared wisdom held in trust by the (elders) ... shared knowledge which is triggered to be delivered through the teaching/learning and tuition which Galtha provides.“(Marika-Mununggiritj 1991a: 34) “The rules that govern Galtha should be taken into account when we plan for learning to occur – this is when we use our ideas about Pedagogy” (1991a: 33). This embodied, interpretive working through of history, place and connectedness into the future is exactly what Yolngu elders insisted education has always been like for the young, and should continue to be like. Especially in 23. Raymattja’s perspectives are further discussed by Verran (2002: 155–81).

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the days where so much of what needs to be learnt appears to come from outside, unanchored to history, and from whitefellas who enjoy power and access to resources, but little respect for land, history, or the immense historical, environmental and spiritual knowledge of traditional owners.24 So while a ceremony has a galtha, so can individuals have their own Galtha when they become truly themselves in line with ancestral imperatives. A man who is a good dancer, who knows his connections and his land and understands his rom (law and culture), can produce his own Galtha. This what we are aiming for in Yolngu education. A man who is Galtha-ga:nangumirri (literally ‘possessing a different and distinct Galtha’), can present his own galtha in the context of a ceremony and is much admired. He can act intelligently as an individual because he knows and respects the background to what he is doing. He is a unique individual. He isn’t just copying his ancestors. He isn’t just keeping Yolngu culture unchanged like a museum piece. He has learned to create something that is especially his own, but quite consistent with the past... He is a modern Yolngu keeping his Yolngu culture strong. (MarikaMununggiritj and Christie 1995: 61–2)

10.

Conclusion

Specific Yolngu language habitats continue to be alive and productive as networks which link people to place, history, the networks of relatedness and the modern world in their ongoing work in universities, schools, knowledge centres, and government departments. At both Yirrkala and Galiwin’ku the possibilities of students of Yolngu language and culture, non-Yolngu linguists, and other researchers engaging with these complexes was preceded by lengthy periods of active Yolngu collaboration in the delivery of government services (including health and education)25. The contributions grew up in an environment characterized by mutual respect. There is something highly responsive, almost ad hoc about the particular strategies which emerged from these engagements. Women told stories of their own embodiment, work, and connections. Gumatj told stories of Gumatj land, Rirratjingu of Rirratjingu waters, Wangurri of Wangurri minds. Educators told stories of the development of a child’s mind, young people of hunting, elders of ceremonial practice. All made reference to new generations of Yolngu young people dealing with a changing world. 24. See Ngurruwutthun (1991) for an indication of the complexity of this work. 25. And before that, a relatively happy cooperative relationship with the Methodists.

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We learn only as we participate. These stories and ours reflect a strong link between the time and place of each storyteller and ‘the context of the workplace’ (Guymun 2003: 9). This is quite natural to Yolngu who see the work of talking and doing as being fundamentally constitutive of new realities. We need to learn to do that together intelligently, to produce owned, situated, and timely truths. What each in his own place appreciates about the other’s relation to their language habitat, is not what the other knows, but rather how they know it, how they apprehend it, how they elaborate it collectively, how they implement it in education, art, performance, and everyday life, and how they renew it. In these contexts, non-Yolngu and Yolngu are working together through disparate knowledge traditions from disparate language habitats to build new futures. References Bepuka 2003 [http://yalu.ntu.edu.au/philosophy/bepuka.html]. Buthimang 2003 [http://yalu.ntu.edu.au/philosophy/buthimang.html]. Christie, Michael J. 2000 Galtha: The application of Aboriginal philosophy to school learning. New Horizons in Education 103: 3–19. Christie, Michael J., and William Perret 1996 Negotiating resources: Language, knowledge and the search for ‘secret English’ in northeast Arnhem Land. In Resources, Nations and Indigenous Peoples, R. Howitt, J. Connell and P. Hirsch (eds.), 57–65. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Dhalnganda 2003 [http://yalu.ntu.edu.au/philosophy/dhalnganda.html]. Djaati 2003 [http://yalu.ntu.edu.au/philosophy/djati.html]. Garnggulkpuy, Joanne 2002 Yolngu Balandi Watangumirri, Yalu Marnggithinyraw Centre, [http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/ yolngustudies/docs/garnggulkpuy.pdf].

