Ilana Mushin
Biographic Data
| ID | 636697 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ilana Mushin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ilana |
| FAMILY NAME | Mushin |
| SIGNATURE | MUSHIN I |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1896-9624 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 216 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Understanding equivocal feedback in PhD supervision meetings
A significant proportion of the teaching and learning in PhD programs is conducted independently by the candidate under the supervision of one or more supervisors. Supervisors and students are usually expected to meet regularly to ensure that students are on track to produce a dissertation as independent researchers. Yet few studies to date examine how teaching and learning within supervision meetings is interactionally achieved. In this paper we…
Discourse and social interaction
In this chapter we survey what we know about the ways in which speakers of Australian languages structure discourse. We show how advances in recording and data management technologies at the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century have enabled the focus of research on Australian language discourse to move from the analysis of transcribed text collections to the in situ analysis of language use in authentic social interactions. Our surve…
Towards an interactional grammar of interjections
Words classified as 'interjections' tend to be treated in descriptive grammars as outside of morphosyntax, too contextually bound to warrant a systematic description of their syntagmatic relations. We use a comparative corpus of conversations in four typologically distinct Australian Aboriginal languages (Garrwa, Gija, Jaru and Murrinhpatha) to illustrate how such an analysis may be developed. We focus on forms which have been described as 'compa…
On the road again
In this article we examine displays of epistemic status and stance among long-term Anglo-Australian residents of remote communities through a case study of a 2-h interaction by four men who have demonstrated sophisticated knowledge of locations in their region. We show how equal access to knowledge of places is oriented to, as well as how differences in rights to authoritatively claim knowledge emerge in disputes over details of locations which a…
The epistemics of social relations in Murrinhpatha, Garrwa and Jaru conversations
Locational pointing in Murrinhpatha, Gija, and English conversations
It has been suggested that the gestural accuracy used by speakers of Australian Aboriginal languages like Guugu Yimidhirr and Arrernte to indicate directions and represent topographic features is a consequence of absolute frame of reference being dominant in these languages; and that the lackadaisical points produced by North American English speakers is an outcome of relative frame being dominant in English. We test this claim by comparing locat…
Linguistic structures in social interaction
In this introductory paper to the inaugural volume of the journal Interactional Linguistics , we raise the question of what a theory of language might look like once we factor time into explanations of regularities in linguistic phenomena. We first present a historical overview that contextualises interactional approaches within the broader field of linguistics, and then focus on temporality as a key dimension of language use in interaction. By d…
Da Symbol Dat Under da Stuffs
Failure to adequately address language differences between home and school is one of the many ways in which education systems frequently disadvantage Aboriginal students. Children from predominantly Aboriginal English-speaking homes face specific challenges, as the language differences between their home variety and the Standard Australian English (SAE) of the curriculum and classroom are often rendered 'invisible', with little explicit accommoda…
Grammaticalization and typology in Australian Aboriginal languages
While grammatical change has been a key area of interest for Australian historical linguistics, only a few studies have sought to explain the development of grammar in terms of processes of grammaticalization. This chapter explores the key reasons for the relative absence of grammaticalization studies in the Australianist tradition. It then shows how the development of a particular areal feature—second-position clitic constructions—may be explain…
Tools of Engagement
Building on earlier Conversation Analytic work on turn-taking and response mobilization, we use video-recorded multiparty conversations to consider in detail how Australian Aboriginal participants in conversation select a next speaker in turns that are grammatically designed as questions. We focus in particular on the role of a range of embodied behaviors, such as gaze direction, body orientation, and pointing, to select—or avoid selecting—a next…
Rethinking Australian Aboriginal English-based speech varieties
The colonial history of Australia necessitated contact between nineteenth and twentieth century dialects of English and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island languages. This has resulted in the emergence of contact languages, some of which have been identified as creoles (e.g. Sandefur 1979, Shnukal 1983) while others have been hidden under the label of ‘Aboriginal English’, exacerbated by what Young (1997) described as a gap in our knowledge of hi…
Linguistic cues for recipient design in an Indigenous Australian conversational narrative
This article presents an examination of some of the linguistic and interactional features of a story emerging from talk in a remote Indigenous Australian community. In the data used here, the storyteller is an elderly Garrwa woman in Borroloola who speaks Garrwa and Kriol. The focus is on how the addition of a non-community member to the field of interaction affected the way the storyteller recounted events from a situation within the previous 24…
