Rob Pensalfini
Biographic Data
| ID | 2906170 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rob Pensalfini |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rob |
| FAMILY NAME | Pensalfini |
| SIGNATURE | PENSALFINI R |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2007-7553 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 49 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Holding the mirror up to converted languages
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This article describes an unusual result of language contact occurring in North-Central Australia, where extensive long-term contact between speakers of the genetically unrelated Jingulu and Mudburra has resulted in a high degree of lexical borrowing, with little if any change to syntactic or morphological structure in either language. What is particularly unusual about this borrowing is that it is …
Lend me your verbs
We discuss two unrelated languages, Jingulu (Mirndi, non-Pama-Nyungan) and Mudburra (Ngumpin-Yapa, Pama-Nyungan), which have been in contact for 200–500 years. The language contact situation is unusual cross-linguistically due to the high number of shared nouns, tending to an almost shared noun lexicon. Even more unusually, this lexicon was formed by borrowing in both directions at a relatively equal rate. The aim of this paper is to extend the b…
Gender Lender
This paper explores borrowing of nouns between two unrelated Australian languages with a long history of contact: Mudburra, a language with no grammatical gender, and Jingulu, which has four genders and super-classing. Unusually, this case involves extensive borrowing in both directions, resulting in the languages sharing 65% of their nouns. This bi-directional borrowing of nouns allows us to simultaneously examine the behaviour of gender where (…
Language description informed by theory
This volume explores how linguistic theories inform the ways in which languages are described. Theories, as representations of linguistic categories, guide the field linguist to look for various phenomena without presupposing their necessary existence and provide the tools to account for various sets of data across different languages. A goal of linguistic description is to represent the full range of language structures for any given language. T…
Re-imagining the Actor's Quartet
This essay argues that the relationship between body, intellect, emotion, and voice in an actor’s expressivity are not related in an equal fashion, as per Kristin Linklater’s “actors quartet,” but rather in a hierarchical fashion whereby the trinity of body, intellect, and emotion find their ultimate expression through the voice, united by breath. [Summary, no abstract available]
Towards a Typology of Configurationality
Eulogizing a language
In 1996, I worked with what appear to have been the last fluent speakers of Ngarnka, a language of central northern Australia. To the best of my knowledge, the last fluent speaker passed away in 1997 or 1998. In 2000, I began to collect all available information on the language. This article describes some of the challenges that have arisen in working with a language during and after the final stages of its death, and examines some of the possibl…
Vowel harmony in Jingulu
The rise of case suffixes as discourse markers in Jingulu—a case study of innovation in an obsolescent language∗
Jingulu exhibits a pattern of morphologically marking discourse prominence quite different to anything found in adjacent or closely related languages. The Ergative, and to a lesser extent the Dative, case suffixes have come to be used as optional indicators of discourse prominence in addition to maintaining their original case‐marking uses. Some other head‐marking non‐Pama‐Nyungan languages may also use case markers in non‐case functions, but the…
Arrernte
That syllable onsets are present in all languages is widely regarded as axiomatic, and the preference for syllabifying consonants as onsets over codas is considered a linguistic universal. The Central Australian language Arrernte provides the strongest possible counterevidence to this universal, with phenomena generally used to determine syllabification suggesting that all consonants in Arrernte are syllabified as codas at the word level. Attempt…
Arrernte
That syllable onsets are present in all languages is widely regarded as axiomatic, and the preference for syllabifying consonants as onsets over codas is considered a linguistic universal. The Central Australian language Arrernte provides the strongest possible counterevidence to this universal, with phenomena generally used to determine syllabification suggesting that all consonants in Arrernte are syllabified as codas at the word level. Attempt…
The rise of case suffixes as discourse markers in Jingulu—a case study of innovation in an obsolescent language∗
Jingulu exhibits a pattern of morphologically marking discourse prominence quite different to anything found in adjacent or closely related languages. The Ergative, and to a lesser extent the Dative, case suffixes have come to be used as optional indicators of discourse prominence in addition to maintaining their original case‐marking uses. Some other head‐marking non‐Pama‐Nyungan languages may also use case markers in non‐case functions, but the…
