Carmel O''Shannessy
Biographic Data
| ID | 797265 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carmel O''Shannessy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carmel |
| FAMILY NAME | O''Shannessy |
| SIGNATURE | SHANNESSY C O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4914-9693 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 153 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
English language attitudes in Australia
This study investigates contemporary Australian attitudes toward a range of L1 and L2 English accents, building on prior research showing that standardised varieties are typically rated higher on status traits and non-standardised varieties are rated higher on solidarity. 138 Australian-born listeners rated audio stimuli from 12 male speakers representing 12 English L1 and L2 accents on seven attributes related to status, solidarity, and clarity.…
Projecting Voices
Multimodal strategies for engaging young Arrernte and Warlpiri children in storytelling and play
From an early age children learn to recognize and make use of the semiotic resources present in their immediate communicative environments. For children in Aboriginal families in Central Australia, these resources encompass everyday speech, sign language, gesture, and the symbolic conventions found in narrative practices such as sand drawing. Successful face-to-face interaction rarely involves only one of these ways of communicating with others–m…
An acoustic study on monophthongs in Central Australian Aboriginal English
We present an acoustic analysis of monophthongal vowel production in Central Australian Aboriginal English (CAAE), providing one of the first systematic examinations of this variety spoken by English-as-a-first-language (L1) speakers in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, Australia. Using conversational data from six adult female participants, we investigated the acoustic properties of CAAE's vowel system, focusing on phonemic contrasts, phonetic realisation…
Source language influences in the Australian mixed language, Light Warlpiri
A mixed language is formed through the systematic combination of subsystems from two source languages ( Bakker 2017 : 219). Defining features include the social history of a language and the ways in which the source language components are distributed in the mixed language, showing significant amounts of lexicon and/or grammar from each source. Yet it is possible for a language of this type to also have identifiable influence from a third languag…
Toward a typology of Australian contact languages
The longitudinal corpus of language acquisition, maintenance and contact
Australian Indigenous languages contribute to the linguistic diversity and wealth of the nation and the world, yet are highly vulnerable due to continuing legacies of colonization. Speakers show resilience and creativity in maintaining languages and creating new ways of speaking as they adapt to forced relocation, societal changes and pressure from English. Documentation of these languages provides resources for speakers, educators and researcher…
Production and perception of stop voicing in Central Australian Aboriginal English
This paper reports on a series of studies investigating the production and perception of stop voicing contrasts in speakers of Central Australian Aboriginal English (CAAE; Alice Springs, Australia). Study 1 investigated Voice Onset Time (VOT) and Constriction Duration (CD) in stop consonants in naturalistic adult speech, and the speakers produced a VOT-based voicing distinction in word-initial stops, while medial voiceless stops differ from voice…
Developing the Little Kids’ Word List app, a fair assessment tool of communicative development for young Aboriginal children in multilingual families in Central Australia
Assessment of the language development of Aboriginal children in Central Australia is a major challenge, because little is known about the children’s language repertoires and paths of development. The Central Australian language context presents a specific challenge for describing what young children are learning and for developing an appropriate vocabulary assessment tool. National Indigenous policies now have a focus on young children’s develop…
Insights from the perspective of language ecologies and new contact languages in Australia
Preview this article: Insights from the perspective of language ecologies and new contact languages in Australia, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/lab.22081.osh-1.gif
Talking together
When an endangered or minority language is spoken by children and taught in schools, both oral and literacy skills are crucial for continued language maintenance. In school settings, literacy skills are often prioritised to support the transition to second language literacy, and rich oral language development is overlooked. This paper presents a transdisciplinary collaboration between a language researcher, curriculum support staff and educators …
Transitivity Marking in Light Warlpiri, an Australian Mixed Language
Light Warlpiri is a newly emerged Australian mixed language that systematically combines nominal structure from Warlpiri (Australian, Pama-Nyungan) with verbal structure from Kriol (an English-lexified Creole) and English, with additional innovations in the verbal auxiliary system. Lexical items are drawn from both Warlpiri and the two English-lexified sources, Kriol and English. The Light Warlpiri verb system is interesting because of questions …
