Australian Journal of Linguistics

Vol. 18, no. 1 (1998)

Articles

How grown grew from one syllable to two Margaret A. Maclagan & Elizabeth Gordon 5-28
The Bernard data revisited Felicity Cox 29-55
Sound changes in languages of western and central Victoria Barry J. Blake & Julie Reid 57-72
A note on verbal agreement in Maung Mark Donohue 73-89
What is a Ngayata language? A reply to O'Grady and Laughren Alan Dench 91-107

Book reviews

Essays on Time-Based Linguistic analysis (Charles-James N. Bailey) Eduardo D. Faingold 109-112
Luxembourg and Lëtzebuergesch: Language and communication at the crossroads of Europe (Gerald Newton, editor) Anne Pauwels 113-115
Ways of saying, ways of meaning: Selected papers of Ruqaiya Hasan (Carmel Cloran, David Butt and Geoffrey Williams, editors) Wendy L. Bowcher 115-122
Measuring second language performance (Tim McNamara) Barbara Mullock 123-125
Inter-cultural communication at work (Michael Clyne) Deborah Jones 125-128

Publications on Australian languages, 1996 Geraldine Triffitt 129-135

Abstracts

How grown grew from one syllable to two

Margaret A. Maclagan & Elizabeth Gordon

Abstract: This paper examines the use of two variants of participles ending in -own in New Zealand English: the traditional OWN and the newer analogical OWEN form. It traces the historical background of the OWEN variant, indicating where this occurs in other varieties of English. Data on current usage in New Zealand are presented showing that professional men and younger professional women prefer the OWEN variant, while non-professional men and older women use the traditionally correct OWN form. Older professional women use both forms almost equally. Data from attitude studies are presented to support the hypothesis that these results have come about because of different notions of correctness relating to these variants.

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The Bernard data revisited

Felicity Cox

Abstract: For the past thirty years John Bernard's acoustic analysis of Australian English vowels (Bernard 1967, 1970) has remained the standard vowel reference for Australian speech researchers. The published papers present a set of data which is generally considered to be representative of vowel productions across the range of accent types available to speakers of the dialect. The present paper provides a reanalysis and reinterpretation of some aspects of the classic Bernard account focusing on the significant spectral differences between the accent types and examining age heterogeneity within the original sample. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) is used to investigate the effects of accent type and age on formant frequency values. The results reveal the presence of numerous accent and age effects. Univariate ANOVA and t-tests are used to further refine the analysis and establish the specific differences between the age and accent groups. The presence of age effects can, in some instances, be interpreted as evidence of changes that were in progress at the time of the data collection.

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Sound changes in language of western and central Victoria

Barry J. Blake & Julie Reid

Abstract: This paper is an attempt to plot sound correspondences in languages of central and western Victoria using material recorded by Hercus (1986) and amateur notations from the nineteenth century. It is hypothesized that original intervocalic retroflex stops developed in some languages into laminal stops and in other languages into rhotics. It is also suggested that intervocalic retroflex nasals developed into laminal nasals in some languages. Recognizing correspondences and establishing a direction of change is important for reconstructing something of the relationship between Australian languages, and it seems that those Victorian languages that have intervocalic retroflexes retain important relics.

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A note on verbal agreement in Maung

Mark Donohue

Abstract: The non-Pama Nyungan languages of the north of Australia are notable for the often elaborate pronominal prefixing that is found on verbs. Most descriptions of this prefixing describe it as following a nominative-accusative pattern, and note that the ordering of the affixes is not fixed: sometimes object precedes subject, sometimes subject precedes object. In this article I demonstrate that the pronominal prefixing found in Maung is broadly a split-ergative system, and that through reference to the alignment categories distinguished by the prefixes, not the syntactic roles (A, S or O), we can find a set of principles behind the variations in prefix order, which are modelled in a set of constraints following the principles of Optimality Theory. Some speculations on the historical origins of this system are presented, suggesting that this aberrant system arose from the reanalysis of a voice marker, and the development of the accusative prefixes from the nominative forms. The Maung data is used to argue that Bittner and Hale's proposals regarding agreement ordering do not represent a set of universal conditions.

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Last update: 22 April 2000
Comments to Tim Curnow