[Xmca-l] Re: Indigenous Australian English

[David Kellogg]

I think it means that Australians are leading the way into a future without
articles. Actually, very few languages use an article system; as you know,
Russian does not, and neither does Chinese, Korean, Tibetan or Turkish.

As you point out, English doesn't always use articles either. When we embed
singular nouns in prepositional phrases, the use of the article tends to
depend on the meaning. Compare "in the morning" with "at night", or "at
weekend" with "over the the weekend", "down town" with "down the street",
etc. The usual analysis is that "at night" functions mostly as an adverb
("nightwise") while "in the morning" is a minor verb (i.e. a verb with no
subject but an object). "I go home", "I speak language" and "I spent two
weeks in hospital/jail/church" can be analyzed in much the same way.

I find it useful to think of articles as part of a whole range of
prenominal modifiers that go from deictic to defining. So for example when
my student writes "My mom had to have an urgent C-section surgical
operation" the "an" part is maximally orienting but minimally defining (it
just means I am orienting towards it as an instance of something but it
doesn't say what it's an instance of), the "urgent" part is somewhat less
orienting and more defining, the "C-section" part is classifying, and
therefore more defining still, until we come to the part that is maximally
defining and minimally orienting, "operation". Not only nominal groups but
verbal groups obey this rule ("had to have", where "had" is tensed because
it is orienting and locates the speaker in time but "to have" is untensed
and simply defines the nature of the process). Whole clauses can also be
seen this way ("My mom" is the deictic part of the clause and "operation"
is the defining part).

Not all languages do this, because not all languages need to. So for
example Russian doesn't require this kind of rigid order. Because of those
pesky cases, so hard for Russian students to master, it is always clear
who does what to whom by what means, and the order simply doesn't matter.
Same is true in Latin. This is why I think you miss the point a little when
you speak of "a perizhivanie" vs. "perizhivanie". That's not how you think
in Russian.

dk


David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article;

 David Kellogg (2019) THE STORYTELLER’S TALE: VYGOTSKY’S ‘VRASHCHIVANIYA’,
THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT AND ‘INGROWING’ IN THE WEEKEND STORIES OF
KOREAN CHILDREN, British Journal of Educational Studies, DOI:
10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200
<https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200>


Some e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GSS2cTAVAz2jaRdPIkvj/full?target=10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200




On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 8:57 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:

> While we have the attention of some linguists .... Indigenous Australians
> have a way of using certain specific words, for example, country, culture,
> language, community, which in English we usually use with a personal
> pronoun, as in "I can speak your language," or article, "is this the
> country you come from?" as if they were countable nouns, but which
> Indigenous Australians use without an article or personal pronoun, as in "I
> went to country" or "when I speak language ...," much like the word "home"
> which can be used without the "my" or "your."
>
> This usage conveys a meaning which is generally understood, but is used
> only in relation to the Indigenous people. I understand it. But I find it
> hard to put into words what is actually being done when words are used like
> this. I use words like "science" or "religion" in the same way, I guess.
> What does it mean linguistically??
>
> Andy
> --
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>
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