The descriptions of English and various Australian contact varieties (presented in section §5.2 above) reveal that there remains some ambiguity over whether and in which contexts speakers have a choice between the forms used in present temporal reference. For English, stativity has been thought to impose a categorical prohibition on the use of the progressive, though as we saw above, this is not always the case. And in the descriptions of Kimberley Kriol and early descriptions of Kriol, there appears to be variation between the use of -ing and -bat (referred to as ‘overlap’). Previous corpus studies of English varieties have shown that the choice amongst present temporal reference forms is probabilistic rather than categorical (e.g. Walker 2000; Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001). This does not imply that particular aspectual readings arise in a random fashion, rather that quantitative studies have the opportunity to draw out the contextual factors which make one reading or another more likely.
As a consequence, and following Walker (2000:122) I define the variable context as every instance of a lexical verb used with present temporal reference. Present temporal reference is negatively defined as all non-past and non-future contexts. The variable, therefore, is ‘present temporal reference’, and the variants are all verb forms that perform this function. (As should already be apparent, there will be a focus on three variants: V, Ving and Vbat, since these appear to be the main forms involved in the expression of present time by the children in the present corpus. The work of both Walker (2000), and Poplack and Tagliamonte (1996; Tagliamonte & Poplack 1993) provide a precedent for taking the entire sphere of a particular temporal space (present and past respectively) as the starting point for analysis. This approach has several
advantages for the present analysis. Firstly, it allows for the testing of various hypotheses (in the form of factor groups and combinations thereof) regarding the role each form takes within a functional domain, ultimately (hopefully) revealing the most accurate account (Walker 2000). Secondly, it reflects the variationist analysis as “a function- rather than form-driven approach to linguistic problems” (Walker 2000: 122). Taking a functional domain as the locus of analysis, and analysing the incidence of the forms that perform that function (and excluding the other functions performed by those forms) facilitates comparative examinations (of formal variation within that domain) between closely-related languages which share functional domains (such as present temporal reference). In the present analysis such a comparative examination is conducted for the children’s HOME and SCHOOL varieties.
Finally, and most critically, since this corpus contains a previously undocumented language, there is no descriptive work to guide what could be included/excluded as the relevant forms of present temporal reference until the corpus was examined10. Further,
even if such description were available it would likely refer to adult language norms, and as such would not necessarily reflect the usage of children. Defining a broad envelope of variation allows us to begin on an agnostic footing regarding the relevant forms, and allows us to overcome the need to assign clauses on the basis of a set of supposed L1/L2 forms (the problems of which were discussed in Chapter 3 (§3.1).
5.4.1 A priori exclusions
In addition to excluding all clauses with past or future temporal reference, I have made a number of a priori exclusions. Firstly, all hypothetical and counterfactual (i.e. “irrealis”) contexts have been excluded following Walker (2000). Examples are given in (33) and (34) below.
(33) Okei, wen ai tok ‘rait’, wel, wel, thet min ai gat pik11. [SJD-062:599 Alysha HOME]
Okei, wen ai tok ‘rait’, wel, wel, thet min ai gat pik Okay when 1SG.SBJ say right well well that means 1SG.SBJAUX choose
‘Okay, when I say ‘right’, well, well, that means I’ve got to choose.’
10 While there are obvious similarities, noted above, to Wumpurrarni English, Disbray (2008a) notes that the
treatment of tense and aspect in the description of this variety is far from comprehensive. Without further investigations into both corpora, the extent of similarities and differences is yet to be established.
11 Even though only ‘talk’ is in the hypothetical subordinate clause, I have also excluded the main clause verb ‘mean’
from analysis as well. I felt it is prudent for complex clauses containing a hypothetical element to be examined separately. (‘Got pick’ is excluded on the grounds that it contains the modal auxiliary ‘got’ - see below).) Other complex clauses were included in the analysis when part of a present temporal reference framing.
(34) What about you photo it? [SJD-068:64 Simon SCHOOL]
Present-tense forms which are used to perform non-present temporal reference were excluded: i.e. when the bare V form is used for past temporal (as in examples (35) and (36)) or future reference. This was determined by a close examination of the context of the utterance12, taking into account such elements as whether the action or event in
reference had already occurred, whether the temporal frame had already been supplied by another party, such as the teacher.