Towards a Typology of Configurationality
Eulogizing a language
In 1996, I worked with what appear to have been the last fluent speakers of Ngarnka, a language of central northern Australia. To the best of my knowledge, the last fluent speaker passed away in 1997 or 1998. In 2000, I began to collect all available information on the language. This article describes some of the challenges that have arisen in working with a language during and after the final stages of its death, and examines some of the possibl…
Vowel harmony in Jingulu
Gender Lender
This paper explores borrowing of nouns between two unrelated Australian languages with a long history of contact: Mudburra, a language with no grammatical gender, and Jingulu, which has four genders and super-classing. Unusually, this case involves extensive borrowing in both directions, resulting in the languages sharing 65% of their nouns. This bi-directional borrowing of nouns allows us to simultaneously examine the behaviour of gender where (…
The rise of case suffixes as discourse markers in Jingulu—a case study of innovation in an obsolescent language∗
Jingulu exhibits a pattern of morphologically marking discourse prominence quite different to anything found in adjacent or closely related languages. The Ergative, and to a lesser extent the Dative, case suffixes have come to be used as optional indicators of discourse prominence in addition to maintaining their original case‐marking uses. Some other head‐marking non‐Pama‐Nyungan languages may also use case markers in non‐case functions, but the…
Arrernte
That syllable onsets are present in all languages is widely regarded as axiomatic, and the preference for syllabifying consonants as onsets over codas is considered a linguistic universal. The Central Australian language Arrernte provides the strongest possible counterevidence to this universal, with phenomena generally used to determine syllabification suggesting that all consonants in Arrernte are syllabified as codas at the word level. Attempt…
Vowel harmony in Jingulu
Towards a Typology of Configurationality
Eulogizing a language
In 1996, I worked with what appear to have been the last fluent speakers of Ngarnka, a language of central northern Australia. To the best of my knowledge, the last fluent speaker passed away in 1997 or 1998. In 2000, I began to collect all available information on the language. This article describes some of the challenges that have arisen in working with a language during and after the final stages of its death, and examines some of the possibl…
Re-imagining the Actor's Quartet
This essay argues that the relationship between body, intellect, emotion, and voice in an actor’s expressivity are not related in an equal fashion, as per Kristin Linklater’s “actors quartet,” but rather in a hierarchical fashion whereby the trinity of body, intellect, and emotion find their ultimate expression through the voice, united by breath. [Summary, no abstract available]
Language description informed by theory
This volume explores how linguistic theories inform the ways in which languages are described. Theories, as representations of linguistic categories, guide the field linguist to look for various phenomena without presupposing their necessary existence and provide the tools to account for various sets of data across different languages. A goal of linguistic description is to represent the full range of language structures for any given language. T…
Gender Lender
This paper explores borrowing of nouns between two unrelated Australian languages with a long history of contact: Mudburra, a language with no grammatical gender, and Jingulu, which has four genders and super-classing. Unusually, this case involves extensive borrowing in both directions, resulting in the languages sharing 65% of their nouns. This bi-directional borrowing of nouns allows us to simultaneously examine the behaviour of gender where (…
Lend me your verbs
We discuss two unrelated languages, Jingulu (Mirndi, non-Pama-Nyungan) and Mudburra (Ngumpin-Yapa, Pama-Nyungan), which have been in contact for 200–500 years. The language contact situation is unusual cross-linguistically due to the high number of shared nouns, tending to an almost shared noun lexicon. Even more unusually, this lexicon was formed by borrowing in both directions at a relatively equal rate. The aim of this paper is to extend the b…
Holding the mirror up to converted languages
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This article describes an unusual result of language contact occurring in North-Central Australia, where extensive long-term contact between speakers of the genetically unrelated Jingulu and Mudburra has resulted in a high degree of lexical borrowing, with little if any change to syntactic or morphological structure in either language. What is particularly unusual about this borrowing is that it is …
Linguistics (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (8 works) · Australian Indigenous Culture and History (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (4 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (4 works) · Language and cultural evolution (3 works) · Natural language processing (3 works)