Australian Studies, Cross cultural History

Academic Reference:

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad & Monaghan, Paul (2012). "Revival linguistics and the new media: Talknology in the service of the Barngarla language reclamation", pp. 119-126 of Foundation for Endangered Languages XVI Conference: Language Endangerment in the 21st Century:Globalisation, Technology & New Media. Auckland, New Zealand.

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Revival Linguistics and the New Media:
Talknology in the service of the Barngarla Language Reclamation


Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages
School of Humanities, University of Adelaide, SA Adelaide 5005, Australia
[ghilad.zuckermann@adelaide.edu.au]


Paul Monaghan

Mobile Language Team
School of Humanities, University of Adelaide, SA Adelaide 5005, Australia
[paul.monaghan@adelaide.edu.au]


Abstract

Revival Linguistics is a new branch of linguistics, currently being established at Adelaide. It analyses comparatively and systematically the universal constraints and global mechanisms on the one hand (see Zuckermann 2009), and local peculiarities on the other hand, apparent in revival attempts across various sociological backgrounds, all over the world (see Zuckermann & Walsh 2011). A branch of both linguistics and applied linguistics, it combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning (language reclamation is the most extreme case of Second Language Learning).

The study: The Barngarla language (spelled Parnkalla by Schürmann 1844) is a no-longer spoken Thura-Yura Pama-Nyungan Aboriginal language of the Lakes Cultural Region of South Australia. Most recently Zuckermann, Monaghan and the Barngarla community have launched a reclamation of this sleeping beauty in three major rural/urban centres on the Eyre Peninsula, namely Port Lincoln, Whyalla, and Port Augusta. The presence of three Barngarla populations several hours drive apart presents the revival linguist with a need for a sophisticated reclamation involving ‘talknological’ innovations, such as online chatting, newsgroups, photo and resource sharing through a Barngarla wiki. This paper also examines the tensions accompanying the creation of a Barngarla ‘community of practice’ (cf. Wenger 1998) in a post-traditional Aboriginal context. In important ways, the new talknology poses a direct challenge to existing authority structures relating to the everyday management of knowledge, collaboration and participation. We predict that how the broader Barngarla community negotiates these issues will have an important bearing on the ultimate results of the reclamation project.




Revival Linguistics

Revival Linguistics is a new branch of linguistics, currently being established at Adelaide. It analyses comparatively and systematically the universal constraints and global mechanisms on the one hand (see Zuckermann 2009), and local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies on the other hand, apparent in revival attempts across various sociological backgrounds, all over the world (Zuckermann & Walsh 2011). A branch of both linguistics and applied linguistics, it combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning (language reclamation is the most extreme case of Second Language Learning).

Revival Linguistics complements the established field of documentary linguistics, which records endangered languages before they fall asleep. Revival Linguistics ought to revise the fields of grammaticography (writing grammars) and lexicography (writing dictionaries): Grammars and dictionaries ought to be written for language reclamation, i.e. in a user-friendly way, for communities, not only for linguists. For example, juxtapose Lutheran missionary Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann’s 1844 spelling of the Barngarla word nunyara ‘recovery’, which ignores the English environment, thus resulting in the pronunciation nanYAra rather than NOONyara.

Closely related to contact linguistics, Revival Linguistics changes the field of historical linguistics, e.g. by weakening the Family Tree model, which implies that a language ought to have only one parent. Assisting Aboriginal communities in a realistic, non-purisitic way, without selling them myths, Revival Linguistics promotes efficiency and efficacy in language reclamation.

Certainly Australia has been made the ‘Unlucky Country’ through the historical processes of linguicide (language killing) and glottophagy (language eating). These twin forces were in operation from the early colonial period. In her detailed study of the role missionary language practices in the early years of the South Australian colony, Scrimgeour quotes the following colonial language ideology: ‘Mr Forster afterwards adverted to the present mode of teaching the children in their own language. He, with all respect to the Missionaries, would say, on several grounds, that this was wrong. The natives would be sooner civilized if their language was extinct. The children taught would afterwards mix only with whites, where their own language would be of no use – the use of their language would preserve their prejudices and debasement, and their language was not sufficient to express the ideas of civilized life.  He gave the Missionaries full credit for their talents and zeal, but he thought it would be better to teach the children in English’ (from Report on a public meeting of the South Australian Missionary Society in aid of the German Mission to the Aborigines, Southern Australian, 8 September 1843; Scrimgeour, 2007: 116, italics added).