(35) I swim in the town. [SJD-018:156 Lenora SCHOOL]
(Lenora has been pointing to a picture of a beach saying to her classmate ‘I bin swim there’ (a past tense clause). The teacher says she would like to take them to the beach. Lenora then states (35). As she is not presently and does not habitually swim in the town pool, I have concluded that this is an attempt at SAE past reference) (36) [Teacher name], I do yellow and blue. [SJD-061:22 Simon SCHOOL]
(The teacher asks what colour waves are. Multiple children (including Simon) call out ‘Blue!’. Simon holds up his drawing, showing the teacher that he has coloured in his waves yellow and blue, when he states this. At this point he is holding an orange pencil and about to commence colouring another part of the worksheet)
Verb clauses containing modals were excluded (see examples (37) and (38)). In SAE, the main verb is invariant (V) when preceded by a modal. The patterning for the children’s AlyE is unclear (there still appears to be some variation in verb form), but the different semantics that modality imposes adds another layer of complexity and is best
investigated in a separate analysis.
(37) Yudu gat bi iding. [SJD-062:633 Tiffany HOME]
yudu gat bi id-ing 2DU.SBJ AUX be eat-ING
‘You two have got to be (the ones) eating.’
(38) What we got do? [SJD-018:167 Lenora SCHOOL]
Variationist analyses remove frozen forms from analysis since these don’t show
variability and can skew the data if included. In other words, they are not an instance of
12 There were actually few of these exclusions overall, and most were excluded as a caution when dealing with the
most ambiguous tokens. However, this does point to one of the challenges with mobilising a functional definition (as opposed to a formal - though this also has its problems as I have discussed in Chapter 2).
the variable. While across English corpora some frozen forms are predictable, for present purposes it was necessary to examine the corpus closely to determine potential frozen forms. The forms ‘you know’ [N=25] and ‘reckon’ were excluded as they were invariant as in examples (39) and (40). However, tokens of verb ‘know’ and ‘reckon’ were included if they were used in full clauses and not as discourse interjections, as there was variation in the verb form and subject form in these cases. In the case of ‘know’ it was included if the subject was not ‘you’ [N=53], or if the subject was ‘you’ there was other verb morphology [N=1] or there was an expressed object [N=4]. Clauses with ‘reckon’ were included if there was a fully expressed object and/or subject [N=4]. (39) Ye, Am jes pudimbat, yu no, leik. [SJD-062:1525 Alysha HOME]
ye, am jes pud-im-bat, yu no, leik yeah 1SG.SBJ just put-TR-BAT 2SG.SBJ know like
‘Yeah, I’m just putting it, you know, like.’
(40) Red ‘r’, reckon. [SJD-061:208 Lenora SCHOOL]
Imperatives (like those in examples (41) and (42)) were excluded: despite their using present tense forms and there being some variation in verb form, this would add an additional layer to the analysis and variation in imperative expression would be better served by a specific analysis. I have included in this commands which don’t conform to the typical SAE pattern of subject elision in the imperative (per (42)).
(41) Gimi bek thet braun wan! [SJD-062:1580 Tiffany HOME]
gimi bek thet braun wan give_2SG.OBJ back DET brown one
‘Gimme back that brown one!’
(42) You look at Emerson! [SJD-066-A:2157 Lenora SCHOOL]
Also excluded from analysis were present temporal reference clauses that used the copular construction (in the SCHOOL data - see example (43)) or the equivalent nominal
predicate construction (in the HOME data - see example (44)). Since these clauses don’t
have verbs which vary between V, Ving and Vbat they have not been included. However, there are points of interest which would be worthy of further study. In particular the acquisition of copular expression in English would be a useful point of examination.
(43) These are little scissors. [SJD-039-A:850 Daniel SCHOOL]
(44) Thaniya ola mwetek-rnem. [SJD-016:34 Lenora HOME]
thaniya ola mwetek-rnem
DEM all car-PL
‘These are all cars.’
Finally, recall that a number of clauses were excluded from analysis because they fell outside of the basic definitional criteria of the HOME or SCHOOL data sets (discussed in
detail in Chapter 4 §4.5.1). As shown in Figure 5-1, the token count for excluded sub- contexts is 706, which constitutes 30% of the 2325 tokens originally extracted as cases of present temporal reference. While this number may seem high, the aim of the method deployed here is to first select clauses from contexts in which there is less likely to be variability due to cross-linguistic influence. This is in order to isolate two data sets that can be taken as representative of two separate codes (Alyawarr English and SAE) should they be demonstrable as existing in the subsequent analysis. Further, the fact that
excluded contexts make up 30% of the present temporal reference corpus speaks to the dynamic nature of children’s language use.
Figure 5-1: RIGHT Number of tokens included in HOME [N=1163] and SCHOOL [N=456] data sets, and
excluded sub-contexts [N=706] as a proportion of total tokens extracted for present temporal reference.
LEFT proportion of V, Ving and Vbat tokens in excluded sub-context data.
HOME 1163 SCHOOL 456 excluded 706 V, 447 Ving, 143 Vbat, 116