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Graham, Mary 1999 Some thoughts about the philosophical underpinnings of Aboriginal worldviews. Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 3 (2) 105– 118. Guymun 2003 [http://yalu.ntu.edu.au/philosophy/guymun.html]. Lowell, Anne, Elaine Lawurrpa, and Dorothy Biritjalawuy 2000 Indigenous Health and Education: Exploring the Connections. Darwin: CRC Aboriginal and Tropical Health. Marika, Raymattja 1989 Ngathu the cycad. In Third Galtha Workshop, Biranybirany, September 1989, Yirrkala Literature Production Centre (ed.), 37–8. [Nhulunbuy, N.T.]: Yirrkala Literature Production Centre. 2002 Gapu Dhawu. [http://xmeg.cdu.edu.au/ikm/media/Gapu_Raymattja_ final.doc, accessed 24 September 2004] Marika-Mununggiritj, Raymattja 1989 Ngayi Balngana Mawurrku. Yirrkala Literature Production Centre, Yirrkala. 1990 Workshops as teaching-learning environments. Ngoondjook 4: 43–54. 1991a Some notes on principles for Aboriginal pedagogy. Ngoondjook 6: 33–4. 1991b How can Balanda (White Australians) learn about the Aboriginal world? Ngoondjook 5: 17–25. Marika-Mununggiritj, Raymattja, Banbapuy Maymuru, Marrayala Mununggurr, Badangdhun Munyarryun, Gandalal (Jamesie) Ngurruwutthun, and Yalway Yunupingu 1990 The history of the Yirrkala community school: Yolngu thinking about education in the Laynha and Yirrkala area. Ngoondjook 3: 32–52. Marika-Mununggiritj, Raymattja, and Michael J. Christie 1995 Yolngu metaphors for learning. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 113: 59–62. Muecke, Stephen 2004 Ancient and Modern: Time, Culture and Indigenous Philosophy. Sydney: University of NSW Press. Ngurruwutthun, Dayngawa 1991 The Garma project. In Aboriginal Pedagogy: Aboriginal Teachers Speak Out, R. Bunbury, W. Hastings, John Henry, and Robin McTaggart (eds.), 107–122. Melbourne: Deakin University Press.

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Pearlin, Leonard, Elizabeth Menaghan, Morton A. Lieberman, and Joseph T. Mullan 1981 The stress process, Journal of Health and Social Behavior 22 (4): 337– 356. Tsey, Komla 1997 Aboriginal self-determination, education and health: Towards a radical change in attitudes to education. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 21 (1): 77–83. Verran, Helen 2002 “Transferring” strategies of land management: The knowledge practices of Indigenous landowners and environmental scientists. Research in Science and Technology Studies 13: 155–181. Watson Helen, and David W. Chambers 1989 Singing the Land, Signing the Land. Geelong: Deakin University Press. Yunupingu, Dhayirra 1992 Waanga ga Rumbal Ngilimurrunggu. Yaan 3: 16–21. Yunupingu, Mandaway 1991 A plan for Ganma research. In Aboriginal Pedagogy: Aboriginal Teachers Speak Out, John Henry and Robin McTaggart (eds.), 98–107. Geelong: Deaking University Press. 1994 Yothu Yindi – finding balance. In Voices from the Land, Mandaway Yunupingu (ed.), 1–11. Sydney: ABC Books.

