Mary Laughren

University of Queensland | UQ · School of Languages and Cultures

This chapter describes how reflexive relations are expressed in Warlpiri and the meanings associated with them.

Dictionary of the Australian language Warlpiri to which over 100 Warlpiri speakers contributed. It contains Warlpiri to English entries with definitions of word meaning and illustrative examples of typical word usage. These entries contain information about traditional Warlpiri life, customs, implements, kinship relations and ways of thinking about...

Like most other Australian languages, Warlpiri – a Pama-Nyungan language of the Ngumpin-Yapa group – is rich in figurative expressions that include a body-part noun. In this article we examine the collocations involving two body parts: langa ‘ear’, which mostly relates to cognition; and miyalu ‘belly’, which mostly relates to emotion. Drawing on an...

The DP subject of a Warlpiri finite clause containing verbs of a certain class is marked with the ergative suffix whereas other DP subjects are morphologically unmarked. This chapter examines the wider distribution in Warlpiri of the ergative morpheme and the varied functions of ergative-marked DPs in both finite and non-finite clauses. Particular...

Elwyn Flint was a lecturer in the English Department at The University of Queensland from 1946 till 1975. In the 1960's he travelled widely in Queensland researching variant forms of spoken English as part of the Queenland Speech Survey. The varieties of English spoken by Aboriginal people, especially those living in mission and government settleme...

As a linguist investigating the Warlpiri language of central Australia since 1975 and the Waanyi language of the Gulf of Carpentaria region since 2000, my research has always had dual goals. One is to gain a better understanding of the nature of human language generally through detailed documentation and deep analysis of particular human languages,...

This chapter presents a cross-linguistic study of possession constructions, examining data from Kuku Thaypan (Rigsby 1976), Waanyi and Warlpiri. It acknowledges the distinction between alienable and inalienable possession constructions in the three languages, then focusses more particularly on how kin relation expressions relate to alienable posses...

Luise Hercus has always had a keen interest in Australian Aboriginal songs and collaborated with musicologists both in the field and in her analysis. Her examination of lyrics and the relationship between songs and the people who sing them encompasses a vast area of Australia. Her work on songs from the ‘Corner Country’ reveal performance as a culm...

Waanyi, traditionally spoken south of the Gulf of Carpentaria in land watered by the South Nicholson River, allows combinations of lexical verbs within a finite clause, in the manner of typical serial verb constructions (SVC). Each verb contributes some element of meaning to a complex predicate. In this chapter, I describe three types of SVC which...

The Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad (OzCLO) started in 2008 in only two locations and has since grown to a nationwide competition with almost 1500 high school students participating in 2013. An Australian team has participated in the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) every year since 2009. This paper describes how the compe...

Song genres vary as to which aspects of language and music are matched to create a well-formed song. For example, English folk songs match stressed syllables to strong musical beats. Some song styles have no requirements on how language and music should align. This article analyses how text and music align in Warlpiri women's songs from central Aus...

The way that language and music are matched to create a well-formed song differs across singing genres and languages. This article analyses how text and music align in a set of Warlpiri women's songs of the yawulyu genre from the Lander River region of central Australia. It proceeds by investigating whether a previously identified set of constraint...

In 2010 the authors visited various Central Australian communities including Willowra, Tennant Creek, Alekarenge, Barrow Creek and Ti Tree, to interview some of our research collaborators past and present about how they saw the present and future of their yawulyu/awelye traditions. Yawulyu (in Warlpiri and Warumungu) and Awelye (in Kaytetye and oth...

The Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad (OzCLO) started in 2008 in only two locations and has since grown to a nationwide competition with almost 1500 high school students participating in 2013. An Australian team has participated in the International Linguistics Olympiad (ILO) every year since 2009. This paper describes how the compe...

Elwyn Flint was a lecturer in the English Department at The University of Queensland from 1946 till 1975. In the 1960's he travelled widely in Queensland researching variant forms of spoken English as part of the Queenland Speech Survey. The varieties of English spoken by Aboriginal people, especially those living in mission and government settleme...

As a linguist investigating the Warlpiri language of central Australia since 1975 and the Waanyi language of the Gulf of Carpentaria region since 2000, my research has always had dual goals. One is to gain a better understanding of the nature of human language generally through detailed documentation and deep analysis of particular human languages,...

The morphosyntactic, semantic, and phonological properties of Warlpiri verbs have been investigated by a number of scholars including Hale (1982, 1983), Hale, Laughren, and Simpson (1995), Harvey and Baker (2005), Laughren (1988, 1992), Legate (2002, 2003, 2008), Levin (1983), Nash (1982, 1986), Reimer (2002, 2003, 2008), and Simpson (1991, 2002)....

Connected speech processes (CSP) in Warlpiri, an indigenous language of central Australia, taken from two fluent ‘dreaming’ monologues are analyzed with the aim of observing the influence of language particular phonological constraints and prosody upon phonetic processes of lenition, co-articulation and selective segmental enhancement.

We extend Cuervo's (2003) analysis of the Lower Applicative Dative DP in Spanish to account for the animate definite DP preceded by a and the fact that it is not possible to have both an animate dative definite direct object and a dative indirect object in the same clause. We argue that the presence of such a dative DP 'blocks' the upward movement...

1. See Laughren (1992) for relevant data. 2. Quicoli's ex. 55 (63), a construction similar to English He wondered had he arrived yet, shows that the inflected auxiliary verb must be preposed to the overt subject. This suggests that while these constructions have no overt Cº, it is this position to which Iº (e.g. terem) moves. Portuguese inflected i...

In this paper we present evidence in favour of the O'Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin (1966:84) and O'Grady (1966) classification of Palyku, a language identified by von Brandenstein (1967) also by the term Njijapali (our Nyiyaparli), as a Ngayarta language and against its inclusion in the Wati subgroup as proposed by Dench (1995a). Because Palyku/Nyiy...

The lexicon has typically been viewed as a mere list of lexical entries containing idiosyncratic information associated with individual words. Therefore, linguists have paid little attention to the internal structure of lexical entries. More recently, linguists have recognized a need to develop a more structured and elaborated lexical representatio...

Revue of Glowczewski, Barbara. 1991. Du Reve A La Loi Chez Les aborigenes: Mythes, rites et organisation sociale en Australie. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. 362pp.

This paper re-examines the criteria previously used to define the phonological word in Warlpiri and argues that the phonological word (PhonWd) and the prosodic word (PWd) are distinct phonological rule domains, which should be analysed as distinct phonological constituents as well. We base our hypothesis on the observation that there is not always...

Typescript. Thesis (doctorat de troisième cycle)--Université de Nice, 1973. Bibliography: leaves 286-291. Photocopy.

This includes the cover page and links to all papers available online. The Meeting was held in Brisbane from 7-9 July, 2006.