ACLA Project
Samantha Smiler Nangala-Nanaku telling a story to her son based on a picture-prompt book
This project involves case studies of three Aboriginal communities
designed to address the following questions:
RQ1: what kind of language input do indigenous Australian Aboriginal
children receive from traditional indigenous languages, Kriol and
varieties of English, and from code-switching involving these languages as
used by adults and older children?
RQ2: what effect does this have on the children's language acquisition and
how the input is reflected in their productive output?
RQ3: what are the processes of language shift, maintenance and change
which may be hypothesised to result from this multilingual environment, as
evidenced by the children's input and output and the degree to which this
reflects transmission of the target languages, the loss of traditional
languages, or the emergence of new mixed languages?
To address the complexity of these questions, this project brings together
people with expertise in three different, but related, fields: Central
Australian languages (Disbray, McConvell, Meakins, Moses, O'Shannessy and
Simpson), first language acquisition (Wigglesworth), and historical change
and language maintenance (McConvell and Simpson). We are collecting the
data for the study in four main locations: Kalkaringi, Lajamanu, Tennant
Creek, and Yakanarra. We are identifying the kinds of interactions young
children are involved in, the language they use at different ages, and the
breadth and variety of language the children are hearing.