Newsletter December 2015
Welcome to the fifth newsletter of the Research Unit for Indigenous Language. This newsletter is published twice-yearly and contains details of the research activities, latest news and other achievements of the Research Unit.
Fieldwork Report: Dr Barb Kelly
Over the past five years Barb Kelly has been immersed in discovering what she can about the acquisition of Murrinhpatha, spoken in Port Keats (Wadeye) in the north west of the NT. Together with members of the Language Acquisition in Murrinhpatha (LAMP) project she has been investigating how children acquire a complex polysynthetic language with a rich morphological system. Barb's research has focused primarily on how speakers of Murrinhpatha guide children in their early language use and how children then develop the language. On her third and most recent field trip to Wadeye in October, she enjoyed creating... Continue reading...
First precious box of cultural materials on its way to digitisation
In an exciting stage of the ARC Linkage project ‘Re-integrating Central Australian Community cultural collections’, the first box of recordings has been handed over to PARADISEC for digitisation. This ARC project (LP140100806) is a partnership between the Central Land Council (CLC), the peak Indigenous representative body covering the southern half of the Northern Territory; the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne. Continue reading...