How ordinary child language acquisition processes can lead to the unusual outcome of a mixed language
Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study is to examine the language processing mechanisms involved when young children bring structural innovations into their community way of speaking, as part of conventionalising code-switching practices to become a mixed language. Approach: The study takes a qualitative approach to the analysis of child language acquisition and adult speech data in two contexts. Data and Analysis: The study analyses naturali…
Conventionalized creativity in the emergence of a mixed language – A case study of Light Warlpiri
Questions of how contact languages are best categorized and how their paths of development are most accurately described remain contentious. Mixed languages or split languages raise many unanswered questions about mechanisms of change in multilingual contexts, and how they lead to specific structural outcomes. An examination of the structure of Light Warlpiri, a mixed language spoken in a Warlpiri community in northern Australia, shows that the m…
Reflexive and Reciprocal Encoding in the Australian Mixed Language, Light Warlpiri
Mixed languages combine significant amounts of grammatical and lexical material from more than one source language in systematic ways. The Australian mixed language, Light Warlpiri, combines nominal morphology from Warlpiri with verbal morphology from Kriol (an English-lexified Creole) and English, with innovations. The source languages of Light Warlpiri differ in how they encode reflexives and reciprocals-Warlpiri uses an auxiliary clitic for bo…
When more is more
This paper presents a combined analysis of the perception and production study of the mixed language Light Warlpiri (Australia), which systematically combines elements of Warlpiri, Kriol and English. The perception and production results suggest that the Light Warlpiri phonological inventory consists of a voiced and voiceless series of stops and affricates, differentiated by Voice Onset Time (VOT) word-initially and by Constriction Duration (CD) …
Loss and Renewal
Australian language contact in historical and synchronic perspective
This volume is the first collection of research dedicated to the effects of recent language contact processes on Australian languages
Distributions of case allomorphy by multilingual children
When a new linguistic code emerges and stabilizes, what are the roles of children and adults in leading and consolidating the changes? This question lies at the intersection of child language acquisition and contact-induced language change. Adults and children have played different roles in the development of a new mixed code, Light Warlpiri, spoken in a Warlpiri community in northern Australia that arose from code-switching practices among bilin…
Multilingual children increase language differentiation by indexing communities of practice
An area in need of study in child language acquisition is that of complex multilingual contexts in which there is little language separation by interlocutor or domain. Little is known about how multilingual children use language to construct their identities in each language or in both languages. Identity construction in monolingual contexts has been examined closely using a community of practice model, with case studies of adolescents and teenag…
The role of multiple sources in the formation of an innovative auxiliary category in Light Warlpiri, a new Australian mixed language
Light Warlpiri, a new Australian mixed language combining Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan) with varieties of English and/or Kriol that has emerged within approximately the last thirty-five years, shows radical restructuring of the verbal auxiliary system, including modal categories that differ from those in the source languages. The structure of Light Warlpiri overall is that of a mixed language, in that most verbs and some verbal morphology are drawn fro…
Typological constraints on verb integration in two Australian mixed languages1,2
Gurindji Kriol and Light Warlpiri are two mixed languages spoken in northern Australia by Gurindji and Warlpiri people, respectively. Both languages are the outcome of the fusion of a contact variety of English (Kriol/Aboriginal English) with a traditional Australian Aboriginal language (Gurindji or Warlpiri). The end result is two languages which show remarkable structural similarity. In both mixed languages, pronouns, TMA auxiliaries and word o…
The role of codeswitched input to children in the origin of a new mixed language
Light Warlpiri is a mixed language, with Warlpiri and Aboriginal English/Kriol as its sources. It was developed by a group who received codeswitched input in a baby talk register from when they were young. The innovating group conventionalized the input they received and developed morphosyntactic structures beyond those in the input. The development of Light Warlpiri shows that commonly occurring processes in language contact situations, codeswit…
Competition between word order and case-marking in interpreting grammatical relations
The study examines strategies multilingual children use to interpret grammatical relations, focusing on their two primary languages, Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Both languages use mixed systems for indicating grammatical relations. In both languages ergative–absolutive case-marking indicates core arguments, but to different extents in each language. In Lajamanu Warlpiri, pronominal clitics in a nominative–accusative pattern also indicat…
