20 t R l Repo A 14 Annu The Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language is an ARC funded centre of excellence (CE140100041).

College of Asia and the Pacifc The Australian National Unviersity H.C. Coombs Building Fellows Road, Acton ACT 2601 Email: [email protected] Phone: (02) 6125 9376 www.dynamicsofanguage.edu.au www.facebook.com/CoEDL © ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language 2014

Design: Sculpt Communications ARC Centre of excellence for the Dynamics of language Annual Report 2014 table of contents

Section 1: The Centre 7

Section 2: People 25

Section 3: Research 49

Section 4: Education, Training and Mentoring 75

Section 5: Outreach and Engagement 81

Section 6: Outputs 90

Section 7: Financials 103

Section 8: Performance indicators 105

7 one

on I t C e S

01tHe CentRe HEADING HEADING Introducing the ARC Centre of excellence for the Dynamics of language

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Using language is as natural as breathing, and almost as important, for using language transforms every aspect of human experience. But it has been extraordinarily diffcult to understand its evolution, diversifcation, and use: a vast array of incredibly different language systems are found across the planet, all representing different solutions to the problem of evolving a fexible, all-purpose communication system, and all in constant fux.

The ARC Centre of Excellence for the To achieve this transformation of the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL) will shift language sciences and the fow-on the focus of the language sciences from the translational outcomes for the public and long-held dominant view that language is a end-users, we have assembled a team which static and genetically constrained system — makes surprising and bold connections to a dynamic model where diversity, variation, between areas of research that until now plasticity and evolution, along with complex have not been connected: linguistics, interactions between language-learning and speech pathology, psychology, anthropology, perceptual and cognitive processes, lie at the philosophy, bioinformatics and robotics. heart of language and its investigation. CoEDL will address the most critical questions about language: How do languages (and other adaptive self-organising systems) evolve? How different can languages be? How do our brains acquire and process them? How can technologies deal with the complexity and enormous variability of language in its central role in human information processing? What can Australia do to increase its linguistic abilities at a time of increasingly multilingual demands in trade and information? t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu CoeDl in 2015

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Since the announcement in December 2013 that our bid was successful, and our formal commencement of operations in September 2014, we have put in place the key elements to meet our ambitious goals. Organisationally, we have set up our Administrative team and Advisory Committee; designed, built and moved into purpose-built new premises on the ANU campus; recruited our frst batch of PhD Students and Postdocs; held a number of workshops; and mapped out our more detailed research plans at one-year and three-year rhythms.

We are now ready to move, in detail, to meet Second Language Learning, in mainstream, the scientifc and social challenges that multi-lingual, and disadvantaged contexts. we will address over the next six years. A Finally, our basic research in language central part of this is to enhance Australia‘s evolution together with cutting-edge linguistic wealth – an underrated aspect of experiments in robotics will feed the our informational resources - and to help development of new educational technologies secure the linguistic and cultural heritage of as well as assistive devices (language Indigenous and regional communities. We prostheses) for conversational support for will translate this shift in conceptual focus those with language loss or dementia. into transformations of central importance to society, the public and end-users, through using and developing New Technologies and upskilling Australia‘s research workforce. A smart country requires smart solutions that transform our economy away from manufacturing into a high-technology future. Research developments in this Centre will have signifcant technological fow-throughs, not least from the large amounts of language data collected from a range of languages. The consequent databases, in addition to the benefts of the new technology to develop them, will provide the type of Big Data essential for automatic speech recognition systems with educational and clinical applications. Centre research on language processing and learning will provide data for informing better literacy outcomes and adult HEADING HEADING Director’s welcome

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As Director of the newly-established ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, it is a special pleasure to write this introduction to our frst annual report. To all our readers, I hope this frst report will convey the excitement, ambition and urgency of our goals, as well as a feeling for how, over this founding period, we have set the Centre up to take us there.

This is where we bump against the tip of that giant iceberg that starts with the world’s 7,000+ languages, and goes down to the many billion more variants found at the level of individual variation. This includes the ever-present changes in how we speak as we learn our frst and subsequent languages, and, at the other end of life, as we lose the power to communicate. It is the goal of our Language is central to everything we do Centre to take these two facts – the stunning – from reading this report, to talking with diversity of the world’s linguistic systems, friends and family, to following the latest and the fact that they are dynamic systems scientifc or political developments. This constantly being reconfgured by their users makes CoEDL’s focus of interest, language – and forge a new approach to language and languages, something no one can afford which places diversity and dynamism at to ignore. Speaking and understanding come centre stage. so naturally to us, but this easy comfort Several tectonic shifts in the sciences of only lasts until we try to communicate with language make this approach timely. someone who doesn’t share our language, or suffer frustrating encounters with automatic One is a change in the way the science of voice recognition systems that don’t linguistics is conceived. Recent conceptual understand our words, or – an increasingly shifts (though by no means uncontroversial) common problem – witness the tragic decline move from an emphasis on a shared in older people’s ability to communicate ‘Universal Grammar’ with relatively superfcial with their carers, as a result of degenerative differences among languages, to a view that t – 2014 disorders like Alzheimer’s. At the level of emphasises the incredible diversity of the OR p

E national and global politics, education or world’s languages on every level, and the R

AL health, these communicative setbacks intricate two-way causal interactions between remind us that language is not always a language and thought, and language, perfectly tuned channel. society and culture. The great achievement COEDL Annu 11 of the Darwinian revolution in biology was A second conceptual shift, made more to show how the boundless diversity of the pressing by our realisation of how much world’s organisms can arise from general diversity has to tell us, is the looming principles of selection and their interaction catastrophe of language loss, proceeding with a wide range of ecological niches. more rapidly in Australia than on any other The ‘coevolutionary’ approach that informs continent. This mass extinction event is likely our Centre’s program aims to accomplish to see more than half the world’s languages a comparable revolution in the study of fall silent by the end of this century, many language. We are working towards a general completely unrecorded. Between them, the model of language evolution in which countries of our region contain around a ffth selection pressures give rise to a diversity of the world’s linguistic diversity: PNG ranks of linguistic structures. In this context, #1, Indonesia #2, India #4, Australia #5, the relevant ‘ecological’ settings may be Philippines #10 and Vanuatu #12 in terms cognitive, cultural, or technological. of numbers of local languages. Depending on the metric used, Vanuatu and PNG vie for To achieve this synthesis, CoEDL will supremacy as the world’s most linguistically approach the study of language through four diverse nations. interacting programs. Shape looks at the different ways languages are built, Learning Though there have been some notable examines what this means for the learning worldwide efforts over the last couple of of very different language types, Processing decades to record and safeguard this researches the way different language heritage, several key international programs structures demand different strategies are exhausting their funding with only for listening and thinking, and Evolution a fraction of the problem having been maps how a whole range of selectors build addressed. Renewing the impulse for and reshape each language and language the urgent effort to document the world’s variety. The varied backgrounds of our languages is a key part of the Centre’s brief. team of CIs span almost every feld needed A number of new academic appointments to build this new science of language – will be dedicated to the study of undescribed linguistics, psychology, computer science languages, and will develop new approaches and robotics, philosophy, anthropology, to archiving and technologies that speed speech therapy, and evolutionary and extend recording in the feld, and will bioinformatics. And the unique interweaving be developing global databases that can of four programs built into CoEDL’s structure be used for new types of comparison of is designed to maximise cross-fertilisation linguistic structures worldwide. around shared problems. DIRECTOR’S WELCOME

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This leads to the third shift in the science Following European colonisation, we of language, namely the explosion of have seen over two centuries in which technologies for language processing, monolingualism has been the mainstream and for capturing data on languages and norm. Even within the English-speaking their learning and use in the feld. The countries of the world – notorious for their two ‘Technology Threads’ of CoEDL – New belief that English is enough – Australia Generation Technologies and Archiving – will has the world’s lowest rates of foreign- develop new software and apps for capturing language study. Figures on knowledge of feld linguistic data, taking laboratory other languages are hard to obtain – it is investigations out to the feld situation, symptomatic that there has been no national optimising the fow of data and metadata from investigation, and the only National Census recordings into the archive, crowd-sourcing question simply asks what language(s) are the gathering of linguistic data, and assisting spoken in the home. However, indications communication with people suffering speech of High School enrolment are a good proxy: impairments. Big data for small languages – in 2014, only 8% of students enrolled in a new technologies will help us gather this to Higher School Certifcate in New South Wales an unprecedented extent, again allowing us were enrolled in a language course. to link diversity to the dynamics of language At his opening address to the 2014 Adelaide learning, use and change. Language Festival, the Hon. Christopher Australia is a paradoxically appropriate place Pyne articulated the paradox between to launch this new quest – a predominantly Australia’s persistent monolingual mindset, monolingual country with a deep multilingual its cultural diversity, and its aspiration to past, located at the epicentre of the world’s ‘comprehend our place in the Asia-Pacifc linguistic diversity among trading partners region and engage confdently on the global speaking languages of the most varied types. stage supported by a workforce and society’, During its frst forty millennia its indigenous going on to call for ‘no less than a national cultures developed a diverse mosaic of over revival of language education’. three hundred languages in which high levels CoEDL will contribute three main ingredients of multilingualism were the norm, which to this ambitious reorientation of national evinced great interest in language in all its mindset. First, learning another language is forms, leading to such ‘monuments to the diffcult, particularly in the case of languages human intellect’ as Demiin, the initiation like Chinese or Japanese which differ radically language on Mornington Island. in structure from English. Research we do on language acquisition at different points in

t – 2014 the lifespan will lay the scientifc foundation OR

p for improving how language is taught and E

R learned. Second, technologies for processing AL and learning language are changing rapidly, an industrial turn which CoEDL will be linked COEDL Annu 13 to through our partnership with Appen Ltd. For now I would like to conclude by thanking Third, we wish to make language an exciting my Deputy Director Jane Simpson, our and frequent topic of discussion in the media Executive, our Administrative Team and at every level: this is crucial to attracting our whole team of investigators for their the best and the brightest into language extraordinary commitment, energy and study, teaching, research and technology. wisdom in meeting the challenges of setting Our strategy for doing this includes public up this new Centre, and the Australian lectures, awards, and support to events like Research Council for honouring us with the Linguistics Olympiad. the support that will enable us to answer fundamental questions about the nature of I would like to use this occasion to introduce language and its role in human life. and to thank the members of our Advisory Committee: Kate Burridge (Linguistics, — nick evans Monash; Chair), Kent Anderson (DVC International, UWA), Craig Cornelius (Google), Katherine Demuth (Centre for Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie), Jeff Elman (Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego), Merrki Ganambarr (Principal, Yirrkala Community School), Ralph Regenvanu (Vanuatu Minister of Lands and Natural Resources), Lia Tedesco (SA School of Languages) BS Tony Woodbury (Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin). A key challenge that we have set as a Centre is to link the science and the technology to the education and the social issues, and it is a great pleasure to have an Advisory Committee whose background and interests knit these together so closely. Chair’s welcome

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On behalf of the Advisory Committee, let me say what an outstanding start it has been for the ARC Centre of Excellence in the Dynamics of Language, and to congratulate all on their hard work and achievements to date.

This Centre brings together researchers of an exceedingly high international standard, and the Committee has every confdence that CoEDL will successfully deliver what it has set out to do. And the practical deliverables are palpable: cutting-edge language recording tools and documenting/archiving technologies to secure comprehensive descriptions of In only a few months of activity, the Centre hitherto undescribed languages in the has fnalised its administrative structures, region; research technologies for better budgets and governance, recruited students speech recognition systems and automated and postdoctoral fellows, established parsing for translation; assistive technology research affliates, and most importantly (“language prostheses”) for conversational brought together and structured its vast support for those with language loss or interdisciplinary research teams. degenerative processes such as dementia, to The challenge of such a large and ambitious name only a few. This unique, exciting and enterprise, especially one that is across so challenging venture promises to transform many diverse felds, will be how to maintain the understanding of our most amazing interdisciplinary collaboration. In this regard, intellectual achievement — language. the Committee enthusiastically endorsed — Kate Burridge the Centre’s well-thought-out structure: four meshed research programs (each focused on its own puzzle) and interlocked by the two threads centred around the technological innovations needed to drive the Centre’s research agenda. The Committee noted and

t – 2014 strongly supported the various opportunities OR p

E that had been built into the Centre’s structure R to allow for integration and to facilitate AL cooperation and the sharing of expertise across the different programs. COEDL Annu Governance

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The Centre governance structure is designed to support the research program, research training, outreach and education of the wider community. It facilitates cross-disciplinary collaboration within and outside of the Centre, allowing the pursuit of fundamental issues throughout the Centre’s lifespan, adding new ideas from researchers as they emerge in the feld.

Advisory Committee The Advisory Committee assists Centre management by contributing to the development of strategies and vision for the future relative to the proposed goals and objectives of the Centre, and by serving as a vehicle for creating better linkages between academia, the broader community, government and industry. The Committee gives advice to the Centre Director and the Administering Organisation on matters regarding the research focus of the Centre, its structure and general operating principles, ways of extending its social impact, and intellectual property and commercialisation management. GOVERNANCE

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as associate professor at Hokkaido University Law School in Japan. Kent is on the New Colombo Plan Advisory Board, the Board of Canberra Grammar School, and a variety of academic and community boards including the Languages and Cultures Network for Kate Burridge Kent Anderson Australian Universities Title: Chair Institution: The University of (LCNAU). Institution: Monash Western Australia University Professor Kent Anderson is Professor Kate Burridge an international lawyer who is a prominent Australian specialises in comparing linguist and the current Chair Asian legal systems, and of Linguistics at Monash is currently a Deputy Vice- University. Kate completed Chancellor at the University her undergraduate training of Western Australia. He in Linguistics and German has an eclectic background, at the University of Western having completed tertiary Australia. She completed her studies in US, Japan, and PhD in 1983 on syntactic the UK in Law, Politics, Craig Cornelius change in medieval Dutch. Economics and Asian Institution: Google Inc This was followed by three Studies. He also worked as Craig Cornelius is a senior years postgraduate study at a marketing manager with a software engineer at the University of London. US regional airline in Alaska Google, with special skills Kate is also the author of and as a commercial lawyer in internationalisation, many books, a regular guest in Hawaii. Before joining imaging, computer on ABC radio and recently UWA, Kent was Pro Vice graphics, analysis, and presented a TED talk in Chancellor (International) at enhancing understanding Sydney on Euphemisms in University of Adelaide and and interaction with English. before that foundational visual information. He has director of the School added Google search in

t – 2014 of Culture, History and approximately 20 countries OR

p and languages, including E Language at the Australian R National University. He Albania, numerous African AL started his academic career countries, Myanmar, and others, designing virtual COEDL Annu 17 keyboards for Cherokee, development of phonological, also through psycholinguistic Sorani, Kurdish and Burmese morphological and syntactic and neuroimaging studies. in close collaboration with representations, in both In his early work he was speakers. He has also typically developing and interested in speech worked with Cherokee Nation language-impaired children perception, and what the representatives to support and L2 learners. Much of her mechanisms are that make the Cherokee language in work is crosslinguistic, using it possible for humans to Google Search, GMail, and insights from the structure perceive complex acoustic other products. of different languages to inputs with such apparent better understanding the ease. With Jay McClelland, mechanisms underlying he developed TRACE , a the process of language neural network that takes acquisition. Part of either simulated or real this research program speech as input, and exhibits also involves a better a number of phenomena understanding of the nature characteristic of humans of the input (child-directed perception. Recently he speech) that language has been working on learners hear. understanding sentence-level and discourse-level language Katherine Demuth phenomena. Jeff is based at Institution: Macquarie the University of California, University San Diego where he recently served as Dean of Social Katherine Demuth is Sciences. a CORE Professor in Linguistics and the Centre for Language Sciences (CLaS) at Macquarie University, where she is Director of the Child Language Lab and a Jeff elman member of the new Centre Institution: University of of Excellence for Cognition California San Diego and its Disorders (CCD). Demuth’s research focuses Jeff Elman’s primary on Language Acquisition, research interests are including studies of both on language processing perception and production and learning. He studies across languages. She is language both through especially interested in the computational models and GOVERNANCE

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conferred him the honour of Libehkamel Tah Tomat (Caretaker of the Sacred Nakamal).

