Skip to content
BY 4.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access April 9, 2019

Epistemic authority and sociolinguistic stance in an Australian Aboriginal language

  • John Mansfield EMAIL logo
From the journal Open Linguistics

Abstract

Murrinhpatha, an Aboriginal language of northern Australia, has an initial k-alternation in verbs that has hitherto been resistant to grammatical analysis. I argue that k-does not encode any feature of event structure, but rather signals the speaker’s epistemic primacy over the addressee. This authority may relate to concrete perceptual factors in the field of discourse, or to socially normative authority, where it asserts the speaker’s epistemic rights. These rights are most salient in the domains of kin, country and totems, as opposed to other topics in which speakers are habitually circumspect and co-construct knowledge. My analysis of the k-alternation thus brings together the typology of epistemic grammar (Evans, Bergqvist, & San Roque, 2018a, 2018b), and a sociolinguistic perspective on stance (Jaffe, 2009).

References

Barth, D., & Evans, N. 2017. SCOPIC Design and Overview. In Social Cognition Parallax Interview Corpus (SCOPIC) (pp. 1–21). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Search in Google Scholar

Bentley, D., Ciconte, F. M., & Cruschina, S. 2013. Existential constructions in crosslinguistic perspective. Rivista Di Linguistica, 25(1), 1–13.Search in Google Scholar

Bergqvist, H. 2016. Complex epistemic perspective in Kogi (Arawako). International Journal of American Linguistics, 82(1), 1–34.Search in Google Scholar

Blythe, J. 2009. Doing referring in Murriny Patha conversation (PhD thesis). University of Sydney.Search in Google Scholar

Blythe, J. 2013. Preference organization driving structuration: Evidence from Australian Aboriginal interaction for pragmatically motivated grammaticalization. Language, 89(4), 883–919.10.1353/lan.2013.0057Search in Google Scholar

Blythe, J. 2018. Recruitments in Murrinhpatha and the preference organisation of their possible responses. In S. Floyd, G. Rossi, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Getting others to do things: A pragmatic typology of recruitments. Berlin: Language Science Press.Search in Google Scholar

Blythe, J., Mardigan, K. C., Perdjert, M. E., & Stoakes, H. 2016. Pointing out directions in Murrinhpatha. Open Linguistics.10.1515/opli-2016-0007Search in Google Scholar

DeLancey, S. 1997. Mirativity: The grammatical marking of unexpected information. Linguistic Typology, 1, 33–52.Search in Google Scholar

Eades, D. 1982. You gotta know how to talk: Information seeking in Southeast Queensland Aboriginal society. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 2(1), 61–82.Search in Google Scholar

Enfield, N. J. 2011. Sources of asymmetry in human interaction: Enchrony, status, knowledge and agency. In T. Stivers, L. Mondala, & J. Steensig (Eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation (pp. 285–312). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511921674.013Search in Google Scholar

Evans, N., Bergqvist, H., & San Roque, L. 2018a. The grammar of engagement I: Framework and initial exemplification. Language and Cognition, 10(1), 110–140.Search in Google Scholar

Evans, N., Bergqvist, H., & San Roque, L. 2018b. The grammar of engagement II: Typology and diachrony. Language and Cognition, 10(1), 141–170.Search in Google Scholar

Falkenberg, J. 1962. Kin and totem: Group relations of Aborigines in the Port Keats district. Oslo: Oslo University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Freeze, R. 2001. Existential constructions. In M. Haspelmath, E. Koenig, W. Oesterreicher, & W. Raible (Eds.), Language typology and language universals (pp. 941–953). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110194265-007Search in Google Scholar

Gaby, A. R. 2017. A grammar of Kuuk Thaayorre. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110459067Search in Google Scholar

Green, I. 1989. Marrithiyel: a language of the Daly River region of Australia’s Northern Territory (PhD). Australian National Univeristy, Canberra.Search in Google Scholar

Harvey, M. 2003. Reconstruction of pronominals among the non-Pama-Nyungan languages. In N. Evans (Ed.), The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of Northern Australia (pp. 475–513). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar

Haviland, J. B. 1987. Fighting words: Evidential particles, affect and argument. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 343–354).10.3765/bls.v13i0.1805Search in Google Scholar

Heritage, J. 2012. Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(1), 1–29.Search in Google Scholar

Hoddinott, W., & Kofod, F. 1988. The Ngankikurungkurr Language (Daly River Area, Northern Territory). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar

Jaffe, A. 2009. Introduction: The sociolinguistics of stance. In A. Jaffe (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives (pp. 3–28). New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Keen, I. 1994. Knowledge and secrecy in Aboriginal religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Kiesling, S. F. 2004. Dude. American Speech, 79(3), 281–305.Search in Google Scholar

Kiesling, S. F. 2009. Style as stance: Stance as the explanation for patterns of sociolinguistic variation. In A. Jaffe (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives (pp. 171–194). New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331646.003.0008Search in Google Scholar

Lambrecht, K. 1994. Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620607Search in Google Scholar

Landaburu, J. 2007. La modalisation du savoir en langue andoke (Amazonie colombienne). In Z. Guentcheva & J. Landaburu (Eds.), L’énonciation médiatisée II: Le traitement épistémologique de l’information; Illustrations amérindiennes et caucasiennes (pp. 23–47). Leuven: Peeters.Search in Google Scholar

Laughren, M. 1982. A preliminary description of propositional particles in Warlpiri. Working Papers of SIL-AAB, Series A, 6, 129–162.Search in Google Scholar

Liberman, K. 1982. Some linguistic features of congenial fellowship among the Pitjantjatjara. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 36, 35–51.Search in Google Scholar

Liberman, K. 1985. Understanding interaction in central Australia: An ethnomethodological study of Australian Aboriginal people. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Search in Google Scholar

Lindwall, O., Lymer, G., & Ivarsson, J. 2016. Epistemic status and the recognizability of social actions. Discourse Studies, 18(5), 500–525.Search in Google Scholar

Mansfield, J. B. 2014. Polysynthetic sociolinguistics: The language and culture of Murrinh Patha youth (PhD thesis). Australian National University, Canberra.Search in Google Scholar

Mansfield, J. B. 2016. Intersecting formatives and inflectional predictability: How do speakers and learners predict the correct form of Murrinhpatha verbs? Word Structure, 9(2), 183–214.10.3366/word.2016.0093Search in Google Scholar

Mansfield, J. B., forthcoming. Murrinpatha morphology and phonology. De Gruyter Mouton.Search in Google Scholar

Mansfield, J. B., Blythe, J., Nordlinger, R., & Street, C. 2018. Murrinhpatha morpho-corpus. Retrieved from langwidj.org/ Murrinhpatha-morpho-corpusSearch in Google Scholar

McGregor, W. 1990. A functional grammar of Gooniyandi. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/slcs.22Search in Google Scholar

McKay, G. 2000. Ndjebbana. In R. M. W. Dixon & B. J. Blake (Eds.), The handbook of Australian languages (Vol. 5, pp. 155–356). Melbourne: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Michaels, E. 1986. The Aboriginal invention of television in central Australia, 1982-1986. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Search in Google Scholar

Mushin, I. 2012. “Watching for witness”: Evidential strategies and epistemic authority in Garrwa conversation. Pragmatics and Society, 3(2), 270–293.Search in Google Scholar

Myers, F. R. 1986. Pintupi country, Pintupi self: Sentiment, place and politics among Western Desert Aborigines. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Search in Google Scholar

Nordlinger, R. 2015. Inflection in Murrinh-Patha. In M. Baerman (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of inflection (pp. 491–519). Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199591428.013.21Search in Google Scholar

Nordlinger, R., & Caudal, P. 2012. The tense, aspect and modality system in Murrinh-Patha. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 32(1), 73–112.Search in Google Scholar

Pye, B. J. M. 1972. The Port Keats story. Darwin: Colemans.Search in Google Scholar

Reid, N. 1990. Ngan’gityemerri: a language of the Daly River region, Northern Territory of Australia (PhD thesis). Australian National Univeristy, Canberra.Search in Google Scholar