Ordering arguments about
Ordering arguments about
The role of multiple sources in the formation of an innovative auxiliary category in Light Warlpiri, a new Australian mixed language
Light Warlpiri, a new Australian mixed language combining Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan) with varieties of English and/or Kriol that has emerged within approximately the last thirty-five years, shows radical restructuring of the verbal auxiliary system, including modal categories that differ from those in the source languages. The structure of Light Warlpiri overall is that of a mixed language, in that most verbs and some verbal morphology are drawn fro…
The role of codeswitched input to children in the origin of a new mixed language
Light Warlpiri is a mixed language, with Warlpiri and Aboriginal English/Kriol as its sources. It was developed by a group who received codeswitched input in a baby talk register from when they were young. The innovating group conventionalized the input they received and developed morphosyntactic structures beyond those in the input. The development of Light Warlpiri shows that commonly occurring processes in language contact situations, codeswit…
Light Warlpiri
not speakers of Kriol, but elements that could be identified as Kriol (or Aboriginal English) appear in their Warlpiri through borrowing and code-mixing.The codemixing of older Warlpiri speakers both resembles and differs from the combination of elements in LW.A specific difference is that, when code-mixing, older Warlpiri speakers do not produce the LW auxiliary system, which is an innovation on the part of the younger generation.The use of this…
When more is more
This paper presents a combined analysis of the perception and production study of the mixed language Light Warlpiri (Australia), which systematically combines elements of Warlpiri, Kriol and English. The perception and production results suggest that the Light Warlpiri phonological inventory consists of a voiced and voiceless series of stops and affricates, differentiated by Voice Onset Time (VOT) word-initially and by Constriction Duration (CD) …
Production and perception of stop voicing in Central Australian Aboriginal English
This paper reports on a series of studies investigating the production and perception of stop voicing contrasts in speakers of Central Australian Aboriginal English (CAAE; Alice Springs, Australia). Study 1 investigated Voice Onset Time (VOT) and Constriction Duration (CD) in stop consonants in naturalistic adult speech, and the speakers produced a VOT-based voicing distinction in word-initial stops, while medial voiceless stops differ from voice…
Typological constraints on verb integration in two Australian mixed languages1,2
Gurindji Kriol and Light Warlpiri are two mixed languages spoken in northern Australia by Gurindji and Warlpiri people, respectively. Both languages are the outcome of the fusion of a contact variety of English (Kriol/Aboriginal English) with a traditional Australian Aboriginal language (Gurindji or Warlpiri). The end result is two languages which show remarkable structural similarity. In both mixed languages, pronouns, TMA auxiliaries and word o…
Multimodal strategies for engaging young Arrernte and Warlpiri children in storytelling and play
From an early age children learn to recognize and make use of the semiotic resources present in their immediate communicative environments. For children in Aboriginal families in Central Australia, these resources encompass everyday speech, sign language, gesture, and the symbolic conventions found in narrative practices such as sand drawing. Successful face-to-face interaction rarely involves only one of these ways of communicating with others–m…
An acoustic study on monophthongs in Central Australian Aboriginal English
We present an acoustic analysis of monophthongal vowel production in Central Australian Aboriginal English (CAAE), providing one of the first systematic examinations of this variety spoken by English-as-a-first-language (L1) speakers in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, Australia. Using conversational data from six adult female participants, we investigated the acoustic properties of CAAE's vowel system, focusing on phonemic contrasts, phonetic realisation…
Reflexive and Reciprocal Encoding in the Australian Mixed Language, Light Warlpiri
Mixed languages combine significant amounts of grammatical and lexical material from more than one source language in systematic ways. The Australian mixed language, Light Warlpiri, combines nominal morphology from Warlpiri with verbal morphology from Kriol (an English-lexified Creole) and English, with innovations. The source languages of Light Warlpiri differ in how they encode reflexives and reciprocals-Warlpiri uses an auxiliary clitic for bo…
Distributions of case allomorphy by multilingual children
When a new linguistic code emerges and stabilizes, what are the roles of children and adults in leading and consolidating the changes? This question lies at the intersection of child language acquisition and contact-induced language change. Adults and children have played different roles in the development of a new mixed code, Light Warlpiri, spoken in a Warlpiri community in northern Australia that arose from code-switching practices among bilin…
