Arrernte at heart: Children's use of their traditional language and English in a Central Australian Aboriginal community

Abstract

This thesis is a rich description of a group of primary school aged children's language at Ltyentye Apurte, an Eastern Arrernte community in Central Australia. It documents morphosyntactic properties of their speech and broader aspects of their communicative competence. Notwithstanding variation in the cohort, this thesis finds that the children are essentially maintaining Arrernte rather than shifting to a contact code.

Theoretically and methodologically the thesis draws on aspects of language documentation and language socialisation traditions, combining discourse and ethnographic data. The discourse data comprises recordings in three contexts: textless picture book narratives, spontaneous first-person recounts told in the sand and classroom interactions. The ethnographic data comprises my participant-observations and conversations with parents/carers and educators which both contextualise and enhance interpretation of the discourse data.

Analysis of the narratives elicited through textless picture books is based on audio recordings of 17 children aged 5;9-10;10 and three adults each telling four stories, a total of 80 recordings. It investigates use of two morphosyntactic constructions that are distinctive features of Arrernte and integral to referent tracking and/or event packaging: the definitising function of 3sg pronouns and the switch reference system. Variation in the children's use of these constructions, when seen in the context of each child's language profile, is found to be better explained by social factors than by age.

Analysis of a culturally valued communicative event type, scary stories told in the sand, is based on the video recordings of five children aged 7;4-9;6, investigating their integration of speech, drawing and use of a stylus. It introduces a new approach describing how children lay out their stories with entities (people, scary beings, landmarks), path lines (protagonists' journeys) and swipes (transitions between scenes). Their drawings include 'Western' style icons and graphic elements found in adult performance of sand talk genres in Central Australian communities. The subject of the children's personal experience stories provides evidence of their growing understanding of the physical and social geography of the community, including locations and behaviours of widely known monsters and similar beings.

Analysis of classroom talk is based on a video recording of a mainstream curriculum Maths lesson in a Year 1-2 class of 20 students. It focuses on two of the students (aged 7;4 and 8;3) as they complete a pair task and talk with their teacher. They are found to work co-operatively and draw on both Arrernte and their early English language proficiencies to understand the requirements of the task and learn the lesson concepts. Their interactions and linguistic behaviours evidence early socialisation into the school environment.

This thesis contributes to research on children's language and ways of communicating in a contact situation, informed by empirical and qualitative data. It adds to the growing number of case studies of Aboriginal children's language in Australia and to the typological diversity in child language research globally. The study suggests factors that mitigate against language loss under pressure from English. It foregrounds the community's ideologies, advocacy and efforts to provide the linguistic, sociocultural and educational conditions that nurture children's Arrernte, alongside English.