Monash Linguistics Seminar Semester 1, 2011
Tuesdays, 11.00am-1.00pm
Room G23, Building 6 (Education)
Followed by lunch & coffee in the Staff Club
(You can also bring your own food to the club).
All welcome!
8 March Timothy Brickell (Monash University and Latrobe University)
Split Intransitivity in Sou Amana Teru, a language of Ambon Island, Indonesia
(Abstract)
22 March Tania E. Strahan (Independent researcher)
Control of subjects of nonfinite clauses in Icelandic
(Abstract)
12 April Simon Musgrave and Nicholas Thieberger (Monash University and the University of Melbourne)
Language description and hypertext: Nunggubuyu as a case study
(Abstract)
10 May Howard Manns (Monash University)
Supra-local styles, stancetaking and identity in East Java, Indonesia
(Abstract)
24 May Dovid Katz (Scholar in Residence of ACJC)
Recovering Lithuanian Yiddish after the Holocaust and Before Extinction on its Native Territory
(Abstract)
This page contains some video files that can be downloaded. Right-Click on the link and select "Save As.." to download them.
Abstracts
March 8, 2011
Timothy Brickell
(Monash University and Latrobe University)
Split Intransitivity in Sou Amana Teru, a language of Ambon Island, Indonesia
The notion of split intransitivity can be summarised as the possibility of a language to have
two (or more) different morphosyntactic constructions for single arguments of intransitive clauses. Cross linguistically two different types of split intransitivity are commonly attested. One divides verbs of intransitive clauses into a number of mutually exclusive subclasses, with the different subclasses indicated by different morphological marking on their arguments. The other allows for arguments of verbs to have either type of morphological marking. These constructions are known as ‘split S’ and a ‘fluid S’ respectively. A split S system is attested to be conditioned by a number of interrelated factors, usually semantic. The fluid S system is conditioned more by speaker choice and verbal interpretation in particular instance of use.
Sou Amana Teru is an endangered Austronesian language spoken primarily on Ambon island. Research on split intransitivity in this language has not previously been undertaken and will provide further knowledge into the typology of Austronesian languages. Through the use of various semantically based tests I will demonstrate that a split intransitive system is present in the language. More specifically, a split S construction is present with agentivity, lexical aspect, and clause level transitivity amongst the conditioning factors. In addition there is evidence for a subclass of verb termed ‘intradirective’. While this subclass of verb is also present in other Austronesian languages, further research is needed to properly explain any difference in S marking of arguments of intradirective verbs.
Split Intransitivity in Sou Amana Teru, a language of Ambon Island, Indonesia Handout [pdf 85kb]
Split Intransitivity in Sou Amana Teru, a language of Ambon Island, Indonesia Presentation [pdf 3mb]
March 22, 2011
Tania E. Strahan
(Independent researcher)
Control of subjects of nondefinite clauses in Icelandic
This paper presents an analysis within the Lexical-Functional Grammar framework of control structures such as that in (1) in Icelandic. Vonast 'hope' in (1a) is an anaphoric control verb (aka 'equi) while virðast 'seem' is a functional control (raising) verb.
(1) a. Hún vonast til að vanta ekki efni í ritgerðina.
she.nom hopes to to lack not material for thesis
b. Hana virðist vanta ekki efni í ritgerðina.
She.acc seems lack not material for thesis
The main claim of this paper is that functional and anaphoric control in a nonfinite control structure in Icelandic should be distinguished based solely on whether case raises or not, and that other phenomena that have been suggested to be indicative of the type of control, such as
- the assignment of a thematic role to the controller,
and indications of the grammatical function of the complement clause such as: - its passivisability,
- its topicalisability,
- the ability to extrapose the clause into subject position,
- the ability to extrapose the clause with a dummy object pronoun,
- the ability to cleft and pseudo-cleft the clause,
- and the presence or absence of the complementiser að
are not consistent enough covariables of nonlocal quirky case, or each other, to be able to be considered as diagnostics for the type of control in Icelandic. Some new data will be presented, but much of it will also be reanalysis of well-known data and observations.
'Control of subjects of nondefinite clauses in Icelandic' presentation (pdf)
April 12, 2011
Simon Musgrave and Nicholas Thieberger
(Monash University and the University of Melbourne)
Language description and hypertext: Nunggubuyu as a case study
Any reasonably complete description of a language is a complex object consisting not only of a grammar but also of two other components. Traditionally a detailed description included a grammar, a dictionary and a text collection as separate sections. But of course these are really highly inter-related, with points in the grammar relying on examples from the text collection, and both of those components not being fully interpretable without reference to the dictionary. This complex web of inter-relations suggests that hypertext would be a very suitable medium for the presentation of the information (Musgrave 2005). In addition to the improved accessibility and integration of the different types of material, the information would be fully searchable, links between text and media could be implemented, and the presentation would have to be based on a well-defined data structure which would have advantages for archiving and reusability (Thieberger 2009). This data structure should be compatible with generally accepted practices in encoding textual material (for example those defined by the Text Encoding Initiative), but will need to be quite specific in order to deal with data types typically used in linguistics, such as paradigms (Penton and Bird 2004) and glossed examples (Hughes, Bird and Bow 2003).
The description of Nunggubuyu by Heath (1980 [texts], 1882 [dictionary], 1984 [grammar]) is an excellent starting point for the development of the structure of a hypertext language description. Heath’s explicit intention was to allow the reader to access as much as possible of the primary data relevant to any claim he made, a feature which was commented on by reviewers as making the work hard to use: “the work is particularly difficult to read. .... One must look up the attestations for every major grammatical point in another volume.” (Haiman 1986: 654-655). The initial step in our research is therefore to present a small fragment from Heath’s text collection as hypertext with appropriate links to parts of the other elements of the description and to demonstrate the benefit which the approach can bring. This initial step will involve a certain amount of hand-coding but will establish a basis for the necessary data structure which will then be used in a second phase to develop techniques for the automatic processing of scanned versions of Heath’s work.