Light Warlpiri
not speakers of Kriol, but elements that could be identified as Kriol (or Aboriginal English) appear in their Warlpiri through borrowing and code-mixing.The codemixing of older Warlpiri speakers both resembles and differs from the combination of elements in LW.A specific difference is that, when code-mixing, older Warlpiri speakers do not produce the LW auxiliary system, which is an innovation on the part of the younger generation.The use of this…
Ordering arguments about
Competition between word order and case-marking in interpreting grammatical relations
The study examines strategies multilingual children use to interpret grammatical relations, focusing on their two primary languages, Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Both languages use mixed systems for indicating grammatical relations. In both languages ergative–absolutive case-marking indicates core arguments, but to different extents in each language. In Lajamanu Warlpiri, pronominal clitics in a nominative–accusative pattern also indicat…
Typological constraints on verb integration in two Australian mixed languages1,2
Gurindji Kriol and Light Warlpiri are two mixed languages spoken in northern Australia by Gurindji and Warlpiri people, respectively. Both languages are the outcome of the fusion of a contact variety of English (Kriol/Aboriginal English) with a traditional Australian Aboriginal language (Gurindji or Warlpiri). The end result is two languages which show remarkable structural similarity. In both mixed languages, pronouns, TMA auxiliaries and word o…
The role of codeswitched input to children in the origin of a new mixed language
Light Warlpiri is a mixed language, with Warlpiri and Aboriginal English/Kriol as its sources. It was developed by a group who received codeswitched input in a baby talk register from when they were young. The innovating group conventionalized the input they received and developed morphosyntactic structures beyond those in the input. The development of Light Warlpiri shows that commonly occurring processes in language contact situations, codeswit…
The role of multiple sources in the formation of an innovative auxiliary category in Light Warlpiri, a new Australian mixed language
Light Warlpiri, a new Australian mixed language combining Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan) with varieties of English and/or Kriol that has emerged within approximately the last thirty-five years, shows radical restructuring of the verbal auxiliary system, including modal categories that differ from those in the source languages. The structure of Light Warlpiri overall is that of a mixed language, in that most verbs and some verbal morphology are drawn fro…
Multilingual children increase language differentiation by indexing communities of practice
An area in need of study in child language acquisition is that of complex multilingual contexts in which there is little language separation by interlocutor or domain. Little is known about how multilingual children use language to construct their identities in each language or in both languages. Identity construction in monolingual contexts has been examined closely using a community of practice model, with case studies of adolescents and teenag…
Loss and Renewal
Australian language contact in historical and synchronic perspective
This volume is the first collection of research dedicated to the effects of recent language contact processes on Australian languages
Distributions of case allomorphy by multilingual children
When a new linguistic code emerges and stabilizes, what are the roles of children and adults in leading and consolidating the changes? This question lies at the intersection of child language acquisition and contact-induced language change. Adults and children have played different roles in the development of a new mixed code, Light Warlpiri, spoken in a Warlpiri community in northern Australia that arose from code-switching practices among bilin…
How ordinary child language acquisition processes can lead to the unusual outcome of a mixed language
Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study is to examine the language processing mechanisms involved when young children bring structural innovations into their community way of speaking, as part of conventionalising code-switching practices to become a mixed language. Approach: The study takes a qualitative approach to the analysis of child language acquisition and adult speech data in two contexts. Data and Analysis: The study analyses naturali…
Conventionalized creativity in the emergence of a mixed language – A case study of Light Warlpiri
Questions of how contact languages are best categorized and how their paths of development are most accurately described remain contentious. Mixed languages or split languages raise many unanswered questions about mechanisms of change in multilingual contexts, and how they lead to specific structural outcomes. An examination of the structure of Light Warlpiri, a mixed language spoken in a Warlpiri community in northern Australia, shows that the m…
Reflexive and Reciprocal Encoding in the Australian Mixed Language, Light Warlpiri
Mixed languages combine significant amounts of grammatical and lexical material from more than one source language in systematic ways. The Australian mixed language, Light Warlpiri, combines nominal morphology from Warlpiri with verbal morphology from Kriol (an English-lexified Creole) and English, with innovations. The source languages of Light Warlpiri differ in how they encode reflexives and reciprocals-Warlpiri uses an auxiliary clitic for bo…
