CIARA had its first conference outing for 2019 at the Australian Languages Workshop (March 15-17) in Marysville, Victoria. Lesley presented the latest version of our analysis of pointing in Murrinhpatha, Gija and non-Indigenous Australian English conversations.
Pointing in the Kimberley
Thanks to GPS technology and Google Earth, our initial findings show how people’s familiarity with country is evident in the very precise directional pointing to places hundreds of kilometres from where the recording took place.
An accurate sweeping point by a Murrinhpatha speaker
Our PhD student Josh also presented evidence for and against young people’s Jaru being an autonomous mixed language. While the evidence suggests it is not an autonomous language, there is clearly much much more to discover.