Indigenous languages: Transitions from the past to the present Michael Walsh 1. The state of traditional Aboriginal languages today When first significant contact was made with outsiders it is generally agreed that there were about 250 Indigenous languages in Australia (McConvell and Thieberger 2001:16; Koch, this vol.). After sustained contact began in earnest with the European settlement of Australia in 1788, it will come as no surprise that there is a strong correlation between languages which experienced sustained and early contact and their relative viability today. Many of the languages in the southeast of Australia have been referred to as ‘extinct’ and it is these languages which suffered the brunt of sustained contact. On the other hand, the languages for which contact was much later and sparser are the ones in which children are still learning traditional languages as part of daily life. These are to be found in the remoter parts of northern Australia. According to some accounts (e.g. Schmidt 1990) there are only about 20 languages that can be considered ‘safe’. However we will see that some languages that had been written off as extinct are undergoing revitalization and the whole notion of linguistic viability needs nuanced consideration in Aboriginal Australia. The general picture is quite gloomy: many languages have already been lost and more are to follow. There have been numerous surveys of the Indigenous language situation in Australia, e.g. by Dixon (1980; 1991), Schmidt (1990), House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs (1992), Pearson et al. (1998)1, and McConvell and Thieberger (2001). Dixon (2002) is most relevant for his account of structural features of the languages. In these surveys there is general agreement that there has been a decline in the number of languages spoken on a day-to-day basis. McConvell and Thieberger conclude that “There has been a decrease of 90% in the number of Indigenous languages spoken fluently and regularly by all age groups in Australia since 1800.” (2001: 2). However we cannot conclude from this that only 10% of the languages are spoken at all. There is a range of linguistic vitality and it is relatively 1. See in partic. David Nash Indigenous Languages component (esp. pp. 19–20, 77–86).

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uncommon to find an Indigenous person in Australia who knows not a single word of their ancestral language(s). Even an Indigenous person who claims that their language has gone will nevertheless know at least a few words and some stock phrases. For some such people there can be considerable ambivalence. They may be at once ashamed and proud of this knowledge: ashamed that they do not know more – as much, for example, as their grandparents but proud because they see it as a marker of their linguistic identity. 2. Measuring language vitality The figures for the number of speakers of Indigenous languages cannot be taken at face value. There are degrees of fluency to be taken into account, for instance. Particularly in parts of northern Australia many Indigenous people are multilingual and the survey instruments need to take account of such matters as what a person regards as their primary linguistic affiliation. In some instances this may be their ‘father tongue’ rather than the mother tongue we tend to think of in that part of the wider Australian population which is monolingual. Often enough in these areas of northern Australia an individual’s parents will each have a multilingual repertoire. Such individuals will build up their own multilingual repertoire with inputs from the parents and other members of the community as they are growing up and later from their spouses, employment and travels. However the overall trend in Australia is towards language shift so that the Australian Census presents disturbing figures for the percentage of Indigenous people over 5 years old who speak an Indigenous language: 1986 18% 1991 20% 1996 14% 2001 12% Such figures can be queried (McConvell and Thieberger 2001: 16–27; 33– 45; the figures for the 2001 Census are available from data at: http://www.abs. gov.au/ausstats/censusfree.nsf/log?openagentandIPP_0.zipand0and2001+Cen sus+Indigenous+ProfileandF263ACCE91D93800CA256C7C0001250Cand0a nd2001and19.11.2002and-blank-) but the overall situation is a matter for concern. It seems we can expect accelerated loss in the years to come (for instance, Henderson and Nash 1997). McConvell and Thieberger (2001: 2) warn: “If these trends continue unchecked, by 2050 there will no longer be any Indigenous languages spoken in Australia”.

