Felicity Meakins – författare

Felicity Meakins was awarded the Kenneth L. Hale Award 2021by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for outstanding work on the documentation of endangered languages

Australia is known for its linguistic diversity and extensive contact between languages. This edited volume is the first dedicated to language contact in Australia since colonisation, marking a new era of linguistic work, and contributing new data to theoretical discussions on contact languages and language contact processes. It provides explanations for contemporary contact processes in Australia and much-needed descriptions of contact languages, including pidgins, creoles, mixed languages, contact varieties of English, and restructured Indigenous languages. Analyses of complex and dynamic processes are informed by rich sociolinguistic description.

Felicity Meakins was awarded the Kenneth L. Hale Award 2021by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for outstanding work on the documentation of endangered languages

This volume provides the first comprehensive description of Bilinarra, a Pama-Nyungan language of the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory (Australia). Bilinarra is a highly endangered language with only one speaker remaining in 2012 and no child learners. The materials on which this grammatical description is based were collected by the authors over a 20 year period from the last first-language speakers of the language, most of whom have since passed away. Bilinarra is a member of the Ngumpin subgroup of Pama-Nyungan which forms a part of the Ngumpin-Yapa family, which also includes Warlpiri. It is non-configurational, with nominals commonly omitted, arguments cross-referenced by pronominal clitics and word order grammatically free and largely determined by information structure. In this grammatical description much attention is paid to its morphosyntax, including case morphology, the pronominal clitic system and complex predicates. A particular strength of the volume is the provision of sound files for example sentences, allowing the reader access to the language itself. This volume will be of interest to typologists and all with an interest in Australian languages, language endangerment and language documentation.

Felicity Meakins was awarded the Kenneth L. Hale Award 2021by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for outstanding work on the documentation of endangered languages

Australia is known for its linguistic diversity and extensive contact between languages. This edited volume is the first dedicated to language contact in Australia since colonisation, marking a new era of linguistic work, and contributing new data to theoretical discussions on contact languages and language contact processes. It provides explanations for contemporary contact processes in Australia and much-needed descriptions of contact languages, including pidgins, creoles, mixed languages, contact varieties of English, and restructured Indigenous languages. Analyses of complex and dynamic processes are informed by rich sociolinguistic description.

Australia's language diversity is truly breathtaking. This continent lays claim to the world's longest continuous collection of cultures, including over 440 unique languages and many more dialects. Sadly, European invasion has had severe consequences for the vitality of these languages.

Amid devastating loss, there has also been the birth of new languages such as Kriol and Yumplatok, both English-based Creoles. Aboriginal English dialects are spoken widely, and recently there has been an inspiring renaissance of First Nations languages, as communities reclaim and renew them.

Bina: First Nations Languages Old and New tells this story, from the earliest exchange of words between colonists and First Nations people to today's reclamations. It is a creative and exciting introduction to a vital and dynamic world of language.

'Years in the making, Bina offers a multidimensional reflection on how many diverse languages across this continent continue to vibrate in rich and profound ways. The emergence of Indigenous linguists Gari Tudor-Smith and Paul Williams as authors of this survey alongside Felicity Meakins signals an important and welcome shift in the Australian linguistics landscape.' —Professor Clint Bracknell, University of Western Australia, Nyungar musicologist and musician

Felicity Meakins was awarded the Kenneth L. Hale Award 2021by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for outstanding work on the documentation of endangered languages

Gurindji is a Pama-Nyungan language of north-central Australia. It is a member of the Ngumpin subgroup which forms a part of the Ngumpin-Yapa group. The phonology is typically Pama-Nyungan; the phoneme inventory contains five places of articulation for stops which have corresponding nasals. It also has three laterals, two rhotics and three vowels. There are no fricatives and, among the stops, voicing is not phonemically distinctive. One striking morpho-phonological process is a nasal cluster dissimilation (NCD) rule. Gurindji is morphologically agglutinative and suffixing, exhibiting a mix of dependent-marking and head-marking. Nominals pattern according to an ergative system and bound pronouns show an accusative pattern. Gurindji marks a further 10 cases. Free and bound pronouns distinguish person (1st inclusive and exclusive, 2nd and 3rd) and three numbers (minimal, unit augmented and augmented). The Gurindji verb complex consists of an inflecting verb and coverb. Inflecting verbs belong to a closed class of 34 verbs which are grammatically obligatory. Coverbs form an open class, numbering in the hundreds and carrying the semantic weight of the complex verb

Felicity Meakins was awarded the Kenneth L. Hale Award 2021by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for outstanding work on the documentation of endangered languages

Gurindji is a Pama-Nyungan language of north-central Australia. It is a member of the Ngumpin subgroup which forms a part of the Ngumpin-Yapa group. The phonology is typically Pama-Nyungan; the phoneme inventory contains five places of articulation for stops which have corresponding nasals. It also has three laterals, two rhotics and three vowels. There are no fricatives and, among the stops, voicing is not phonemically distinctive. One striking morpho-phonological process is a nasal cluster dissimilation (NCD) rule. Gurindji is morphologically agglutinative and suffixing, exhibiting a mix of dependent-marking and head-marking. Nominals pattern according to an ergative system and bound pronouns show an accusative pattern. Gurindji marks a further 10 cases. Free and bound pronouns distinguish person (1st inclusive and exclusive, 2nd and 3rd) and three numbers (minimal, unit augmented and augmented). The Gurindji verb complex consists of an inflecting verb and coverb. Inflecting verbs belong to a closed class of 34 verbs which are grammatically obligatory. Coverbs form an open class, numbering in the hundreds and carrying the semantic weight of the complex verb