Language documentation at the University of Melbourne

Topics range from descriptive grammars of little known languages to more specific investigations of phonetics, morphology, semantics, discourse, lexicography, language acquisition and language documentation.

To those University of Melbourne students obtaining scholarship support for the Linguistics and Applied Linguistics PhD program, financial support for fieldwork through the Faculty Fieldwork Scheme is available (currently up to around AUD $10,000); in many cases further support from particular research projects is also available. A Language Documention lab provides a desk, filing cabinet and computer for each PhD student undertaking remote area fieldwork and language documentation.

Honours students can take field methods classes which may trigger an interest in the language studied that results in further research on that language. Languages that have been studied in the field methods course in recent years have included Lopit (Sudan), Ganalbingu (Australian), Golin, Enga (Papuan), Tetun Dili, Lau, Sasak, Bugis and Acehnese (Austronesian).

The program offers two regular courses on Australian Aboriginal languages, and a further course involving the study of a particular language family (eg the Aslian languages of the Malay Peninsula). We regularly offer workshops in topics in language documentation with a focus on software tools to support linguistic analysis.

Linguistics staff have been central in establishing the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) and support long-term reusability of records produced during linguistic research. We also established the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity to support language work and to network between researchers in the field, since 2019 called Living Languages, a key national organisation delivering grassroots training to Indigenous people across Australia.

• Associate Professor Brett Baker - Ngalagkan, Wubuy (Australia)
• Dr Joe Blythe - Murrinh-Patha conversation and interaction
• Professor Janet Fletcher - Phonetics of Australian languages; intonation and prosody
• Dr Jennifer Green - Arandic languages, Central Australian sign languages, multimodal documentation
• Dr Barbara Kelly - Sherpa (Nepal)
• Dr Jean Mulder - Coast Tsimshian, Sm'algyax (Canada)
• Professor Rachel Nordlinger - Murrinh-Patha (Northern Australia), Bilinarra, Wambaya, the Doing great things with small languages project and the Language Acquisition in Murrinh-Patha (LAMP) project
• Professor Lesley Stirling - Kala Kawaw Ya (Torres Strait)
• Dr Aung Si - ethnobiology and language documentation in Arnhem land
• Dr Ruth Singer - Mawng, multilingual documentation
• Associate Professor Nick Thieberger - South Efate (Central Vanuatu), Warnman (Western Australia), CI in the Doing great things with small languages project
  • Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC)
  • Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity (RNLD) now called Living Languages
• Professor Gillian Wigglesworth - Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition project (with Jane Simpson)

• Brigitte Agnew - grammatical description of Mangarla (north Western Australia)
• Rosey Billington - Phonetics and phonology of Lopit (South Sudan)
• Lucy Davidson - investigating the ways in which children become cultural members of Murrinhpatha speaking society (Northern Australia)
• Daniela Diedrich - grammatical description of Paku, Kalimantan (Indonesia)
• Bill Forshaw - Acquisition of verbal morphology in Murrinh-Patha (Northern Australia)
• Kate Horrack - Argument structure in Wubuy (Northern Australia)
• Ivan Kapitonov - grammatical description of Kunbarlang (Northern Australia)
• Isabel O'Keeffe (née Bickerdike) - Kun-barlang language and songs in multilingual western Arnhem Land (Northern Australia)
• Jonathan Moodie - Grammatical description of Lopit (South Sudan)
• Gemma Morales - the development of Yolngu Matha (home language) literacy skills (Northern Australia)