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However it can be difficult to assess language vitality. Perhaps the bestknown scheme is the eight-stage Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) proposed by Fishman (1991). In brief, GIDS provides a sociolinguistic taxonomy for endangered languages. At one end (stage 8) an endangered language needs to be reconstituted before it can be restored as a vernacular. In stage 6, certainly one of the most critical in the scale, informal, intergenerational communication in the language needs to have geographic/demographic concentration and institutional reinforcement. Stage 5 extends the focus from mainly oral communication in stage 6 to literacy. Stages 4 and below bring on functional expansion: schools, then in other cultural institutions like higher education, government, and the media. This has attracted criticism and calls for modification. For instance, Lo Bianco and Rhydwen (2001) propose modifications to the basic GIDS approach for Australian Indigenous languages. In particular the GIDS approach has an emphasis on literacy so it may not be the most appropriate model in these contexts. Another factor is the problem of under-reporting or even what from an outsider’s perspective may seem like misreporting. Evans (2001: 250) explores the notion, ‘last speaker’ and demonstrates “the way in which the broader social system determines individuals’ perceived right to be a speaker, as well as their linguistic performance”. In other words an Aboriginal person may claim that they do not speak some language but later begin to use it when the ‘last speaker’ has passed away. Particular cultural practices can hinder as well as assist the survival of Indigenous languages. Concerning Ilgar, an Indigenous language of northern Australia, Evans (2001: 278) observes, “On the other hand, he never talks it [Ilgar] to his own sisters, both of whom do speak Ilgar, because of a strict taboo on conversation between opposite-sex siblings. This leaves him in the odd position of talking his mother-tongue to people who don’t speak it, and not talking it with the couple of people who do”. Another language from northern Australia, Gurrgoni has a tiny speaker population, but there is a cultural imperative that children should learn their father’s language. As a result, their mothers, who are mostly not Gurrgoni, teach the children after they have learned it themselves (Green 2003). Often the description of a language will be given in isolation rather than considering the overall language ecology (Mühlhäusler et al. 2004) or language habitat (Leitner 2004: 343–346). This can be misleading so I will attempt to provide a description of a particular location in northern Australia which has been the subject of my research since 1972.

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3. The Wadeye (Port Keats) area as a case study The dominant traditional language at the township of Wadeye (formerly referred to as Port Keats, roughly 250 kms southwest of Darwin in the Northern Territory) is Murrinhpatha. The Australian National Census for 2001 indicates that there are 1157 speakers of this language. What are we to make of such a statement? Firstly it indicates that this is one of the ‘stronger’ traditional languages today given that the total number of speakers for many languages is under 100. However we must question the number because of factors such as have been mentioned above: primary linguistic affiliation; degree of fluency etc. Finally we must examine the local language habitat. To see how Murrinhpatha fits into a wider perspective, it is useful to consider the situation in terms of time slices each of 30 years starting in 1885, progressing up to the present and then projecting forwards to 2035. This will show how the current situation is part of an evolving pattern. In 1885 the area around Wadeye was considered very remote and very few researchers of any kind had studied this area. The major European settlement in this part of Australia, Darwin, had only begun in 1869. Settlement spread out in the Darwin hinterland but never reached Wadeye. However there were mining activities in the 1880s as far down as the Daly River area. In the late 1870s the need for cheap labour in the Northern Territory was met by a substantial influx of Chinese workers. By the end of 1878 there were nearly 3000 Chinese in the Northern Territory mainly in Darwin and at mining sites south of Darwin. Their number peaked in 1888 at a little over 7000 at a time when there were only around 1000 Europeans in the whole of the Northern Territory (Powell 1996: 90). It is possible that they may have intermingled with people travelling to Daly River from Wadeye. It is also possible that there may have been some contact with seafarers from Indonesia who plied northern Australian waters for over 200 years up until the early years of the 19th century (Urry and Walsh 1981). At that time there were no known recordings of the Murrinhpatha language and little was known about its linguistic neighbours. Even so we can assume from later research in this area and from our general knowledge about Aboriginal language practices that Murrinhpatha was spoken by all age groups and that it would have formed one part of the multilingual repertoire of Aboriginal people whether or not they regarded Murrinhpatha as their primary linguistic affiliation. We can also assume that at least some speakers of Murrinhpatha would have travelled to other linguistic areas for ceremonies, trade or intervisitation. It is also possible that at least some people travelled to

