CoEDL Seminars

Professor Nicholas (‘Nick’) Evans is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. His central research focus is the diversity of human language and what this can tell us about the nature of language, culture, deep history, and the possibilities of the human mind. He is especially interested in the ongoing dialectic between primary documentation of little-known languages, and induction from these to more general questions about the nature of language. His book Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us sets out a broad program for the field’s engagement with the planet’s dwindling linguistic diversity. Nick has carried out fieldwork on several languages of Northern Australia and Papua New Guinea, particularly Kayardild, Bininj Gun-wok, Dalabon, Ilgar, Iwaidja, Marrku and Nen, with published grammars of Kayardild (1995) and Bininj Gun-wok (2003), and dictionaries of Kayardild (1992) and Dalabon (2004). Among his many (co)edited volumes, one on The Dynamics of Insubordination (with Honoré Watanabe; John Benjamins) and The Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis (with Michael Fortescue and Marianne Mithun). Currently, Nick is collecting data from the diverse and little-studied region of Southern New Guinea. His ARC Laureate Project The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity examines how microvariation at speech community level relates to macro-diversity of languages and language families, and he is leading a team in a cross-linguistic study of how diverse grammars underpin social cognition.

Grammars and grammar-sketches are important sources of information for typological work, such as grammatical surveys. We have been coding for one such survey, Grambank, for over six months and find that there are ways in which typological coding can inform grammar writing. Our coding experience has been affected by two main difficulties: the quality and readability of publications (accessibility), and the lack of explicit statements of typologically-relevant information (codability). In this presentation, we present advice to those writing grammars regarding ways in which descriptive linguists can take advantage of grammatical typology, and make their work more accessible for typological purposes.

The last decade has seen a lot of questioning the validity and usefulness of presumed language universals of the Greenbergian and Chomskyan type, Evans & Levinson’s (2009) The myth of language universals perhaps being the most prominent example. This talk takes stock as to where this leaves us with regard to language universals research, pointing out some unwarranted exaggerations and ill-conceived distinctions. The hypothesis is proposed that there are universals levels (or aspects) of linguistic structure that are directly derivative of the biological and communicative infrastructure for communication. Recognizing such levels allows one to avoid some of the confusions characterizing the current debate. Examples mostly come from prosody (syllable and intonational phrase), but also Dingemanse et al.’s proposal of “universal words” is being discussed.

The role of technology in Aboriginal language learning communities is becoming increasingly prevalent. But what are the best tools to use? What are the pitfalls in trying to introduce various new technologies? What are the range of technologies available? And is it possible to adapt or build your own language learning app? In this presentation, these questions are addressed by two members of the Learning Program at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language: Mark Richards and Scott Heath.