Up dere la ’
This paper presents an analysis of the discourse particle la as it is used in an English-based Aboriginal vernacular language spoken in an ex-government reserve in Queensland. Using unelicited conversational data recorded in primary school classrooms, we present an analysis of the formal and functional properties of la. In terms of formal properties, we classify la as a final particle and observe that it frequently collocates with the deictic dem…
Making knowledge visible in discourse
Linguistic studies of evidentiality, the coding of source of knowledge, have often appeared divided into two camps: those whose focus is the semantic, morphological and typological characteristics of grammaticalized morphological evidential systems (e.g. Aikhenvald, 2004), and those whose focus is on the social functions of non-grammaticalized evidential constructions as markers of epistemic authority and responsibility (e.g. Fox, 2001; Sidnell, …
“Watching for witness”
Linguistic forms with dedicated evidential meanings have been described for a number of Australian languages (eg. Donaldson 1980, Laughren 1982, Wilkins 1989) but there has been little written on how these are used in social interaction. This paper examines evidential strategies in ordinary Garrwa conversations, by taking into account what we know more generally about the status of knowledge and epistemic authority in Aboriginal societies, and ap…
A Grammar of (Western) Garrwa
Mushin provides the first full grammatical description of Garrwa, a critically endangered language of the Southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region in Northern Australia. Garrwa is typologically interesting because of its uncertain status in the Australian language family, its pronouns and its word order syntax. This book covers Garrwa phonology, morphology and syntax, with a particular focus on the use of grammar in discourse. The grammatical descrip…
An Introduction to ‘Studies in Australian Indigenous Conversation’
Code-Switching as an Interactional Resource in Garrwa/Kriol Talk-in-Interaction
This paper is a study of bilingual talk among Garrwa/Kriol speakers in the communities of Borroloola and Robinson River, NT, focussing on choices speakers make between traditional and non-traditional Indigenous languages in ordinary conversations. The analysis presented here supports the view of code-switching, recently summarized by Matras, as an interactional resource—a means by which speakers can structure their talk around the local contingen…
Silence is talk
Clause-initial position in four Australian languages
Word order in Australian languages has frequently been described as “free” or subject to pragmatic or discourse constraints rather than governed by syntactic rules. This paper examines both the pragmatic and syntactic factors which motivate the placement of constituents in clause initial position. We find striking similarities across four languages – Warlpiri, Jiwarli, Nyangumarta and Garrwa – suggesting underlying principles for ordering that be…
Diverging paths
This paper presents an account of variations in the clausal position of two tense/aspect markers in the Garrwa language, primarily whether they occur before or after a pronoun as part of a second position clitic cluster. The analysis considers how different paths of grammaticalisation in the development of Garrwa tense/aspect markers may impact on their contemporary usage. An account of discoursepragmatic factors associated with tense/aspect clit…
Discourse and grammar in Australian languages
One of the major functions of grammar for its speakers is the production of coherent and contextually meaningful discourse. Linguists have long been interested in the reciprocal questions of how grammatical structures are employed to express discourse structure and coherence, and how the pressures of communication in actual language use may influence the development of grammar. As a discourse unfolds, entities are introduced, reintroduced and ref…
Grammar and discourse in Australian languages
Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages
Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages is the first major survey to address the issue of the effects of information packaging on Australian languages, widely known for nonconfigurationality. The papers are based on individual fieldwork and describe a wide range of Australian languages of different types, ranging from the polysynthetic languages of Arnhem Land and the Kimberley to the classical types represented by Walpiri. Topics covered i…
Free to Bound to Free
Data from dual pronoun systems in Australian languages is used to show the pragmatic basis for a cycle of pronoun creation-reduced pronouns from free forms and free from reduced-and the motivation to maintain both types in a linguistic system. Free pronouns become positionally restricted reduced forms by association of clause-initial position with discourse prominence (Swartz 1988, Choi 1999). The same pragmatic motivations result in the creation…
Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages
Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages is the first major survey to address the issue of the effects of information packaging on Australian languages, widely known for nonconfigurationality. The papers are based on individual fieldwork and describe a wide range of Australian languages of different types, ranging from the polysynthetic languages of Arnhem Land and the Kimberley to the classical types represented by Walpiri. Topics covered i…
Silence is talk
A Grammar of (Western) Garrwa
