Australian Journal of Linguistics

Vol. 12, no. 2 (1992)

Articles

H-droppin': Two sociolinguistic variables in New Zealand English	Allan Bell & Janet Holmes	223-248
"For my part ...": The grammar and semantics of part possession in the languages of Tanna	John Lynch	249-270
The thetic-categorical distinction as expressed by subject-predicate sentences in Chinese	Guo Wu	271-296

Bibliography: Publications on Australian languages, 1991 Harold Koch & Geraldine Triffitt 297-305

Notes, comments and replies

The noun phrase in Australian languages: A comment	Mark Harvey	307-315
The noun phrase as a grammatical category in (some) Australian languages: A reply to Mark Harvey	William McGregor	315-319

Book reviews

English phonology: An introduction (Heinz J. Giegerich)	Laurie Bauer	321-325
The handbook of Australian languages, vol. 4: The Aboriginal languages of Melbourne and other grammatical sketches (R. M. W. Dixon & Barry J. Blake, editors)	Margaret C. Sharpe	326-329
A functional grammar of Gooniyandi (W. B. McGregor)	Mark Harvey	329-335

Shorter notices

Language planning and education in Australasia and the South Pacific (Richard Baldauf, Jr & Allan Luke, editors)	David Bradley	337-340
Forensic phonetics (John Baldwin & Peter French)	Laurie Bauer	340-341

Abstracts

H-droppin': Two sociolinguistic variables in New Zealand English

Allan Bell & Janet Holmes

Abstract: The paper reports findings from the first large-scale sociolinguistic investigation of conversational New Zealand English. We examine two sociolinguistic variables from interviews with 75 mainly working-class speakers and compare them with other dialects of English. Our findings challenge the view that NZE has little or no dropping of word-initial /h/. We found a modest mean level of HDROP among our speakers - much less than found in Britain, but slightly more than in Australia. HDROP exceeded 30 percent among some groups, and 70 percent for a few individual speakers. Men used much more HDROP than women. HDROP was favoured particularly by older and middle-aged Maori speakers, and avoided by older Pakeha (European) women. The variable ING, which realizes the velar nasal in [in] as the alveolar [n], is as stable a socioeconomic marker in NZE as elsewhere. Men reduced twice as many ING tokens as women, and there was some differentiation by socioeconomic group. The level of ING is lower than in British and American English, but similar to Australian English. The linguistic factors which influence the frequency of both HDROP and ING operate similarly in NZE to other varieties.

"For my part ...": The grammar and semantics of part possession in the languages of Tanna

John Lynch

Abstract: The possessive systems of the Oceanic languages of Melanesia have traditionally been analysed as including, among other categories, a direct suffixed construction which is used with kinship terms and parts of the body and of wholes. In this paper, I show that the possession of part terms in the languages of Tanna (Vanuatu) is rather more complex than this. Different part terms participate in different construction types, and a distinction must be made between those part terms which are seen as being relatively inalienable, and are thus normally not removed, and nouns which refer to less inalienable parts, which are regularly or easily removed or exuded, or which refer to things added to a manufactured object. A brief comparison suggests that something similar occurs in a number of other Melanesian languages, and that the traditional analysis may be inadequate.

The thetic-categorical distinction as expressed by subject-predicate sentences in Chinese

Guo Wu

Abstract: Two levels of linguistic study should be distinguished concerning subject and topic in Chinese. Subject and predicate operate on the syntactic level, whereas topic and comment function on the pragmatic level. The same syntactic structure may display different information patterns in different contexts. Chinese features topic-comment sentences, involving establishing a topic and making a predication of it (categorical judgment), but, the referent of the NP in a topical position does not always function as a topic, and in certain circumstances such syntactic forms may also express the propositional content as a totality (thetic judgment). A thetic sentence can be seen as a comment on the situation, rather than as infomration about some entity that is already under consideration (a topic). While the thetic-categorical distinction of presentational sentences in Chinese is syntactically marked, that of subject-predicate sentences - SV(O), double nominative and ba sentences - can be distinguished only in the context, depending on whether the referent of the NP in a topical position is eligible for topic status. It is in the light of the thetic-categorical distinction that the information structure of these sentence patterns may be fully understood.

Last update: 3 May 2000
Comments to Tim Curnow