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other areas for employment but this must remain fairly speculative as the historical record for this period is not strong. In 1915 the situation was little changed although the mining activities around Daly River had mostly ceased. Indeed ‘In 1911 Territory mining was moribund …’ (Powell 1996: 131). Wadeye remained a place largely free of outside contact from non-Aboriginal people. By 1945 the historical record is much stronger. Around 1935 a Roman Catholic mission was set up near what is now the township of Wadeye. The establishment of this mission brought a number of groups into contact that formerly had mostly lived on their own country, including Marri Ngarr, Magati Ke, Marri Tjebin (these three to the north of Wadeye) and Jaminjung (to the south). None of these languages shares much vocabulary with Murrinhpatha and Jaminjung has been classified into a separate group. It is likely that more people would have included these languages in their multilingual repertoires. There was not infrequent contact with Aboriginal groups further north along the coast including the Manda, Emmi, Batjamalh and Larrakia as well as some inland groups like Ngan’gityemerri. And at least some people would have acquired other languages through employment on cattle stations to the south where they would have acquired languages like Gurindji, Malngin and Mutpurra. There are also anecdotal accounts of some Aboriginal people gaining some knowledge of Japanese from seafarers who ventured along these shores up until the 1930s. From 1935 onwards English literacy was introduced and a growing number of local people were exposed to English, either through formal education or through their contact with English speakers. Thirty years later, in 1975, the township of Wadeye had changed considerably. The influence of the mission was weakening through a national government policy of self-determination for Aboriginal people. Populations of Aboriginal people who had been effectively controlled by the mission presence became more independent – developing into townships where Aboriginal people continued to be the majority but were now able to direct their own affairs through an Aboriginal town council. But gaining independence could be a two-edged sword. Up to the late 1960s many Aboriginal people in northern Australia lived and worked on cattle stations. Although the stations did not pay standard wages many provided food, clothing and shelter not just for the workers but also for their children and extended families. With a view to granting these Aboriginal pastoral workers conditions equal to those enjoyed by non-Aborigines a policy of equal wages was introduced by the end of 1968 (Stevens 1974: 205). Unfortunately the pastoral properties were unable to provide full wages to all of those who had

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previously worked for them so the substantial and relatively stable populations of Aboriginal people living on these cattle stations were greatly reduced. The reduction resulted in the dispersal of Aboriginal people – some of them ending up as fringe dwellers in larger population centres. Others were employed at a local cattle station nearby Wadeye while many remained unemployed. The effect on the language ecology was significant: there were far fewer people gaining knowledge of less local Aboriginal languages. Added to this, bilingual education had been introduced in the Northern Territory as a Federal Government initiative in 1973 and Murrinhpatha had been selected as the vehicle for bilingual education at Wadeye. Many of the Aboriginal staff at the local school were totally fluent in Murrinhpatha (as it was now entrenched as the local lingua franca) even though this was not their primary linguistic affiliation. The children studying at the school brought a wide array of linguistic repertoires with them. For example, a child might have a Jaminjung father and a Magati Ke mother and be taught syllabus content in Murrinhpatha by a teacher whose primary linguistic affiliation was Marri Ngarr. Although no detailed sociolinguistic studies have been carried out at Wadeye it would seem that the seeds of language shift had already been sown by 1975. Thirty years on in 2005 Wadeye has become an Aboriginal township under Aboriginal control. Murrinhpatha continues to be the dominant language but other local languages are in decline (see Ford and Klesch 2003 for a detailed account). After 30 years of bilingual education few people are literate in Murrinhpatha and there is less emphasis on bilingual education. Most Aboriginal people will use basic English in their interactions with Europeans at the store or office otherwise the usual language of day-to-day discourse is Murrinhpatha. However the Murrinhpatha of 2005 has undergone some simplification when compared with the Murrinhpatha of 1975. Murrinhpatha has had a quite elaborate morphology in its verbal system and some of this complexity is no longer in use among younger speakers. A very rough comparison with English may be useful here. Some older speakers maintain a distinction between “shall” and “will” to indicate future time reference but the majority of Australian English speakers either go from one to the other in an unsystematic fashion or solely use “will”. Thus a part of the English verbal system has been lost. It is difficult to predict the details of the language situation at Wadeye in 2035. We anticipate more simplification of Murrinhpatha and perhaps more admixture with English. We suspect that some of the local languages now under threat may have succumbed after 30 years. It is possible that Kriol (the English based creole spoken across much of northern Australia) may have

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Table 1. Language situation at Wadeye (Port Keats), Northern Territory Murrinhpatha (the language of the landowners) 1885 the major language

1915 the major language

Other Aboriginal English languages

Contact varieties

presumably some through intermarriage, intervisitation, etc

minimal contact with any outsiders

?some Aboriginal English

uncommon

?some Aboriginal English

presumably some through intermarriage, intervisitation, etc 1945 the major Marri Ngarr, language; Magati Ke, emerging as Marri Tjebin, the Indigenous Jaminjung lingua franca

much more common through school education and 10 years of sus-tained contact 1975 the major some language common language; also shift becoming the Indigenous noticeable lingua franca 2005 some simplifi- language shift common cation of more noticeable Murrinhpatha 2035 ?more ? language shift common simplification more noticeable and shift to English

Non-Aboriginal languages other than English ?some unconfirmed possibility of contact with ‘Macassans’?; perhaps some Chinese ??

