Australian Journal of Linguistics

Vol. 22, no. 1 (2002)

Articles

Discourse quotatives in Australian English: Adolescents performing voices	Joanne Winter	5-21
Can you be gay and lesbian in Australian English?	Timothy Jowan Curnow	23-33
The genres of 'shouted speech' in Cheke Holo	Freddy Boswell	35-43
Verb polysemy and the vocabulary of percussion and impact in Central Australia	Nick Riemer	45-96
On the theory of neologisms and nonce-formations	Pavol Štekauer	97-112
Speaking family business in Areyonga Teenage Pitjantjatjara	Annie Langlois	113-129

Book reviews

Lexical-Functional Syntax (Joan Bresnan)	Peter Peterson	131-135
Information structure in Chinese (Wu Guo)	Marinus van den Berg	135-140
Philosophy of language: The big questions (Andrea Nye, ed.)	George Stern	141-143

Abstracts

Discourse quotatives in Australian English: Adolescents performing voices

Joanne Winter

Abstract: This paper examines the discourse quotatives of Australian English (AE) found in sociolinguistic interviews with adolescents. The investigation focuses on a description of the types and linguistic conditioning of the discourse quotatives and a documentation of the discourse meanings and contexts of their realization. Results indicate that the innovation be + like is located in the discourse quotative system of AE but faces opposition from go, say and the null/zero (Mathis & Yule 1994) form. A comparative analysis of AE with North American, Canadian and British English shows that go and null/zero discourse quotatives are prominent in the data, realized with minimal tense variation, i.e. the Historical Present (HP) dominates. Further, the trajectory of be + like in the AE data confounds the typical accessibility pattern for grammatical person. The form has a relatively limited distribution but appears to be grammaticalized for the third person. Analysis of the discourse context highlights the saliency of oppositional experiences, i.e. 'me and them' tales including voices expressing solidarity with the teller's position. The HP successfully captures both meanings - the enduring ongoing voices of 'others' and the chorus of support from their peers. These meanings effectively exclude the innovation be + like. The AE adolescents appear to be embracing the be + like innovation but its implementation in the system is constrained by the discourse role of the voices, expression of solidarity and the continuing 'other', and the propinquity of null/zero forms.

Can you be gay and lesbian in Australian English?

Timothy Jowan Curnow

Abstract: The use of the expression gay and lesbian in a corpus of televised spoken Australian English is examined. It is shown that speakers treat this as a lexicalized expression, rather than a productively created conjunct of gay and lesbian. The meaning of the whole expression is not predictable from the meaning of the parts, in that gay and lesbian is used to refer to a broader set of people than the sets covered by the terms gay and lesbian individually. Gay and lesbian is also used in reference to a single non-specific individual, where a disjunct phrase with or would normally be appropriate. Additional support for the lexicalized status of this expression comes from the occasional use of gay and lesbians, with a single marker of plurality on what appears to be a conjoined noun phrase.

Verb polysemy and the vocabulary of percussion and impact in Central Australia

Nick Riemer

Abstract: Verbs with meanings in the domain of 'percussion and impact' in the Arandic and Nyungic subgroups of Pama-Nyungan show a high degree of uniformity in the extended polysemous meanings which they simultaneously hold. These meanings are analysed according to a parsimonious typology of possible semantic extension in which metaphor and metonymy are the principal categories, and a comparative study of the linkages between core and extended meanings across different languages is presented. This comparison exposes typical patterns of semantic extension, and brings to light semantic correspondences and divergences between different languages. Such comparative data contribute to the body of evidence that suggest that the lexicon, far from being the repository of everything irregular in linguistic structure, is rather a domain in which significant regularity exists.

On the theory of neologisms and nonce-formations

Pavol Štekauer

Abstract: This article outlines an onomasiological theory of neologisms and nonce-formations. First, a theoretical background is presented, and then the topic is discussed with regard to P. Hohenhaus' approach to nonce-formations in order to highlight the advantages of the theory proposed. It is distinguished between neologisms and nonce-formations and postulated that the 'oddity' of the latter should be sought for in the interplay between language, on the one hand, and the extra-linguistic reality and the speech community, on the other. It is argued that from the inherent word-formation point of view nonce-formations are regular coinages generated by productive word-formation rules, and as such they are listed in the Lexicon as any other naming units.

Speaking family business in Areyonga Teenage Pitjantjatjara

Annie Langlois

Abstract: This paper is based on data collected from September 1994 to December 1995, in the Pitjantjatjara community of Areyonga in Central Australia. One key question of this work is the extent to which Areyonga Teenage Pitjantjatjara is being influenced by contact with English, taking for example here the kinship terminology. Indeed, many studies on Aboriginal languages have shown that contact with English can be highly damaging to native languages and a link between the loss of the kinship terminology due to crosslinguistic influences and the loss of the traditional structure of the tribal unit has been outlined by many researchers. In her work on the Dyirbal language, Schmidt (1985) remarks that the breakdown of kinship vocabulary is a common phenomenon in vocabulary loss, especially in Aboriginal communities. She writes that 'the loss of kinship terms is associated with the disintegration of the tribal units and upheavals in the traditional social fabric' (Schmidt 1985: 177). The same idea is voiced by Hudson (1983: 139), who observes that: "as the influence of Western culture has increased, the young people have paid less attention to the traditional culture and it is not surprising that an area requiring much effort to learn, such as kinship, should be among the first to be put aside. Some have learned the traditional system and for them the Kriol terms equate with lexemes in their TA [Traditional Aboriginal] languages but others have taken the Western system and use the terms as in English to apply to the nuclear family." However, some exceptions can be found. In the Aboriginal community of Areyonga, the Pitjantjatjara spoken by teenagers still maintains the original elements along with borrowed English terms.

Last update: 10 May 2002
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