When more is more
This paper presents a combined analysis of the perception and production study of the mixed language Light Warlpiri (Australia), which systematically combines elements of Warlpiri, Kriol and English. The perception and production results suggest that the Light Warlpiri phonological inventory consists of a voiced and voiceless series of stops and affricates, differentiated by Voice Onset Time (VOT) word-initially and by Constriction Duration (CD) …
Talking together
When an endangered or minority language is spoken by children and taught in schools, both oral and literacy skills are crucial for continued language maintenance. In school settings, literacy skills are often prioritised to support the transition to second language literacy, and rich oral language development is overlooked. This paper presents a transdisciplinary collaboration between a language researcher, curriculum support staff and educators …
Transitivity Marking in Light Warlpiri, an Australian Mixed Language
Light Warlpiri is a newly emerged Australian mixed language that systematically combines nominal structure from Warlpiri (Australian, Pama-Nyungan) with verbal structure from Kriol (an English-lexified Creole) and English, with additional innovations in the verbal auxiliary system. Lexical items are drawn from both Warlpiri and the two English-lexified sources, Kriol and English. The Light Warlpiri verb system is interesting because of questions …
Developing the Little Kids’ Word List app, a fair assessment tool of communicative development for young Aboriginal children in multilingual families in Central Australia
Assessment of the language development of Aboriginal children in Central Australia is a major challenge, because little is known about the children’s language repertoires and paths of development. The Central Australian language context presents a specific challenge for describing what young children are learning and for developing an appropriate vocabulary assessment tool. National Indigenous policies now have a focus on young children’s develop…
Insights from the perspective of language ecologies and new contact languages in Australia
Preview this article: Insights from the perspective of language ecologies and new contact languages in Australia, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/lab.22081.osh-1.gif
Source language influences in the Australian mixed language, Light Warlpiri
A mixed language is formed through the systematic combination of subsystems from two source languages ( Bakker 2017 : 219). Defining features include the social history of a language and the ways in which the source language components are distributed in the mixed language, showing significant amounts of lexicon and/or grammar from each source. Yet it is possible for a language of this type to also have identifiable influence from a third languag…
Toward a typology of Australian contact languages
The longitudinal corpus of language acquisition, maintenance and contact
Australian Indigenous languages contribute to the linguistic diversity and wealth of the nation and the world, yet are highly vulnerable due to continuing legacies of colonization. Speakers show resilience and creativity in maintaining languages and creating new ways of speaking as they adapt to forced relocation, societal changes and pressure from English. Documentation of these languages provides resources for speakers, educators and researcher…
Production and perception of stop voicing in Central Australian Aboriginal English
This paper reports on a series of studies investigating the production and perception of stop voicing contrasts in speakers of Central Australian Aboriginal English (CAAE; Alice Springs, Australia). Study 1 investigated Voice Onset Time (VOT) and Constriction Duration (CD) in stop consonants in naturalistic adult speech, and the speakers produced a VOT-based voicing distinction in word-initial stops, while medial voiceless stops differ from voice…
Projecting Voices
Multimodal strategies for engaging young Arrernte and Warlpiri children in storytelling and play
From an early age children learn to recognize and make use of the semiotic resources present in their immediate communicative environments. For children in Aboriginal families in Central Australia, these resources encompass everyday speech, sign language, gesture, and the symbolic conventions found in narrative practices such as sand drawing. Successful face-to-face interaction rarely involves only one of these ways of communicating with others–m…
An acoustic study on monophthongs in Central Australian Aboriginal English
We present an acoustic analysis of monophthongal vowel production in Central Australian Aboriginal English (CAAE), providing one of the first systematic examinations of this variety spoken by English-as-a-first-language (L1) speakers in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, Australia. Using conversational data from six adult female participants, we investigated the acoustic properties of CAAE's vowel system, focusing on phonemic contrasts, phonetic realisation…
Linguistics (22 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (19 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Australian Indigenous Culture and History (11 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (7 works) · History (6 works)