Reid, N., & McTaggart, P. 2008. Ngan’gi dictionary. Armidale: Australian Linguistics Press.Search in Google Scholar

Ritz, M.-E. A. 2010. The perfect crime? Illicit uses of the present perfect in Australian police media releases. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(12), 3400–3417.Search in Google Scholar

Rumsey, A. 1993. Language and territoriality in Aboriginal Australia. In M. Walsh & C. Yallop (Eds.), Language and culture in Aboriginal Australia (pp. 191–206). Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.Search in Google Scholar

San Roque, L., Floyd, S., & Norcliffe, E. 2018. Egophoricity: An introduction. In S. Floyd, L. San Roque, & E. Norcliffe (Eds.), Egophoricity (pp. 1–78). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.118.01sanSearch in Google Scholar

San Roque, L., Gawne, L., Hoenigman, D., Miller, J. C., Rumsey, A., Spronck, S., … Evans, N. 2012. Getting the Story Straight: Language Fieldwork Using a Narrative Problem-Solving Task. Language Documentation and Conservation, 6, 135–174.Search in Google Scholar

Sansom, B. 1980. The camp at wallaby cross: Aboriginal fringe dwellers in Darwin. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Search in Google Scholar

Schultze-Berndt, E. 2000. Simple and complex verbs in Jaminjung (PhD thesis). Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Nijmegen.Search in Google Scholar

Schultze-Berndt, E. 2017. Shared vs. primary epistemic authority in Jaminjung/Ngaliwurru. Open Linguistics, 3(1), 178–218.Search in Google Scholar

Shweder, R. A., & Bourne, E. J. 1984. Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self and emotion (pp. 158–199). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Solomon, R. C. 1988. Continental philosophy since 1750: The rise and fall of the self. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Spiro, M. E. 1993. Is the Western conception of the self “peculiar” within the context of world cultures? Ethos, 21, 107–153.Search in Google Scholar

Stanner, W. E. H. 1936. Murinbata kinship and totemism. Oceania, 7, 186–216.Search in Google Scholar

Stanner, W. E. H. 1965. Aboriginal territorial organization: Estate, range, domain and regime. Oceania, 36(1), 1–26.Search in Google Scholar

Stanner, W. E. H. 1966. On Aboriginal religion. Canberra: Oceania Monographs.Search in Google Scholar

Stivers, T., Mondala, L., & Steensig, J. 2011. Knowledge, morality and affiliation in social interaction. In T. Stivers, L. Mondala, & J. Steensig (Eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation (pp. 3–26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511921674.002Search in Google Scholar

Stokes, B. 1982. A description of Nyigina, A language of the West Kimberly, Western Australia (PhD thesis). Australian National Univeristy, Canberra.Search in Google Scholar

Street, C. 1996. Tense, aspect and mood in Murrinh-Patha. In Studies in Kimberley Languages in Honour of Howard Coate (pp. 205–225). Munich: Lincom Europa.Search in Google Scholar

Street, C., & Kulampurut, H. P. 1978. The Murinbata mode of existence. Papers in Australian Linguistics, 11, 133–141.Search in Google Scholar

Sutton, P. 1978. Wik: Aboriginal society, territory and language at Cape Keerweer, Cape York Peninsula, Australia (PhD thesis). University of Queensland, St Lucia.Search in Google Scholar

Taylor, J. 2010. Demography as destiny: Schooling, work and Aboriginal population change at Wadeye. Canberra.Search in Google Scholar

Tryon, D. 1970. An introduction to Maranungku. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar

Tryon, D. 1974. Daly family languages, Australia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar

Walsh, M. 1976. The Murinypata language of north-west Australia (PhD thesis). Australian National Univeristy, Canberra.Search in Google Scholar

Walsh, M. 1997. Cross cultural communciation problems in Aboriginal Australia. North Australia Research Unit.Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2018-05-21
Accepted: 2018-12-05
Published Online: 2019-04-09

© 2019 John Mansfield, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Public License.

Downloaded on 29.3.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opli-2019-0002/html
Scroll to top button