In the case of glottophagy, Governor George Grey noted: ‘The merchant in London who lays on a vessel for a certain port, regards the affair as a mere mercantile speculation, but could he trace out the results he effects in their remotest ramifications, he would stand astonished at the changes he produces.  With the wizard wand of commerce, he touches a lone and trackless forest, and at his bidding, cities arise, and the hum and dust of trade collect – away are swept ancient races; antique laws and customs moulder into oblivion.  The strong-holds of murder and superstition are cleansed, and the Gospel is preached amongst ignorant and savage men. The ruder languages disappear successively, and the tongue of England alone is heard around’ (Grey 1841: 200-201, italics added). Grey was a strong supporter of Aboriginal languages, encouraging Schürmann’s work documenting the Adelaide language (Kaurna) and Barngarla at Port Lincoln (see below).

With globalization, homogenization and Coca-colonization there will be more and more groups all over the world added to the forlorn club of the lost-heritage peoples. Language reclamation will become increasingly relevant as people seek to recover their cultural autonomy, empower their spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and improve their wellbeing. There are various ethical, aesthetic and utilitarian benefits of language revival: for example, social justice, diversity and employability, respectively.

Zuckermann (2012) has enthusiastically called for Native Tongue Title and linguistic human rights, suggesting that the Australian government ought to compensate Indigenous people not only for the loss of land but equally importantly for the loss of language. Zuckermann has suggested to the Australian government to define Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander vernaculars as official languages.

Furthermore, it is predicted that in the future the very insights offered by Revival Linguistics will themselves become part of Indigenous Intellectual Property, when Slovenes and Estonians come to Australia and New Zealand to ask Aboriginal Australians and Maori to assist them in their own European language resurrection.

There is an urgent need to produce perspicacious LINGUISTIC and socio-linguistic insights relevant to language reclamation. Otherwise, linguists or language workers would not be able to offer, if asked by Indigenous people, efficient and efficacious advice. There are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would help revivalists and First Nations leaders to work more efficiently; for example, to focus more on basic vocabulary and verbal conjugations than on sounds and word order – see Zuckermann (2009: http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Hybridity_versus_Revivability.pdf.

Revival linguistics would assist revivalists to be more realistic and to abandon discouraging slogans such as "Give us authenticity or give us death!" The following are among the basic principles that the revival linguist encourages in Aboriginal communities:

i. If your language falls asleep: stop, revive, survive!
ii. If you revive a language, embrace the hybridity of the emerging tongue; and
iii. If your language is healthy, assist others in linguistic need.

One day we may invent devices to “inject” a language into our brains. But until then, any attempt to reclaim a hibernating language will result in a hybrid that combines components from the revivalists' and documenters' mother tongues and, of course, the target language. In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld: "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"

The Study


Figure 1: Map of Traditional Aboriginal Country after Norman Tindale (adapted from Hercus 1999)

The Barngarla language reclamation project has arisen through partnerships between the University of Adelaide (Linguistics and the Mobile Language Team) and the Barngarla people. Although still in its infancy, consultations began in September 2011, a number of very significant steps have been made towards reclaiming this ‘sleeping beauty’. Without doubt, the key challenge has been to develop a strategy for the reclamation of the language simultaneously and without favour in three major regional centres. In ways that will be elaborated below, this multi-sited, regional or peripheral reclamation makes demands that are very different to those often found in metropolitan reclamation contexts (e.g. Kaurna, cf. Amery...

Through the effects of colonisation, materials such as food, tools and medicines are appropriated and transformed to appeal to different consumer groups creating new points of interaction and combined histories. These products flow through colonial pathways between indigenous peoples and Europeans and create a connection in which interactions are inevitable. In Australia, dugong oil was a product that traversed the spatial and racial divide being consumed by both Aboriginal and white people. I argue that whether used as a ‘scientific’ medicine bought at the local chemist, a detested medicine enforced by colonial authorities, or a remedy passed down through generations, the story of dugong oil uncovers the duality of objects and complicates the history of Aboriginal-European interaction.

