Projects per year
Abstract
The quotative system – lexical and morphosyntactic strategies for the direct reporting of speech and thought – has undergone a major transformation in mainstream World Englishes. Diachronic studies of quotation in Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand English have all documented the same trends: a relatively stable system, using a small number of quotative variants, becomes more varied and complex, with a decline in the frequency of canonical say correlating with an increasing tendency to quote thought. This study, modelled on two foregoing sociolinguistic analyses of mainstream West Australian and New Zealand Englishes, examines quotation in recordings of 26 speakers of Australian Aboriginal English born between 1907 and 1961, including 16 oral histories. The results indicate that, unlike their settler English-speaking counterparts, these speakers have not only preserved the dominance of say: they have come to use it in distinctive ways, with semantic and grammatical innovations not observed in other varieties, in a system which serves to enrich narrative in a speaker population unique for its millennia of oral tradition. The findings suggest processes of grammaticalization and, observed alongside similar expanding frequency and versatility of be like in mainstream Englishes, may signal a parallel evolutive effect in a different language ecology.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 453-476 |
Number of pages | 24 |
Journal | Australian Journal of Linguistics |
Volume | 41 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 17 Jan 2022 |
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Indigenizing say in Australian Aboriginal English'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Datasets
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Yarning Corpus of Australian Aboriginal English
Rodriguez Louro, C. (Creator) & Collard, G. (Data Collector), The University of Western Australia, 2022
DOI: 10.26182/rq24-1y72
Dataset
Projects
- 1 Finished
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Aboriginal English in the global city: Minorities and language change
Rodriguez Louro, C. (Investigator 01)
ARC Australian Research Council
12/11/18 → 5/05/23
Project: Research
Research output
- 2 Citations
- 1 Article
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Quotation in earlier and contemporary Australian Aboriginal English
Rodriguez Louro, C., Collard, G., Clews, M. & Gardner, M. H., Jul 2023, In: Language Variation and Change. 35, 2, p. 129-152 24 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open Access3 Citations (Scopus)