What women want: Teaching and learning pronouns in Ngarrindjeri

ABSTRACT

Ngarrindjeri is one of many Aboriginal languages being actively revived in southern Australia. Women in the Ngarrindjeri community have expressed a desire to speak, read and write their language with the same richness as when it was spoken fluently over 70 years ago. Like many Aboriginal languages, Ngarrindjeri has a rich selection of free and bound pronouns, which express person, number and case, but unlike most other Australian languages, it has a third set of reduced free form pronouns. This tripartite set is used to express discourse saliency and continuing topic, and to definitize noun phrases. This paper addresses the issue of teaching and learning how to use Ngarrindjeri pronouns in traditional ways, but for contemporary purposes. Learning Ngarrindjeri requires understanding grammatical categories such as case that differ substantially from English, plus understanding the use of free forms for discourse saliency, bound forms for continuing topics, and free reduced forms where English uses articles. Finally, it requires memorizing a large number of pronoun forms. We share anecdotes on learning pronouns from individual authors, and a reflection from a young Ngarrindjeri woman. We then propose strategies and resources to make it easier to learn, remember and use the complex, regularized pronoun paradigms of Ngarrindjeri.

KEYWORDS:

• Ngarrindjeri
• pronouns
• language revival
• Berndt and Berndt
• Aboriginal language

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Ngarrindjeri women and ‘language warriors’ for sharing their language and learning experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study were derived as referenced from resources available in the public domain. The Tindale (1935) narrative was accessed from the South Australian Museum archive, with permission, and is now in the public domain through ARC project outcomes discussed in this paper.

Notes

1 Giles is employed by Miwi-inyeri Pelepi-ambi Aboriginal Corporation to teach Ngarrindjeri to adults, and now works closely making language resources with the co-author Gale, who has been the support linguist for the Ngarrindjeri revival programme since 2004.

2 This claim contrasts with Cerin’s analysis of Ngarrindjeri pronominals, who variously says they play a “rare” or “marginal role” in reference tracking in the Definitizer NP (Cerin, 1994, p. 163).

3 This pronoun form (not included in the pronoun Table 1 below) is an Indirect object bound pronoun marked with an oblique Allative case: – in ‘him(3SgACC)’ + -angk ‘to(ALL)’.

4 It could be argued that these three Ergative pronoun forms have a heavier load at the conversational and discourse level, hence their retention from a chronologically earlier version of the language.

5 In Table 1 the ‘OR’ indicates free alternate pronoun forms whereas ‘&’ indicates separate Nominative Subject and Ergative Agent forms. See the three Ergative pronoun forms shaded in grey.

6 Meyer’s spelling is retained in this example, rather than the standardized spelling used by revivalists today.

7 The final two Dreaming booklets were compiled in response to direct community requests, because of the lack of availability of Ngarrindjeri Dreaming texts in affordable books. These two booklets make accessible all the published (out-of-print) and unpublished versions of the narratives about both the Ngurunderi Dreaming Ancestor and the Kondoli (Whale) Dreaming Ancestor, respectively, in both Ngarrindjeri and English.

8 Without access to the original field notes under embargo until 2023 in the Berndt Museum, University of Western Australia, it is impossible to cross-check the methodology and veracity of written recordings. It is unclear how accessible and in what format the Berndt and Berndt field notes will be made to the public from 2023.

9 It is not apparent why this is, but any men who choose to participate in classes are especially welcomed.

10 The Certificate III (and Certificate IV) was developed and written by Gale, in collaboration with TAFE SA, and until it expired in December 2020 was taught by Gale, with an Elder, through Tauondi Aboriginal College.

11 See the ABC story celebrating this achievement: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-11/aboriginal-languages-boosted-by-new-dictionaries-and-education/100275646.

12 Note Ngarrindjeri meanings: ngopun ‘walking, going’, le:wun ‘sitting, staying’, yaramun pulgi ‘peeing place (toilet)’, thremun ‘spread’, taraki ‘leg’, mrupun ‘wipe, ko:pi ‘nose’, tau ‘stop’, yanun ‘talking’, mi:mini ‘woman’, kungun ‘listening’, thrupun ‘splashing’.

13 Gale grew up and went to school on Ramindjeri/Ngarrindjeri country, and has now returned to live and work with Ngarrindjeri people in reviving their language.

14 Note: Ngarrindjeri pronouns have a Nominative–Accusative system, except for the three exceptions that also take an Ergative form (that is a two-way split within the pronoun system).

15 See the University of South Australia ‘Pitjantjatjara Language and Culture’ course information at: https://study.unisa.edu.au/courses/106079.

16 These sources included: Berndt and Berndt (1993), Meyer (1843), Taplin (1878, 1879), and Tindale (1935), along with Yallop (1975), who drew from the recordings of Luise Hercus and Cath Ellis, and further analysis by Maryalyce McDonald (1977).

17 Paul Eckert should be acknowledged here for sharing his ideas and mentoring role as a language teacher for many years as the coordinator and teacher of the Pitjantjatjara Summer School at the University of South Australia.

18 See ABC TV News story on Deadly Nannas, Saturday 17 April 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYldBxkF1es.

Additional information

Funding

The research underpinning this paper was supported by the Australian Research Council under Grants DP150103287: “Analysis of Ngarrindjeri texts of the Lower Murray, Lakes & Coorong region, as recorded in the book: A World That Was by Ronald & Catherine Berndt” and DP190102413: “Towards Sustainable Language Revival”.

Notes on contributors

Mary-Anne Gale

Mary-Anne Gale, PhD, is a Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide and a Trainer at Tauondi Aboriginal Community College. Postgraduate studies in education and linguistics have led to a career as a teacher and teacher-linguist in bilingual schools in the Northern Territory, then teacher trainer and support linguist for language revival programmes in South Australia (SA). Her specialty is analysis and interpretation of Ngarrindjeri source material and resource production. She has worked collaboratively with a range of SA Aboriginal groups, particularly the Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna, and co-produced a range of language resources, including learners’ guides, phrase books, dictionaries, alphabet books and course materials.

Angela Giles

Angela Giles is an undergraduate arts student at Flinders University, a Ngarrindjeri language trainer at Tauondi College and a specialist language teacher at Para Hill High School in Adelaide. She is a proud Ngarrindjeri mi:mini and a graduate of the Certificate III in Learning an Endangered Aboriginal Language (Ngarrindjeri).

Jane Simpson

Jane Simpson is Chair of Indigenous Linguistics at the Australian National University. She works on syntax, language documentation, reconstructing languages from old sources, and has worked with Warumungu and Warlpiri people of Central Australia.

Rob Amery

Rob Amery is Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of Adelaide. He has worked with Australian languages since 1980, focussing on the reclamation and re-introduction of Kaurna of the Adelaide Plains since the early 1990s. He has worked sporadically with Ngarrindjeri since 1990.

David Wilkins

David Wilkins, PhD, is currently an Honorary Lecturer in Linguistics, College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU, Canberra. He is an anthropological linguist who has worked with Arrernte speakers in central Australia.