My current research focus is the sociolinguistics of multilingualism in a small but highly multilingual community in north-west Arnhem Land. I am also collaborating with Professor Nicholas Evans (ANU) on his project, Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity (2014-2018) and continue work with Janet Fletcher (MU) on intonation and information structure in Mawng, a language of north-west Arnhem Land.
I began my research in Linguistics with PhD on the Australian Aboriginal language Mawng, focussing on the semantics of grammatical gender agreement and how this becomes lexicalised together with specific verb senses.
While a postdoctoral fellow with the Language and Cognition group, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen, The Netherlands) and Radboud University (Nijmegen) I contributed to work on large-scale typological comparisons of languages of the Pacific. My research focus between 2008-2010 was expanding the Mawng dictionary database by doing research on traditional ethnobiological knowledge which has resulted in the publication of three bilingual posters about Shellfish, Fish and Plant Medicine. I also helped to document traditional songs sung by Mawng speakers during this time and researched kinship verbs and triangular kinship terms. In 2010 I taught at La Trobe University.
Various publications and presentations can be accessed via academia.edu including unpublished manuscripts and forthcoming article
I have been collecting data on the Mawng language since 2002. The details of my deposit in the ELAR archive can be viewed on the Mawng Dictionary Project web page. A fuller set of my Mawng materials has been archived in PARADISEC.
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FEATURED Journal article
The impact of national standardized literacy and numeracy testing on children and teaching staff in remote Australian Indigenous communities
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Credentials
Positions
Postdoctoral Fellow In Indigenous Language Documen
Languages And Linguistics
Casual
Languages And Linguistics
Affiliate
Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
Staff Member
Research Unit for Indigenous Language
Member
Australian Linguistics Society
Education
Doctor of Philosophy
University of Melbourne
Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Arts with honours in Botany and Linguistics
University of Melbourne