People
Patrick McConvell (AIATSIS)
Jane Simpson (University of Sydney)
Gillian Wigglesworth (University of Melbourne)
Felicity Meakins (University of Melbourne)
Karin Moses (University of Melbourne)
Carmel O'Shannessy (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands; University of Sydney)
3. Indigenous Research Assistants
Betty Nakamarra Morrison (Tennant Creek)Samantha Smiler Nangala-Nanaku (Kalkaringi)
I have worked on Australian Indigenous languages, especially in the west of the Northern Territory and the Kimberleys and Pilbara of Western Australia. Apart from grammar and dictionary work I am interested in the maintenance of languages, and in the shift to Kriol, code-switching and mixing of languages. I have been involved with the setting up of the Kimberley Language Resource Centre, and training of Indigenous language workers at Batchelor Institute. I taught linguistic and social anthropology and have a major interest in the relationship between language, society and culture.
Apart from ACLA, my current research interests are: Gurindji Grammar and Dictionary compilation, linguistic prehistory of Australia and investigating the past with the aid of linguistic evidence, and traditional relationships to land in the Victoria River District NT and North Queensland.
Contact Details:
Phone: +61 2 6246 111Facsimile: +61 2 6249 7714
Email: Patrick.McConvell@aiatsis.gov.au
Address: GPO Box 553, AIATSIS, Canberra ACT 2601, AUSTRALIA.
I have worked on one of the languages in the study, Warumungu, since 1979, and have been involved in language maintenance work in the Tennant Creek area. I have also studied historical records to determine the development of pidgins in different parts of Australia.
I became involved in the project, partly because I want to find out more
about the conditions that favour maintenance of traditional languages, but also because I want to understand the ways in which learners reinterpret the data they hear in producing creoles and new mixed languages.
Contact Details:
Phone: +61 2 9351 3655
Messages: +61 2 9351 4348
Fax: +61 2 9351 7572
E-Mail:jhs@mail.usyd.edu.au
Address: Linguistics F12, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, AUSTRALIA.
Gillian Wigglesworth received her PhD in 1993 from La Trobe University with a thesis entitled "Investigating children's cognitive and linguistic development through narrative". From 1992 to 1994 she worked at the University of Melbourne in the Department of Applied Linguistics and the Language Testing Research Centre, where she focussed particularly on the development of oral language assessments. She worked in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University from 1995-2001 where she was coordinator of the applied linguistics postgraduate programs. From 2000-2001 she was also a member of the Adult Migrant English Program Research Centre research staff. She returned to the University of Melbourne in 2001. Her research interests include first and second language acquisition, language testing and evaluation and bilingualism, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches to data collection and analysis.
Contact Details:
Phone: +61 3 8344 4215
Fax: +61 3 8344 8990
E-Mail: g.wigglesworth@unimelb.edu.au
Address: Department of Linguistics, University of Melbourne, VIC 3010, AUSTRALIA.
Samantha Disbray completed her undergraduate studies in Linguistics and Anthropology at the University of Adelaide and graduated with an Honours degree in Linguistics in 1997. She is enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, and is investigating adult and peer language input to children in Tennant Creek, particularly narrative discourse.
Samantha has worked for the Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education and for the Institute for Aboriginal Development (IAD), training Indigenous Language Workers in English and vernacular literacy and language research. Both organisations are in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory. Many of the students Samantha worked with speak or identify as Warumungu. Warumungu is the traditional language of Tennant Creek, a small remote town 520 km north of Alice Springs. While working in this community she became interested in language shift from Warumungu to varieties of Aboriginal English and creolised English. She also became interested in the language used by children and their entry into school as speakers of a non-Standard English.
Samantha Disbray has compiled a Learner's Picture Dictionary for Warumungu for the Northern Territory Department of Education and IAD Press to be published in 2004.
Publications:
Disbray, Samantha and Jane Simpson. (2005) The expression of possession in Wumpurrarni English, Tennant Creek. Monash University Working Papers in Linguistics. 4.2: 65-86.
Contact Details:
E-Mail: s.disbray@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
I worked as a linguist at Diwurruwurru-jaru Aboriginal Corporation (Katherine Regional Aboriginal Language Centre) from 2001-04, producing language documentation, resources and revitalisation programs in three Ngumbin languages - Bilinara, Ngarinyman and Gurindji. I was also involved in Kriol interpreter training and the DoCITA indigenous language CD-ROM project. In my last six months in Katherine, I held an AIATSIS grant, working with the last speaker of Bilinara to produce language books and videos for the Pigeon Hole community.
I am interested in language change at Kalkaringi, particularly the role of the language transmission in this language change. l. Currently I am writing a PhD dissertation through Melbourne University on language change and aspects of Gurindji Kriol nominal morphology.
Publications:
McConvell, P., & Meakins, F. (2005). Gurindji Kriol: A mixed language emerges from code-switching. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 25(1), 9-30.
Meakins, F., & O'Shannessy, C. (2005). Possessing variation: Age and inalienability related variables in the possessive constructions of two Australian mixed languages. Monash University Linguistics Papers, 4(2), 43-63.
Contact Details:
Phone: +61 3 8344 5191
E-Mail: fhm@unimelb.edu.au
Address: Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, University of Melbourne VIC 3010, AUSTRALIA.
Karin Moses, who is conducting the research at Yakanarra, first worked in an Aboriginal Community in 1988 when she was appointed to the position of post primary teacher at Kulkarriya, the independent school at Noonkanbah. She has also worked as a lecturer for Batchelor College in what was then known as the Remote Teacher Education Programme, firstly in Tennant Creek and then at Yirrkala. Karin completed a Masters in Applied Linguistics in 1995; her thesis focused on the interaction between the bilingual children and their monolingual teacher in a small Alyawarr community at Epenarra.
Her interest in this project stemmed from her concern about the way in which mainstream pedagogical language use and practice disadvantaged Aboriginal children. Although research into classroom practice and the Aboriginal child has been conducted over a number of years now, very little is based on a detailed study of Aboriginal language use; even less is based on data that focuses on pre-school Aboriginal children's language use. This project provides an exciting opportunity to understand something about the way in which Aboriginal people at three different locations use language with their small children and how these children become accomplished language users themselves. Such an insight into language practice could contribute much to our knowledge about the relationship between language and learning, and could have implications for improved teaching practice.
Contact Details:
Phone: +61 3 8344 5191
E-Mail: k.moses@latrobe.edu.au
Address: Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, University of Melbourne VIC 3010, AUSTRALIA.
I lived and worked in the Warlpiri Community of Lajamanu from 1998-2001 as Executive Teacher, Two-Way Learning at Lajamanu Community Education Centre. In 2002, I held an AIATSIS grant to investigate young people's language in Lajamanu.
I have some familiarity with Kriol from working in the Kriol speaking community, Ngukurr, in 1996-1997 as Lecturer in the Teacher Education program with Batchelor College (now Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Education).
I am studying for my PhD at the University of Sydney and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands, and my dissertation focuses on the children's acquisition of two language varieties in Lajamanu, 1) Warlpiri, and 2) a new mixed variety, Light Warlpiri.
Publications:
O'Shannessy, C. (2005). Light Warlpiri: A new language. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 25(1), 31-57.
Meakins, F., & O'Shannessy, C. (2005). Possessing variation: Age and inalienability related variables in the possessive constructions of two Australian mixed languages. Monash University Linguistics Papers, 4(2), 43-63.
Contact Details:
E-Mail: carmel.oshannessy@yahoo.com.au
Address: Postbus 310, NL AH 6500 Nijmegen, The Netherlands.