Dr Alice Gaby
Qualifications and Positions
- BA(Hons), University of Melbourne
- PhD, University of Melbourne & Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (A Grammar of Kuuk Thaayorre)
- Lecturer
Background
My research interests lie in three intersecting domains: the documentation and analysis of endangered languages, especially those of the Australian continent; semantic and structural typology; and the relationship between language, culture and cognition. Much of my research focuses on the Paman languages spoken in and around the community of Pormpuraaw (Cape York Peninsula, Australia). My ongoing collaboration with this community has impressed on me the importance of language documentation, especially in contexts of language obsolescence. It has also given me an appreciation of how linguistic analysis can be enriched by acknowledging that grammatical structures are part of a larger communicative system, encompassing multiple languages, registers and modalities. Empirical in orientation, my research explores the relationship between language, culture and cognition, as well as the range of cross-linguistic variation.
Current research interests include the cross-cultural representation of time in terms of space in both language and thought (with Lera Boroditsky, Asifa Majid and Stephen Levinson), and the indirect expression of desire in Australian languages.
Research Areas
- Australian languages
- Morphosyntax
- Semantics
- Pragmatics
- Metaphor
- Grammaticalization
- Language, culture, and cognition
- Language documentation and description
- Linguistic typology, particularly semantic typology
Supervision
I have supervised students working in the following areas:
- Fieldwork-based grammatical description of a range of languages from Indonesia, Vietnam, USA and Australia
- Sociophonetics of language acquisition
- Interactional pragmatics of interjections
- Affix ordering
- Anaphora
Recent Publications
- Gaby, A. In press [accepted 22/1/2011]. Reciprocal-marked and marked reciprocal events in Kuuk Thaayorre. In Evans, N., Gaby, A., Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (eds). Reciprocals and semantic typology (Typological Studies in Language). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Evans, N., S. Levinson, A. Gaby & A. Majid. In press [accepted 22/1/2011]. Introduction: Reciprocals and semantic typology. In Evans, N., Gaby, A., Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (eds). Reciprocals and semantic typology (Typological Studies in Language). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Majid, A., N. Evans, A. Gaby & S. Levinson. In press [accepted 22/1/2011]. The semantics of reciprocal constructions across languages: An extensional approach. In Evans, N., Gaby, A., Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (eds). Reciprocals and semantic typology (Typological Studies in Language). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Evans, N., Gaby, A., Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (eds). In press [accepted 22/1/2011]. Reciprocals and semantic typology (Typological Studies in Language). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Majid, A., S. Levinson, A. Gaby, & N. Evans. 2011. The grammar of exchange: A comparative study of reciprocal constructions across languages. Frontiers in Cultural Psychology 2(34). DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00034.
- Boroditsky, L. & Gaby, A. 2010. Absolute spatial representations of time in an Aboriginal Australian community. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797610386621.
- Gaby, A. 2010. From discourse to syntax and back: The lifecycle of Kuuk Thaayorre ergative morphology. Lingua, 120 (7), pp.1677-1692. DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2009.05.014.
- Gaby, A. 2009. Teaching & Learning Guide for: Rebuilding Australia's Linguistic Profile – Recent Developments in Research on Australian Aboriginal Languages. Language and Linguistics Compass. Blackwell, Published Online: Aug 20 2009 4:45AM. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00162.x.
- Gaby, A. 2008. “Re-building Australia’s linguistic profile: recent developments in research on Australian aboriginal languages”. Language and Linguistics Compass, 2(1): 211-233.
- Gaby, A. 2008. Pragmatically case-marked: non-syntactic functions of the Thaayorre ergative suffix. In Ilana Mushin and Brett Baker (eds) Discourse and grammar in Australian languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Gaby, A. 2008. “Distinguishing reciprocals from reflexives in Kuuk Thaayorre”. In Ekkehard König and Volker Gast (eds) Reciprocals and reflexives: linguistic and theoretical explorations. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Gaby, A. 2008. “Gut feelings: locating emotion, life force and intellect in the Thaayorre body”. In Farzad Sharifian, René Dirven and Ning Yu (eds) Body, culture and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Gaby, A. 2007. “Describing cutting and breaking events in Kuuk Thaayorre”. Cognitive Linguistics 18(2): 263-272.
- Evans, N., A. Gaby and R. Nordlinger. 2007. “Valency mismatches and the coding of reciprocity in Australian languages”. Linguistic Typology, 11. Pp. 543-599.
- Anderson, S., L. Brown, A. Gaby and J. Lecarme 2006. “Life on the edge: there’s morphology there after all”. Lingua e linguaggio, 1. pp. 33-48.
- Gaby, A. 2006. “The Thaayorre ‘true man’: lexicon of the human body in an Australian language”. In Language Sciences, 28(2-3). Pp. 201-220.
- Gaby, A. 2006. A Grammar of Kuuk Thaayorre. Unpublished PhD thesis. Melbourne: University of Melbourne.
- Gaby, A. 2005. “Some participants are more equal than others: case and the composition of arguments in Kuuk Thaayorre”. In Mengistu Amberber and Helen deHoop (eds) Competition and variation in natural languages: the case for case, Amsterdam: Elsevier.