Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 33:1 (2018) ► pp.92–135

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Lexical semantics in language shift

Comparing emotion lexica in Dalabon and Barunga Kriol (northern Australia)

ORCiD logo with link | University of Western Australia | University of Sydney | Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University
Published online: 7 May 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00003.pon
Abstract
This article analyzes some of the lexical semantic features of Barunga Kriol, an Australian creole language (Northern Territory, Australia), in comparison with Dalabon, one of the Australian Aboriginal languages replaced by Barunga Kriol. Focusing on the semantic domain of emotions, this study offers insights into how creole languages select and organize semantic meanings, and to what extent this results in lexical loss or retention. I spell out the exact nature of the lexical resemblances between the two languages, and highlight major differences as well. The conclusions of the study are two-fold. Firstly, I show that the Barunga Kriol emotion lexicon shares a great many properties with the Dalabon emotion lexicon. As a result, speakers in Barunga Kriol and Dalabon respectively are often able to package meaning in very similar ways: the two languages offer comparable means of describing events in the world. From that point of view, language shift can be considered to have a lesser impact. Secondly, I show that the lexical resemblances between Barunga Kriol and Dalabon are not limited to simple cases where the lexemes in each language share the same forms and/or meanings. Instead, lexical resemblances relate to a number of other properties in semantics and combinatorics, and I devise a preliminary typology of these lexical resemblances. Beyond the comparison between Barunga Kriol and Dalabon, this typology may tentatively serve as a grid to evaluate lexical resemblances between languages more generally.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Emotions
    • 1.2A typology of lexical resemblances
    • 1.3Lexical resemblances and language shift
  • 2.The languages and their ecology
  • 3.The Dalabon emotion lexicon
  • 4.Resemblances
    • 4.1Lexical forms
    • 4.2Semantics
      • 4.2.1Plain semantic resemblance
      • 4.2.2Patterns of colexification
      • 4.2.3Partial semantic overlap
      • 4.2.4Emotional connotations
      • 4.2.5Lexical gaps
    • 4.3Combinatorics
      • 4.3.1Argument subcategorization
      • 4.3.2The semantics of non-core arguments
    • 4.4Summary of resemblances
      • 4.1.1Lexical resemblance
      • 4.4.2A typology of lexical resemblances
      • 4.4.3Lexical resemblances and perspectives on emotions
  • 5.Differences
    • 5.1Patterns of lexicalization
      • 5.1.1Absent concepts
      • 5.1.2Absent colexifications
      • 5.1.3New concepts
    • 5.2Selectional restrictions
    • 5.3Word classes
    • 5.4Figurative representations
    • 5.5Summary of differences
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (83)
References
Ameka, Felix. 2015. “Dev”t means eye-red’: Communicating feelings in glocalised Ghanaian English. Oral presentation at the Australian National University, August 2015.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Besmeres, Mary. 2006. Language and emotional experience: The voice of translingual memoir. In Aneta Pavlenko (ed.), Bilingual minds. Emotional experience, expression, and representation, 34–58. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1984. The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Science 71. 173–221. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chaudenson, Robert. 2001. Creolization of language and culture. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crowley, Terry & Claire Bowern. 2010. An introduction to historical linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cruse, David Alan. 1986. Lexical Semantics. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cutfield, Sarah. 2011. Demonstratives in Dalabon. A language of south-western Arnhem Land. PhD Thesis, Monash University, Melbourne.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dickson, Gregory F. 2015. Marra and Kriol: The loss and maintenance of knowledge across a language shift boundary. PhD Thesis, The Australian National University, Canberra.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ekman, Paul. 1992. An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion 6(3/4). 169–200. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Enfield, Nick J. 2015. The utility of meaning: What words mean and why. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas. 2003. Bininj Gun-Wok: A pan-dialectal grammar of Mayali, Kunwinjku and Kune. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Semantic typology. In Jae Jung Song (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Typology, vol. 504–533. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas, Dunstan Brown & Greville Corbett. 2001. Dalabon pronominal prefixes and the typology of syncretism: A network morphology analysis. In Booij Geert & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 2000, 103–172. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas & Francesca Merlan. 2003. Dalabon verb conjugation. In Nicholas Evans (ed.), The non-Pama-Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia: Comparative studies of the continent’s most linguistically complex region, vol. 5521, 268–283. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas, Francesca Merlan & Maggie Tukumba. 2004. A First Dictionary of Dalabon. Maningrida: Maningrida Arts and Culture, Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Farquharson, Joseph. 2012. The African lexis in Jamaican: Its linguistic and sociohistorical significance. PhD Thesis, University of West Indies, Kingston.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
François, Alexandre. 2008. Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages. In Martine Vanhove (ed.), From polysemy to semantic change, 163–215. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gaby, Alice R. 2008. Gut feelings: Locating emotion, life force and intellect in the Thaayorre body. In Farzad Sharifian, René Dirven & Yu Ning (eds.), Body, culture and language: Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages., 27–44. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goddard, Cliff. 1994. Lexical primitives in Yankunytjatjara. In Cliff Goddard & Anna Wierzbicka (eds.), Semantics and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings, 229–262. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harkins, Jean. 1990. Shame and shyness in the Aboriginal classroom: A case for “practical semantics”. Australian Journal of Linguistics 10(2). 293–306. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hiatt, Less R. 1978. Classification of the emotions. In Less R. Hiatt (ed.), Australian Aboriginal Concepts, 182–187. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hill, Clair. In prep. The social action of tending the land: On the road to the Old Mission with Umpila and Kuuku Ya’u speakers. Anthropological Linguistics.
