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Article published In:
Australian Contact Languages
Edited by Carmel O'Shannessy, Denise Angelo and Jane Simpson
[Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 39:1] 2024
► pp. 149–186

Alyawarr English

A new contact language of Central Australia

ORCID logo | The University of New England
This paper explores Alyawarr English, a new contact language spoken in Ipmangker, a remote Alyawarr community of Central Australia. Focusing on language use by children and drawing on a corpus of 50+ hrs of naturalistic video recordings, several aspects of Alyawarr English are examined in detail. The analysis centres on the origins of nominal and verbal morphology, with comparison to the patterns of replication evidenced in other new Australian contact languages. This reveals that children’s Alyawarr English has several points of symmetry with these languages. Nominal inflectional morphology is primarily derived from Alyawarr sources. Verb morphology is primarily derived from Kriol/English sources. The lexicon is derived from both Kriol/English and Alyawarr sources. Variation between morphology of Alyawarr and Kriol/English sources is also considered in each domain, to further elucidate what gets replicated and why in the ongoing development of new Australian contact languages.
Keywords: Alyawarr English, contact language, Australian languages, mixed language, child language
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Ipmangker language ecology
  • 3.Data collection
  • 4.Nominal Morphology
    • 4.1Marking clause functions
    • 4.2Marking phrasal functions
    • 4.3Double-marking of clausal and phrasal functions
    • 4.4Other nominal morphology
    • 4.5Number marking
    • 4.6Summary of nominal morphology
  • 5.Verbal morphology
    • 5.1Marking tense contrasts
    • 5.2Marking aspectual contrasts
    • 5.3Marking mood contrasts
    • 5.4Marking transitivity on verbs
    • 5.5Marking spatiality
    • 5.6Alyawarr-derived verbs and verb morphology
    • 5.7Summary of verb morphology
  • 6.Lexicon
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 11 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00128.dix
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