@CIOL_Linguists
SPRING 2024 The Linguist 27
features such as the complex polysynthetic
verbs of Murrinhpatha, which have hundreds
of irregular forms, or the long 'clause chains'
of Nungon? In this Papuan language people
'speak in paragraphs', chaining together one
clause after another but holding off key
information till the end of the paragraph.
CoEDL research shows that children
learning such languages do not appear to
master these structures any later than English-
learning children master equivalent structures.
In some cases (such as learning irregular
verbs), those learning Murrinhpatha seem to
be ahead of their English-speaking peers.
8
Evolution
Whatever makes Murrinhpatha and Nungon
unusual from an English point of view – and
perhaps rare by the standards of worldwide
samples – cannot be put down to them being
hard to learn. Morten Christiansen and Nick
Chater demonstrate how the iterated effects
of processing and learning can nudge the
evaluation of language onto particular paths
without invoking any hardwired 'universal
grammar'.
9
Nick Evans provides a conceptual
framework for integrating evolutionary theory
with the systematic study of linguistic diversity,
which shows how culture, demography and
other factors can push linguistic evolution in
different directions.
10
Threads
Intersecting all four research programmes
were two threads: technology and archiving.
The technology thread facilitated the
development of tools and systems to support
language research such as transcription,
language learning and meeting the needs of
people living with particular communication
needs. Relevant to all programmes, it included
the development of automated transcription
programs such as Elpis, designed to assist
and speed up language transcription.
The archiving thread resulted in advances
in curating and archiving data in collaboration
with PARADISEC (paradisec.org.au). It also
oversaw training for researchers to ensure
their corpora were archived responsibly and
ethically, and properly documented to ensure
their value and impact would benefit both the
communities who contributed to them and
academic researchers.
With research comes social responsibility.
CoEDL sponsored a discussion on ethical
research and how to make research accessible
to the people whose languages are covered.
11
For the general public, we introduced research
findings in innovative ways, including a
project providing 50 words in many Australian
Indigenous languages.
12
At policy level, we
engaged with governments to introduce
research findings, including co-authoring the
National Indigenous Languages Report.
13
Applying technology and language
documentation to the real-world problem of
assessing children's language development
has resulted in practical tools for educators
and speech professionals. These include the
ERLI (Early Language Inventory) checklist of
first words and hand signs for Indigenous
children,
14
the Little Kids' Word List for
multilingual children in Central Australia,
15
and the Dhuwaya literacy app for teaching
children literacy in their first language.
16
legacy.dynamicsoflanguage.edu.au.
Notes
1 https://cutt.ly/ANUlab
2 https://slll.cass.anu.edu.au/sydney-speaks
3 Seifart, F et al (2018) 'Language Documentation
Twenty-Five Years On'. In Language, 94, 4
4 Skirgård, H et al (2023) 'Grambank Reveals the
Importance of Genealogical Constraints on
Linguistic Diversity and Highlights the Impact of
Language Loss'. In Science Advances, 9, 16
5 Evans, N et al (2018) 'The Grammar of
Engagement: Part I, Fundamentals'. In Language
and Cognition, 10
6 Olsson, B (2019) 'The Absconditive Revealed:
Attention alignment in the grammar of Coastal
Marind'. In Open Linguistics, 5,1
7 Nordlinger, R et al (2022) 'Sentence Planning
and Production in Murrinhpatha, an Australian
"Free Word Order" Language'. In Language, 98, 2
8 Kidd, E and Garcia, R (2022) 'How Diverse is
Child Language Acquisition Research?' In
First Language, 42,6
9 Christiansen, M and Chater, N (2016) Creating
Language: Integrating evolution, acquisition, and
processing, MIT Press; https://cutt.ly/MIT_CL
10 Evans, N (2016) 'Typology and Coevolutionary
Linguistics'. In Linguistic Typology, 20, 3
11 Woods, L (2023) Something's Gotta Change:
Redefining collaborative linguistic research,
Canberra: ANU Press
12 https://cutt.ly/mwmzXanp
13 'National Indigenous Languages Report (NILR)'
(2020) Canberra: DITRC; https://cutt.ly/DITRC
14 https://cutt.ly/GwVmGw8Q
15 https://cutt.ly/jwCOXJ22
16 https://cutt.ly/5wCOCe6M
CEREMONIAL TRADITION
Yolŋu people from Arnhem Land, Australia
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WAYNE
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