The sea has been an important element in the history of both the ancient and modern Greeks, providing passage, local livelihoods and access to international trade. In the modern era, Antipodean waters have been part of this ongoing relationship. The sea brought the earliest Greek settlers to Australia, together with the majority of post-World War II Greek migrants, offering them employment opportunities, adventure, recreation and sport. This paper provides evidence of the significance of the Greek contribution to Australia’s maritime activities — a contribution that has helped to mould modern
Australia’s connection with the sea.

Abstract.
The interlink between the determination of the circumference of the Earth and the geographical mapping performed by Ptolemy in his Geography (c. 150 AD) is discussed. As Ptolemy himself stated, he used the value of 180,000 stades for the circumference of the Earth which is in stark contrast to the famous result of Eratosthenes, i.e. 252,000 stades. Many scholars see these different values as a result of the diverse definitions of a stade used by both ancient authors. Such a view cannot, nevertheless, explain the excessive distortion of Ptolemy's world map along the east-west direction. We have treated the problem with the methods of spherical trigonometry and have shown that many features of Ptolemy’s map can be easily explained and corrected under the presupposition that the length of the stade used by Ptolemy coincides with that of Eratosthenes. The latitudinal distortion in Ptolemaic map is caused by his underestimating of the size of the Earth in combination with his efforts to keep the known latitudes of the localities. Another mathematical consequence is a significant displacement of the localities lying approximately on the same meridian (so-called antikemenoi poleis), as in the case Carthage in relation to Rome. It is shown that a simple transformation of the Ptolemaic coordinates to the circumference of the Earth measured by Eratosthenes drastically improves the positions of the locations given in Ptolemy´s catalogue. The comparison of the recalculated positions of the identified localities with their actual positions confirmed a very high precision of Eratosthenes' result for the circumference of the Earth.

Zusammenfassung
Untersucht wird der Zusammenhang zwischen der Bestimmung des Erdumfangs und dem kartographischen Verfahren, das Ptolemaios in seiner Geographie (ca. 150 n. Chr.) anwendet. Wie Ptolemaios selbst behauptet, verwendet er statt des Resultats der berühmten Erd-umfangsmessung des Eratosthenes (252 000 Stadien) den Wert von 180 000 Stadien für die Erdgröße. Die meisten Forscher heute führen diesen Unter-schied auf unterschiedliche Stadien-Längen zurück. Eine solche Ansicht kann aber z. B. nicht die starke Ost-West-Überdehnung der Oikumene erklären, wie sie aus der Erdkarte des Ptolemaios bekannt ist. Wir haben daher dieses Problem mit den Methoden der Sphärischen Trigonometrie behandelt und können nun zeigen, dass sich viele Verzerrungen leicht erklären und korrigieren lassen, wenn wir annehmen, dass das Ptolemäische Stadion mit dem des Eratosthenes identisch ist. Vielmehr wird die Über-dehnung der Oikumene durch den zu geringen Erdumfang bei Ptolemaios in Verbindung mit seinem Bestreben, die überlieferten Breitenangaben für bekann¬te Orte zu bewahren, verursacht. Eine andere mathematische Konsequenz ist die signifikante Verlagerung von Orten, die auf dem gleichen Meridian liegen (so genannte antikemenoi poleis), wie die von Karthago gegenüber Rom. Wir können nachweisen, dass durch eine Rekalkulation der Ptolemaischen Koordinaten in Bezug auf die “richtige” Erdgröße des Eratosthenes die Positionen der Orte in seinem Katalog dramatisch verbessert werden. Ein Vergleich zwischen den rekalkulierten und modernen Koordinaten bestätigt außerdem die Genauigkeit der Eratosthenischen Erdmessung.

This paper offers a set of nuanced narratives and a theoretically-informed report on what is the driving force and motivation behind the movement of Hindus and Sikhs from one continent to another (apart from their earlier movement out of the subcontinent to distant shores). What leads them to leave one diasporic location for another location? In this sense they are also 'twice-migrants'. Here I investigate the extent and nature of the transnational movement of diasporic Hindus and Sikhs crossing borders into the U.S. and Australia – the new dharmic sites – and how they have tackled the question of the transmission of their respective dharmas within their own communities, particularly to the younger generation. Two case studies will be presented: one from Hindus and Sikhs in Australia; the other from California (temples and gurdwaras in Silicon Valley and Bay Area).

