The influence of Arandic languages on Central Australian Aboriginal English

This paper examines the influence of the grammar of Australian Aboriginal languages on Central Australian Aboriginal English (CAAE). CAAE is considered to be a partially anglicised version of a former Central Australian Aboriginal Pidgin (CAAP). This CAAP was one of the local varieties of the general Australian Pidgin (AP) that developed out of New South Wales Pidgin (NSWP), the earliest of the PC varieties that developed in Australia. The paper discusses data from three areas of the grammar of CAAE and compares it with Kaytetye, one of the substrate languages. It shows how two relatively exotic grammatical categories found in Kaytetye (and other Arandic languages – dyadic” in kinship nouns and “Associated Motion” in verbs – were replicated in CAAE using formal material derived from English. The usage of CAAE prepositions, whose forms are from English, is also compared to Kaytetye case functions. We find that the organisation of the semantic “functions” of the cases is replicated in considerable detail in the use of the CAAE prepositions.