Merrki Ganambarr Ralph Regenvanu Institution: Yirrkala School Institution: Minister, Lands & Natural Resources, Vanuatu Merrki Ganambarr is a Yolngu artist, educator and Ralph Regenvanu is activist from eastern Arnhem Minister of Lands and Land. She is the principal Natural Resources for the lia tedesco of Yirrkala School which Republic of Vanuatu. He Institution: School of has maintained a bilingual has been a Member of Languages, SA program for 40 years. Merrki Parliament since 2008. Lia Tedesco began her is passionate about language Ralph came to national involvement in languages rights and the promotion of prominence as cultural education as a teacher of Indigenous cultural heritage. activist, committed to the Italian at secondary level. In 2001 she featured in the promotion and preservation She has been involved award-winning flm Yolngu of local knowledge in one with numerous state and Boy. of the most linguistically national level curriculum diverse regions of the world. development projects and He was a founding member policy initiatives, including of the Pacifc Islands the Australian Language Museum Association and Level (ALL) Guidelines and has been director of the the National Statement and Vanuatu Cultural Centre. His Profle for Languages Other achievement is recognised Than English. She was the with the title of Chavalier Manager of Languages dans l”ordre des Art et des with the South Australian Lettres (Knight in the Order Department of Education t – 2014 of Arts and Letters) by the

OR for many years, prior to her p

E government of France, while appointment as Principal R the Nende people of South AL of the School of Languages West Bay, Malakula have in 2000. Since that time, COEDL Annu 19 she has been seconded on current and former students, two occasions to undertake in the documentation and projects for the Ministerial description of Chatino, an Council of Education, Otomanguean language Employment, Training and group of Oaxaca, Mexico, Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) – supported by grants from namely, the 2003 Review the Endangered Language of Languages Education in Documentation Programme Australian Schools; which and the National Science then led to the development Foundation. Earlier, Anthony C. Woodbury of the National Statement he worked on Yupik- Title: Professor and Plan for Languages Inuit-Aleut languages of Institution: University of Education in Australian Alaska, especially Cup’ik. Texas at Austin Schools. In addition to her Themes in his writing have ongoing role as Principal of Anthony C. Woodbury earned included tone and prosody, the School of Languages, his B.A. in Linguistics in morphology, syntax, historical she is currently serving 1975 from the University linguistics, ethnopoetics, as Executive Offcer to of Chicago and his Ph.D. language endangerment the MCEETYA Languages in Linguistics from the and preservation, and Education Working Party, University of California at documentary linguistics. which is the ministerial Berkeley in 1981. He has He is also co-director of the group charged with the taught in the UT Linguistics digital Archive for Indigenous responsibility of overseeing Department since 1980, Languages of Latin America the implementation of this and served as its chair, (www.ailla.utexas.org) at the major national initiative. 1998-2006. He was elected Lozano Long Institute of Latin She assumed the role of President of the Society for American Studies, which is President of the Australian the Study of the Indigenous supported in part by a grant Federation of Modern Languages of the Americas from the National Science Languages Teachers for the year 2005; and he Foundation. Associations in June 2006. received the UT Graduate School’s Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award for 2008. His research focuses on the indigenous languages of the Americas, and what they reveal about human linguistic diversity. Since 2003, he has been engaged, together with GOVERNANCE

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Education Sub-Committee New Initiative and Transdisciplinary Grants Sub-Committee The Centre’s vision is for a comprehensive higher-degree research (HDR) programme The cross-disciplinary nature of the Centre that provides a world-class stream for will provide many opportunities for cross- developing high-quality PhD candidates program collaboration at all levels. The and graduates. This stream must be Centre budget provides grant funds each consistent with – and integrated into – the year to be used to further develop the HDR programmes of the four collaborating existing interdisciplinary nature of the Centre, institutions. The complicated task requires providing opportunities for centre members vision and dedicated oversight. The to initiate integration projects and activities. Education sub-committee was established to The Executive Committee has established the advise the Executive on this critical outcome New Initiative and Transdisciplinary Grants for the Centre. sub-committee to coordinate applications and advise the Executive on the distribution Membership: of these grant funds. Jane Simpson (Chair; ANU) Gillian Wigglesworth (UMelb) Membership: Evan Kidd (ANU) Anne Cutler (Chair; UWS) Felicity Meakins (UQ) Janet Fletcher (UMelb) Caroline Jones (UWS) Simon Greenhill (ANU) Piers Kelly (Communications and Outreach Janet Wiles (UQ) Coordinator; ex offcio) Denise Angelo (Student representative; ANU) t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu organisation chart

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Education Executive Intellectual Property Sub-Committee Committee Management Committee

New Initiative and Transdisciplinary Grants Sub-Committee

Chief Operating Centre Director and Advisory Offcer Deputy Director Committee

Processing Shape Learning Evolution Archiving New Technologies Leader Leader Leader Leader Leader Leader

Professor Associate Professor Professor Doctor Doctor Professor Anne Cutler Rachel Nordlinger Gillian Simon Greenhill Nick Thieberger Janet Wiles Wigglesworth

Programs Threads Indigenous linguistic heritage

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A signifcant part of the Centre’s research is reliant on the participation of Indigenous communities in Australia and the Asia-Pacifc, and the transmission and safeguarding of important cultural, linguistic and historical information. The Centre recognises the right of Indigenous communities to maintain, control, protect and develop their traditional knowledge and cultural expressions, and the inherent ownership they have over this intellectual property. The Centre also recognises that communities and individuals within the region hold different views as to what these rights entail.

Research conducted by Centre staff and In addition, the Centre recognises the students at the collaborating institutions is important contribution of the guidelines subject to approval by institutional human developed by The Australia Council for the research ethics committees. These statutory Arts on Indigenous Protocols for Producing committees review and approve research Indigenous Australian Music, Writing, involving Indigenous people with specifc Visual Arts, Media Arts and Performing Arts reference to Values and Ethics: Guidelines (2007). We will always assert the moral for Ethical Conduct in Aboriginal and Torres rights of performers in collections of material Strait Islander Health Research (NHMRC produced by the Centre. We are investigating 2003), and The Australian Institute of the Traditional Knowledge licence system Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies as an addition to Creative Commons for Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian licensing the use of records created by Indigenous Studies (AIATSIS 2012), plus The researchers and speakers. National Statement on Ethical Conduct in We take very seriously our responsibility to Human Research (NHMRC, ARC, UA 2007). create records of performances, be they narratives, songs, and other expressions of traditional languages. Through the activities of the Archiving and New Technologies Threads, the Centre dedicates signifcant resources to ensuring cultural data, recordings and other media are returned to the communities from which they t – 2014

OR originate in a timely and sensitive manner. p E

R This will take many forms, ranging from

AL appropriate repatriation of the originally recorded materials, assistance in making COEDL Annu 23 them available in web-accessible form where the community wishes, ongoing access via archives, production of dictionaries, readers, orthographies, books of traditional stories and versions of dictionaries that can be loaded onto mobile phones. A goal of the Centre is to develop protocols for making cultural data available to the communities on a permanent basis, as well as a consistent set of principles for conducting research in indigenous communities in Australia and the Asia- Pacifc. These principles will be incorporated into all research ethics applications across the Centre, regardless of institution, and will ideally become best practice examples for researchers working with Indigenous communities Australia-wide. Fundamental to our research program is our commitment to ensuring a record for future generations and for all interested in indigenous languages, and respect and celebration of the knowledge of language and story by the teller and their wish to be remembered, while accepting that sometimes there will be a wish to restrict access to some material. We will be building in graded degrees of access, keyed to community wishes, through the digital archive PARADISEC, which has experience in formulating access conditions. 24 t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu 25

Section 2: People o W t

on I t C e S

02people HEADING HEADING people

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Chief Investigators the investigation of the component processes involved in language production. The work involves the use of a number of ‘on-line’ or ‘real-time’ measures of processing (including reaction-time and ERP) to examine both the behavioural details and prof Anne Cutler the brain-areas involved Title: Professor in language processing. Program: Processing prof Helen Chenery The behavioural and Institution: The MARCs Title: Professor neurobiological bases of Institute, University of Program: Processing/ language disorders are Western Sydney Technologies investigated in both non Institution: Professor at the neurologically impaired Anne Cutler studied University of Queensland, people and people with languages and psychology Executive Dean in the acquired neurological at the Universities of Faculty of Health Sciences disorders including people Melbourne, Berlin and and Medicine at Bond with subcortical aphasia, Bonn, taught German at University bilingual people with aphasia Monash University, but embraced psycholinguistics Helen Chenery’s major subsequent to stroke, as soon as it emerged as an areas of research examine people with Parkinson’s independent sub-discipline, the nature of language disease, adults and children taking a PhD in the subject processing in both healthy with language impairment at the University of Texas. and neurologically-involved following traumatic Postdoctoral fellowships at populations based on the brain injury, people with MIT and Sussex University integration of detailed models schizophrenia and healthy followed, and from 1982 to of language processing people scoring highly on 1993 a staff position at the within a neurobiological ratings of dimensions of Medical Research Council framework. Her research schizotypy. Helen’s research Applied Psychology Unit is underpinned by a involves collaborations with in Cambridge. In 1993 detailed understanding of psychiatrists, neurologists, she became a director at the processes involved in electrical engineers, t – 2014 psychologists, linguists, and the Max Planck Institute

OR the moment-by-moment

p for Psycholinguistics E integration of information computer scientists. R in Nijmegen, the AL during on-going language Netherlands, a post she comprehension and by held till 2013. She was also COEDL Annu 27 professor of comparative in diverse populations, is the diversity of human psycholinguistics at the including human infants, language and what this can Radboud University children and adults, and tell us about the nature of Nijmegen from 1995 to zebra fnches. She obtained language, culture, deep 2013, and, from 2006 to a three-year grant from the history, and the possibilities 2013, part-time Research Netherlands Organization for of the human mind. He is Professor in MARCS Auditory Scientifc research to study especially interested in the Laboratories. In 2013 she sound perception and word ongoing dialectic between took up a full-time position at recognition in immigrant primary documentation of the MARCS Institute. communities learning Dutch little-known languages, and as a third language. She induction from these to more initiated the interdisciplinary general questions about the Brain and Cognition project nature of language. His book about infant cognition at the Dying Words: Endangered University of Amsterdam, Languages and What They where she currently is Have to Tell Us sets out a Visiting Professor. broad program for the feld’s engagement with the planet’s dwindling linguistic diversity. Nick has carried out feldwork on several Dr paola escudero languages of Northern Title: Doctor Australia and Papua Program: Processing New Guinea, particularly Institution: The MARCs Kayardild, Bininj Gun-wok, Institute, University of Dalabon, Ilgar, Iwaidja, Western Sydney Marrku and Nen, with Paola Escudero is an published grammars of prof nicholas evans Associate Professor at The Kayardild (1995) and Bininj Title: Professor MARCS Institute and teaches Gun-wok (2003), and Program: Shape (and within the Linguistics Major dictionaries of Kayardild Evolution) of the School of Humanities (1992) and Dalabon (2004). Institution: The Australian and Communication Arts. National University Currently Nick is collecting She received her PhD in data from the diverse 2005 and was working at Nicholas Evans is the and little-studied region the University of Amsterdam Director of the ARC Centre of Southern New Guinea. until the end of 2010. Her of Excellence for the He is leading a team in a research focuses on auditory Dynamics of Language. cross-linguistic study of and visual perception His central research focus how diverse grammars PEOPLE

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underpin social cognition, languages. She is currently the Pacifc, how language and his Laureate project working on phonetic structure and complexity ‘The Wellsprings of variation, and prosody, and evolve, the co-evolution Linguistic Diversity’ looks intonation in Indigenous of cultural systems in the at how microvariation at a Australian languages. Pacifc, and how cultural community level relates to She is a member of the evolution can be modeled. macro-diversity of languages Research Unit for Indigenous Simon is an ARC Discovery and language families. Language in the School of Fellow in the School of Languages and Linguistics. Culture, History & Language and ANU College of Asia and the Pacifc at the Australian National University. He was previously a postdoctoral research fellow in the Psychology Department and Computational Evolution Group at the University of Auckland.

prof Janet Fletcher Title: Associate Professor Dr Simon Greenhill Program: Processing (and Title: Doctor Shape) Program: Evolution (and Institution: The University of Shape) Melbourne Institution: The Australian National University Janet Fletcher is Associate Professor of Phonetics in the Simon Greenhill’s research School of Languages and focus is the evolution of Linguistics. She has held languages and cultures. He Dr Caroline Jones previous appointments at the has applied cutting-edge Title: Doctor University of Edinburgh, the computational phylogenetic Program: Learning/ Ohio State University, and methods to language and Technologies Macquarie University. Her cultural evolution, and Institution: The MARCs research interests include used these methods to test Institute, The University of phonetic theory, laboratory hypotheses about human t – 2014 Western Sydney

OR phonology, prosodic prehistory and cultural p E phonology, articulatory evolution in general. The Caroline Jones researches R

AL and acoustic modelling of questions he has explored so phonological development prosodic effects in various far include how people settled in children: the properties COEDL Annu 29 of child-directed or PhD (Psycholinguistics) in maternal speech, and the 2004, both from La Trobe development of children’s University. He worked at speech sound categories in the Max Planck Institute for perception and production. Evolutionary Anthropology Recent and current work as a postdoctoral research investigates phonetic associate between 2003 structures and children’s – 2005, and as a Lecturer phonological development and then Senior Lecturer in in non-standard varieties of Psychology at The University Dr evan Kidd northern Australia, including of Manchester (UK) between Title: Doctor Gurindji Kriol and north 2005–2012. From 2008– Program: Processing Australian Kriol. Caroline also 2011 he was also a Charles (and Learning) has interests in: teachers’ La Trobe Research Fellow at Institution: The Australian knowledge of language La Trobe University. National University concepts and the kind of language used by teachers Evan Kidd’s research is in interaction with children, in psycholinguistics and and the documentation and developmental psychology. revitalisation of Aboriginal His current research languages in Australia. interests include sentence Associate Professor Jones processing in children is an Australian Research and adults, the acquisition Council Future Fellow. of complex sentences, She received her PhD in the acquisition of verb Linguistics in 2003 from the argument structure and University of Massachusetts. verbal morphology, how prof Rachel nordlinger Prior to joining UWS in 2013, children deal with lexical Title: Associate Professor her previous academic and syntactic ambiguity Program: Shape (and positions were teaching- in acquisition, and the Learning) research roles in Education role of symbolic play in Institution: The University of at University of New South language and socio-cognitive Melbourne Wales (Lecturer, 2005-07) development. He conducts Rachel Nordlinger is the and University of Wollongong research on a number of Director of the Research (Senior Lecturer, 2007- languages, including English, Unit for Indigenous 2013). German, Italian, Finnish, Language in the School of Cantonese, and Persian. Languages and Linguistics. Evan was awarded a BBSc Rachel’s research centres (Hons) in 1999 and a around the description and PEOPLE

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documentation of Australia’s indigenous languages, and she has worked with the Bilinarra, Wambaya, Gudanji, Murrinhpatha and Marri Ngarr communities to record and preserve their traditional languages. She has also published on syntactic and morphological prof Alan Rumsey prof Jane Simpson theory, and in particular Title: Professor Title: Professor the challenges posed by Program: Learning Program: Shape (and the complex grammatical Institution: The Australian Learning) structures of Australian National University Institution: The Australian Aboriginal languages. She University is the author of numerous Alan Rumsey is a linguistic academic articles in anthropologist who has Jane Simpson has carried international journals, worked in feld locations out feldwork on Indigenous and fve books, including across northern Australia Australian languages since A Grammar of Wambaya and Papua New Guinea. 1979, and received a PhD in (Pacifc Linguistics, 1998), He is currently involved in a linguistics from MIT in 1983 Constructive Case: Evidence major collaborative research for a study of Warlpiri in the from Australian languages project on ‘Children’s Lexical-Functional Grammar (CSLI Publications, 1998) Language Learning and framework. She was a and A Grammar of Bilinarra the Development of Sloan postdoctoral fellow at (Mouton de Gruyter, 2014, Intersubjectivity’. Other Stanford University. She then coauthored with Dr. Felicity recent projects include an worked in Central Australia Meakins). She is co-editor interdisciplinary comparative on Warumungu language (with Harold Koch) of The one on verbal art which and language maintenance, Languages and Linguistics of resulted in the volume Sung and helped set up a Australia (Mouton de Gruyter, Tales from the Papua New language centre in Tennant 2014). Guinea Highlands. Creek. She also carried out various consultancies (e.g. Aboriginal Legal Aid, Aboriginal Sacred Sites

t – 2014 Protection Authority), and OR p

E worked on the Warumungu R land claims. In 1986-1988 AL with David Nash she worked COEDL Annu 31 as lexicography fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, helping set up a digital archive of Aboriginal language material, which became ASEDA. In 1989 she became a lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Sydney. In 2005, with Mary Laughren prof Kim Sterelny Dr nicholas thieberger and David Nash, she shared Title: Professor Title: Doctor the Linguistics Society of Program: Evolution Program: Shape/Archiving America Summer Institute Institution: The Australian Institution: The University of Inaugural Ken Hale Chair. National University Melbourne In 2011 she moved to ANU as the inaugural chair Kim Sterelny’s main research Nicholas Thieberger has of Indigenous linguistics interests are Philosophy worked with speakers and head of the School of of Biology, Philosophy of of Australian languages Language Studies. In 2014 Psychology and Philosophy since the early 1980s. He she stepped down as head of Mind. He is the author of established the Aboriginal of school and is now Deputy The Representational Theory language centre Wangka Director of the Centre of of Mind and the co-author of Maya in Port Hedland Excellence for the Dynamics Language and Reality (with in the late 1980s, then of Language. Michael Devitt) and Sex worked at AIATSIS building and Death: An Introduction the Aboriginal Studies to Philosophy of Biology Electronic Data Archive (with Paul Griffths). He in the early 1990s. He is Fellow of the Australian has written a grammar of Academy of the Humanities. South Efate, a language In addition to philosophy, from central Vanuatu that Kim spends his time eating was the frst to link media curries, drinking red wine, to the analysis, allowing bushwalking and bird verifcation of examples watching. Kim has been a used in analytical claims. In Visiting Professor at Simon 2003 he helped establish Fraser University in Canada, PARADISEC (paradisec. and at Cal Tech and the org.au), a digital archive University of Maryland, of recorded ethnographic College Park, in the USA. material. He is a co-founder PEOPLE

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of the Resource Network for Bachelor of Asian Studies Linguistic Diversity (RNLD) with First Class Honors in and in 2008 he established Linguistics and Japanese a linguistic archive at the from the ANU, and a PhD University of Hawai’i. He is in Linguistics and Spanish interested in developments from La Trobe University. in e-humanities methods and She came to ANU in 2012 their potential to improve from the University of New research practice and he is Mexico, Albuquerque, USA, now developing methods for where she worked for 10 prof Catherine travis creation of reusable data sets years, for fve as head of the Title: Professor from feldwork on previously Hispanic Linguistics program Program: Evolution/Archiving unrecorded languages. He in the Department of Spanish Institution: The Australian is the Editor of the journal & Portuguese. As well as National University Language Documentation at the University of New & Conservation. He taught Catherine Travis’ primary Mexico, she has taught at in the Department of research interest lies in La Trobe University, and has Linguistics at the University the study of grammatical held visiting appointments at of Hawai’i at Manoa and is variation in spontaneous the Universidad Autónoma now an Australian Research speech, in both monolingual de México, James Cook Council Future Fellow at the and bilingual communities. University (Cairns), and the University of Melbourne. She is a specialist in University of Melbourne. Please see his homepage Spanish, and has also at languages-linguistics. worked on Portuguese, unimelb.edu.au/thieberger Japanese and English. Her for full details. current research projects include the Spanish of a bilingual community in New Mexico, USA, the English of immigrant communities in Australia, and the creation of a national language studies portal for Australian universities. Catherine is Chair of Modern European

t – 2014 Languages, and Head of OR p

E the School of Literature, R Languages and Linguistics AL at the ANU. She holds a COEDL Annu 33

Indigenous language use and cognition. She received at home and school. UK, her PhD from Sydney Continuum International; University. She is a member Wigglesworth, G. (Ed.) of the Complex & Intelligent 2003 The kaleidoscope Systems Research Division of adult second language (CIS) in UQ’s School of learning: learner, teacher Information Technology and and researcher perspective, Electrical Engineering (ITEE). Sydney, NCELTR and Ng, B.C. & Wigglesworth, G. prof Gillian Wigglesworth Partner Investigators 2007. Bilingualism, an Title: Professor advanced resource book. Program: Learning London, Routledge. Institution: The University of Melbourne Gillian Wigglesworth’s research work focuses around frst and second language acquisition in monolingual, bilingual and multilingual settings, and she is currently working Judith Bishop in remote Indigenous Title: Dr communities documenting Program: Archiving/ children’s language learning prof Janet Wiles Technologies at home and at school. She Title: Professor Institution: Appen has published widely in Program: Evolution/ frst and second language Technologies Judith Bishop is Senior learning, bilingualism, as Institution: The University of Manager of Linguistic well as language testing. Queensland Services and Principal She is very widely published Linguist at Appen Butler Hill, Janet Wiles’s research in international journals Inc. She has completed an interests are in: complex and books with over one MPhil. in French Literature systems biology, hundred publications. She from Cambridge University, a computational neuroscience, is author or editor on several Masters of Fine Arts (poetry) evolution of language, books including Simpson, from Washington University computational modeling J. & Wigglesworth, G. (Eds.) at St Louis, U.S.A., and a methods, artifcial 2008. Children’s language PhD in Linguistics from the intelligence and artifcial life, and multilingualism: University of Melbourne. human memory, language PEOPLE

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Franklin Chang Title: Dr Program: Processing/ Learning Institution: University of Liverpool Franklin Chang is a researcher and lecturer whose research examines the relationship between Morten Christiansen Greville Corbett learning and processing Title: Professor Title: Distinguished Professor through the use of Program: Processing/ Program: Shape connectionist models and Evolution Institution: University of human experiments. Prior Institution: Cornell University Surrey to joining the staff at the Morten Christiansen does Greville Corbett’s research School of Psychology he pioneering research in the focuses on typology, has worked at Hanyang felds of language evolution, morphology, morphosyntax; University in Seoul, acquisition, cognition and Slavic and Slavonic South Korea, the Natural and processing. He uses languages. He is a founding Language Research Group computational modeling and member of the Surrey in the NTT Communication neuroimaging to investigate Morphology Group and an Science Laboratories near language and sequential Honorary Member of the Kyoto, Japan, and at the learning. Linguistic Society of America. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany with Michael Tomasello and Elena Lieven on issues in language acquisition. He completed his PhD on sentence production in the Department of Psychology at University of Illinois (Beckman Institute) with Gary Dell and Kathryn Bock. t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu 35

Russell Gray Stephen levinson elena lieven Title: Professor Title: Professor Title: Professor Program: Evolution Program: Shape/Processing Program: Learning/ Institution: The University of Institution: Max Processing Auckland Planck Institute for Institution: University of Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen Manchester Russell’s research has made signifcant contributions Stephen Levinson’s research Elena Lieven did her to the felds of linguistics, focuses on language diversity undergraduate degree and animal cognition, philosophy and its implications for her Ph.D. on individual of biology and behavioural theories of human cognition. differences in early language phylogenetics. He His work attempts both to development in the pioneered the application of grasp what this diversity is Department of Psychology at computational evolutionary all about, and to exploit it as the University of Cambridge. methods to questions about a way of discovering the role She came to Manchester in linguistic prehistory. This work that language plays in our 1979. She was Editor of the has helped solve the 200 everyday cognition. Journal of Child Language year-old debate on the origin from 1996–2005. In 1998 of Indo-European languages. Professor Lieven was granted long-term unpaid leave to work at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. This funded the Max Planck Child Study Centre from 1998- 2014 which was set up in the Manchester Department when she moved to Leipzig. In 2012, she moved back to work in the Manchester PEOPLE

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School and, as well as of Chinese; the grammar of University of Auckland. She continuing as Director of Chinese dialects, notably has also been a Visiting the Child Study Centre, took Cantonese, Chaozhou and Professor with Michigan on the role of Centre lead other Minnan dialects; State University, University of in the newly formed Centre language contact and Colorado at Boulder, and the for Developmental Science bilingualism, with particular University of Agder. and Disorders in the Institute reference to Sinitic Her research deals with of Brain, Behaviour and languages. He is Co-Director language variation and Mental Health. In 2014, of the Childhood Bilingualism change in its broadest the ESRC International Research Centre. An perspective. As well as an Centre for Language and amateur musician, he plays active research programme Communicative Development second violin with the Hong investigating variation in (LuCiD) of which Elena is Kong Chamber Orchestra situations of language and the Centre Director, was and the SAR Philharmonic. dialect contact, she has a established across the long-standing interests in Universities of Manchester, the ways social ideologies Liverpool and Lancaster on a affect language use and 5-year grant. perceptions of language users. In particular, she is interested in ideologies of gender and language. Her current research is mainly focused on variation and change in the Nkep speaking community of Hog Miriam Meyerhoff Harbour, Vanuatu. Title: Professor Program: Evolution/Learning/ Shape Stephen Matthews Institution: Victoria University Title: Dr of Wellington Program: Shape/Learning Miriam Meyerhoff completed Institution: Hong Kong her PhD at the University University of Pennsylvania in 1997 Stephen Matthews and since then has held t – 2014

OR specialises in language academic positions at the p E typology, syntax and University of Hawai’i at R

AL semantics. His current Moa, Cornell University, interests include the typology University of Edinburgh and COEDL Annu 37

Bee Chin ng Caroline Rowland Rena torres Cacoullos Title: Associate Professor Title: Professor Title: Professor Program: Learning Program: Learning/ Program: Evolution/Shape Institution: Nanyang Processing Institution: Pennsylvania Technical University Institution: University of State University Liverpool Ng Bee Chin works in the Rena Torres Cacoullos area of child language Caroline Rowland is a is an American linguist acquisition and semantics. professor in the Institute widely known for her work Her primary area of research of Psychology Health on language variation and is in psycholinguistics and and Society, University of change, as well as her sociolinguistic aspects of Liverpool. Her research research on processes of language acquisition in focuses on how children grammaticalisation and multilingual contexts. Topics acquire language, how the linguistic outcomes of which she has worked on the language acquisition language contact. She is include bilingual acquisition, mechanism interacts with a leading expert on New language identity and the environment, and how Mexican Spanish and has attitudes, semantic and adults and children represent developed a corpus of code- conceptual acquisition, language in the brain. switched speech in the New interpretation and Mexican Spanish-English translation, language and bilingual community with gender, speech pathology collaborator Catherine E. in multilingual settings. Travis. She has served as an Given the multilingual editor of Language Variation context she works in, she and Change since 2007. is interested in any aspect of language enquiry which explores the interaction between the speaker and the environment. PEOPLE

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and the European Research Council’s panel on the human mind and its complexity.

Associate Investigators

Jakelin troy Virginia Yip Title: Dr Title: Associate Professor Program: Archiving/ Program: Learning Technologies Institution: Chinese Institution: AIATSIS University of Hong Kong Jakelin Troy is a Ngarigu Virginia Yip is Professor woman whose country is the and Chairperson of the Wayan Arka Snowy Mountains of New Department of Linguistics and Title: Dr South Wales, Australia. Her Modern Languages as well Program: Shape/Archiving academic research is diverse as Director of the Childhood Institution: The Australian but has a focus on languages Bilingualism Research Centre National University and linguistics, anthropology at the Chinese University and visual arts. She is of Hong Kong. Her books Wayan Arka is interested in particularly interested in include Interlanguage and Austronesian and Papuan Australian languages of New Learnability (John Benjamins; languages of Eastern South Wales and ‘contact 1995) and The Bilingual Indonesia, language typology, languages’. Her doctoral Child: Early Development syntactic theory and language research was into the and Language Contact documentation. His current development of NSW Pidgin. (Cambridge University project on the typological Since 2001 Jakelin has Press; 2007) which received study of core arguments and been developing curricula the Linguistic Society of marking in Austronesian for Australian schools with a America’s Leonard Bloomfeld languages is an extension focus on Australian language Book Award in 2009. She of my previous collaborative programs. serves on the editorial board project with Indonesian of Bilingualism: Language linguists on the languages of Eastern Indonesia. He is t – 2014 and Cognition, International

OR still working on the Rongga p

E Journal of Bilingualism, R Second Language Research materials collected for The AL and Multilingual Education Rongga Documentation Project, funded by the Hans COEDL Annu 39

Rausing ELDP grant (2004- new writing systems. From 6). He is also currently doing 1998-2002 he was Associate collaborative research on Director of the Linguistic Data voice in the Austronesian Consortium at the University languages of eastern of Pennsylvania, where he Indonesia (funded by an led an R&D team working NSF grant, 2006-2009), on open-source software for Indonesian Parallel Grammar linguistic annotation. Project (funded by a near- miss grant from Sydney Steven Bird University (2007) and an Title: Associate Professor ARC Discovery grant (2008- Program: Archiving/Shape 2011), and the languages Institution: The University of of Southern New Guinea Melbourne (funded by an ARC grant 2011-2015). Steven Bird is Associate Professor in Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, and Senior Research David Bradley Associate at the Linguistic Title: Professor Data Consortium. His Program: Shape research focuses on formal Institution: La Trobe and computational models University for linguistic information, David Bradley has conducted with application to human extensive research on language technologies and endangered languages, Brett Baker to the description of the sociolinguistics, historical Title: Dr world’s 7,000 languages. linguistics, geolinguistics, Program: Shape Before coming to Melbourne language policy and Institution: The University of University he did doctoral phonetics/phonology in Melbourne and post-doctoral research at Southeast, East and South the University of Edinburgh Brett Baker is a senior Asia over many years, (1987-94). From 1995-97 lecturer in linguistics, the especially on Tibeto-Burman he conducted linguistic author of Word Structure in languages, as well as on feldwork on the languages Ngalakgan (2008), and the other languages of these of western Cameroon, co-editor (with Ilana Mushin) areas and on varieties of published a dictionary, and of Discourse and Grammar in English. He is a member helped develop several Australian Languages (2008). of the editorial boards of PEOPLE

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eight international journals and lover-directed speech; Yolŋu Studies program at and monograph series, the captions for the hearing Northern Territory University author, co-author, editor impaired; tone languages: (now CDU) in 1994. After or co-editor of over twenty lexical tone perception, tone working within the Faculty books and fve language perception with cochlear of Aboriginal and Torres atlases, several with implants, and speech- Strait Islander Studies and translation and/or second music interactions; human- the School of Education, and third editions; and of machine interaction; speech he moved to the Northern numerous other publications. corpus studies; and the Institute in 2010. He has role of infants’ perceptual over 40 years involvement experience and expertise, in with bilingual education, literacy development. linguistics and literature production in the NT, and the ways in which Aboriginal philosophies and pedagogies have infuenced the production and use of literature over the years. He is a major contributor to the Living Archive of Aboriginal Denis Burnham Languages. Title: Professor Program: Learning/Archiving/ Technologies Michael Christie Institution: MARCs at The Title: Professor University of Western Sydney Program: Shape Institution: Charles Darwin Denis Burnham is the University inaugural Director of MARCS at the University Michael Christie heads of Western Sydney. His up the Contemporary current research focuses on Indigenous Governance experiential and inherited and Knowledge Systems infuences in speech and research theme at the language development: Northern Institute, Charles infant speech perception; Darwin University. Professor t – 2014

OR auditory-visual (AV) speech Christie worked in Yolŋu p E perception; special speech communities as a teacher R

AL registers, including ,infant-, linguist in the 1970s and pet-, foreigner-, computer-, 1980s, and started the COEDL Annu 41

Simon Garrod nikolaus Himmelmann Title: Professor Title: Professor Title: Professor Program: Shape/Evolution Program: Processing/ Program: Shape/Archiving Institution: Max Planck Evolution Institution: University of Institute for Psycholinguistics Institution: University of Cologne Glasgow Nick Enfeld’s research Nikolaus Himmelmann addresses the intersection Simon Garrod holds has done feldwork in the of language, cognition, the Chair in Cognitive Philippines (Tagalog), social interaction, and Psychology and is director of Sulawesi (Tomin-Tolitoli culture, from three main the INP Social Interactions languages) and East Timor angles: 1. Semiotic structure Centre. His interests in (Waima’a) and published and process; 2. Causal psycholinguistics include widely on a number of core dependencies in semiotic reading, dialogue, and the issues in Austronesian systems; 3. Language evolution of language and grammar, including the and Human Sociality. His communication. He was nature of lexical and syntactic empirical specialisation is in awarded the Distinguished categories and voice. the languages of mainland Scientifc Contribution Award Southeast Asia, especially of the Society for Text and Lao and Kri. Lao is the Discourse and is a Fellow national language of Laos, of the Royal Society of spoken by over 20 million Edinburgh. people in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and elsewhere. Kri (Vietic sub-branch of Austroasiatic) is spoken near the Laos-Vietnam border in Khammouane Province by an isolated community of around 300 people. PEOPLE

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particularly American Indian communities and surrounding (rural) communities and towns.

paul Maruff Francesca Merlan Title: Professor Title: Professor Program: Processing/ Program: Learning Technologies Institution: The Australian Institution: Cogstate National University Paul Maruff is one of the Francesca Merlan’s research Ilana Mushin founders of Cogstate. He interests include: social Title: Dr is a neuropsychologist with transformation; indigeneity, Program: Learning expertise in the identifcation nationalism, language and Institution: University of and measurement of subtle culture; theories of social Queensland behavioral and cognitive action, organisation, and Ilana Mushin has a long- dysfunction. Paul’s research consciousness; modernity standing interest in the integrates conventional segmentary politics; management of knowledge and computerized exchange emergent in discourse. Her recent neuropsychological testing identities; gender, social research has included with cognitive neuroscientifc and cultural transformation epistemic stance-taking methods to guide decision in North Australia; the in Australian Aboriginal making in drug development transformation of place- communities; grammatical and in clinical medicine. worlds among Aboriginal description of Garrwa, people; the building of a critically endangered Australian national identity Aboriginal language; and, in relation to indigeneity; more recently, on the land claims; applied English-based vernacular anthropology; and sites and languages spoken by heritage issues. Her research most Aboriginal people in t – 2014 covers many geographies

OR Australia today.. She is the p

E and nationalities, including author of Evidentiality and R Australia; Papua New AL Epistemological Stance: Guinea; and North America, Narrative Retelling (John COEDL Annu 43

Benjamins, 2001) and A and innovation in the Light research professor at the Grammar of (Western) Garrwa Warlpiri auxiliary system. Institute for Evolutionary (Mouton De Gruyter, 2012) Of particular interest Biology (CSIC,UPF). During and co-editor of Discourse is the role of children the past decade he has and Grammar in Australian in grammaticalisation focused on theories for the Languages (with Brett Baker, processes. origins and evolution of John Benjamins, 2008). language using computer simulations and robotic experiments to discover and test them.

luc Steels Carmel o’Shannessy Title: Professor Title: Professor Program: Evolution/ Program: Shape/Learning Technologies Institution: University of Institution: Universitat Adam Vogel Michigan Pompeu Fabra, Sony Title: Dr Program: Processing/ Carmel O’Shannessy is Luc Steels studied linguistics Technologies currently documenting at the University of Antwerp Institution: University of a newly emerged mixed (Belgium) and computer Melbourne language in northern science at the Massachusetts Australia, Light Warlpiri, Institute of Technology Adam leads the Speech the emergence of which is (USA). His main research Neuroscience Unit at the the result of code-switching feld is Artifcial Intelligence University of Melbourne between an Australian covering a wide range of where his team work towards language, Warlpiri, and intelligent abilities, including improving speech, language English and Kriol (an vision, robotic behavior, and swallowing function English-lexifed creole). Her conceptual representations in people with progressive current projects include and language. He founded and acquired neurological diachronic changes in the Sony Computer Science conditions. Adam’s group nominal case-marking from Laboratory in Paris in 1996 pursues rehabilitation and Warlpiri to Light Warlpiri, and became its frst director. discovery research across and grammaticalisation Currently he is ICREA two intertwined domains: PEOPLE

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(1) the frst seeks to improve neuropsychological and His publications range communication and brain imaging methods. His across lexical semantics, swallowing in people with research can be applied to pragmatics, semantic progressive neurological understanding problems change, gesture, aphasia disorders (e.g., atypical in clinical neuropsychology and augmentative and dementia, hereditary including bilingual aphasia, alternative communication. ataxias); (2) the second dementia and reading He has done feldwork in exploits speech as a sensitive diffculties. He is Chair in central Australia and Far marker of central nervous Communication Science North Queensland. In the system integrity to better at the University of Hong area of documentary and understand the mechanisms Kong and Director of the descriptive linguistics, he underlying a range of Communication Science is currently working to neurological conditions (e.g., Laboratory at HKU, where he show how and why the sleep disturbance, drug has been since 2010. Prior current model of grammar, use, hearing impairment, 2010, he was a Reader in dictionary and texts needs depression). Experimental Psychology at to be complemented by a the University of Sussex for grammar of language use, ten years. an ethno-thesaurus, an ethnography of speaking and an account of a community’s paralinguistic repertoire and the interface of language with other culturally available semiotic systems.

Brendan Weekes Title: Professor Program: Processing David Wilkins Institution: Title: Dr Program: Shape Brendan Weekes is an Institution: Language and experimental psychologist Linguistics Consulting who studies the psychology of language and memory – David Wilkins is an t – 2014

OR specifcally word recognition anthropological linguist who p E and recall. He examines explores the relationship R

AL cognitive processes between language use, using cross-linguistic, culture and cognition. COEDL Annu 45

Postdoctoral Fellows compared to assessments Denise Angelo that rely on behavioural Australian National University tests as the single source of information. Guided by an Daniel Angus increasing interest in novel University of Queensland technology-assisted language Mark Antoniou assessment techniques, University of Western Sydney Christina has also been collaborating with the UQ Richard Aslin Discursis team (Prof. Janet University of Rochester Wiles and Dr. Daniel Angus) louise Baird since early 2012, and University of Canberra/ Christina Knuepffer joins the Centre as our frst Australian National University Title: Dr postdoctoral fellow. Program: Processing elaine Ballard University of Auckland Institution: University of Centre Administration Queensland linda Barwick Following her graduation Geoff Sjollema University of Sydney from Maastricht University Cathi Best (B.Sc in Biological Corin Murphy University of Western Sydney Psychology, M.Sc in Finance and Administration Neuropsychology), Christina Rosey Billington completed a PhD at UQ Joanne Allen University of Melbourne in the feld of language Director EA and Joe Blythe neuroscience, assessing Administration University of Melbourne language outcomes in long- piers Kelly term survivors of childhood Communications and lindell Bromham Australian National University traumatic brain injury. Using Outreach event-related potential Reuben Brown recordings and advanced Julia Miller University of Sydney diffusion magnetic resonance Data Management imaging in addition to Andy Butcher conventionally-used Affliate Members Flinders University behavioural language tests, Cynthia Allen lydia Byrne her PhD research highlighted Australian National University University of Queensland the superior sensitivity of technology-assisted Avery Andrews Matthew Callaghan techniques for the detection Australian National University Australian National University of language impairments, PEOPLE

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Manual Cantero Dominique estival Qandeel Hussain Australian National University University of Western Sydney Macquarie University Margaret Carew Bethwyn evans Scott Heath Monash University Australian National University University of Queensland Steve Cassidy nicholas Fay Rachel Hendery Macquarie University University of Western Sydney University of Western Sydney patrick Caudal Christopher Fennell luise Hercus Universite Paris-Diderot University of Ottawa Australian National University Helen Charters William Forshaw Darja Hoenigman University of Auckland University of Melbourne Australian National University Joshua Clothier Cindy Gallois Xia Hua University of Melbourne University of Queensland Australian National University Fanny Cottet John Giacon Catherine Hudson Australian National University Australian National University Australian National University loan Dao Amy Gibson Gwendolyn Hyslop University of Canberra University of Queensland University of Sydney Samantha Disbray Stephanie Goodhew Shunichi Ishihara Charles Darwin University Australian National University Australian National University Dwi Djenar Ian Green Yuki Itani-Adams University of Sydney University of Adelaide Australian National University Gerry Docherty Jenny Green louise Jansen University of Melbourne Australian National University laurent Dousset Rebecca Green Ray Johnston Aix Marseille University NT Department of Education Australian National University Marie Duhamel John Hajek Alan Jones University of Auckland University of Melbourne Macquarie University/ Australian National University elizabeth ellis paul Hallett Australian National University Consultant Marina Kalashnikova

t – 2014 Marcs Institute/University of

OR Mark ellison Amanda Hamilton

p Western Sydney E Australian National University University of Queensland R

AL Siva Kalyan tom ennever Mark Harvey Australian National University University of Queensland University of Newcastle COEDL Annu 47 eri Kashima Astghik Mavisakalyan Johanna Rendle-Short Australian National University Curtin University Australian National University Barbara Kelly elizabeth Mayer enrich Round University of Melbourne Australian National University University of Queensland Yuko Kinoshita patrick McConvell Antonia Rubino Australian National University Australian National University University of Sydney Harold Koch James Mcelvenny nikodem Rybak Australian National University Universitat Potsdam Australian National University Inge Kral Catherine McMahon Claire Salter Australian National University Macquarie University Consultant Jeong Yoon Ku Felicity Meakins Anju Saxena Australian National University University of Queensland Uppsala University Cat Kutay Stephen Morey Andrea Schalley Macquarie University La Trobe University Sebastian lacrampe David nash Dineke Schokkin Australian National University Australian National University Australian National University Debbie loakes Roslyn neilson Adam Schembri University Melbourne Consultant La Trobe University Robert Mailhammer Isabel o’Keeffe Mridula Sharma University of Western Sydney University of Melbourne Macquarie University tobias Maletz David osgarby paul Sidwell Australian National University University of Queensland Australian National University Ruth Singer University of Melbourne University of Queensland University of Melbourne Anna Margetts Varghese peter Hedvig Skirgård Monash University University of Western Sydney Australian National University Alexandra Marley Maia ponsonnet Karen Sullivan La Trobe University Dynamique de Langage University of Queensland Ben Matthews Ruying Qi Mele taumoepeau University of Queensland University of Western Sydney University of Otago Karen Mattock uta Reinohl Joe thurbon University of Western Sydney University of Cologne Intersect Australia PEOPLE

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Myfany turpin University of Queensland Charlotte van tongeren Australian National University Jill Vaughan University of Melbourne Jacques Vernaudon Universite de la Polynesie francaise Stephen Viller University of Queensland Kilu von prince Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin Michael Walsh AIATSIS Daniel Williams Universitat Potsdam t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu Section 3: Research

49 ee HR t

on I t C e S

03ReSeARCH 50 t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu Shape Program

The central concern of the Shape program is Researchers: the puzzle of linguistic diversity: how widely Associate Professor Rachel Nordlinger do languages differ, why do they differ, and (Program Leader) what do these differences tell us about how Professor Nick Evans people build functioning communication Dr Felicity Meakins systems for the needs of widely varying Professor Jane Simpson societies? Currently only around 10-15% Dr Nick Thieberger of the world’s 7,000 languages are well Professor I Wayan Arka described, and many of the remaining Dr Brett Baker 85-90% are highly endangered, including Associate Professor Steven Bird almost all of the languages of our region. Professor David Bradley Rampant language shift to colonial languages Professor Rena Torres Cacoullos like English or Indonesian means that most Professor Michael Christie languages in the region will disappear Professor Greville Corbett within the next century, and with each one a Professor Nick Enfeld library of its culture’s history and knowledge Professor Nikolaus Himmelmann of the natural world. Exploring the 7,000 Professor Stephen Levinson natural experiments represented by the Professor Stephen Matthews world’s languages is an immense task, and Professor Miriam Meyerhoff yet such work can ‘give the impossible a Dr Ilana Mushin chance’ by discovering design solutions Associate Professor Carmel O’Shannessy previously thought not to exist. The Shape Dr David Wilkins program will explore the design space of language by investigating a strategic selection of little-known languages of our region. We will push forward efforts to document this language heritage by a broad range of methods, drawing on innovative approaches and technologies; building the frst large corpora of Indigenous Australian and Papuan languages; and initiating new research on how intergenerational variation can reveal different design solutions evolving in languages to solve similar social communicative problems. SHAPE PROGRAM

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Our research program is made up of four remote languages (drawing on methods from main strands: the Processing and Learning programs); new Underdescribed and Endangered technologies (working with the Research Languages of Our Region Technologies thread); and a framework for typological comparison of morphosyntax. In this strand we will undertake targeted In April 2015 we will bring all participants language documentation projects in together for a lexicography workshop, with Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, other theme-based workshops planned Vanuatu, China and Laos, working with for later in 2015 and early 2016. Local speakers of small, under-described community training will be ensured by languages to record and document their running workshops with local participants. languages. An important part of this strand involves the documentation and description The projects currently underway in the of ‘new’ languages – creole languages Shape program cover languages of Australia and mixed languages that have developed (Anindilyakwa, Bininj Gun-Wok, Dalabon, through contact between traditional Garrwa, Gurindji Kriol, Kriol, Kunbarlang, languages and colonial languages such as Light Warlpiri, Murrinhpatha, Ngardi, English – for the information they provide on Mudburra, Warlpiri, Warnman, Warumungu, how languages vary and evolve. Traditional Wubuy), Bougainville Island, Indonesia methods for language documentation based (Yelmek-Maklew), Papua New Guinea (Idi, on intensive feldwork will be complemented Marind, Nambu, Nen), Samoa, Thailand by new techniques for gaining data on (Lisu, Gong) and Vanuatu (Nkep, Sa/Raga, t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu 53

South Efate, Tolomako). We expect to add knowledge, are of great value to indigenous more in 2015 with the appointment of more communities because corpus development postdoctoral researchers and PhD students. unlocks the material for local use, as well A further new Papuanist postdoc, Darja as forming the basic data-sets for present Hoenigman (ANU), will begin in March and future linguistic investigation. As well as on HRELP funding (UK) to work on the extensive collection of new materials, legacy previously unreported Meakambut language holdings will be upgraded by annotation of the Sepik region of PNG. with as much demographic data as can be collected, through detailed investigations in The research has both theoretical and the community, seeking to record identical practical value. Theoretically, work on information for all participants to make underdescribed languages will extend the corpora as comparable as possible. All our understanding of radically diverse corpora will be publicly available not just for linguistic structures and the full range of relevant researchers, but also for speaker structures possible in human language. On communities (subject to community-driven a practical level this research will lead to access restrictions), thus unlocking the the development of linguistic resources for material for local use. these communities – dictionaries, collections of traditional stories, language-learning This strand will be led by an expert materials – that will make a signifcant postdoctoral fellow (to be appointed at contribution to their efforts to maintain and UMelb in early 2015), who will work with preserve their languages. two postdoctoral fellows involved in corpus Corpus Development building for English contact varieties (UWS and UQ), and a postdoctoral fellow working A key goal for the Centre is to build large with a Discovery Indigenous languages corpora of little-known languages of our fellow on a special purpose Ngaanyatjarra region. Despite over 50 years of high- and Ngaatjatjarra corpus (ANU). A one-day quality linguistic research, there is still not workshop on corpus building to be held in one single publicly available corpus of an conjunction with the Australian Languages Australian Indigenous language. We will Workshop (March 2015) will spearhead this build large structured, annotated corpora research strand, to be followed by a small of 10 Indigenous Australian languages, workshop on creating a corpus for developing 3 Papuan languages, as well as Bislama, English contact varieties (April 2015), and a the national creole language of Vanuatu. larger meeting involving all Shape members We will work with the Documentation and later in 2015. Archiving thread on principles for the Multivarietal Documentation development of additional corpora and for presentation of portions of each corpus in The purpose of this strand is to move the EOPAS online system. These corpora, documentation beyond the traditional which will act as vast storehouses of cultural approach, which distils the structures of SHAPE PROGRAM

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a given language into an idealized shared Semantic Typology representation, and turn the spotlight on A further issue in understanding the shape intergenerational change. It capitalises on of language is the range of grammatical the Centre’s 7-year timespan to develop a solutions that evolve for solving the longer term, team-based research strategy communicative problem of coordinating connecting language documentation to the the attention and belief of speaker and focus on how variation feeds change in the hearer. We will focus on two sub-parts of Evolution program. Language change across this program – the coordination of attention generations is normal in all societies, but can between speaker and addressee, and the take varied and drastic forms in communities monitoring of shared knowledge and belief – where traditional languages come into contact and develop elicitation tasks to gather rich, with colonial languages such as English matched data across the languages being or Indonesian. In this research we will do worked on in the Shape program. As part of parallel documentation across the generations this we will develop a semi-parallel corpus – working with older people, younger adults, of around ffteen structurally very different and children all within the one community – languages from around the world. The data to investigate the different design solutions collected in this research strand will form that evolve in languages to solve similar social a semi-parallel, naturalistic corpus for how communicative problems, and the role that languages encode categories relevant to language typology, and language contact can social cognition. We will begin development play in the development of these solutions. of the required set of stimuli materials for this This part of the project interacts signifcantly strand of research during 2015. with Evans’ Laureate project Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity, within which plans for This research comes at the question four ‘multi-varietal documentations’ are now of linguistic diversity from the opposite in various phases of development: Western perspective to the language description Arnhem Land, Southern New Guinea, research outlined above: in this research Vanuatu (Pentecost Island) and Samoa. we zero in on particular communicative The frst one-week Forum Dialogue of the functions and compare their structures Wellsprings project, featuring prominent across a broad range of languages. This sociolinguists Peter Trudgill and James research will inform debates on how far the Stanford, has now been set for the frst week shared, fundamental human capacity for of February, 2016. Additional plans for 2015 social cognition is modulated by different include the appointment of a postdoctoral linguistic structures. In 2015 we will recruit fellow to begin a multigenerational and appoint a postdoctoral fellow (ANU) to

t – 2014 documentation project on Murrinhpatha work on a semi-parallel corpus of materials OR

p developed from Evans et al’s existing social

E (Australia), and work on creating and

R structuring multigenerational corpora. cognition stimulus set, as a part of this AL research strand. COEDL Annu 55

The story of Dre A previously unreported language came to light during a recent feldtrip to southern New Guinea led by Prof Nick Evans. A man named Dayaku Irfai, now in his 70s, is the last surviving speaker of Dre. With help from his nephew he travelled three days on foot to meet the project team and begin documentation. Nick Evans and University of New England PhD student Emil Mittag spent an intense week working out the essentials of the language, working through a linguistic goulash of Nen, Nambu, Dre and Arammba, the language Dayaku uses in daily communication. Dre belongs to the same family as Nen, though not close – roughly like Italian and Rumanian – and retains a number of interesting features lost in all other languages of the branch. 56 t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu Learning Program

The Learning Program has three strands each Researchers: of which focus on different learner groups: Professor Gillian Wigglesworth (Program (i) Children learning their frst language/s Leader) in multilingual contexts of language shift, Dr Paola Escudero (ii) adults and children learning additional Dr Caroline Jones languages in urban, indigenous and remote/ Professor Alan Rumsey other multicultural settings, and (iii) older Professor Denis Burnham adults and their families learning new Dr Franklin Chang languages and/or dealing with rapid language Professor Nick Evans loss or change. In the frst few years of Dr Evan Kidd the Centre of Excellence, the focus of the Professor Elena Lieven program will be on the frst two of these Professor Stephen Matthews strands, taking a broad view of different Professor Francesca Merlan aspects of language and investigating how Professor Miriam Meyerhoff they impact on learning. Dr Karen Mulak Dr Ilana Mushin Professor Bee Chin Ng Adults’ ways of talking to children and their Associate Professor Carmel O’Shannessy effect on language-learning outcomes Professor Caroline Rowland Children learn their frst language based Dr Jill Vaughan on the varieties to which they are exposed. Professor Virginia Yip How caregivers (parents, siblings, and other relatives and friends) talk to children refects to some extent their cultural attitudes and beliefs about what is required to support children’s learning, especially in the area of language. Using corpus data, interviews with caregivers, and ethnographic observation, we seek to deepen the literature on cross-cultural beliefs and attitudes beliefs and attitudes concerning children’s learning, their relation to patterns of actual language use, and the effect of these on language-learning outcomes’. LEARNING PROGRAM

