Resources - Linguistic Explanations
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It can be useful for many things, such as - understanding how people learn language, developing a spelling system for an oral language, working out the sounds of a language that is not currently spoken, and understanding how languages change. It also has links with other areas of study. For example, it contributes to archaeology and history in piecing together the life of an ancient culture, to psychology in understanding how the brain works, sociology and anthropology in understanding the diversity of human cultures, and information technology in developing computer software for people with disabilities. Because language is such a large subject, there are many small areas within linguistics that focus on one particular aspect of language. The first section of the Explanations on this webpage explains briefly what some of these areas cover. The most basic areas are phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Then there are broader areas such as sociolinguistics, language acquisition, orthography, or historical linguistics. Most linguists specialise in one or more areas of linguistics, or in a specific 'family group' of world languages, such as the Indigenous languages of Australia. On this webpage you will find definitions of common technical terms used in linguistics, especially the ones found in linguistics writing about the Indigenous languages of Australia.This page is under construction!! We will be putting in new words regularly over the next few weeks. If you are looking for a term that you can't find here, please contact us.
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O |P| Q | R | S| T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
ablative The ablative case shows that someone is coming 'from' a place. In Aboriginal languages, this is usually a word-ending on the place they are coming 'from'. Example: (from Blake 2003 The Warrnambool language) Pipangu partan kapin yandapurti wuruth-ngu, 'Your father killed the bird. It fell from the tree'. Wuruth is 'tree'; the word-ending ngu is the ablative, meaning 'from'.
absolutive The absolutive case is used in many Aboriginal languages, but not in English. Usually the absolutive is shown by having no word-ending on the person (or animal, etc.) you are talking about. It shows that the person involved is not acting to affect someone else. To explain this in English, we have to talk about two possibilities: (1) They are doing something, but not to someone else. Example: Birnbupma mirri, 'The sun comes out' (no word-ending on mirri, the sun). (2) Someone else is doing something to them. Example: Guli-a bakunirring gowayn, 'A man caught an eel'. Gowayn, the eel, doesn't have any word-ending, but guli, the man, does. The man is doing something to something else; the sun and the eel are not. Absolutive case is used together with ergative case. (Examples from Blake 1998 'Wathawurrung: the language of the Geelong-Ballarat area')
accusative The accusative case shows who or what is affected by an action. In Aboriginal languages, this is usually a word-ending on the person or animal affected. Example: (from a song in Hercus 1986 'Outline of the Wembawemba language', respelt) Pulaminy ngalang-in nya 'He will pull us all in' (to court). Something is being done to ngalang 'us', so it has the accusative ending in. Accusative case is used together with nominative case.
adjective A type of word that describes something, used together with a noun. Example: (from Blake & Reid 2002 'The Dhudhuroa language of northeastern Victoria') wagarra murranduwa 'big crow'. Adjectives are not always used in Aboriginal languages some languages may describe things using a noun instead. adverb A type of word that describes how, when, or where something happens. Example: (from Hercus 1992 Wembawemba dictionary) nyunga 'around here', tyelik-tyelik 'yesterday', tyurung-kuthewiny 'lengthways, from head to tail'.
affix Part of a word added onto the beginning (prefix) or end (suffix) of the word, changing its meaning slightly. Example: (from Blake & Reid 2002 'The Dhudhuroa language of northeastern Victoria') yawarra 'kangaroo', yawarra-djama 'male kangaroo', yawarra-djanggaana 'female kangaroo'.
affricate Sounds such as English 'ch' or 'j', which are made by blocking the air off somewhere in the mouth, then releasing it slowly. Affricates are not usually used in Aboriginal languages. agent This is the person (or animal, etc.) doing the action that affects someone else. Example: (from Blake 1998 'Wathawurrung: the language of the Geelong-Ballarat area') Guli-a bakunirring gowayn, 'A man caught an eel'. Guli, the man, is the agent, because he is doing something to something else.
agreement This is a system in language for keeping it clear who is doing what, and which word describes which other word. A verb or an adjective might have a word-ending meaning 'I', 'you' or 'they', to show who is doing the action, or who the adjective is describing. We can say that the verb or adjective 'agrees with' the word that shows 'who'. Example: (from Blake & Reid 2002 'The Dhudhuroa language of northeastern Victoria') Djaba-ngu murranduwa-ngu djawa dagi 'A big man killed a possum'. Djaba is 'man' and murranduwa is 'big'. Murranduwa has the same word-ending as djaba to show it is the 'man' who is 'big', not the 'possum'.
allative The allative case shows that someone is going 'to' a place. In Aboriginal languages, this is usually a word-ending on the place they are going 'to'. Example: (from Blake 1998 'Wathawurrung: the language of the Geelong-Ballarat area') yaluk-iyu 'to the river'. Yaluk is 'river'; the word-ending -iyu is the allative, meaning 'to'.
allomorph Different versions of the same morpheme. A morpheme always has the same meaning, but might change in sound for various reasons such as speaking quickly. Example: In words like 'walking', 'going', some people say the ing at the end as 'walk'n', 'goin'. The '-n' and '-ing' are allomorphs of the same morpheme.
allophone Different versions of the same phoneme. Although people think of a phoneme as always the same sound in their language, they may actually say the sound in slightly different ways depending on the sounds around it. For example, people say a different 'p' sound in 'pit' and 'spit'. (Try holding your hand in front of your mouth while you say it and you should be able to tell the difference.)
alveolar Sounds made with the tongue at the ridge behind your top teeth called the alveolar ridge. This includes s, t and l. Try saying these sounds and notice where your tongue is touching.
alveo-palatal Sound like 'sh', made with the tongue between the alveolar ridge and the palate (the roof of your mouth). Try saying 'shhhh' and notice where your tongue is touching.
antonym Opposite. 'Tall' is an antonym of 'short'; 'sooner' is an antonym of 'later'.
approximant Sounds like 'w', 'r' and 'y', which are made with your tongue very close to another part of your mouth, but not blocking the air off completely.
article Words like 'the' and 'a' in English, which go together with a noun. Articles are not generally used in Aboriginal languages.
aspect This part of grammar shows details about the time spent doing something. The action might be repetitive, or continuing, or completely finished. English does not have much aspect in its grammar though it does use the word-ending '-ing' to show a continuing action ('I'm writing', as distinct from 'I write', or 'I wrote'). Some Aboriginal languages show several different kinds of aspect with word-endings. Example: (from Blake 2003 The Warrnambool language) Pawa means 'cook' and wiraka is 'run'. The word-ending na seems to mean that the action is completed (sometimes called 'completive aspect'): pawa-na 'They are cooked' (and ready); wiraka-na 'He ran away' (he escaped, he got away).
aspiration A small puff of air that accompanies some sounds, affecting the sound slightly. If you put your hand in front of your mouth and say 'p', then 'b', you will feel much more aspiration with the 'p'. We say that 'p' in English is aspirated.
assimilation This word is about the way that sounds change in a word depending on the sounds around them. Try saying 'undo', then 'uncanny', slowly. You may notice that the 'n' is different in the two words. In 'uncanny', the 'n' changes to an 'ng' sound closer to the back of the mouth, to assimilate to the 'c' that follows it.
Phonetics is the study of how the sounds of language are made, and how the hearer perceives them. Phonetics is important for language revival in a number of ways. It is needed for working out what the sounds of the languages are; it helps to make sense of the different spellings used by early collectors; and it can help you learn how to pronounce sounds of your language that you don't use in English. Phonetics has its own alphabet, called the International Phonetic Alphabet, or 'IPA', for writing the sounds of the world's languages in a way that makes it clear what the actual sound is. This is very different from alphabets such as the English one, where the sound is not always clear from the writing. For example, the letter 'u' in English spelling can mean the sound in 'but' or the sound in 'put'. In the IPA, these sounds are spelled differently, so that it is clear what sound is meant. You can see the IPA symbols and hear the sounds on a website at the University of California. There are different areas within phonetics. The most important for language revival work is articulatory phonetics. This focuses on how sounds are actually produced in the mouth for example, by blocking the air at your lips and then releasing it (this gives you 'b' or 'p').