This article, published in 1985 outlined the emergence of the Australian folk music movement out of radical cultural nationalism, and highlighted its fraught relationship with  contemporary popular culture. It was written in the context of the growth of new Australian popular nationalism in the 1980s.

Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, a landmark in intellectual history, is a curious text. Originally intended as a collection of all errors, it became an encyclopedia of everything, enfolding rampantly growing footnotes that commented on every imaginable topic. Instead of looking at Bayle's theoretical statements in the Dictionnaire, I explore Bayle's writing practice, his critical method and his practice of forming judgments. A close study of the textual, paratextual and contextual characteristics of the first entry of the Dictionnaire (the entry "Abaris") allows me to find out how Bayle made up his mind at every stage during a contemporaneous controversy on divination. In this way, we are able to see Bayle's mind in action while he is judging the contradictory information he receives and the to-and-fro movement of changing opinions he is confronted with. Th is examination yields new insights to Bayle's practical attitudes towards key issues in his oeuvre, including scepticism, rationalism, superstition and tolerance. At the same time, the article clarifies how Bayle was involved in the Republic of Letters and how he related to his local context in Rotterdam.

What was Governor Arthur Phillip's relationship with the Eora, and other Aboriginal people of the Sydney region? How do we interpret Philip in the light of his actions towards Aboriginal people? Looking closely at the colony's early years through the twin lenses of British and Eora perspectives and experiences banishes the notion that there can be only one story or way of interpreting Phillip's legacy.

Dates and times and places are daisy chain links for the accountants at Armageddon, and detective story tellers. For the rest of us, life is a more approximate affair, full of sudden holes in memory and meaning.

The act of recalling faint echoes into ink is a shameless deception on the self. Yet I crave this spurious integration of a created past. Is that so unusual? The tale is written in a kind of rough prose-poetry. It has a voice. Rake it around the tongue, but like any spice from faraway places, taste only a pinch at a time. 

About and about whom truth stands: this is an autobiography, a file of personal memorabilia. All persons, objects and events are real. It is a reality however which lives in the writer's own exotic brain. Aggrieved spirits and beings with any sense will say that it's all lies. These lines are irresponsible to every purpose, excepting only the pleasure found in language.

..this truly was the abrupt partition of worlds. South, somewhere over those unthinkable mountains was the steaming monsoon world of South Asia with its tropical profusion and teeming millions. From here to an unmeasured bleak north you would find only scattered remnants of humanity, or life of any kind. A harsh world of fierce pride and careful conservation, where precious water came from dark places deep in the earth...

The paper traces the trajectory of Serbian migrant writing in Australia from its beginnings after World War II until the present, arguing that this writing has progressively evolved from being part of a doubly neglected ghetto-like literary community to becoming a fully integrated, award-winning authorship.

As I look back across two decades of writing and publishing in the specific areas of gender and imperialism and critical race and whiteness studies, the consistent thread is a concern to explicate the link between ‘history’ and (my)self. Or, to put it another way, the thread has been between private biography and social inquiry within which social and cultural history, along with sociology, anthropology and psychology, take shape (Mills 1970; Clifford 1986; Steedman 1986). This project seems to echo Nora’s own—to rework, rethink, reimagine the
relationships between the past and the present. Ien Ang’s trope of entanglement encompasses the sense in which the methodological imperative is not simply an
awareness of how self connects with one’s ‘History’, but the ways in which both self and History are constrained by the entanglements with those other stories
Barklay-Brown captures in ‘gumbo ya ya’. The methodological journey is from a disruption of singularity to an awareness of partiality, plurality and perspective
that does not reconstitute a unity. My narrative of self necessarily demands to be deconstructed to reveal its ‘entanglements’, complicit and resistant, with other stories of class, race, geography and nation, that work to take the
singularity out of History and replace it with a messy tale, unsure of its origins or its trajectory beyond the objective of transparency and (perhaps) an ethical accountability for the ‘H/his/her story’ so produced.