2009, Siegel, Jeff

Languages are said to come into contact when their speakers interact with one another. The linguistic and sociolinguistic consequences of long-term contact between languages arc studied in the subfield of linguistics called 'contact linguistics'. Two of the major concerns of contact linguistics are contact-induced language change and the formation of new contact varieties such as new dialects, pidgins and creoles. However, the actual site of language contact is in the minds of individuals using more than one language (Weinreich (1970) [1953]). Thus, second language acquisition (SLA), an individual psycholinguistic process involving two languages is by definition a kind of language contact. Changes that occur in languages, or the new varieties that emerge, must have originated in individuals' ways of speaking. This chapter examines the role of processes of SLA in individuals that may ultimately lead to the outcomes of language change or the emergence of new contact varieties in communities of speakers.

2010, Siegel, Jeff

This article examines whether the conventional notion of bilingual literacy is applicable to speakers of creole languages in terms of autonomy, codification, instrumentalisation, education and literacy practices. It then goes on to describe alternative conceptions of both literacy and bilingualism that appear to be more relevant to creole contexts - namely, the sociocultural literacy approach and truncated bilingualism. The article concludes with a discussion of the educational benefits to creole speakers of adopting either conventional or alternative bilingual literacy practices in the classroom.

2003, Eades, D, Fraser, Helen Beatrice, Siegel, Jeff, McNamara, T, Baker, Brett

The authors of this report are five Australian experts in the fields of sociolinguistics, phonetics (analysis of accent or pronunciation) and language testing. Their report raises concerns about the "language analysis" that is being done by overseas agencies and that is being used by the Australian government in determining the nationality of refugee claimants, and concludes that "language analysis", as it is currently used, is not valid or reliable. It appears to be based on "folk views" about the relationship between language and nationality and ethnicity, rather than sound linguistic principles. The report found that: i) a person's nationality cannot always be determined by the language he or she speaks, ii) a few key words and their pronunciation normally cannot reveal a person's nationality or ethnicity, iii) common perceptions about pronunciation differences among groups of people cannot be relied upon, iv) any analysis of pronunciation must be based on thorough knowledge of the language and region in question and must involve detailed phonetic analysis. Furthermore, in a study of 58 Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) decisions in which this "language analysis" was at issue, it was found that there were doubts over its validity. The authors have grave concerns that the use of "language analysis" in the determination of nationality may be preventing Australia from properly discharging its responsibilities under the Refugees Convention and therefore call on the Australian Government to stop using this type of analysis.

2017, Mittag, Joanna Ewa, Siegel, Jeff, Post, Mark

Lockhart River Creole (LRC) is an English-based contact variety spoken in the Lockhart River Aboriginal Community located on Cape York Peninsula approximately 780km north of Cairns. Considering that LRC has not been previously studied, analysed, and described, the focus of the present study is to provide its linguistic description, design an orthographical system allowing for the language to be used in the written form, ascertain if LRC is a creole or a variety of Aboriginal English, establish similarities and differences between LRC and other contact varieties spoken in the Pacific basin, and determine the scope of the influence of the two substrate languages, namely, Kuuku Ya’u and Umpila. While Chapter 1 provides information on the Lockhart River area and its linguistic configuration, theoretical background, language data and methodology, as well as sources consulted for the purpose of the present project, Chapter 2 constitutes a detailed description of historical factors that contributed to the emergence and development of LRC. Chapter 3 examines segmental phonemes of LRC, namely, consonants, vowels, and diphthongs, as well as variation and phonotactics, i.e. syllable structure, in addition to such suprasegmental features as vowel length, stress, and intonation. Furthermore, Chapter 3 also discusses the proposed phonemically-based orthographical system. In addition to morphological processes, Chapter 4 explores the LRC word classes, namely, nouns, pronouns, determiners, quantifiers, adjectives, prepositions, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, and interjections. Chapter 5 discusses the noun phrase, including both simple and complex NPs, as well as pronominal NPs, and prepositional phrases. This is followed by the presentation of the word and phrase coordination. In addition to the coordination of verbs and verb phrases, Chapter 6 investigates the verb phrase, including bare, intransitive, transitive, ditransitive, and complex head verbs. This is then followed by the examination of oblique complements, serial verb constructions, prepositional phrases and adverbs within the verb phrase. Chapter 7, which is devoted to simple sentences, provides an overview of the five types of predicates, the predicate constituents, sentences with and without the subject, as well as declarative sentences, including negative markers, and interrogative sentences, both 'yes-no' and information questions. Chapter 8 presents complex sentences and discusses complement and adverbial clauses, relative clauses, left dislocation, as well as the coordination and subordination of complex sentences. Chapter 9 examines the LRC vocabulary, as well as emphatic and discourse markers. Concluding remarks are provided in Chapter 10. Each chapter contains original and substantial information pertinent to the linguistic description of LRC. Furthermore, numerous comparisons of many LRC features with their equivalents in other contact varieties, namely, Australian Kriol, Torres Strait Creole, Solomon Islands Pijin, Vanuatu Bislama, and Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin, are provided throughout this thesis.

