Termies..

Sorry for the suspense. A fourth termite appeared, but apparently they want to remain within the numbers that Bardi has, as there were no others. I think they were an exploratory party going up the phone line, or maybe they were trying to get a better view of the Hawthorn-Adelaide game – “an enthralling contest” [...]

Laves project web page

I’ve started a page for the Laves materials project. It’s still a draft at this stage but more material will go up as the project progresses. You can reach it here: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bowern/laves/laves.htm.

New Language!

Well, not really, but it was new to me, and it was a bit of a shock.
This post was originally going to be a bit of a rant about “people” who don’t catalogue their tapes, or record who’s speaking on the tape (or what the language is). I’ve been at AIATSIS for the past couple [...]

What do you want?

Here’s a gem from a tape I was listening to a few days ago. I’d better not say who the linguist was, and I don’t know who the speaker was. He was elderly in the mid 1960s.
Linguist: How do you say “what do you want”?
Speaker: Anggi liyan min.. I mean anggi liyan ngan .. no [...]

Goolarrabooloo

Some time ago I mentioned that I would blog about the name/term Goolarrabooloo. It’s a Yawuru/Jugun clan name, it seems.
First up, morphology. Goolarra means ‘west’, and -(a)booloo is a kind of collective denizen suffix; X-booloo translates as “people belonging to X”. X is most often a compass point, but it can also be an environment [...]

Two unusual articles

Notice anything about this article? or this one?

community problems

If anyone knows which community this story refers to, could you let me know?