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What is Syntactic Ergativity

Chapter 4
Indigenous Language Acquisition, Maintenance, and Loss and Current Language Policies
A phenomenon in which the intransitive subject and the transitive object are treated in the same way, in contradistinction to the transitive subject, at the syntactic level of a given language.
Published in Chapter:
Australian Aboriginal Languages: Their Decline and Revitalisation
Tasaku Tsunoda (Emeritus, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Japan)
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 36
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-2959-1.ch004
Abstract
The present chapter describes the decline and revitalisation of Australian Aboriginal languages—also called Australian languages. As preliminaries, it looks at the following: (i) a brief history of Aboriginal Australians, (ii) degrees of language viability, (iii) current situation of Australian languages, (iv) value of linguistic heritage, and (v) methods of language revitalisation. It then describes five selected language revitalisation activities, concerning Warrongo, Kaurna, Bandjalang, Thalanyji and Wiradjuri languages. In particular, it provides a detailed account of the Warrongo language revitalisation activity (in which the author has been participating). It finally examines a problem that is frequently encountered in language revitalisation activities: confusion over writing systems. The entire chapter pays careful attention to the changing political climate that surrounds Australian languages and activities for them.
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