Hoffmann, Dorothea. 2012. Descriptions of motion and travel in Jaminjung and Kriol. PhD Thesis, University of Manchester.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holm, John. 1988. Pidgins and creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. An introduction to pidgins and creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koch, Harold. 2000. Central Australian Aboriginal English: In comparison with the morphosyntactic categories of Kaytetye. Asian Englishes: An International Journal of the Sociolinguistics of English in Asia/Pacific 3(2). 32–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, Jason. 2004. Kriol-English interactive dictionary. AuSIL Interactive Dictionary Series A-9.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, Jason & Kazuko Obata. 2010. Languages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People – A uniquely Australian heritage. Year Book Australia, vol. 2009–10. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Claire. 1986. Relexification in creole genesis revisited: the case of Haitian Creole. In Pieter C. Muysken & Norval Smith (eds.), Substrata versus Universals in Creole Genesis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. Creole genesis and the acquisition of grammar. The case of Haitian Creole. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language contact. Cambrige: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McKay, Graham. 1975. Rembarrnga: a language of Central Arnhem Land. PhD Thesis, The Australian National University, Canberra.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meakins, Felicity. 2014. Language contact varieties. In Harold Koch & Rachel Nordlinger (eds.), The languages and linguistics of Australia: A comprehensive guide, 361–411. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Merlan, Francesca & Pascale Jacq. 2005. Jawoyn-English Dictionary and English Finder List. Katherine: Diwurruwurru-Jaru Aboriginal Corporation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mühlhäusler, Peter. 2008. History of research into Australian pidgins and creoles. In William McGregor (ed.), Encountering Aboriginal languages: Studies in the history of Australian linguistics, 437–457. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munro, Jen. 2004. Substrate language influence in Kriol: The application of transfer constraints to language contact in Northern Australia. PhD Thesis, University of New England, Armidale.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Musharbash, Yasmine. 2010. Marriage, love magic, and adultery: Warlpiri relationships as seen by three generations of anthropologists. Oceania 80(3). 272–288. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter C. 1981. Half-way between Quechua and Spanish: the case for relexification. In Arnold R. Highfield & Valdman Albert (eds.), History and Variation in Creole Studies, 52–79. Karoma: Ann Arbor MI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Myers, Fred R. 1979. Emotions and the self: A theory of personhood and political order among Pintupi Aborigines. Ethos 7(4). 343–370. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1986. Pintupi country, Pintupi self: Sentiment, place and politics among Western Desert aborigines. Canberra, Washington: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicholls, Sophie. 2013. Cultural scripts, social cognition and social interactions in Roper Kriol. Australian Journal of Linguistics 33(3). 282–301. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Noyce, Philip. 2002. Rabbit-Proof Fence. Australia, Australia: Jabal Films PtyLtd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ogarkova, Anna. 2013. Folk emotion concepts: Lexicalization of emotional experiences across languages and cultures. In Johnny R. J. Fontaine, Klaus R. Scherer & Cristiana Soriano (eds.), Components of emotional meanings: A sourcebook, 46–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pavlenko, Aneta. 2006. Bilingual minds. Emotional experience, expression, and representation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. The bilingual mind and what it tells us about language and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peile, Anthony R. 1997. Body and soul: An Aboriginal view. Victoria Park: Hesperian Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ponsonnet, Maïa. 2009. Aspects of the semantics of intellectual subjectivity in Dalabon (south-western Arnhem Land). Australian Aboriginal Studies 2009(1). 16–28.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011a. “Brainwash from English”? Barunga Kriol speakers’ views on their own language. Anthropological Linguistics 52(2). 24.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011b. Les figures du doute en langue dalabon (Australie du Nord). Journal de la société des Océanistes 132(1). 151–164. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Body-parts in Barunga Kriol and Dalabon: Matches and mismatches. In Maïa Ponsonnet, Loan Dao & Margit Bowler (eds.), Proceedings of the 42nd Australian Linguistic Society Conference – 2011, 351–387. Canberra: ANU Research Repository.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014b. Documenting the language of emotions in Dalabon (Northern Australia). Caveats, solutions and benefits. In Aicha Belkadi, Kakia Chatsiou & Kirsty Rowan (eds.), Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory Conference 41, 1–13. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016a. Emotion nouns in Australian languages. In Peter K. Austin, Harold Koch & Jane H. Simpson (eds.), Language, Land and Story in Australia. London: EL Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016b. Emotion middle predicates in Barunga Kriol. Kioloa, Australia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Conceptual representations and figurative language in language shift. Metaphors and gestures for emotions in Kriol (Barunga, northern Australia). Cognitive Linguistics 28(03). 631–671.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rhydwen, Mari. 1995. Kriol is the color of Thursday. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1131. 113–119. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sakel, Jeanette. 2007. Types of loans: Matter and pattern. In Yaron Matras & Jeanette Sakel (eds.), Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic perspective, 15–29. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
