Suggested Honours topics in Linguistics
Keith Allan
Topics in semantics, pragmatics, jargon, dysphemism (insult, 'bad' language), Role & Reference Grammar, linguistic metatheory, history of linguistics.
Heather Bowe
Topics in Australian Indigenous languages (syntax, language maintenance), intercultural communication, Australian English vowels.
Julie Bradshaw
Topics in sociolinguistics, bilingualism, second language acquisition and community language maintenance. This might include topics such as:
- Linguistic diversity in a small country town.
- Issues around education and community relations in immigrant community with diglossia, or a range of different dialects.
- The language needs of refugees.
- Adolescents and language change, the influence of American dialects, music etc.
- Narrative style in friendship groups (esp. reported speech), possibly related to gender.
- Gender and identity issues in second language acquisition.
- Identity and the naming of the “other” (i.e. not people like us)
- Ethnic speech style, ingroup language, among 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants.
Kate Burridge
Topics in grammatical change in Germanic languages; the notion of linguistic taboo (euphemism, dysphemism or "bad" language); slang and jargon; the structure and history of English. Some suggested topics might be:
- Sound change
English is currently losing the unstressed vowel (or schwa) [´] when it occurs in the middle of words. For example, most speakers would pronounce every as [Evri] not [Ev´ri]. But sound change is gradual and [´] doesn’t disappear across the board. For example, some people might pronounce delivery as [d´livri]; others as [d´liv´ri]. The progress of this change through the lexicon and through the speech community would make an interesting topic for investigation.
- Sound change
Another fine example of sneaky diffusion is “yod-dropping”. English speakers have been dropping yods since the 17th century, but the change is gradual and also different in the different dialects. Where most variation occurs currently is in words like dew, new, tune, suit, enthusiasm. This would be interesting to investigate — also the fact that yod-dropping is competing with palatalization.
- Sound change
There are a number of sound changes currently happening (especially involving palatalization) that would make nice studies.
- Change in stress patterns
Also changing stress patterns would be a fascinating little study. Linguists like Laurie Bauer have observed that stress seems to be moving in the direction of the anti-penultimate syllable. But it’s a very complex change and would warrant some investigation.
- Lexical change
For people interested in lexical change — a nice study would be to look at recent lexical additions and see what are the most usual word formation processes used. Past studies have always identified affixation as way out front, but new words that have been flooding into the language recently suggest this may be no longer the case.
- Spelling reform
I think the question of spelling reform would make an interesting topic — should we reform? How? Recent reforms that have taken place elsewhere.
- Grammatical change
One of the many puzzling aspects of English grammar is the business of collective nouns and what to do with agreement — the government are in a tricky position or the public are united on this. versus the government is in a tricky position and the public is united on this?American and British usage is divided here. British speakers are much more likely to go for the plural option. Americans go more for the singular option. What do Australian speakers do? Where is the language heading or is the variation semantically determined?
- Grammatical change
ABC listener, Arthur of Evatt, posed an interesting question of current English usage that concerns sentences such as There is still grave fears. Certainly traditional grammar would argue that the phrase grave fears is the subject. It’s plural and therefore the verb should also be plural; in other words, there are grave fears is the correct version. So why do speakers appear to be violating a fundamental rule of English grammar? Why are they saying, and indeed also writing, things like there is still grave fears?“Language will change, and has to change. [...]”, Arthur of Evatt writes, “It’s not the change but the “Why” of the change that I cannot always fathom”. This is a change underway that could be investigated, especially with respect to how it fits in with changes that have already taken place to word order patterns in English.
- Grammatical change
Typical adjectives are gradable and take part in a three-term system — something is tasty, tastier or tastiest. Not all adjectives take these endings and the group is becoming smaller. More sneaky diffusion — a change that could be investigated easily by examining written material and devising a questionnaire. Also it should be looked at within the wider picture of changes that have been taking place in English over the past thousand years — the unrelenting erosion of inflections and their replacement with free-standing forms.
The matter of possessive marking could also be investigated in the same way — ‘the cover of the book’ versus ‘the book’s cover’.
- Euphemism and language change
The contribution of euphemism and taboo to language change — not just in English, but across languages.
Margaret Florey
- Austronesian linguistics (descriptive, historical, sociolinguistic), e.g. working on an aspect of one of the Moluccan languages I have data for; or a cross-linguistic comparison.
- Australian linguistics (dscriptive, historical, sociolinguistic), e.g. working on an aspect of one of Malkana (WA) for which I have data.
- Language shift, endangerment, maintenance.
Anna Margetts
- Topics in Oceanic linguistics. For example:
Analysing aspects of Lau, an Oceanic language of the Solomon Islands, on the basis of an existing database of transcribed spoken language. For example:- Deixis and demonstratives and/or specificity and definiteness in Lau.
- A topic of your choice to be investigated on the Lau database.
- Topics in child language acquisition, working with the CHILDES database.
Simon Musgrave
- Non-Oceanic Austronesian languages - topics on Austronesian languages of Indonesia (especially Maluku), particularly syntactic topics but also including morphology, historical linguistics and language contact.
- Using computers in historical linguistics - topics in comparative linguistics using computational techniques such as tree-drawing algorithms and probabilistic models (possible co-supervision with Assoc Prof David Dowe, Computer Science).
- Communication in medical settings - topics in applying discourse analysis to communication between doctors and patients, especially issues of intercultural communication. Note that any topic of this nature would depend on using existing data due to the difficulty of obtaining ethics clearance in this area. (possible co-supervision with Dr Marisa Cordella, Spanish and Latin American Studies)
- Technology and language data - topics on the application of digital technology to the collection, processing, storage and presentation of language data.