We argue that it is important to develop models for electronic grammaticography which will inform best practice into the future, but that there are clear advantages to developing models which are also backwards compatible. There is a rich literature of grammatical descriptions already existing, and establishing at least partially automated pathways for the migration of such material to new formats is a very desirable goal. At least in the short term, grammatical description ‘born digital’ is likely to be in short supply, and presentations of old materials in new formats can play an important role, firstly in discussions about the best structure for electronic language descriptions, and then as exemplars which can gain the acceptance of the linguistic community for the formats which emerge.
Video of Seminar (m4v format - 30MB).
References
Haiman, John. 1986. Review article on Heath 1980, 1982, 1894. Language 62: 654-663.Heath, Jeffrey. 1980. Nunggubuyu Myths and Ethnographic Texts. Canberra: Australian Institute of
Aboriginal Studies.
Heath, Jeffrey. .1982. Nunggubuyu Dictionary. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Heath, Jeffrey. 1984. Functional Grammar of Nunggubuyu. Canberra: Australian Institute of
Aboriginal Studies
Hughes, Baden, Steven Bird, and Catherine Bow. 2003. Encoding and presenting interlinear text sing
XML technologies. In Proceedings Australasian Language Technology Workshop. Alistair Knott and Dominique Estival (eds.), 105–113. Melbourne, Australia. Accessed at http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00000455 on 31/8/2010.
Musgrave, Simon. 2005. Multimedia presentation of grammatical description: design issues. In
Proceedings of the Australasian Language Technology Workshop. Timothy Baldwin, James
Curran and Meno van Zaanen (eds.), 113–119. Accessed at http://www.alta.asn.au/events/altw2005/cdrom/pdf/ALTA200517.pdf on 31/8/2010.
Penton, David, and Steven Bird. 2004. Representing and Rendering Linguistic Paradigms. In
Proceedings of the Australasian Language Technology Workshop, 123–130. Sydney,
Australia. December 2004. Accessed at http://www.alta.asn.au/events/altw2004/publication/04-26.pdf on 31/8/2010.
Thieberger, Nicholas. 2009. Steps toward a grammar embedded in data. Epps, Patricia and Alexandre
Arkhipov. (eds.) New Challenges in Typology: Transcending the Borders and Refining the Distinctions. Berlin ; New York, NY : Mouton de Gruyter Mouton. 389-408.
May 10, 2011
Howard Manns
(Monash University)
Supra-local styles, stancetaking and identity in East Java, Indonesia
This talk will explore how Javanese multilinguals adopt supra-local styles to construct identity in an emerging variety of Indonesian spoken in Malang, a city in East Java, Indonesia. Conversational data is examined to explore the strategic use of supra-local styles by 25 young, educated Javanese individuals. These strategies are discussed within Ochs’ (1992) framework of direct and indirect indexicality.
In Malang, young people value both Javanese identity and a youth identity known as gaul, associated with language styles of the capital Jakarta. In conversational data, speakers select gaul pronouns, discourse markers and a gaul suffix to enact stances which are confident and brash. These stances occur most frequently in task-oriented utterances and for accomplishing potentially face-threatening acts, stances which ostensibly come into conflict with local cultural schemas which emphasise cooperative and harmonious relations. This can result in tension at the identity and interactional level, leading some speakers to use gaul forms with a sense of irony while others avoid these styles altogether. However, many speakers select both Javanese forms and gaul forms to create a new twist on Javanese identity and achieve particular discourse effects.
This talk aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between identity and choice of linguistic form among young people in Malang. The study shows how speakers resolve indexical tension by invoking latent indexicalities through styling and stylisation. These results support recent arguments as to the role that stance may play in helping to explain the mechanisms of linguistic change (cf. Bucholtz, 2009; Jaffe, 2009; Kiesling, 2009).
'Supra-local styles, stancetaking and identity in East Java, Indonesia' presentation (pdf)
Video of Seminar (m4v format - 29MB).
References
Bucholtz, M. (2009). From stance to style: Gender, interaction, and indexicality in Mexican
immigrant youth slang. In A. Jaffe (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives
(pp.146-190).New York: Oxford.
Jaffe, A. (2009). Introduction: the sociolinguistics of stance. In A. Jaffe (Ed.), Stance:
Sociolinguistic Perspectives (pp.3-28). New York: Oxford.
Kiesling, S. (2009). Style as stance: Stance as the explanation for patterns of sociolinguistic
variation. In A. Jaffe (Ed.) Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives (171-194). New York:
Oxford.
Ochs, E. (1992). Indexing gender. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 335-358). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
May 24, 2011
Dovid Katz
(Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation (ACJC))
Recovering Lithuanian Yiddish after the Holocaust and Before Extinction on its Native Territory
In this talk, Professor Dovid Katz, one of the preeminent scholars of Yiddish in the world, explores the cultural history and current status of Lithuanian Yiddish. Professor Katz presents the dialectology of Lithuanian Yiddish using data collected during long-term research within the dialect borders of Jewish Lithuania. He outlines dialectal differences in terms of phonological and lexical variation. As a backdrop to this variation, Professor Katz illustrates the cultural history of Lithuanian Yiddish through a vivid and personal discussion of the speakers who participated in his study.
Video of Seminar (m4v format - 30MB).