San Roque, Lila, Gawne Lauren, Darja Hoenigman, Julia Colleen Miller, Alan Rumsey, Stef Spronck, Alice Carroll & Nicholas Evans. 2012. Getting the story straight: Language fieldwork usung a narrative problem-solving task. Language documentation and conservation 61. 135–174.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sandefur, John R. 1979. An Australian Creole in the Northern Territory: A description of of Ngukurr-Bamiyili dialects. Darwin: SIL-AAB.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1986. Kriol of North Australia: A language coming of age. Darwin: SIL-AAB.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saulwick, Adam. 2003a. A First Dictionary of Rembarrnga. Maningrida: Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation, Maningrida Arts and Culture.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003b. Aspects of the verb in Rembarrnga, a polysynthetic language of northern Australia: Grammatical description, texts and dictionary. PhD Thesis, University of Melbourne.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schultze-Berndt, Eva, Felicity Meakins & Denise Angelo. 2013. Kriol. In Susan M. Michaelis, Matthew Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds.), The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures (APiCS), 241–251. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sharifian, Farzad, René Dirven, Ning Yu & Susanne Niemeier. 2008. Culture, body and language. Conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Siegel, Jeff. 2008. The emergence of pidgin and creole languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simpson, Jane. 2000. Camels as pidgin-carriers: Afghan cameleers as a vector for the spread of features of Australian Aboriginal pidgins and creoles. In Jeff Siegel (ed.), Processes of language contact: Studies from Australia and the South Pacific, 195–244. Saint-Laurent, Québec: Fides.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. From common ground to syntactic construction: Associated path in Warlpiri. In Nick J. Enfield (ed.), Ethnosyntax: Explorations in grammar and culture, 2087–2307. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thornton, Warwick. 2009. Samson and Delilah. Australia, Australia: Scarlett Pictures PtyLtd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Troy, Jakelin. 1990. Australian Aboriginal Contact with the English Language in New South Wales 1788–1945. Canberra: Pacific Linguistic.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1994. Melaleuka: A history and description of New South Wales Pidgin. PhD Thesis, The Australian National University, Canberra.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Turpin, Myfany. 2002. Body part terms in Kaytetye feeling expressions. In Nick J. Enfield & Anna Wierzbicka (eds.), The body in description of emotion, Pragmatics and Cognition, vol. 101, 271–303. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walsh, Michael. 1996. Body parts in Murrinh-Patha: In corporation, grammar and metaphor. In Hilary Chappell & William McGregor (eds.), The grammar of inalienability: A typological perspective on body part terms and the part-whole relation, 111–153. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel. 1953. Languages in contact. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1999. Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Woodbury, Anthony C. 1998. Documenting rhetorical, aesthetic, and expressive loss in language shift. In Leonore A. Grenoble & Lindsay J. Whaley (eds.), Endangered languages, 234–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Youn, Hyejin, Logan Sutton, Eric Smith, Christopher Moore, Jon F. Wilkins, Ian Maddieson, William Croft & Tanmoy Bhattacharya. 2015. On the universal structure of human lexical semantics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113(7). 1766–1771. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Batchelor, Thomas
2025. Asymmetrical and symmetrical serial verb constructions in Kununurra Kriol. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages DOI logo
Yacopetti, Eleanor & Maïa Ponsonnet
2024. A semantic typology of emotion nouns in Australian Indigenous languages. Australian Journal of Linguistics 44:1 ► pp. 29 ff. DOI logo
Zeng, Zhifa & Yuhang Li
2024. Multi-modal Chinese Text Emotion Metaphor Computation Based on Mutual Information and Information Entropy. ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing 23:8 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Ponsonnet, Maïa
2022. The Linguistic Embodiment of Emotions. A Study of the Australian Continent. Ethos 50:2 ► pp. 153 ff. DOI logo
Jourdan, Christine
2021. Pidgins and Creoles: Debates and Issues. Annual Review of Anthropology 50:1 ► pp. 363 ff. DOI logo
Kofod, Frances & Anna Crane
2020. The body and the verb. Pragmatics & Cognition 27:1 ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo
Ponsonnet, Maïa & Kitty-Jean Laginha
2020. The role of the body in descriptions of emotions. Pragmatics & Cognition 27:1 ► pp. 20 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue