The Building Blocks of Language Sciences

Reference grammars and dictionaries are the building blocks of linguistics.

Grammars seek to explain the workings of a language, especially the thousands of grammatical rules and the ways they interact to construct an infinite number of sentences. Writing a grammar is an immense intellectual effort, involving extensive data-gathering, organisation, analysis and time, often including fieldwork in remote communities.

A priority of linguistics is to have quality grammars of every human language, as some of the most challenging phenomena in language science may be present in just one or two languages. Under a quarter of Pacific languages have some form of grammatical description and many of the world’s 7000 languages are unlikely to be spoken beyond this century [1 – 3]. Documenting these languages is therefore urgent for cultural preservation and linguistic inquiry.

For these reasons, charting the full design space of language was central to CoEDL’s mission. By late 2022, CoEDL researchers had produced 19 grammars, 3 more than proposed. These grammars come from leading publishers and received significant prizes, such as the Georg von der Gabelentz award, won in 2022 by CoEDL PhD graduate Christian Dohler for his grammar of Komnzo.

Dictionaries are similarly central outputs of linguistic and cultural documentation. Communities value them as a symbol of the importance of their language; as tools for learning, maintaining and revitalising language and ecological and cultural knowledge; and for facilitating work in other areas, like land management.

In collaboration with communities, CoEDL produced dictionaries in over ten Australian Indigenous languages (several supported by institutional partner AIATSIS) and four Pacific languages, as well as flora and fauna vocabulary books from languages of the region.

Contributing to handbooks and textbooks was an important way CoEDL redefined the field. Surveys of the language sciences through handbooks can transform scholarly practice by building shared understandings and providing new benchmarks for best practice methods. Textbooks reset how language science students and scholars see the discipline and areas within it by condensing insights and findings into a conceptual schema of questions and methods within which new research is situated.

Language conveys culture across time through story, song and commentaries on other forms of creativity like art. These creative expressions also drive language change and were therefore a focus of CoEDL research and archival work.

Examples from across Australia and the Pacific, many co-authored by speakers and art practitioners, include:

• Jennifer Green’s landmark book Drawn From the Ground [4], the first account of story-telling to bring together speech, song, sand-drawing and gesture in a single time-linked analysis
• The Western Desert verbal arts texts from Affiliates Inge Kral, Jennifer Green and Elizabeth Ellis In the Time of Their Lives [5], which draws on recordings of Ngaatjatjarra verbal art, recognised in the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World register, and i-Tjuma [6]
• The bilingual books on Gurindji oral history by Erika Charola and CI Felicity Meakins Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country [7] and Mayarni-Kari Yurrk: More Stories from Gurindji Country [8]
• The Warlpiri history film Kaja-warnu-jangka by Maxwell Walma Tasman Japanangka and AI Carmel O’Shannessy

• April Pengart Campbell and collaborators’ book Mer Angenty-warn alhem: travelling to Angenty country [9], featuring Anmatyerr and Warlpiri singers and speakers
• Nicholas Evans’ piece [10] linking Sally Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Gabori’s art and her Kayardilt language for the 2022 exhibition of her art at the Fondation Cartier in Paris
• Five unique commentaries on First Nations songs, their creation, language, circulation and processes of re-learning this knowledge from archives [11 – 15]
• Azeb Amha and collaborators’ discussion of the intriguing phenomenon of naming people by tunes in the Oyda and Yopno communities of Papua New Guinea [16]
• Documentation of Tekná (song-tales) of Kayan people of Sarawak, Indonesia by Rosalind Wan and collaborators [17]