This paper examines the usage frequency of phonetically reduced modals (i.e. "gonna," "wanna," "gotta") in Present-day English. It is assumed that in distinct sociolinguistic and discourse contexts, the use of reduced modals is dynamic. To collect the data, there are five corpora used in this study, "Corpus of…

Aboriginal English, the language many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students bring to the classroom, represents the introduction of significant change into the English language. It is the argument of this paper that the linguistic, social and cultural facts associated with the distinctiveness of Aboriginal English need to be taken into…

The diversity of language in Australia in pre-invasion times is well attested, with at least 300 distinct languages being spoken along with many dialects. At that time, many Indigenous people were multilingual, often speaking at least four languages. Today many of these languages have been lost, with fewer than 15 being learned by children as a…

The language ecologies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Queensland are characterised by widespread language shift to contact language varieties, yet they remain largely invisible in discourses involving Indigenous languages and education. This invisibility--its various causes and its many implications--are explored through a…

Aboriginal English has been documented in widely separated parts of Australia and, despite some stylistic and regional variation, is remarkably consistent across the continent, and provides a vehicle for the common expression of Aboriginal identity. There is, however, some indeterminacy in the way in which the term is used in much academic and…

This paper reports on a comprehensive corpus-based study of regional and stylistic variation in the distribution of the English present perfect. The data represents ten English varieties of both the Inner Circle and Outer Circle, covering four major text types: conversation, news reportage, academic and fictional writing. The results are discussed…

Examines the constraints on the realization of "/t/" in New Zealander English. On the basis of an examination of the speech of two similar speakers from that country, a series of allophonic rules is provided. The article shows that the distribution of allophones for these speakers is not the same as for other speakers who have been…

Traces the development of "Australian English" from the 1940s to the present time, noting a radical change in both public and individual acceptance. Briefly surveys the extent of the scholarly documentation of Australian English in dictionaries and style manuals, and addresses the question of Australianness in a range of text types and…

Discusses the progress in the number of innovations and neutralizations in the pronominal system of Warlpiri, an aboriginal language spoken in central Australia. The changes are analyzed by age-group usage, and patterns of the changes are suggested. Part of a sample interview in presented. (Author/LMO)

This document consists of the three issues of the serial "VOX" published in 1989-1991. Major articles in these issues include: "The Original Languages of Australia"; "UNESCO and Universal Literacy"; "Language Shift and Maintenance in Torres Strait"; "Maintaining and Developing Italian in…