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Across different populations, all four CIs In a highly multilingual community like will research key questions: Maningrida in North Central Arnhem Land, 1. What are attitudes to IDS/CDS patterns children are exposed to a broad range to children of different ages, genders, of languages, including contact varieties developmental profles? and English. Thus multilingual language acquisition is the norm and children 2. What are the views of different are typically socialised into established generations, women and men, caregivers multilingual practices such as code-switching with different Western education and mixing. This project will collect a corpus backgrounds, different language profles? of child speech and child-directed speech 3. How do these attitudes relate to from approximately six child/caregiver pairs patterns of actual language use and in Maningrida, tracking the child’s linguistic the organisation of social interaction production and input from six months to involving children, e.g. prevalence seven years old. The same methodology will of multi-participant versus dyadic be used in the Katherine region with children interaction, presence or absence of being raised in situations of language shift phonological simplifcation by adults in mainly Kriol speaking families. Caregiver/ when speaking to children? child pairs will be recorded for about an hour a day for four days in a single week every 4. How do differences of the kind referred three months, with recordings reducing in to in 3 relate to differences of outcome frequency as the children get older, across in children’s language learning, e.g. the seven years engaging in naturalistic family in their pronunciation, mean length of interactions, with caregivers or research utterances, and patterns of turn-taking assistants being trained to complete recording as they get older? at regular points during the three months. This corpus will allow us to investigate how Longitudinal child language acquisition in children’s language changes in the early years remote NT communities in terms of phonology, syntax, semantics and Children in Aboriginal Australia grow up in discourse competence, as well as how the a variety of diverse linguistic environments. child’s multilingual repertoire develops over This project will be undertaking longitudinal time. It will also give us access to how speech studies of Indigenous children language directed to children differs from adult-adult acquisition in remote multilingual context speech in the wider community, and how as well as in Kriol-speaking areas of the this changes with increasing child age and Northern Territory. The project will constitute language profciency. These data will provide t – 2014 the frst detailed longitudinal study of the frst long-term studies of children’s OR p

E Indigenous children’s language learning in language acquisition in a remote Australian R community, giving a more accurate insight AL different contexts. into Aboriginal children’s early social and linguistic lives. COEDL Annu 59

Language learning and the development of of the other. Function 1 is more basic children’s intersubjectivity in Ku Waru, PNG than 2 in that the experience of oneself as This project focuses on children’s locus of intentionality is more basic than language learning and the development of the individuation of oneself as an object of intersubjectivity - the capacity for sharing reference, and may even be a pre-condition and exchanging intentions and perspectives. for it. So one of our hypotheses is that these The project is based on feld research in three language functions will develop in the the Ku Waru region in the Highlands of order shown. A further hypothesis is that the Papua New Guinea. It builds upon linguistic- ways in which they develop may be affected anthropological research that they have been by culturally specifc understandings of doing in the region since 1981, and on a personhood and human interaction. current ARC Discovery/DORA project there The Centre will build on fndings from the that is headed by Rumsey. The primary data Ku Waru project to explore these three for the project consists of video and audio language functions in cross-cultural and recordings of four children’s interactions with cross-linguistic perspective, in order to gain a their parents and other interlocutors, which much broader view of language development are being transcribed and further processed and intersubjectivity. using specially designed software for the purpose. For studying the development of Adults, children and infants’ learning of intersubjectivity attention is being focussed sounds and words in multicultural settings on three language functions which are especially relevant for it, namely: In this project, we will document new cases of phonetic variation in less studied learning 1. the expression of desire and refusal; scenarios in: a) remote areas where multiple 2. reference to oneself and one’s languages or accents come in contact, such interlocutor; as in Papua New Guinea; and b) urban hubs, such as Western Sydney where English has 3. presenting one’s utterances in such specifc phonetic properties that differ from a way as to attribute them to another those of other varieties of English such as person or speech situation. American, Canadian or British English. Using Function 3 is relevant because the acoustic comparisons and computational representation of speech and thought is modelling, we will predict developmental inherently intersubjective, requiring the paths for the learning of sound systems and speaker to engage with the perspective lexicons in these diverse scenarios. We will of another. Functions 1 and 2 are also then test these predictions in longitudinal inherently intersubjective, but at more basic studies using innovative psycholinguistic levels; although they entail a differentiation tasks at the laboratory, which can be easily between self and other they do not set up on tablets to be used in urban and necessarily involve taking the perspective remote communities. LEARNING PROGRAM

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MARCS Institute

Does exposure to more than one language Mechanisms of language learning: lead to enhanced perceptual and lexical Statistical learning in multilinguals development? It has been shown that young infants can We predict that the effects of micro-variation harness relative frequency distributions on language learning that we have uncovered in the continuous auditory signal to learn in monolingual children and in adult second to discriminate speech sounds. Statistical language learners will be observable in learning of sounds and words has only been children and adults who grow up speaking examined as a mechanism in monolinguals. two or more languages. In this project, we We believe that bilinguals and multilinguals, test whether the extra variation in language who deal on a daily basis with multiple exposure intrinsic to multilingual populations speech-sound distributions and word- (which comes from different languages and object referents for multiple languages, different accents) results in an advantage. may be the key to our understanding of Specifcally, we are interested in empirically statistical learning as a viable language determining whether being exposed to more learning mechanism. Longitudinal studies variable input enhances acoustic sensitivity will allow us to establish differences in the leading to accelerated language development. way multilinguals harness the statistical A number of studies have already revealed properties of their variable input, unravelling general cognitive advantages for bilingual potential advantages in language learning children and adults. The present project and processing.

t – 2014 will examine through a series of longitudinal OR

p studies whether this advantage extends to E

R the development of sound discrimination and AL the learning and subsequent recognition of new words. COEDL Annu 61

Indigenous children and phonological awareness Phonological awareness – the ability to attend to, identify, and cognitively manipulate units of sound in the speech stream – is a key determinant of successfully learning to read in an alphabetic language. Assessing phonological awareness in the early years of school is important since phonological awareness is a strong concurrent correlate of word reading skills for many years. The National Curriculum now requires all states and territories to implement appropriate phonological awareness teaching and assessment. The Wilson Review (A Share in the Future, 2014) recommended that phonological awareness teaching and assessment in the Northern Territory should be included in preschools in both frst language and English in conjunction with initial research to ensure that these approaches are effective with Indigenous students, including those in frst language programs. In this context, researchers in the Language Learning program are collaborating with the Phonological Awareness Working Group in the NT Department of Education (including COEDL affliates Dr Rebecca Green and Dr Melanie Wilkinson) to develop a language-fair assessment tool for phonological awareness for NT students. 62 t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu Processing Program

This program’s research seeks to answer the Researchers: question: how does our language processing Professor Anne Cutler (Program Leader) ability enable us to rapidly perceive, produce Professor Helen Chenery and understand language given the massive Professor Janet Fletcher diversity observed across both speakers and Dr Evan Kidd languages? Our research activities form two Dr Julie Bishop broad strands: cross-linguistic studies, and Dr Franklin Chang studies of individual differences in processing Professor Morten Christiansen across the lifespan. We concentrate (though Professor Simon Garrod not exclusively) on the processing of spoken Dr Christina Knuepffer language, studying it in a breadth and depth Professor Stephen Levinson previously unmatched in any one project. Professor Elena Lieven We will map processing at multiple levels Professor Paul Maruff of description (from phonetics to grammar Professor Caroline Rowland and discourse) and observation (from neural Dr Adam Vogel to behavioural), in mono- to multilingual Professor Brendan Weekes individuals, in typical and impaired Professor Janet Wiles populations, and in a range of languages and dialects representing the unrivalled diversity in the Indo-Pacifc region. Processing naturally links with all other Centre Programs. Links to Shape underlie our focus on cross-language comparison, and on the processing challenges posed by diversity in language structure. We link to Learning in examining processing across the lifespan, assuming that language processing is dynamic and subject to developmental change. Individual processing differences reveal sources of variation in individual speakers, and relates to variation amongst speakers which leads to language change and evolution.

Cross-linguistic Processing Studies Cross-linguistic studies are key to theory building in linguistics. This part of the program will confront theories of speech and language processing with many new data PROCESSING PROGRAM

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points, diversifying and modernizing our language faculty. Genetic inter-population evidential base. We will examine multiple differences correlate with relevant language components of language in cross-linguistic differences. Individual differences in language perspective, from the basic building blocks skills are observable from the frst year of (phonetic segments, phonological structure: life, are longitudinally predictive of cognitive Fletcher) to all higher levels of linguistic and language outcomes, continue to affect structure (e.g., grammar: Kidd, PI Chang, speech and language processing in adults, AI Garrod; prosody: Cutler, Fletcher). We and characterize the types of language loss will focus on languages of our region (with subsequent to neurological damage and Shape and regional PIs and AIs), the large a person’s response to treatment. We will linguistic diversity of which enables us to uncover individual differences across multiple ask new questions of exceptional scope that components of language across the lifespan can be explored with 7 years of continuous in both typical and atypical speakers, and funding. For instance, do sentence and word incorporating cross-linguistic comparisons. prosody interact differently in polysynthetic This has important social outcomes: as languages (such as many Australian language profciency is a signifcant predictor Indigenous languages) versus agglutinative of general psychological and social outcomes, languages (Japanese, Korean), analytic identifying the source of individual and cross- languages (Bislama) or synthetic languages linguistic differences allows us to better tackle (English, Bengali), or tone languages the economic and social impact that language (Chinese)? Similarly, how do the unique problems have on individuals and societies. typological features of these languages Individual differences in typical populations: infuence grammatical processing? Can we Children must process their linguistic input in build computational models that are fexible order to learn it, but little is known about how enough to capture this diversity, as the individual differences in language processing human processing mechanism so exquisitely ability impact on acquisition. Using the can (Wiles, PIs Chang, Christiansen)? The latest experimental methodologies (e.g., answers to these questions will not only eye-tracking) we will follow a representative have substantial theoretical impact, but sample of children longitudinally from infancy are directly relevant to the development of to age 5, tracking how initial core cognitive research technologies for speech recognition and linguistic processing abilities support or automated parsing for translation (PI language development (Kidd, PIs Rowland, Bishop, AIs Vogel, Maruff). Lieven). This study will provide a wealth of data that will inform computational modelling Individual Differences Across the Lifespan (Wiles, PIs Chang, Christiansen). We will also t – 2014

OR Explaining how and why individuals differ take advantage of our region’s unparalleled p E diversity to intensively study individual R in their facility for language is crucial to AL understanding the linguistic, cognitive, and differences in adults (Cutler), particularly neural processes supporting the human prosodic structure. We will ask whether COEDL Annu 65

individual ability in processing prosodic diseases (e.g., Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s; structure varies in parallel across word, Chenery). Such populations (which are sentence and discourse prosody, whether growing due to our aging population) offer an the range of variation is equivalent across opportunity to investigate the neurobiological languages irrespective of prosodic system and neurocognitive underpinnings of (stress, pitch accent etc.), whether it co- language, and develop strategies to improve varies with other linguistic and non-linguistic quality of life through understanding the performance measures, and in particular language processing changes that occur whether a correlation with musical ability and how language impairment is signalled exists, as claimed for processing of tonal and repaired. Language processing in the structure. brain was long seen in terms of cortical function alone, yet a crucial role has been Neural and neurocognitive bases of demonstrated for subcortical structures. individual differences in language processing: Cross-disease comparisons will shed light Language is so complex that it is likely on how language (sub)components are to be supported by several interacting affected by primarily cortical (Alzheimer’s) neurocognitive mechanisms, including vs. subcortical (Parkinson’s) damage, with attention, memory and learning processes. the 7-year timespan of the Centre allowing A better categorisation of these mechanisms a unique long-term opportunity to measure is essential to explain individual differences the neurobiological bases of language within typical populations and clinically decline within individuals. Related to this signifcant differences attributable to language are the applied questions of how progressive delay and impairment (either developmental language loss impacts social roles, activities or acquired). Studies under this theme will and community participation, which we will focus on both typical and atypical populations explore. (PI Christiansen), as well as degenerative PROCESSING PROGRAM

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Interaction with Threads The Processing program makes signifcant use of, and will further develop, research technologies. The challenge of taking our basic research into remote feld sites in Australia and beyond necessitates methodological innovation (e.g., eye-tracking technology in the feld). We will also apply new generation data collection techniques using smart phone apps (e.g., sound recordings, BabyTalk app for collecting longitudinal acquisition data, PI Rowland) thus generating new forms of archival data. We will take our research with clinical populations (Chenery) out of the laboratory and clinic, by using sophisticated recording devices (combined with GPS and movement recording technology) to study language in situ, providing a never-before-captured, objective and contextualised measure of language use. With Wiles (Evolution), we will use a software tool Discursis to analyse conversations between people with neurodegenerative (primarily Alzheimer’s) diseases and others, to gauge how neurocognitive impairments affect language and vice versa. These unique, in-context datasets will serve as customised databases for machine learning, delivering predictive language scripts to repair troubled language. t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu Evolution Program

How and why did language evolve? Just Researchers: as Darwin showed that species are not Dr Simon Greenhill (Program Leader) fundamentally immutable, it is now known Professor Kim Sterelny that languages continue to evolve over time, Professor Catherine Travis adapting to societies and their environments. Professor Janet Wiles In recent years a wide range of disciplines Professor Rena Torres Cacoullos have contributed new ideas towards Professor Morten Christiansen understanding the evolution of language. The Professor Greville Corbett proposed Centre is uniquely poised to build Professor Nick Enfeld on these new initiatives to develop a general Professor Nick Evans theory of language evolution. The program is Professor Simon Garrod integrative in two respects. First, we integrate Professor Russell Gray over time. Language evolution operates over Professor Miriam Meyerhoff many levels and time-spans: from evolution of Associate Professor Rachel Nordlinger language as a communicative system, which Professor Jane Simpson took place over tens or hundreds of millennia, Professor Luc Steels to evolution of specifc languages across generations and within speech communities. Second, the program aims to link the cognitive capacity of individuals and how they process language to the use of language as a public and social product in a specifc cultural and ecological context. This will therefore integrate our understanding with how language works at the level of the individual to the level of the community or nation. The Centre’s study of language evolution at all these levels will be grounded in rich empirical data of the world’s diverse languages and cultures. We will identify and quantify the important mechanisms in evolution and link them to the “design space” of language and of symbolic systems more generally. This framework will enable the program to chart the evolution of language and cultural inheritance: to explain how human minds and cultures became increasingly shaped by the fow of information, and in turn shape the further EVOLUTION PROGRAM

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evolution of symbolic systems. The overall evidence to rigorously develop a generalized aim is to explore how and why language conception of evolutionary theory, informing evolved and continues to evolve, and how and informed by language evolution. Formal the emergence of language interacts with the techniques developed for evolutionary distinctive features of hominin social life and biology (e.g., modelling evolutionary change) cognition. At the microlevel we will focus on can now be applied to languages. These recent time-scales, and analyse language methods are immensely powerful using change within a social context, to address enormous amounts of data and allowing questions of whether and how minority hypotheses about language and language- communities participate in surrounding culture interaction to be explicitly tested. language changes in progress; and whether However, the application of these tools to and how new language varieties are created language must be intelligent and nuanced. from the bringing together of speakers We will identify the necessary preconditions of different varieties. Our understanding for these approaches to language, and show at the micro-level will then feed into the how evolutionary theory and linguistics enrich macrolevel explorations of change over large each other. time scales to uncover the processes that A family tree for the world’s languages: have shaped and continue to shape our towards a global phylogeny modern day linguistic and cultural diversity. Finally, our insights into the processes that We have pioneered the application of shape the development of language will be phylogenetic tools to language and have integrated into the design of more effective built robust phylogenies for some important and effcient language technologies for language families. The stage is now set for the developing felds of robotics and other a much more ambitious project: a global autonomous devices. This program will thus phylogeny of languages. To date, linguists not only transform research felds, it will also have worked with twigs or branches off provide understanding required for language the great tree of languages, focusing on technologies that can adapt with their users, unconnected families of languages. However leading to new industries for Australia, and to truly understand the fascinating story of will support policy development for enriching humanity’s cultural history, we need to go our multicultural society. to the roots to trace these languages further back and connect them. Working with the Documentation and Archiving thread, we will The evolution program has four key construct large-scale comparative databases projects: of language information from many of the Reconceptualising evolution in terms of

t – 2014 world’s languages. This new global database

OR language

p will subsume existing databases in both the E

R Evolution is one of the most powerful scale and quantity of data bringing linguistics AL processes shaping every adaptive complex into the “big data” era. We will investigate system. This project will use multiple lines of new cutting edge Bayesian phylogenetic and COEDL Annu 69 network methods drawn from evolutionary exciting ability to identify frequently evolved biology and adapt them to language evolution combinations of confgurations within design using the insights from the Shape and spaces (“attractor basins”) – and to fnd Processing programs. Finally, we will use those confgurations that are improbable or these data and methods to push the time- impossible. We aim to understand the extent barrier back as far as possible – 15,000 to to which language refects: (i) the existence 20,000 years or even further – to provide of distinct, but equally good, solutions to an integrated understanding of humanity’s a single design problem; (ii) the limits of linguistic heritage. evolution as a mechanism for building A revolutionised understanding of the optimal systems; (iii) the existence of distinct design requirements for language design problems in different environments; (iv) different trade-offs or compromises Each of the world’s 7,000 languages is in response to competing selective a natural experiment in how to design a pressures. These insights will not only help language, which are now being extended us understand language, but will be used with synthetically evolved languages. These to design effective processes for evolving languages show that there are many possible human-like communication with robots and confgurations of the fundamental building other complex technologies. blocks of language; languages convey different information in different ways. For A deep understanding of the social nature of language example, many Papuan languages have complex grammatical systems requiring Language evolution acts on variation speakers to track the source of information – variation enacted by social agents. through verbal affxes like ‘evidentials’ – ‘saw Speakers create variation to give form to with own eyes’, ‘hearsay’, ‘inferred’ etc., while socially contingent categories. Members other languages (like English) leave this to of the Centre will investigate language the speaker’s discretion. microevolution by detailing the development of new languages, such as for Australia’s The Centre will uncover the links between Aboriginal communities and the surrounding linguistic features within this design space, region (Simpson, Meyerhoff), and the vastly increasing our understanding of how linguistic consequences of the language different systems in each language interact contact situation of Australia’s growing with each other. At the microlevel we will immigrant communities (Travis, Torres chart how new structures and systems arise Cacoullos). We will examine the processes within communities (Travis, PIs Meyerhoff, of language change and variation through Torres Cacoullos), or experimentally (Wiles, the study of both the community language AI Kirby) while at the macrolevel we will and the English used by ethnic communities, analyse how these systems and combinations comparing that to their Australian peers. This are co-evolving over time (Greenhill, Wiles, PI strand will show how new language varieties Gray). These approaches provide us with the arise, and detail the role of social networks in EVOLUTION PROGRAM

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this process, dovetailing with Evans’ Laureate project on microvariation in small multilingual communities. By charting such change and variation over the 7 years of the Centre, we will gain insight into how language use changes as speakers move through different stages in the lifespan (tied to research in Shape and Learning). A better understanding of the role played by social interactions and the creative expression of identity in the construction of language variation and the propagation of change is crucial for an understanding of macroevolution. t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu New Generation Documentation and Archiving Thread

This Thread aims at making sure all the Researchers: primary and derived material created by Dr Nick Thieberger (Thread Leader) CoEDL is produced in ways that allow it to Professor I Wayan Arka be re-used later and that it will be archived Dr Judith Bishop in an accessible form. Accordingly, we Associate Professor Stephen Bird have established a repository for data in the Professor Denis Burnham CoEDL-based on PARADISEC’s (the Pacifc Professor Nikolaus Himmelmann and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Professor Catherine Travis Endangered Cultures) existing archive. We Professor Jaky Troy have successfully applied for disk space from the Research Data Strategic Initiative (RDSI), the federal government funded data storage system. We have begun work on adapting PARADISEC’s catalog (NABU) to the needs of the CoE, among other things including adding felds to the catalog, developing a better upload system for primary records, and building streaming access to media that can be delivered on mobile devices. Each program will produce varying kinds of material (recorded narratives, conversations, child language records, dictionaries, scholarly articles, statistical analyses and so on), and we aim to archive as much of it as possible. For records of small languages we will create a corpus in which it will be possible to perform the usual corpus operations (search, concordance, collocational search, frequency counts, visualisations based on well-structured data, etc.). We will also build playable online texts (as in the current EOPAS.org model) that will ultimately provide stories, with interlinear text and media, for as many languages as we can arange it for, with a map interface to make it attractive to general users. We have been identifying existing collections that will be made accessible via the CoE, for example, the work done by the Aboriginal NEW GENERATION DOCUMENTATION AND ARCHIVING THREAD

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Child Language Acquisition project, a systems that allow each of these to be collection of recordings made in the Daly adequately described for later retrieval. We region of northern Australia since the 1980s, need to develop a metadata entry tool that or the late Darrell Tryon’s collection of over will make it easier to write good descriptions 900 cassettes spanning his research career. in standard formats of fles created by CoEDL These kinds of collections will need signifcant researchers. Currently we have ExSite9, a tool work as they are in varying states of repair, built by PARADISEC, and will explore if it can or are analog tapes that will need digitising. be a basis for future development. As with most current research practice in the Finally, we want to encourage the use of a Humanities, little attention was paid to data simple guide to each collection that includes structures, flenaming, cataloging and other contextual information about how the aspects of data management. The work of collection came into being, what purpose it this Thread will be to develop appropriate was created for, what other material there is methods for participants in CoEDL and more (academic articles about it etc.), metadata on generally for all language researchers to the participants. ensure that the records they produce are accessible and reusable. These records include primary recordings, photos, feldnotes and then the additional annotations, texts, dictionaries and so on. We have committed to preparing accessible collections of material in at least 30 indigenous languages of Australia and its region. In order to get an idea of how much is known about the world’s languages we have partnered with the Open Language Archives Community and arranged for them to take a quarterly timeslice of their aggregated list of information held by all of their participating archives. We will be able to identify particular languages we have been working with and to observe the increase in materials available for those languages. There are various types of material recorded

t – 2014 by researchers in CoEDL including media and OR

p transcripts, and based in different annotation E

R traditions (language documentation, child AL language acquisition, language variation and so on), and we will be developing metadata COEDL Annu New Technologies Thread

Research technologies in the language Researchers: sciences are in a period of unprecedented Professor Janet Wiles (Thread Leader) development, and the judicious use of new Dr Caroline Jones (Deputy Leader) technologies can result in rapid advances, Dr Judith Bishop even paradigm shifts in the nature and Professor Denis Burnham scope of research. Given this rapid Professor Paul Maruff development, the role of this Thread is to Professor Luc Steels share, apply, extend and convert tools and Professor Jaky Troy resources from one area, e.g., Processing Dr Adam Vogel lab-based studies, to other areas, such as Shape feld-based investigations. This will be transformational for the broad feld of Language research and for our societies: this Thread will establish the use of tools and techniques which will radically change how language research is conducted, and produce outcomes in forms usable by researchers and the wider community. We will develop and integrate existing research- — based tools, shareware and in particular Though the use of English build on existing components which Centre partners have previously received Federal online increased by around funds to develop (e.g., Alveo and Exsite9). 281% from 2001 to 2011, To capitalise on possibilities now in reach, this is far less than the techniques will include collection of big data by citizens (crowdsourcing), automated increases for Chinese analysis and visualisation of corpora, and (1,277%), Russian (1,826%) modelling of language interaction and or Arabic (2,501%) over the evolution. This will allow the Centre to leverage Alveo’s rich set of tools and corpora, same period to integrate components in a unique way, — and minimise new software development. Mobile apps will make possible crowd- sourced acquisition of linguistic corpora and corresponding metadata, and technology for receptive language and/or hearing assessment, using eyetracking, ultrasound, and/or iPad-based interactive activities. We will work closely with the Documentation and NEW TECHNOLOGIES THREAD

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Archiving Thread to ensure that open source will remove many bottlenecks to the analysis apps not only facilitate data capture but of data on new languages, allowing much also allow return of language documentation more rapid building of minority-language material in forms that are useful to speech corpora. Relevant to Evolution on the macro- communities. From apps for Learning, this level, novel techniques will be developed for Thread will also derive language assessment inferring language relationships, quantifying tools for community use (e.g., school language similarity and modelling the readiness, hearing). The impetus for mobile evolution of both languages and language apps is driven by research imperatives traits over time. of Centre members working in different Development of high-end sophisticated community contexts. Mobile apps will be language technologies, such as robot developed by technical staff employed by language that would enable the development the Thread; and will then be piloted and of robot-robot and robot-human language user-tested by PhD students and community development. Robots will serve as a members working in different contexts across modelling tool for various theories across the Centre. Thence, via a test-development the Centre, particularly Evolution, in which cycle of refnement, these mobile apps will they can be used to instantiate hypothesized be deployed for Centre research. requirements for language to evolve. App Computational tools will use and make platforms are also beginning to migrate to accessible to a wider research community robots and other autonomous devices which more advanced statistical techniques (e.g., can capture rich movement contexts as well multilevel analyses, cluster/factor analysis, as sensory data, with novel developments phylogenetic analysis, simulation, machine expected to increase exponentially over the learning for prediction, and visualisation). life of the Centre. The use of autonomous For example, Discursis is an analysis robots to capture rich linguistic scenarios will system for assisting language researchers in be trialled in selected feldwork locations. visualisation of data and metrics for analysis We will also develop a language prosthesis based on “semantic recurrence plots” (time to assist people as their language declines series analysis techniques). The recurrence due to Alzheimer’s or other neurological plots will be extended from transcribed text conditions. The prosthesis will be used to audio, permitting the analysis of prosody, by the individual to assist in daily living, speaker identifcation, conversational turns, to identify conversational diffculty then emotional state. Similar tools for Learning, deliver predictive language scripts based Processing, Shape and Evolution (on the on a customised database collected by community-based, micro-level) would allow Centre researchers. The prosthesis will have t – 2014

OR (semi-) automatic estimation of the frequency assistive technology applications in health p E of acoustic, lexical, or grammatical events and education. R

AL and their distribution by speaker, time, and discourse context. These advanced tools COEDL Annu Section 4: Education, Training and Mentoring

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The Centre benefts a wide range of graduate students across the four collaborating institutions. The highly collaborative and cross-disciplinary nature of the Centre provides an outstanding environment for producing the next generation of researchers. We welcome many of the students below as they commence and continue studies in 2015. t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu The Australian National University 77

Denise Angelo Claudia Cialone Alex Marley Supervisor - Professor Jane Supervisor - Dr Evan Kidd Supervisor - Professor Nick Simpson Topic - Language and Evans Topic - Contact languages cognition in indigenous Topic - Effects of Bininj Gun- in education, and creole in languages wok / Mawng bilingualism on Kowanyama, Cape York structure Marie-France Duhamel James Bednall Supervisor - Professor Nick Kyla Quinn Supervisor - Prof Jane Evans Supervisor - Dr Simon Simpson Topic - Sa language, Vanuatu Greenhill and Professor Nick Topic - Tense, mood and Evans tina Gregor aspect in Enindilyakwa Topic - Syncretic patterns as Supervisor - Professor Nick a phylogenetic diagnostic tool Carlo Dalle Ceste Evans Supervisor - Dr Beth Evans Topic - Documentation of Hedvig Skirgård and Dr Simon Greenhill the endangered Yelmek and Supervisor - Professor Nick Topic - Noun classes in Eivo: Maklew langusges Evans a study on their synchronic Topic - Microvariation in nature, micro-variation and Samoa diachronic evolution

For the past three years I have been employed as a community linguist at the Bundiyarra - Irra Wangga Language Centre (Geraldton, Western Australia), where I have been involved in conducting research on several Pama-Nyungan languages of the Mid-West of Western Australia, concentrating in particular on lexical and grammatical descriptions of the Badimaya and Wajarri languages (Pama-Nyungan, Kartu). My role as linguist has involved facilitating community and school-based language revitalisation programs, developing language-learning resources, assisting Aboriginal community members in linguistic and language training, working in collaboration with Aboriginal Australians to deliver language and cultural awareness training, and undertaking administrative responsibilities. My research interests include syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and their respective interfaces; language contact; and language documentation practices, and I’m looking forward to starting my PhD at ANU, where I’m going to be exploring the expression of temporal, aspectual, modal and evidential categories in Enindhilyakwa, a non-Pama- Nyungan language spoken on the Groote Eylandt archipelago in the Northern Territory. — James Bednall 78 The University of Melbourne

Mat Bettinson Daniela Diedrich Ivan Kapitonov Supervisor - Dr Nick Supervisor - Dr Nick Supervisor - Associate Thieberger and Associate Thieberger and Associate Professor Rachel Nordlinger Professor Steven Bird Professor Rachel Nordlinger Topic - A grammar of Topic - Language Topic - Description of Kunbarlang (Northern documentation 2.0: In Paku, a Southeast Barito Australia) search of scalable tools and language spoken in Central Gemma Morales methods Kalimantan, Indonesia Supervisor - Professor Gillian Rosey Billington Bill Forshaw Wigglesworth and Dr Barb Supervisor - Associate Supervisor - Associate Kelly Professor Janet Fletcher and Professor Rachel Nordlinger Topic - Emergent literacy Dr Brett Baker and Dr Barbara Kelly skills in two remote Topic - Phonetics and Topic - The acquisition indigenous schools in phonology of vowels and of verbal morphology in northeast Arnhem Land. tone in Lopit Murrinhpatha Alice Warren lucy Davidson Katie Jepson Supervisor - Dr Nick Supervisor - Professor Gillian Supervisor - Professor Janet Thieberger and Associate Wigglesworth and Dr Joe Fletcher Professor Rachel Nordlinger Blythe Topic - Production Topic - A grammar of Topic - The acquisition of and perception of Tolomako, Vanuatu reference in Murrinhpatha prosodic prominence in Djabarrpuyngu.

I’m very excited about joining the Centre to learn and do feld work on understudied languages, which I dearly love. I have worked with a couple languages so far, mostly Adyghe (Northwest Caucasian), but also Imbabura Quichua (Quechuan) and Kalmyck (Turkic). Adyghe is a language with fascinatingly complex morphosyntax characteristic of the polysynthetic type. My project in the Centre will be work on a grammatical description of Kunbarlang (Gunwinyguan), a polysynthetic language indigenous to Australia’s North Territory. With less than 20 speakers remaining, it is on the brink of extinction, and there’s little time left to capture and document it. — Ivan Kapitonov t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu The University of Queensland 79 lydia Byrne Amanda Hamilton nikodem Rybak Supervisor - Professor Janet Supervisor - Dr Felicity Supervisor - Professor Janet Wiles and Dr Dan Angus Meakins Wiles and Dr Dan Angus Topic - Analytic Visualisation Topic - Young People’s Topic - Characterising audio for Complex Problems Nyangumarta recurrence dynamics in conversation tom ennever Scott Heath Supervisor - Dr Felicity Supervisor - Professor Janet Brian Song Meakins Wiles Supervisor - Professor Janet Topic - A Grammar of Ngardi Topic - Evolving spatial Wiles and Dr Dan Angus and temporal lexicons for Topic - Neurobiological Amy Gibson Lingodroids (mobile robots) inspired algorithms for Supervisor - Professor Janet with different sensors and Robotics Wiles cognition Topic - Spiking Neural Angus Veitch Networks with temporal Caroline McKinnon Supervisor - Dr Dan Angus delays enable clock-free Supervisor - Dr Dan Angus learning: how timing Topic - Visualising plain knowledge and claims in representation can be used language public discourse about coal in forming construals seam gas development in David osgarby Australia Claire Gourlay Supervisor - Dr Rob Supervisor - Dr Felicity Meakins and Dr Rob Meakins Topic - A Grammar of Topic - Kriol/Mudburra/ Mudburra Jingulu Contact at Elliot, NT

I am a PhD student of the Complex and Intelligent Systems research group at the University of Queensland. My PhD work focuses on using a bio-inspired computational model which can form construals and make predictions from sequential series featuring multi-timescale structures. Forming construals is the process of interpreting and conceptualising the objective world. This ability aids a person to make judgements, inferences and predictions. With a linguistic time series, to construe is to fnd the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic structures within the sequences. These are key features that determine the grammar, the meanings of the words and the meanings that the words are conveying in a given situation. Being able to construe from a language is central to understanding it, however, the construal problem is poorly modelled in the feld of computational linguistics. In my PhD work, I am investigating this challenging area using visual and textual sequences that have inherently complex temporal structure. — Amy Gibson 80 The University of Western Sydney

Muneeb Ahmad Samra Alispahic Gloria pino escobar Supervisor - Dr Paola Supervisor - Dr Paola Supervisor - Dr Paola Escudero and Dr Omar Escudero Escudero and Dr Caroline Mubin Topic - Learning to Perceive Jones Topic - Using Robots as and Recognize Second Topic - Bilingual lexical an Instructional Tool For Language Vowels development of Spanish- Teaching a Secondary English bilingual children in Martin Ip Language To Children Australia Supervisor - Professor Anne Cutler Topic - Universal versus processing

My research seeks to explore the cognitive foundations and learning mechanisms that underpin humans’ ability to acquire and process spoken language. Throughout my undergraduate studies in developmental psychology and foreign languages at the University of Queensland, I became fascinated with the burning questions in psycholinguistics concerning how the language we speak shapes both the ways we perceive fuent speech and the ways we represent the world. At the same time, coming from a Chinese-speaking trilingual family, I am always captivated by the sound structures of different languages and regional dialects. Through cross-linguistic experimental methods, I hope to investigate the universal and language-specifc infuences in speech perception and ultimately address how research fndings in this area can provide crucial hints about the human mind and its operations. — Martin Ip t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu Section 5: Outreach and Engagement

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05outReACH AnD enGAGeMent OUTREACH AND ENGAGEMENT

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Centre members will sharing their research and expertise in regular public events. These include annual public lectures as well as small workshops held with speakers of rare languages in Australia and the Pacifc.

In 2015 we are planning to support the Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad (OZCLO), the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World program and the Third Symposium on Bilingualism and Intercultural Communication.

Appen Student Internship program CoEDL and the PARADISEC archive An Australian technology success story, The Pacifc and Regional Archive for Appen was founded in 1996 to develop Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures linguistic technologies for the global market. (PARADISEC) was established in 2003 by Appen now provides language technology The Australian National University, The data and services in more than 140 University of Sydney and The University languages and dialects to companies and of Melbourne with support from the ARC. governments around the world. As a CoEDL PARADISEC provides a facility for digital Partner Institution, Appen provides expertise conservation and access to endangered in large-scale language data processing materials. One of the most important (transcription and annotation) and highly functions of PARADISEC is to make feld developed quality assurance processes. recordings available to recorded individuals and their descendants. Appen and CoEDL are working to develop a student internship program to provide CoEDL Since its inception, PARADISEC has PhD students with experience and training grown to become the pre-eminent digital in the high quality Appen processes and cultural archive in the Asia-Pacifc. In exposure to the diversity of Appen projects. 2012 it was awarded with the European The frst internships are planned to take Data Seal of Approval, and in 2013 the place in 2015. United Nations Educational, Scientifc and

t – 2014 Cultural Organization (UNESCO) inscribed OR

p PARADISEC on the Australian Memory of E

R the World Register in recognition of the AL importance of the PARADISEC collection. COEDL Annu 83

CoEDL will be a heavy user of PARADISEC Prof Anne Cutler was awarded International and will be an active participant in the Speech Communication Medal for Scientifc ongoing development of the archive Achievement on 18 September 2014. The and related tools. Through the New ISCA Medal for Scientifc Achievement Documentation and Archiving Thread, CoEDL recognizes and honors an individual provides funding support to PARADISEC’s each year who has made extraordinary technical team to ensure the Centre’s contributions to the feld of speech researchers have access to world class communication science and technology. The archiving facilities. award of ISCA Medal has been established since 1989. ISCA Medal is presented to the Awards winner by ISCA President at INTERSPEECH opening ceremony. Prof Nick Evans played a major role (consultant & substantial appearance on Australian schools and universities screen) in the documentary flm Language Matters, by David Grubin Films, with a Prof Jane Simpson ran a workshop on the half-hour section on indigenous Australian topic of ‘Learning Indigenous languages – languages. This flm won the Grand Festival can universities help?’ at the University of award for Documentary at the 23rd Annual Newcastle on 9 December. Berkeley Video and Film Festival 2014.

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International The CoEDL is a truly international Centre with partners in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, Europe and North America. In 2015 CoEDL will formalise a new partnership with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.

The University of Manchester The University of Liverpool Max Planck Institute The University of Surrey for Psycholinguistics

Penn State Cornell University

The Chinese University of Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong

Nanyang Technical University

The University of Queensland Appen The Australian National University The University of Western Sydney t – 2014 AIATSIS OR

p The University of Melbourne E

R Victoria University AL of Wellington

The University of Auckland COEDL Annu 85

The University of Manchester The University of Liverpool Max Planck Institute The University of Surrey for Psycholinguistics

Penn State Cornell University

The Chinese University of Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong

Nanyang Technical University

The University of Queensland Appen The Australian National University The University AIATSIS of Western Sydney The University of Melbourne Victoria University of Wellington

The University of Auckland OUTREACH AND ENGAGEMENT

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The Centre Launch In November the Centre was formally launched and we relocated to our new space at the ANU. We were privileged to have the ARC CEO Professor Aidan Byrne and MP Kelly O’Dwyer come and meet the team and provide a wonderful introduction to the Centre.

Member for Higgins Kelly O’Dwyer, ARC CEO Aidan Byrne and ANU Vice-Chancellor Ian Young formally launch the CoEDL t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu 87

CoEDL in the Media Channel 7 News and Prime 7 News: November “University of Western Sydney study fnds Australian babies understand Canadian Milly McCutcheon interviewed Prof Jane accents better”, “Research has found that Simpson on W2SER on the topic of mother- the Australian accent has babies baffed”, tongue medium instruction. Prof Simpson “Research into a group of Sydney infants discussed the difference between people shows learning to speak can be a slow preserving languages by documenting them process” and preserving languages by speaking them. SBS World News: “Research suggests The launch of the Centre on 24 November Australian babies struggle to pick up the 2014 was reported by: Australian accent” The University of Melbourne Newsroom, ABC Online: “University of Western Sydney “How language works is focus of new study fnds Australian babies understand research centre” Canadian accents better” ABC Online: “New Canberra-based language Cruise1323 (Adelaide) and Mix FM 101.1 centre uses robots to help dementia patients” (Melbourne): Interview with Dr Paola (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-24/ Escudero, 8:02am on 15 December 2014. new-language-centre-considers-robots-to- help-dementia-patients/5914370) Dr Simon Greenhill’s research on folktale phylogenies and their relationship to The Canberra Times: “Research centre European language groupings was reported forges new ‘gang’ to study science in the Business Insider on 20 December, of language dynamics” (http://www. “Amazing folk tale map reveals deep canberratimes.com.au/act-news/research- links between cultures” (http://www. centre-forges-new-gang-to-study-science-of- businessinsider.com.au/folktale-map-reveals- language-dynamics-20141124-11shvv.html) cultural-links-2014-12) ABC Radio 666: News interview with Associate Professor Rachel Nordlinger Professor Nick Evans, 17:00, 24 November featured in the SBS program Talking 2014. Language with Ernie Dingo on 14 November December 2014. Dr Paola Escudero’s research into infant pre- linguistic processing was covered extensively between 12–15 December 2014. ABC Radio National, PM with Mark Colvin, “Babies baffed by Australian vowel sounds” (http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2014/ s4147893.htm) 88 t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu 89

Section 6: Outputs SIX on I t C e S

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Publications Cutler, Anne. 2014. “In Native and Non-Native Thrall to the Vocabulary.” Accents.” Akerman, Kim, Bruce Frontiers in Acoustics Australia 42: Psychology, Language Birch, and Nicholas 84–89. Sciences 5 (1059). Evans. 2014. “Notes on the Contemporary Cutler, Anne. 2014. Escudero, Paola, K Mulak, Knowledge of Traditional “How Prosody is both and Samra Alispahic. Material Culture among mandatory and optional.” 2014. “Acoustic Distance the Iwaidja – Cobourg In Above and Beyond the Explains Speaker versus Peninsula, Arnhem Segments. Amsterdam: Accent Normalization in Land, Northern Territory John Benjamins: 71-82. Infancy.” In Proceedings 2005-6.” Transactions of the 15th Australasian Elvin, J, and Paola Escudero. of the Royal Society of 2014. “Comparing International Conference 138 (2): South Australia Acoustic Analyses of on Speech Science 181–213. 2-5 Australian English Vowels and Technology December 2014. Alispahic, Samra, Paola from Sydney: Cox (2006) Christchurch. Escudero, and Karen versus AusTalk.” In Mulak. 2014a. “Diffculty Proceedings of the 15th Escudero, Paola, and. 2014. in Discriminating Non- Australasian International “Distributional Learning Native Vowels: Are Conference on Speech Has Immediate and Dutch Vowels Easier for Science and Technology Long-Lasting Effects.” Australian English than 2-5 December 2014. Cognition 133 (2): Spanish Listeners?” Christchurch. 408–13. In Proceedings of Elvin, J, Paola Escudero, Evans, Nicholas. 2014. . Interspeech 2014 and P Vasiliev. 2014. “Positional Verbs in Nen.” Christchurch. “Spanish Is Better than Oceanic Linguistics 53 ———. 2014b. “Is More English for Discriminating (2): 225–55. Always Better? The Portuguese Vowels: Fletcher, Janet, and Perception of Dutch Acoustic Similarity versus A Butcher. 2014. Vowels by English versus Vowel Inventory Size.” “Sound Patterns of Spanish Listeners.” In Frontiers in Psychology, Australian Languages.” Proceedings of the 15th Language Sciences 5 In The Languages and Australasian International (1188). Linguistics of Australia: Conference on Speech Escudero, Paola, C Best, C A Comprehensive Guide, Science and Technology

t – 2014 Kitamura, and K Mulak. 3:89–132. The World 2-5 December 2014. OR

p 2014. “Magnitude of of Linguistics. Berlin: E Christchurch. R Phonetic Distinction Mouton de Gruyter. AL Predicts Success at Early Word Learning in COEDL Annu 91

Fletcher, Janet, M Hamzah, of Language Concepts: 2014. “Severity of autism and J Hajek. 2014. Relationships to Field is related to children’s “Amplitude and F0 as Experiences.” Australian language processing.” Acoustic Correlates of Journal of Learning Autism Research 7 (6): Kelantan Malay.” In Diffculties 19 (1): 17–32. 687-694. Proceedings of the 15th Kidd, Evan, Angel Chan, Koch, Harold, and Rachel Australasian International and Joie Chiu. 2014. Nordlinger. 2014. Conference on Speech “Cross-Linguistic The Languages and Science and Technology, Infuence in Simultaneous Linguistics of Australia: 63–66. Christchurch, Cantonese–English A Comprehensive Guide. New Zealand. Bilingual Children’s Berlin: De Gruyter Fletcher, Janet, D Loakes, Comprehension of Mouton. and A Butcher. 2014. Relative Clauses.” Kriengwatana, B, Paola “An Electro-Palatographic Bilingualism: Language Escudero, and J Terry. Study of Consonant , and Cognition 2014. “Listeners Cope Sequences.” In 1–15. doi:10.1017/ with Speaker and Accent S1366728914000649. Proceedings of the 15th Variation Differently: Australasian International Kidd, Evan, S Goodhew, and Evidence from the Conference on Speech B McGaw. 2014. “Why Go/No-Go Task.” In Science and Technology, Is the Sunny Side Always Proceedings of the 15th 115–18. Christchurch, up? Explaining Spatial Australasian International New Zealand. Mapping of Concepts Conference on Speech Fletcher, Janet, D Loakes, by Language Use.” Science and Technology J Hajek, and J Clothier. Psychonomic Bulletin & 2-5 December 2014. 2014. “Identifying / Review 21: 1287–93. Christchurch. el/-/æl/: A Comparison Kidd, Evan, E Tennant, Maxwell, O, and Janet between Two Regional and S Nitschke. 2014. Fletcher. 2014. “Tonal Towns.” In Proceedings “Shared abstract Alignment of Focal of the 15th Australasian representation of Accents in Two Varieties International Conference linguistic structure of Indian English.” In on Speech Science in bilingual sentence Proceedings of the 15th and Technology 2-5 comprehension.” Australasian International December 2014, 41–44. Psychonomic Bulletin & Conference on Speech Christchurch, New Review, published online Science and Technology, Zealand. 22 November. 59–62. Christchurch, Jones, Caroline, and D New Zealand. Kidd, Evan, E Bavin, L Tetley. 2014. “Pre-Service Prendergast, E Baker, C Teachers’ Knowledge Dissanayake, and M Prior. OUTPUTS

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Meakins, Felicity, and Derivational Morphology, Ethnographic Fieldwork Rachel Nordlinger. 2014. 651–68. Oxford: Oxford Recordings and Providing A Grammar of Bilinarra: University Press. Long Term Access.” An Australian Aboriginal ———. 2014b. “Teaching Australian Sound Language of the Northern Minority Indigenous Recording Association Boston: De 39: 45–53. Territory. Languages at Journal Gruyter Mouton. Universities.” In FEL XVIII Williams, Daniel, and Nordlinger, Rachel, D Okinawa: Indigenous Paola Escudero. 2014. Estival, J Henderson, Languages: Their Value “Infuences of Listeners’ B Kelly, M Laughren, E to the Community, Native and Other Dialects Mayer, D Molía, et al. 54–58. Batheaston, UK: on Cross- Language 2014. “Australia Loves dation for Endangered Vowel Perception.” Language Puzzles: The Languages. Frontiers in Psychology, Australian Computational Language Sciences 5 Stoakes, H, A Butcher, and and Linguistics Olympiad (1065). Janet Fletcher. 2014. (OzCLO).” Language and “Revisiting the Pressure Williams, Daniel, and Paola Linuistics Compass 8 Impulse in Australian Escudero. 2014. “A (12): 659–70. Languages: Bininj Gun- Cross-Dialectal Acoustic Rumsey, Alan. 2014. Wok.” In Proceedings Comparison of Northern “Bilingual Language of the 15th Australasian and Southern British Learning and the International Conference English Vowels.” Journal Translation of Worlds on Speech Science and of the Acoustical Society in the New Guinea Technology, 102–5. of America 136: 2751–61. Highlands and beyond.” Christchurch, New HAU: Journal of Zealand. Seminars and conference 4 Ethnographic Theory Ter Schure, Sophie, Dorothy participation (2): 119–40. J Mandell, Paola Alispahic, S., Escudero, ———. 2014. “Language Escudero, Maartje E. J. Paola., & Mulak, K. E. and Human Sociality.” Raijmakers, and Scott P. (2014, November). “Is In The Cambridge Johnson. 2014. “Learning more always better? The Handbook of Linguistic from Visual and Auditory perception of Dutch Anthropology, 391–410. Information in 8- and vowels by English versus Cambridge: Cambridge 11-Month-Old Infants.” Spanish learners.” University Press. Infancy 19: 476–95. 39th Boston University t – 2014

OR Conference on Language

p Simpson, Jane. 2014a. Thieberger, Nicholas. 2014. E Development. R “Pama-Nyungan.” In “PARADISEC, Building AL Oxford Handbook of Methods for Preserving COEDL Annu 93

Angus, Daniel & Janet Wiles. Dichotic listening and acoustic analyses of 2014. “AVML Discursis hemispheric integration Australian English workshop”, Tubingen in perceptual processing” vowels from Sydney: Cox Germany, 24-26 Australian Linguistic (2006) versus AusTalk”, September. Society Conference, Australasian International Newcastle, 10-12 Conference on Speech Arka, Wayan. 2014. December. Science and Technology, “Categorial Christchurch, New multifunctionality in Escudero, Paola., Mulak, Zealand. Flores languages: K. E., and Vlach, H. Descriptive, typological 2014. “Infants’ cross- Escudero, Paola, S Alispahic and theoretical issues”, situational learning of and K Mulak. 2014. Title: Australian Linguistic minimally different words Diffculty in discriminating Society Conference, depends on the type non-native vowels: Are Newcastle, 10-12 and magnitude of the Dutch vowels easier December. phonological contrast.” for Australian English Poster presentation at the than Spanish listeners?. Cutler, Anne. 2014. Plenary: 39th Boston University Interspeech 2014, “Learning about speech.” Conference on Language Singapore, October. Interspeech, Singapore. Development, November. Evans, Nicholas. 2014. Cutler, Anne and M Ernestus. Escudero, Paola, B “Multilingualism as 2014. “BALDEY: The Kriengwatana and J Terry the primal human Biggest Auditory Lexical 2014. “Listeners cope condition: What we have Decision Experiment with speaker and accent to learn from small-scale Yet”, 9th International variation differently: speech communities, Conference on the Mental Evidence from the Go/No- 2nd Symposium Lexicon, Niagara, Ontario, go task”, December. on Bilingualism September. and Intercultural Escudero, Paola, S Alispahic Cutler, Anne. 2014: Keynote: Communication in and K Mulak. 2014. “Getting stress right conjunction with “Acoustic distance for your language,” the opening of their explains speaker versus Workshop: The Role of Multilingualism accent normalization in Prosody in Language Laboratory, 7 August. infancy”, Australasian Learning, Macquarie International Conference Evans, Nicholas. 2014. University, Sydney, on Speech Science and Opening plenary talk: December. Technology, Christchurch, “Hearing the inside: the Cutler, Anne, S Mandal, C.T. New Zealand, December. landscape of meaning Best and J Shaw. 2014. in Australian indigenous Escudero, Paola and J “Perceiving markedness: languages”, AILA Elvin. 2014. “Comparing OUTPUTS

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[International Applied Fletcher, Janet & Colleen English”, 15th Australasian Linguistics Association] Holt. “Accentuation International Conference Conference, Brisbane, 10 and focus production on Speech Science and August. by Cochlear Implanted Technology, Christchurch, and Normally hearing New Zealand Evans, Nicholas. 2014. adolescent speakers Australian Academy Fletcher, Janet, M Hamzah of Australian English”. of the Humanities & J Hajek. 2014. International workshop Symposium theme “Amplitude and F0 as on Child Language session: “Look It acoustic correlates of Acquisition, Sound Up: Dictionaries, Kelantan Malay”, 5th Change, and Speech Encyclopaedias, Atlases”. Australasian International Disorders, Venice 19–21 November. Conference on Speech International University Science and Technology, Evans, Nicholas. 2014. and IPS, Ludwig- Christchurch, New “Deep Under the Maximiliens Universitaet Zealand. Word: Dictionaries and zu Muenchen, 16-17 Traditional Cultural October. Fletcher, Janet, A Butcher Knowledge”, 45th Annual & H Stoakes. 2014. Fletcher, Janet. 2014. Symposium of The “Revisiting the Pressure “Workshop on the role Australian Academy of Impulse in Australian of prosody in language the Humanities, ANU, Languages: Bininj Gun- learning: Stress, Tone, Canberra, 21 November. wok”, 15th Australasian and Intonation.” International Conference Evans, Nicholas. 2014. Macquarie University, 8-9 on Speech Science and Keynote address: December. Technology, Christchurch, “Coevolution and Fletcher, Janet, D Loakes New Zealand. Linguistic Diversity: and A Butcher. 2014. Challenges for Linguistics Fletcher, Janet, D Loakes, J “An electro-palatographic in the 21st Century.” Hajek & J Clothier. 2014. study of consonant Linguistics Society of India “Identifying /el/-/æl/: A sequences in Iwaidja”, Conference, Trivandrum, comparison between two 15th Australasian India, 2 December regional towns”, 15th International Conference Australasian International Evans, Nicholas and on Speech Science and Conference on Speech Simon Greenhill. 2014. Technology, Christchurch, Science and Technology, “Pronoun paradigms, New Zealand. Christchurch, New

t – 2014 syncretism and language Fletcher, Janet and O Zealand. OR

p phylogeny”. Australian E Maxwell. 2014. “Tonal R Linguistics Society Annual Greenhill, Simon. 2014.

