Contact Information, Brief History, Research interests, Other Activities, Personal Information
Most of the research work I did between 1978 and 1985 for the Department of Education in the Northern Territory involved recording two morphologically complex languages of Arnhem Land, Nakkara and Ndjebbana. These are both polysynthetic non-Pama Nyungan languages, the analyses of which have required a substantial re-organisation of the traditional descriptive grammar pertaining to Pama Nyungan languages like Dyirbal (Dixon) or Warlpiri (Hale).
In the areas of Phonetics and Phonology this research resulted firstly in the Phonemic Analysis and orthography for Nakkara, which I devised in 1979. My interest in the phonological idiosyncrasies of non-Pama Nyungan languages also involved participation in the Anindilyakwa Orthography sessions in Darwin in 1979. Of particular theoretical interest to me is the occurrence of an apparent double stop series in many languages of Arnhem Land and their subsequent re-analysis as a single series of short versus long (geminate) stops.
During the years 1980-1983 I did extensive research on the Morphology, Syntax and Semantics of Nakkara. This culminated in the completion of my doctoral thesis 'A Grammar of Nakkara (Central Arnhem Land Coast)'
From 1983-1985 I became more involved in the theory and practice of bilingual education in Aboriginal Australia. This required consideration of how best to utilise linguistic research for creation of vernacular reading materials; how to relate the semantics of spatio-temporal concepts to the teaching of numeracy; how to effectively communicate across and between two or more languages and cultures; how to make bilingual education effective in a multilingual community.