Languages: Gurindji Kriol
1. Language Change and Formation
Samantha Smiler reading a book to her son in Gurindji Kriol
1. Language Change and Formation <up>
(excerpt from McConvell, Patrick and Felicity Meakins. (2005). Gurindji Kriol: A Mixed Language emerges from Code-switching. Australian Journal of Linguistics 25.1: 9-30 )
Gurindji Kriol is the main language of Kalkaringi and Dagaragu, twin communities situated 460km south west of Katherine in the north of Australia. It arose from contact between white pastoralists who spoke English, and the Gurindji, the traditional owners of the country the pastoralists colonised. After the initial conflict period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Gurindji people worked on the cattle stations as kitchen hands and stockman. The lingua franca between the two groups was an English-creole, Kriol. The Gurindji, who already spoke a number of the related neighbouring languages added Kriol to this repertoire and their code-switching practices. Nowadays all Gurindji people speak Gurindji Kriol, older people also speak Gurindji and younger speakers have a reasonable passive knowledge of Gurindji. Gurindji is an endangered language, with only 60 speakers remaining in 2003. Gurindji Kriol is the language transmitted to the new generation at present.
Some socio-historical evidence might be relevant as to why full language shift did not take place, as it has done in other areas in northern Australia. In 1966 the Gurindji went on strike from the cattle stations where they had worked and the long-standing dispute over wages and conditions revealed itself as a struggle for land rights. 1975 saw the hand back of traditional lands to the Gurindji by the then Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, a highly significant step for post-colonial law and history and for the Gurindji themselves. It is possible that the pride associated with these momentous events and the resultant desire to mark Gurindji identity linguistically may have affected the course of language shift and motivated the maintenance of a mixed language.
(excerpt from McConvell, Patrick and Felicity Meakins. (2005). Gurindji Kriol: A Mixed Language emerges from Code-switching. Australian Journal of Linguistics 25.1: 9-30 )
Typologically, Gurindji Kriol exhibits a split between the verbal and nominal systems as do other mixed languages like Michif. In Gurindji Kriol, basic verbs such as go and sit, the tense-aspect-mood system and transitive morphology are derived from Kriol, whereas emphatic pronouns, possessive pronouns, case markers and nominal derivational morphology have been transplanted from Gurindji relatively intact, but with some innovations . Demonstratives, nouns, verbs and adpositions are adopted from both languages, however some generalisations can be made about their distribution. A short excerpt of a GK story which demonstrates some of these features is below (1). Gurindji elements are in italics:
nyawa-ma wan karu bin plei-bat pak-ta nyanuny warlaku-yawung-ma.
this-TOP one child PST play-CONT park-LOC 3sg.DAT dog-HAVING-TOP
'This one kid was playing at the park with his dog.'
tubala bin pleibat. i bin tokin la im
2pl PST PST play. 3sg PST talk PREP 3sg
'The two of them were playing and the kid said to him:'
"kamon warlaku partaj ngayiny leg-ta ...
come.on dog go.up 1sg.DAT leg-LOC
' "Come on dog jump up on my leg … '
ngali pleibat nyawa-ngka."
1plu.inc play this-LOC.
"We'll play here."
Dalton, L., S. Edwards, R. Farquharson, S. Oscar and P. McConvell. (1998). Gurindji children's language and language maintenance. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 113: 83-96.
Charola, Erika. (2002). The Verb Phrase Structure of Gurindji Kriol Unpublished Honours Thesis. University of Melbourne.
McConvell, P. (1985). Domains and codeswitching among bilingual Aborigines. Australia, meeting place of languages. M. Clyne. Canberra, Pacific Linguistics. Series C - No. 92: 95-125.
McConvell, P. (1988). Mix-im-up: Aboriginal code-switching, old and new. Codeswitching: anthropological and sociolinguistic perspectives. M. Heller. Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter: 97-150.
McConvell, Patrick (1994) Discourse frame analysis of code-switching In D. Gorter and A. Piebenga eds. Code-switching: papers from the Leeuwarden Summer School 1994. Network on Language Contact and Codeswitching
McConvell, P. (2001). "Mix-im-up speech and emergent mixed languages in Indigenous Australia." Texas Linguistic Forum [Proceeedings from the Ninth Annual Symposium about Language and Society - Austin April 20-22, 2001] 44: 328-349.
McConvell, P. and F. Meakins. (2005). Gurindji Kriol: A Mixed Language emerges from Code-switching. Australian Journal of Linguistics 25.1: 9-30.
Meakins, F. and C. O'Shannessy (2005). Possessing variation: Age and inalienability related variables in the possessive constructions of two Australian mixed languages. Monash Papers in Linguistics 4.2: 43-63.