AL alignment of focal accents Conference, Newcastle, “Pronoun paradigms, in two varieties of Indian NSW, 11 December. syncretism and language COEDL Annu 95

phylogeny.” Australian Linguistic Society panel on ‘Performance, Linguistics Society Conference, Newcastle, Translation and the Conference, Newcastle, 10-12 December Creation of Worlds’ 10-12 December. at the 2014 Annual Kelly, B, J Mansfeld, W Meeting of the American Jones, Caroline, K Demuth, T Forshaw, R Nordlinger & Anthropological & D Ahfat, K Falkenberg, G Wigglesworth. 2014. Association, 5 December. A German, G Macdonald, “The use of speech acts and A Painter. 2014. in Murrinhpatha language Simpson, Jane. 2014. “Variation in fricative socialisation”, Australian “Teaching Minority production by young Linguistics Society Annual Indigenous Languages adult Kriol speakers from Conference, Newcastle, at Universities”, Barunga NT. Australian 10-12 December. Paper presented at Linguistics Society Annual the Foundation for Forshaw, W, B Kelly, Conference, Newcastle, Endangered Languages R Nordlinger & G 10-12 December. Annual Meeting, Naha, Wigglesworth. 2014. Okinawa, Japan, 18 Jones, Caroline, E & G “Acquiring Murrinhpatha: September. Quinlan, C McGrady, big verbs are hard.” M Sulter, D McLaren 39th Boston University Simpson, Jane and David & M Kirby. 2014. Conference on Language Nash. 2014. “Plants, “Towards a course that Development. animals, words: supports community discussion points”, Rumsey, Alan. 2014. leaders.” Learning Plants, animals, words “Bilingual language Indigenous languages: workshop, University learning and the can universities help?, of Kent, Canterbury, 3 translation of worlds Workshop, University of October. in the New Guinea Newcastle. Highlands and beyond”. Sterelny, Kim. 2014. Mushin, Ilana. 2014. Different versions were “Farewell to Content”, “Clause-initial or turn- presented at the 2014 New Zealand Association initial?: Grammar, Annual Conference of of Philosophy, conversation and the the Linguistic Society Christchurch, 3 Garrwa particle ngala”, of Papua New Guinea December. Australian Linguistic on 17 September and Sterelny, Kim. 2014. Society Conference, at the 2014 Annual “Innovation in Human Newcastle. Meeting of the American and Animal Behaviour Anthropological Nordlinger, Rachel. — Overview, Main Issues Association 5 Dec. 2014. “Incorporation and Themes”, Innovation and polysynthesis in Rumsey, Alan. 2014. Panel in Animals and Humans: the Daly”, Australian Chair and Discussant at Understanding the OUTPUTS

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Origins and Development Travis, Catherine E and Rena Visits and feldwork of Novel and Creative Torres Cacoullos. 2014. Kidd, Evan. 2014. Fieldtrip Behaviour; St Andrews Title: What do post-verbal to East New Britain, PNG, Scotland, 3-4 November. subject pronouns do in September. discourse?, Australian Thieberger, Nick. 2014. Linguistic Society Annual Kidd, Evan. 2014. Visiting Invited and funded Coneference, University scholar at Hong Kong to present at the of Newcastle, 10-12 Polytechnic University, Zentrum für Allgemeine December. December. Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) Berlin, 25 September Travis, Catherine E, John Evans, Nick. 2014. Hajek, Colin Nettelbeck, Fieldwork on Nen, Ndre Thieberger, Nick. 2014. Elizabeth Beckmann & and other languages, ‘Lost and found–invisible Anya Lloyd Woods. 2014. Morhead District, collections in the other Practices and Policies: Western Province, PNG, 7000 languages’ at Current Research in September–October. CRDO, CNRS, Marseilles, Languages and Cultures 31 October. Evans, Nick. 2014. Nanyang Education: LCNAU Technological University Thieberger, Nick. 2014. Turpin, Myfany. 2014. (Dec 15); gave seminar, Invited Presentation “Mapping Indigenous met with PI Prof Bee Chin “Languages archives Ceremonial Songs”, 45th Ng, and graduates and and new research Annual Symposium of postgraduates, discussed methods in support of The Australian Academy feldwork on Marind small languages.” 1st of the Humanities, ANU, (identifed West Papuan International Caucasus Canberra. language for Corpus University Association Building) with PhD Conference on Wigglesworth, Gillian and J. Student Bruno Olsson Endangered Languages, Vaughan. 2014. “Codes Ardahan University, and classrooms: The Evans, Nick. 2014. Turkey. interaction of home and University of Cologne, school language(s) in four (Dec 16 – Jan 14): Travis, Catherine et al. Aboriginal communities”, discussed various issues 2014.“Subject expression Australian Linguistics with AI Prof Nikolaus in spoken English: Testing Society Conference, Himmelmann, including hypothesized genre Newcastle, 10-12 issues of archiving differences”, Australian December. endangered language

t – 2014 Linguistic Society material, planned visits by OR

p Conference, Newcastle.

E postdoc Ute Reinold and

R 10 December.

AL other postgrads, wrote two chapters of Nen reference grammar. COEDL Annu 97

Evans, Nick. 2014. Max Max Planck Institute Planck Institute for for Psycholinguistics, Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen. New PhD Nijmegen, 9 January student Hedwig Skirgard 2015. Discussed also present. planning of joint scale- Evans, Nick. 2014. up projects with PI University of Wellington, Prof. Steve Levinson, Feb. 27, 2015. Presented and coordination of seminar on Wellsprings their project with Evans’ Project, Dept Linguistics, Wellsprings project University of Wellington. (their PhD student is working in Amazonian Rumsey, Alan. 2014. Visit Peru ) to maximise data to Mt. Hagen and Kailge, compatibility. Western Highlands Province, PNG for Evans, Nick. 2014. INALCO linguistic-anthropological (CNRS), Paris, January research, 20 September – 15-16, 2015. Three 4 October. lectures delivered in their ‘Initiation à la Rumsey, Alan. 2014. Visit linguistique de terrain’: to Yale University to Ethnolinguistique confer with colleagues in Sociolinguistique, Dept. of Anthropology, 1 Typological semantics, December. and How to Build a Rumsey, Alan. 2014. Visit Grammar. to Princeton University Evans, Nick. 2014. to confer with colleagues University of Auckland, in Dept. of Anthropology, Feb. 23-26, 2015. 10-11 December. Visited CI Russell Gray and other researchers at U. Auckland to plan 3 large global databases of the world’s languages, as a joint enterprise of CoEDL, a new Max Planck Institute for the Sciences of History in Jena, Germany, and the new ARC Grants awarded to Centre Members

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Amery, R.M., Simpson, J.H. Wiles, J., Angus, D.J., Treloyn, S.A., Thieberger, Chenery, H.J. N.A., Jebb, M.A., Christen, ARC Discovery Project 2015 K., Dowding, A.M. (DP150103287) ARC Discovery Project 2015 (DP150102604) ARC Discovery Project 2015 The Ngarrindjeri language (DP150100894) of the Lower Murray This project aims to develop of South Australia was an automated conversation This project aims to richly documented in analysis system to quantify investigate Indigenous the nineteenth and mid- how communication changes song traditions of the twentieth centuries. The over extended periods western Pilbara through largest body of texts (163 of time. It is innovative current practice and legacy texts in Berndt and Berndt, in proposing to extend recordings. It aims to show 1993) is a treasure-trove the theory and methods how public song traditions of language and cultural of recurrence analysis were used through the knowledge from the 1940s, (a dynamical systems twentieth century as tools but has received little technique) to interacting to manage environmental linguistic attention, because modalities combining text, change. By recording and of diffculties in interpreting audio and video, and to documenting songs and writing conventions and longitudinal analyses. The histories, and curating because of the inadequate project is signifcant in being and developing an online translations provided. the frst to aim to measure collection of song-based Through systematic linguistic communication dynamics digital heritage items with a analysis and reconstructions, over time in the felds of virtual landscape interface, this project aims to shed education, health, public the project is expected light on how Ngarrindjeri discourse and science. It is to produce knowledge changed over the 100 years expected to result in new about the role of digital since frst documentation, theories and methods for collections and cultural how clan languages differed, recurrence analysis validated mapping in supporting the and how Ngarrindjeri using real-world data; and sustainment of endangered texts and sentences were to enable new technologies song traditions. It also structured. It is expected for evaluating professional aims to develop tools for to provide important insight communication training and use by communities and into the variation expected in communication changes researchers to secure legacy, language contact situations. resulting from education or crowd-sourced and newly disease progression. created records of intangible Total awarded: $357,700 t – 2014 cultural heritages for the

OR Total awarded: $295,900

p future. E R

AL Total awarded: $359,489 COEDL Annu 99

Ellis, E.M., Kral, I.B., Mushin, I., Gardner, R.J. Harvey, M.D., Turpin, M.M., Green, J.A., Simpson, J.H. Proctor, M.I. ARC Discovery Project 2015 ARC Discovery Indigenous (DP150100113) ARC Discovery Project 2015 2015 (IN150100018) (DP150100845) An enduring problem in Verbal arts are central Indigenous schooling is the This project addresses to social interaction. discrepancy in outcomes a central question about In the Western Desert compared to mainstream language. How well do we Ngaanyatjarra and children, but little is known understand the structure Ngaatjatjarra people use about one crucial factor: the of syllables and words? The special speech styles to role of Indigenous ways of project aims to examine mark particular occasions speaking and their ways of the Australian language and life transitions. Led engaging with knowledge (Kaytetye), the unusual by Ngaatjatjarra linguist, and learning. This ground- word and syllable structure researcher and educator breaking project aims to of which suggests that Elizabeth Marrkilyi Ellis, compare preparatory school models of syllable and the research team aims to students in two urban word structure may require build on a corpus of these settings: a mainstream signifcant revision. The endangered oral traditions. school and a school with project aims to consider Following in-depth linguistic high Indigenous enrolments. the implications of Kaytetye analysis the project aims The project also seeks sound structure for general to implement strategies to to examine learning in theories of phonology, and revitalise these endangered children’s homes to establish more importantly for ideas styles through dynamic how the fow of knowledge about universals in language. contemporary applications is managed in Indigenous The project involves thus reintegrating them into and mainstream families. extensive documentation the language socialisation By investigating these four of Kaytetye, which is an framework of youth. The settings, it is expected to endangered language. The project aims to assist provide important evidence project is expected to provide Aboriginal people to for understanding how a detailed description of safeguard their heritage and language and cultural ways Kaytetye sound structures contribute to a wider public of knowing contribute to the and articles addressing the appreciation of Aboriginal discrepancy in schooling implications of these fndings languages and cultures. outcomes. for phonological theory.

Total awarded: $480,227 Total awarded: $204,500 Total awarded: $202,135 NEW ARC GRANTS AWARDED TO CENTRE MEMBERS

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Meakins, F.H., Pensalfni, Antoniou, M. Round, E.R. R.J. Discovery Early Career Discovery Early Career ARC Discovery Project 2015 Researcher Award 2015 Researcher Award 2015 (DP150101201) (DE150101053) (DE150101024) The linguistic cradle of many Mastery of a second This project aims to harness Aboriginal children in remote language generates the insights of dissipating Australia is a multilingual economic advantages, information, to discover setting involving considerable especially in English- language histories by mixing between languages. speaking nations with large bringing together two high- Children bring this linguistic immigrant populations, defnition technologies: background to the task of such as Australia. It is not powerful, computational learning English. This project clear why some second- statistical engines pioneered is the frst investigation language learners fourish in genetics; and fne-grained, of a trilingual Indigenous while others struggle in the statistically optimised community, Elliott (Northern same educational setting. observations of language Territory), where children Successful learners must structure. It seeks new grow up hearing Jingulu, possess attributes that insight into how languages Mudburra and Kriol. It aims when combined with the reveal history, and how to examine how people features of the learning cultural groups speaking the at Elliott manage multiple situation result in positive Uralic languages of Eurasia languages and how these learning outcomes, whereas and Australian Aboriginal languages have changed unsuccessful learners languages diverged, spread through mixing processes are likely mismatched to and interacted, from a distant such as creolisation and their training method. In a past to the recent present. code-switching. Exploring series of artifcial language this dynamic language learning experiments, this Total awarded: $373,000 ecology is crucial to tailoring project aims to identify the educational programs to combination of factors that suit the needs of Aboriginal matter most in successful children. It is expected language learning. Ultimately to place Australia at the it may be possible to tailor forefront of studies of training proactively to complex language change. maximise learning outcomes.

Total awarded: $294,500 Total awarded: $364,536 t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu 101

Turpin, M.M. Thieberger, N.A. ARC Future Fellowship ARC Future Fellowship 2014 (FT140100783) 2014 (FT140100214) Indigenous ceremonies are Fragile records of the worlds a fundamental aspect of Indigenous languages are Indigenous identity and they at risk of being lost. Better play a role in Indigenous research methods that can health and wellbeing. This beneft not only academics project aims to develop but also the general public a typology of Australian aim to be developed in this Aboriginal ceremonies project and used to train new by classifying them researchers and community according to their structural members in creating better features. By mapping their records. Collaborating across distribution and comparing Australia and the Pacifc in these with linguistic and building tools that will result anthropological evidence in better research practices, it seeks to provide insights it will increase knowledge into Indigenous prehistory of what research has been and cultural diffusion done, and will target areas for across arid Australia. This future focus. Modelling new project aims to lead to a feldwork methods, building greater understanding of reusable datasets, and the ecological knowledge curating long-term collections contained in songs and of language records will all increased Indigenous be part of this project, as will knowledge of, and outreach to support similar engagement in, work both in linguistics and ceremonial life. in the broader community.

Total awarded: $767,373 Total awarded: $756,404 102 t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu Section 7: Financials

103 en V e S on I t C e S

07FInAnCIAlS HEADING HEADING Consolidated Financial Statement 2014

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ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language

INCOME Total ($) Grant Funds ARC CoE Grant Funds 4,120,882 Institutional Contributions The Australian National University 530,001 The University of Melbourne 310,000 The University of Queensland 247,000 The University of Western Sydney 247,000 Total Income 5,454,883

EXPENDITURE Salaries 166,954 Travel and Fieldwork 21,792 Equipment 57,724 Scientifc Services 786 Events 12,324 Centre administration 1,201 Website, branding and marketing 11,681 Total Expenditure 272,462

Note: CoEDL was awarded funds on the basis of a full year of operations beginning calendar year 2014. The offcial start date of the Centre was 15 September 2014, resulting in an intense 3 1/2 month period of recruitment activity for 2014, and the resulting appointments are expected to begin in early 2015. Salary costs are budgeted to constitute over 70% of Centre expenditure, and as such the Centre will carry over a signifcant cash balance into 2015. t – 2014 OR p E R AL COEDL Annu Section 8: Performance indicators

105 t IGH e on I t C e S

08peRFoRMAnCe InDICAtoRS PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

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Performance Measure Target 2014 Actual Research Findings Research Outputs Journal Articles 3 21 Book Chapters 0 3 Conference Publications 2 11 Keynote, plenary and invited presentations at major meetings 6 4 (a) Commentaries about the Media releases, appearances and 14 15 Centre’s achievements articles Blog entries 16 0 (b)

Research Training and Professional Education Professional training courses attended 2 0 (a) Number of Centre attendees at training offered by the Centre 20 2 (a) New postgraduate students 0 2 New postdoctoral researchers recruited 2 1 (a) Early Career Researchers 2 1 (a) Students mentored 2 1 (a) Mentoring programs offered by the Centre 1 0

International, National and Regional Links and Networks International visitors and visiting fellows 2 1 (a) National and international workshops held/organised by the 1 6 Centre Visits to overseas laboratories and facilities 4 21 Interdisciplinary research supported by the Centre 10% 38% (% of total research publications)

End User Links Government, industry and business community briefngs 1 0 (a) Public awareness/outreach programs: school visits, public 3 1 (a) lectures, workshop in Indigenous communities Website hits 2,000 0 (c)

Organisational Support

t – 2014 Cash contributions from Administering and Collaborating $1,334,000 $1,334,000 OR

p Organisations E

R In-kind contributions from Administering and Collaborating $2,321,501 $1,513,997 (d) AL Organisations COEDL Annu 107

In-kind contributions from Partner Organisations $185,357 $49,000 (d) Other research income Category 1 $850,000 $2,454,220 secured by Centre staff Category 2 $0 $0 Category 3 $633,000 0 (a) Category 4 $0 $0 New organisations collaborating with, or involved in the Centre 1 0 (a)

National Benefts Contribution to the “Safeguarding Australia” Enhanced capacity to interpret and engage with National Research our regional and global environment through a Priorities greater understanding of the languages used by our partners and indigenous groups. “Promoting population health and Provision of evidence-based advice to relevant well-being” community members on how appropriate language strategies can improve quality of life from infancy to old age across a range of linguistic backgrounds. Feedback on outreach and professional training sessions relating to language teaching and learning from participants and other interested parties. “Maximise social and economic By enhancing the linguistic and metalinguistic participation in society” skills of Australians, enhance communication from the arteries of the capillaries of our social fabric across domains of life as varied as education, legal access and health provision. “Frontier technologies” Development of smart language technologies, through breakthrough developments in speech processing, storage and processing of language data across a wide range of languages, and assistive language technologies for language- impaired and language-learning situations.

Notes: (a) The offcial start date of the Centre was 15 September 2014. The target performance indicators were developed on the basis of a full year of activity. As such, a range of outputs, training activities, income and end-user links will signifcantly increase in 2015 as the Centre builds momentum. (b) Through the development of the Centre’s new website (see note (c)) and social media profle, a revised blog strategy has been formulated. During the early years of the Centre’s life, blog activity will predominantly be through re-posting and linking to existing blogs written by Centre members, affliates and renowned personalities in the feld. Future activity reports will refect the nature of the blog post. (c) For the period of this report the Centre maintained a temporary page using the domain dynamicsofanguage.edu.au. A design frm has been appointed and the new website is due for release in February 2015. (d) A signifcant proportion of in-kind is in the form of salary support for research staff and administration, on a full calendar year basis. Due to the September start date, the salary contributions are pro-rated, resulting in a lower in-kind value for the reporting period.