Australian Journal of Linguistics

Vol. 15, no. 2 (1995)

Articles

Time for /t/: Initial /t/ in New Zealand English Janet Holmes 127-156
Pivots, voice and macroroles: From Germanic to universal grammar Linda Roberts 157-214

Notes, comments and replies

One step forward and two backwards: Reflections on Durie and Hajek's proposed revisions to the phonemic transcription of Australian vowels John Ingram 215-227
Getting it right: More on an orthography for Australian English Mark Durie & John Hajek 227-239

Bibliography: Publications on Australian languages, 1994 Geraldine Triffitt 241-248

Book reviews

User modelling in text generation (Cecile Paris) Robert Dale 249-251
Creating and using English language corpora (Udo Fries, Gunnel Tottie and Peter Schneider, editors) Peter Collins 251-255
Phonology in generative grammar (Michael Kenstowicz) Mary Laughren 255-258
Sound symbolism (Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols and John Ohala, editors) Keith Allan 258-271
An introduction to systemic functional linguistics (Suzanne Eggins) Louise Ravelli 271-274
Linguistic human rights: Overcoming linguistic discrimination (Tove Skuttnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillipson, editors) Michael Clyne 274-278
The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language (David Crystal) Jean Mulder 278-281
Old English: A historical linguistic companion (Roger Lass) Cynthia Allen 281-284

Abstracts

Time for /t/: Initial /t/ in New Zealand English

Janet Holmes

Abstract: This paper examines the distribution of initial /t/ in New Zealand English. Although a number of linguists have commented on this feature, there has been no previous systematic analysis of its distribution in the speech of New Zealanders. This paper describes the distribution of initial /t/ in a sample of 5,775 tokens produced by 97 New Zealanders from the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English. The analysis identifies three main variants of (t-), an aspirated variant, an unaspirated variant, and a voiced variant. The sociolinguistic distribution of these three variants is described and tentative explanations are proposed for the patterns identified.

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Pivots, voice and macroroles: From Germanic to universal grammar

Linda Roberts

Abstract: This paper attempts to extend Van Valin's (1991) Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) analysis of Icelandic case marking and grammatical relations to (Modern) German and Old English (OE). Although the analysis works well for German, problems arise with OE. OE lacks dual passives of (NOM-DAT-ACC) verbs: this is unexpected in Van Valin's framework. It is suggested that the solution lies in exploiting the two passive rules in RRG; this means that part of Van Valin's analysis of Icelandic must be revised, but results in a unified analysis for all three languages. The analysis is then extended to two Bantu languages, to Dyirbal, and to Balinese. It is argued that the tools of RRG permit an internally consistent analysis for all the languages considered. The analysis also offers a solution to the vexed question of the ergative status of at least one Austronesian language.

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Last update: 30 April 2000
Comments to Tim Curnow