?some ?some Aboriginal Japanese English and no Kriol

some Aboriginal English and no Kriol some Aboriginal English and no Kriol ?encroachment ?? of Kriol

encroached into Wadeye. Kriol already surrounds the Wadeye area: to the north (at Belyuen, for instance) and to the south and east. The language situation at Wadeye is surely unique at a detailed level but much of what has been described here will be found at other places – although the timing may be very different (see also Silverstein 1998). Even in this area where one language, Murrinhpatha, has remained substantially intact there is

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evidence of language loss. It is therefore instructive to consider factors which contribute to language loss. 4. Factors contributing to language loss Not everyone is agreed on the factors contributing to language loss although many have commented on them. Dixon (1991: 236) proposes four factors: white insistence; Aboriginal choice; shift of cultural emphasis; media pressure. By ‘white insistence’ Dixon means the insistence from nonAboriginal people that English be used instead of Indigenous languages. At times this was enshrined in official policy but more broadly Aboriginal languages were discouraged with varying degrees of explicitness. ‘Aboriginal choice’ includes the decision by parents to speak to their children only in English, thinking that this will give them a ‘better’ chance in life. At one time Indigenous people may have used English for some purposes such as work and an ancestral language for traditional activities like hunting and social gatherings with Indigenous people. As less time was devoted to traditional activities there was a ‘shift of cultural emphasis’ and English came to predominate. Finally, ‘media pressure’ refers to the barrage of English encountered by children from radio, TV, popular songs, print media and educational instruction. 5. Competition between Aboriginal languages The case study concerning Wadeye in the Northern Territory demonstrates that there can be competition among languages. In the case of Wadeye Murrinh Patha has gained ascendancy at the expense of other local languages. A similar pattern can be found in many areas across northern Australia. In the southeast there can sometimes be different pressures. In the Sydney area, for example, the local language (sometimes referred to as Dharuk) is not as well documented as some other languages of New South Wales. This means that attempts towards language revitalization in the Sydney area must reach decisions about whether to use Dharuk as the vehicle for language revitalization or some other, more extensively documented language like Gamilaraay or Wiradjuri. On the one hand Dharuk is the language of the land and therefore regarded by many Indigenous people as the legitimate choice. On the other hand it is perhaps more realistic to engage with the better documented languages particularly when there are many descendants of the speakers of these languages are living in Sydney.

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6. Stages of language loss It is not feasible here to enter into all the details for stages of language loss. To start with there are many different schemes, one of the best known being the already mentioned Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale [GIDS] proposed by Fishman (1991). A fundamental problem with applying any of the schemes is the lack of detailed knowledge about levels of language proficiency across so many languages. A useful survey of the issues is provided by McConvell and Thieberger (2001: 52–69). Dixon (1991: 237–8) proposes 5 stages of language loss and then attempts to match the quality of linguistic documentation against these stages. Given the history of research on Australian Indigenous Languages in which the bulk of detailed work has been carried out in the last 50 years it is not surprizing to find that the most poorly documented languages are also the ones which have experienced the greatest degree of loss. More recently, McConvell and Thieberger (2001: 70) have implemented a point system to describe the documentation of a language as follows (with a possible total of 17 points for a well-documented language): Dictionaries: Detailed dictionary (e.g. Arrernte, Kayardild) (4); Medium dictionary (3); Small dictionary/wordlist (e.g. Warnman) (2); Simple wordlist (e.g. Bates, Curr) (1). Texts: Extensive text collection (3); Several texts (