2010, Siegel, Jeff

This book is about learning a new dialect, and how it is different from learning a new language. In this introductory chapter, I start by describing the contexts where this kind of learning occurs and some of the questions the book aims to answer. As I have tried to make the content accessible not just to linguists, I have also included some basic information for readers without a strong background in linguistics. This is about differentiating dialects, describing speech sounds and studying variation in language. The final section presents a brief outline of the book. The study of second language acquisition (often abbreviated as SLA) examines how people who already speak a first language (L1) subsequently acquire a second or additional language (L2). This book focuses on a special type of SLA – when the relationship between the L1 and the L2 is close enough for them to be considered by their speakers to be varieties of the same language, or different dialects, rather than different languages. In this situation, the term "second dialect acquisition" (SDA) can be used. The study of SDA examines how people who already speak one dialect (D1) acquire a different dialect (D2) of what they or their community perceive to be the same language.

2002, Siegel, Jeff

Applied creolistics can be defined as: "The application of the theories, methods, or findings of pidgin and creole linguistics (or creolistics) to the solution of practical problems." (This follows definitions of applied linguistics, such as that of Crystal, 1987, p. 415.) The major undisputed finding of creolistics is that pidgins, creoles, semicreoles, and related nonstandard or minority dialects are legitimate, rule-governed varieties of language that differ in systematic ways from recognized standard languages. This is opposed to the still popular stereotype of these varieties as corrupted, incorrect, and illegitimate forms of careless speech.

2009, Siegel, Jeff

More than 38,000 Chinese came to Australia to prospect for gold in the second half of the 19th century. Most of them originated from the Canton region of China (now Guangdong), where Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) was an important trading language. This article describes a recently discovered source that throws light on the nature of CPE used in Australia during that period - a 70 page notebook written in a form of English by a Chinese gold miner, Jong Ah Siug. The article presents some background information about Chinese immigrants in the region where Jong worked (Victoria), and evidence that some CPE was spoken there. It goes on to describe Jong's notebook and the circumstances that led to him writing it. The main part of the article examines the linguistic features of CPE and other pidgins that are present in the notebook, and discusses other lexical and morphosyntactic features of the text. Some features are typical only of CPE, such as the use of my as the first person pronoun. On the other hand, some features are more characteristic of Australian or Pacific pidgins - for example, the use of belong in possessive constructions. Still other features have not been recorded for any pidgin, such as the use of been as a locative copula. The analysis shows that Jong's text contains a mixture of features from CPE and other pidgins, as well as features of interlanguage, including some resulting from functional transfer from Jong's first language, Cantonese.

2010, Siegel, Jeff

Pidgins and creoles are new varieties of language that emerge when people speaking different languages come into contact with each other. The study of these 'contact languages' falls mainly under the heading of sociolinguistics, but also intersects with many other subdisciplines, such as contact linguistics and applied linguistics. This chapter begins by providing some background: definitions of key terms and information about the current status and use of these languages. Then it describes four areas of research in pidgin and creole studies (sometimes called 'creolistics'). The next section concentrates on educational policy and practice. It discusses the use of pidgins and creoles for classroom instruction and special programmes aimed at speakers of these languages.

2010, Siegel, Jeff

Pidgins and creoles are new languages that develop in language contact situations because of a need for communication among people who do not share a common language. A pidgin continues to be used primarily as a second language for intergroup communication, whereas a creole has become the mother tongue of a particular group of speakers. The lexicon of a pidgin or creole is derived from the various languages originally in contact, with the majority usually coming from one particular language, called the lexifier. However, the grammar of a pidgin or creole is different from that of the lexifier or any of the other contributing languages. Most scholars in the field of pidgin and creole studies (or "creolistics") would agree on these characterizations of the languages they study, but on little else. A great deal of controversy has existed in the field since it became a separate (and ultimately respectable) area of linguistics in the 19605. There are disagreements about the precise definitions of pidgin and creole, about which language varieties are actually pidgins or creoles, and about the origins of the linguistic features of these languages. Because these theoretical controversies are given excellent coverage in other overviews, textbooks, and compilations (e.g., Singler and Kouwenberg, 2008; Rickford and McWhorter, 1997; Sebba 1997), I outline them only briefly here. Then I present some sociolinguistic background information on speakers, status, and attitudes. Finally, I go on to discuss some areas of applied linguistics that concern pidgins and creoles.

2009, Siegel, Jeff

Tok Pisin (or New Guinea Pidgin) is the dialect of Melanesian Pidgin spoken in Papua New Guinea (PNG). It serves as the main language of wider communication in a country where over 800 separate indigenous languages are spoken by a population of approximately 4.5 million. The two other dialects of Melanesian Pidgin are Pijin, spoken in Solomon Islands (with over 80 indigenous languages and a population of around 390,000), and Bislama spoken in Vanuatu (over 100 languages, population 190,000). Torres Strait Creole (also known as Yumpla Tok) - spoken by approximately 10,000 people around the northern tip of eastern Australia - is closely related to Melanesian Pidgin but usually considered to be a separate language.