Phonology is the study of the sound patterns of language. Every language has its own set of sounds, and the sounds are understood according to the language set they are in. For example, in English, 'ten' and 'den' are obviously different words. The reason we can recognise them as different words is that 't' and 'd' are different sounds in English. However, in most Aboriginal languages, 't' and 'd' are not counted as different sounds. You can say 'Taungurung' or 'Daungurung', and it means the same thing. The same goes for the sound-pairs 'k, g' and 'p, b'. This helps to explain why you will sometimes see different spellings for the same word - the language Keerray-woorroong, for example, has sometimes been spelt with a 'G', and Gunnai is sometimes spelt with a 'K'. Phonology also examines what happens to speech sounds when they are combined to form a word. For example, in English if I say 'picture', I am likely to actually say 'pitcher'. The 'c' and 't' sounds together move to a different sound because of the 'u' that follows. So phonology is more about what we think we are saying, while phonetics is about the actual sound that we produce. The spelling of a word is usually closer to the phonology. Ideally, the spelling shows how we think about the word, and then the way people actually say it will change depending on things like how fast they are speaking.
Morphology is the study of how words are made up of smaller parts. A word may be made up of several smaller meanings. The word 'cats', for example, is made up of 'cat' and the word-ending '-s', meaning more than one. Different languages have different kinds of word-endings and other parts of words, and they are put together in different ways. In English I might say I'm going 'to' the river, but in Aboriginal languages the 'to' meaning is usually a word-ending. For example, in Wathaurong, I would say 'yaluk-iyu' (river-to). Morphology is important in language revival because it shows what the word-endings of your language are and how to use them. It is also useful if you are putting new words together, as it can help you find ways of doing this that are true to your language.
Syntax is the study of how phrases and sentences are put together. It gives us ways of thinking about what words you need in a given sentence, what order they go in, and how to make different sorts of sentences, such as a statement, an order, or a question. Again, all these things are different for each language. As an example, a sentence from Gunditjmara (from Sarah Dawson's 1881 wordlist) is 'Yangi-yangi ngutjung kal-ngan ngutuk-ngat', meaning 'My dog is better than yours'. But the words in the Gunditjmara sentence are literally 'very good dog-my yours'. So the Gunditjmara sentence uses different meanings, in a different order, to the English sentence. When we translate the Gunditjmara words like this, it sounds wrong in English. So imagine how wrong it would sound if we just translated English words into Gunditjmara! This shows why it is important to study syntax in language revival, to make sure we don't just assume an Aboriginal language is structured the same way as English.
Semantics is the study of meaning in language - what meanings there are in a language, how each meaning is related to other meanings, and how new meanings are created. In English, a 'mouse' is still a small furry animal, but now the word also means a computer tool. How are these meanings related? Perhaps the computer mouse looks like a live mouse (a small roundish thing with a cable for a tail), or perhaps the way the computer mouse makes the cursor dance rapidly across the screen is like the way a live mouse moves. In the same way, you can look at the ways that the Indigenous people of the nineteenth century connected different ideas together in their language. Wathaurong people invented the word 'birtna-bil' for razor. It literally means scrap-er. As another example, the semantics of family words in Aboriginal languages are very important to culture. Looking at the meanings in these words shows the importance of mother's line as distinct from father's line, with different words for grandparents, depending on whether they are the mother's or the father's parents. On the other hand, the connection between a mother and her sisters is often shown by the use of the same word for these relations.