Mushin provides the first full grammatical description of Garrwa, a critically endangered language of the Southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region in Northern Australia. Garrwa is typologically interesting because of its uncertain status in the Australian language family, its pronouns and its word order syntax. This book covers Garrwa phonology, morphology and syntax, with a particular focus on the use of grammar in discourse. The grammatical descrip…
The epistemics of social relations in Murrinhpatha, Garrwa and Jaru conversations
Making knowledge visible in discourse
Linguistic studies of evidentiality, the coding of source of knowledge, have often appeared divided into two camps: those whose focus is the semantic, morphological and typological characteristics of grammaticalized morphological evidential systems (e.g. Aikhenvald, 2004), and those whose focus is on the social functions of non-grammaticalized evidential constructions as markers of epistemic authority and responsibility (e.g. Fox, 2001; Sidnell, …
Evidentiality and deixis in narrative retelling
Linguistic structures in social interaction
In this introductory paper to the inaugural volume of the journal Interactional Linguistics , we raise the question of what a theory of language might look like once we factor time into explanations of regularities in linguistic phenomena. We first present a historical overview that contextualises interactional approaches within the broader field of linguistics, and then focus on temporality as a key dimension of language use in interaction. By d…
Tools of Engagement
Building on earlier Conversation Analytic work on turn-taking and response mobilization, we use video-recorded multiparty conversations to consider in detail how Australian Aboriginal participants in conversation select a next speaker in turns that are grammatically designed as questions. We focus in particular on the role of a range of embodied behaviors, such as gaze direction, body orientation, and pointing, to select—or avoid selecting—a next…
Code-Switching as an Interactional Resource in Garrwa/Kriol Talk-in-Interaction
This paper is a study of bilingual talk among Garrwa/Kriol speakers in the communities of Borroloola and Robinson River, NT, focussing on choices speakers make between traditional and non-traditional Indigenous languages in ordinary conversations. The analysis presented here supports the view of code-switching, recently summarized by Matras, as an interactional resource—a means by which speakers can structure their talk around the local contingen…
Japanese reportive evidentiality and the pragmatics of retelling
On the road again
In this article we examine displays of epistemic status and stance among long-term Anglo-Australian residents of remote communities through a case study of a 2-h interaction by four men who have demonstrated sophisticated knowledge of locations in their region. We show how equal access to knowledge of places is oriented to, as well as how differences in rights to authoritatively claim knowledge emerge in disputes over details of locations which a…
Free to Bound to Free
Data from dual pronoun systems in Australian languages is used to show the pragmatic basis for a cycle of pronoun creation-reduced pronouns from free forms and free from reduced-and the motivation to maintain both types in a linguistic system. Free pronouns become positionally restricted reduced forms by association of clause-initial position with discourse prominence (Swartz 1988, Choi 1999). The same pragmatic motivations result in the creation…
Intonational Rises and Dialog Acts in the Australian English Map Task
Eight map task dialogs representative of General Australian English, were coded for speaker turn, and for dialog acts using a version of SWBDDAMSL, a dialog act annotation scheme. High, low, simple, and complex rising tunes, and any corresponding dialog act codes were then compared. Dialog acts corresponding to information requests were consistently realized as high-onset high rises((L+)H*H—H%).Howeverlow-onset high rises (e.g., L*H —H%) correspo…
Towards an interactional grammar of interjections
Words classified as 'interjections' tend to be treated in descriptive grammars as outside of morphosyntax, too contextually bound to warrant a systematic description of their syntagmatic relations. We use a comparative corpus of conversations in four typologically distinct Australian Aboriginal languages (Garrwa, Gija, Jaru and Murrinhpatha) to illustrate how such an analysis may be developed. We focus on forms which have been described as 'compa…
Discourse Structure, Grounding, and Prosody in Task-Oriented Dialogue
This article explores the relationship between discourse structure, grounding, and prosody in interactive discourse through an empirical analysis of task-oriented dialogue (the Australian Map Task corpus). We investigate how patterns of prosodic boundary strengths, pitch contour, pausing, and overlap relate to the structuring of "common ground units" (Nakatani & Traum, 1999), collaborative units that capture the points in the discourse at which c…
Locational pointing in Murrinhpatha, Gija, and English conversations
It has been suggested that the gestural accuracy used by speakers of Australian Aboriginal languages like Guugu Yimidhirr and Arrernte to indicate directions and represent topographic features is a consequence of absolute frame of reference being dominant in these languages; and that the lackadaisical points produced by North American English speakers is an outcome of relative frame being dominant in English. We test this claim by comparing locat…
Da Symbol Dat Under da Stuffs
Failure to adequately address language differences between home and school is one of the many ways in which education systems frequently disadvantage Aboriginal students. Children from predominantly Aboriginal English-speaking homes face specific challenges, as the language differences between their home variety and the Standard Australian English (SAE) of the curriculum and classroom are often rendered 'invisible', with little explicit accommoda…
Linguistic cues for recipient design in an Indigenous Australian conversational narrative
This article presents an examination of some of the linguistic and interactional features of a story emerging from talk in a remote Indigenous Australian community. In the data used here, the storyteller is an elderly Garrwa woman in Borroloola who speaks Garrwa and Kriol. The focus is on how the addition of a non-community member to the field of interaction affected the way the storyteller recounted events from a situation within the previous 24…
Up dere la ’
This paper presents an analysis of the discourse particle la as it is used in an English-based Aboriginal vernacular language spoken in an ex-government reserve in Queensland. Using unelicited conversational data recorded in primary school classrooms, we present an analysis of the formal and functional properties of la. In terms of formal properties, we classify la as a final particle and observe that it frequently collocates with the deictic dem…
Evidentiality and deixis in narrative retelling
Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance
This book explores the discourse pragmatics of reportive evidentiality in Macedonian, Japanese and English through an empirical study of evidential strategies in narrative retelling. The patterns of evidential use (and non-use) found in these languages are attributed to contextual, cultural and grammatical factors that motivate the adoption of an ‘epistemological stance’ — a concept that owes much to recent trends in Cognitive Linguistics. The pa…
Japanese reportive evidentiality and the pragmatics of retelling
Intonational Rises and Dialog Acts in the Australian English Map Task
Eight map task dialogs representative of General Australian English, were coded for speaker turn, and for dialog acts using a version of SWBDDAMSL, a dialog act annotation scheme. High, low, simple, and complex rising tunes, and any corresponding dialog act codes were then compared. Dialog acts corresponding to information requests were consistently realized as high-onset high rises((L+)H*H—H%).Howeverlow-onset high rises (e.g., L*H —H%) correspo…
Discourse Structure, Grounding, and Prosody in Task-Oriented Dialogue
This article explores the relationship between discourse structure, grounding, and prosody in interactive discourse through an empirical analysis of task-oriented dialogue (the Australian Map Task corpus). We investigate how patterns of prosodic boundary strengths, pitch contour, pausing, and overlap relate to the structuring of "common ground units" (Nakatani & Traum, 1999), collaborative units that capture the points in the discourse at which c…
Word Order Pragmatics and Narrative Functions in Garrwa* * This paper has developed from a presentation given at the 2003 “Blackwood” Workshop on Australian Languages. Many thanks to the Garrwa people…
This paper presents an analysis of the order of full noun phrase arguments with respect to the verb in Garrwa non-personal narrative. Word order in this corpus is shown to be motivated by a combination of established pragmatic relations (here characterized as kontrast and rheme, following Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998 Vallduví, E and Vilkuna, M. 1998. “‘On rheme and kontrast’”. In The limits of syntax. Syntax and Semantics, Edited by: Cullicover, P and…
Narrative functions of clause linkage in Garrwa
Clause linkage has long been associated with the cohesive narrative functions of temporal organisation and participant tracking (eg. Givon 1983a, Myhill & Hibiya 1988). In this paper I use data from Garrwa, a language of Northern Australia, to show that in addition to these functions, clause linkage also contributes to the interpretation of narrative perspective. The results of this investigation illustrate the range of functions that can be asso…
Clause-initial position in four Australian languages
Word order in Australian languages has frequently been described as “free” or subject to pragmatic or discourse constraints rather than governed by syntactic rules. This paper examines both the pragmatic and syntactic factors which motivate the placement of constituents in clause initial position. We find striking similarities across four languages – Warlpiri, Jiwarli, Nyangumarta and Garrwa – suggesting underlying principles for ordering that be…
Diverging paths
This paper presents an account of variations in the clausal position of two tense/aspect markers in the Garrwa language, primarily whether they occur before or after a pronoun as part of a second position clitic cluster. The analysis considers how different paths of grammaticalisation in the development of Garrwa tense/aspect markers may impact on their contemporary usage. An account of discoursepragmatic factors associated with tense/aspect clit…
Discourse and grammar in Australian languages
One of the major functions of grammar for its speakers is the production of coherent and contextually meaningful discourse. Linguists have long been interested in the reciprocal questions of how grammatical structures are employed to express discourse structure and coherence, and how the pressures of communication in actual language use may influence the development of grammar. As a discourse unfolds, entities are introduced, reintroduced and ref…
Grammar and discourse in Australian languages
Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages
Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages is the first major survey to address the issue of the effects of information packaging on Australian languages, widely known for nonconfigurationality. The papers are based on individual fieldwork and describe a wide range of Australian languages of different types, ranging from the polysynthetic languages of Arnhem Land and the Kimberley to the classical types represented by Walpiri. Topics covered i…
Free to Bound to Free
Data from dual pronoun systems in Australian languages is used to show the pragmatic basis for a cycle of pronoun creation-reduced pronouns from free forms and free from reduced-and the motivation to maintain both types in a linguistic system. Free pronouns become positionally restricted reduced forms by association of clause-initial position with discourse prominence (Swartz 1988, Choi 1999). The same pragmatic motivations result in the creation…
Silence is talk
An Introduction to ‘Studies in Australian Indigenous Conversation’
Code-Switching as an Interactional Resource in Garrwa/Kriol Talk-in-Interaction
This paper is a study of bilingual talk among Garrwa/Kriol speakers in the communities of Borroloola and Robinson River, NT, focussing on choices speakers make between traditional and non-traditional Indigenous languages in ordinary conversations. The analysis presented here supports the view of code-switching, recently summarized by Matras, as an interactional resource—a means by which speakers can structure their talk around the local contingen…
“Watching for witness”
Linguistic forms with dedicated evidential meanings have been described for a number of Australian languages (eg. Donaldson 1980, Laughren 1982, Wilkins 1989) but there has been little written on how these are used in social interaction. This paper examines evidential strategies in ordinary Garrwa conversations, by taking into account what we know more generally about the status of knowledge and epistemic authority in Aboriginal societies, and ap…
A Grammar of (Western) Garrwa
Mushin provides the first full grammatical description of Garrwa, a critically endangered language of the Southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region in Northern Australia. Garrwa is typologically interesting because of its uncertain status in the Australian language family, its pronouns and its word order syntax. This book covers Garrwa phonology, morphology and syntax, with a particular focus on the use of grammar in discourse. The grammatical descrip…
Making knowledge visible in discourse
Linguistic studies of evidentiality, the coding of source of knowledge, have often appeared divided into two camps: those whose focus is the semantic, morphological and typological characteristics of grammaticalized morphological evidential systems (e.g. Aikhenvald, 2004), and those whose focus is on the social functions of non-grammaticalized evidential constructions as markers of epistemic authority and responsibility (e.g. Fox, 2001; Sidnell, …
Up dere la ’
This paper presents an analysis of the discourse particle la as it is used in an English-based Aboriginal vernacular language spoken in an ex-government reserve in Queensland. Using unelicited conversational data recorded in primary school classrooms, we present an analysis of the formal and functional properties of la. In terms of formal properties, we classify la as a final particle and observe that it frequently collocates with the deictic dem…
Rethinking Australian Aboriginal English-based speech varieties
The colonial history of Australia necessitated contact between nineteenth and twentieth century dialects of English and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island languages. This has resulted in the emergence of contact languages, some of which have been identified as creoles (e.g. Sandefur 1979, Shnukal 1983) while others have been hidden under the label of ‘Aboriginal English’, exacerbated by what Young (1997) described as a gap in our knowledge of hi…
Linguistic cues for recipient design in an Indigenous Australian conversational narrative
This article presents an examination of some of the linguistic and interactional features of a story emerging from talk in a remote Indigenous Australian community. In the data used here, the storyteller is an elderly Garrwa woman in Borroloola who speaks Garrwa and Kriol. The focus is on how the addition of a non-community member to the field of interaction affected the way the storyteller recounted events from a situation within the previous 24…
Grammaticalization and typology in Australian Aboriginal languages
While grammatical change has been a key area of interest for Australian historical linguistics, only a few studies have sought to explain the development of grammar in terms of processes of grammaticalization. This chapter explores the key reasons for the relative absence of grammaticalization studies in the Australianist tradition. It then shows how the development of a particular areal feature—second-position clitic constructions—may be explain…
Tools of Engagement
Building on earlier Conversation Analytic work on turn-taking and response mobilization, we use video-recorded multiparty conversations to consider in detail how Australian Aboriginal participants in conversation select a next speaker in turns that are grammatically designed as questions. We focus in particular on the role of a range of embodied behaviors, such as gaze direction, body orientation, and pointing, to select—or avoid selecting—a next…
Da Symbol Dat Under da Stuffs
Failure to adequately address language differences between home and school is one of the many ways in which education systems frequently disadvantage Aboriginal students. Children from predominantly Aboriginal English-speaking homes face specific challenges, as the language differences between their home variety and the Standard Australian English (SAE) of the curriculum and classroom are often rendered 'invisible', with little explicit accommoda…
Linguistics (29 works) · Philosophy (22 works) · Computer Science (19 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (14 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (14 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Psychology (13 works) · History (10 works)