Dr Felicity Meakins
Dr Felicity Meakins
BA (Hons), MA (UQ), PhD (Melb) 
ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Linguistics
 
Office: Gordon Greenwood Building (#32) 517
Phone: (+61 7) 3365 2877
Email: f.meakins@uq.edu.au  
Webpage: http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/lel/staff/felicity-meakins/
 
Teaching:
  •  LING2040 Morphology
  • LING3010 Grammatical Aspects of Language Contact
Research Interests:
  • Language contact, particularly mixed languages, creole languages, code-switching and language convergence; Australian languages, including Gurindji, Gurindji Kriol, Bilinarra, Ngarinyman and Kriol;
  • Morphology, particularly inflectional morphology in contact;
  • Sociolinguistics, e.g. language ecologies, endangerment and shift, variationalist approaches;
  • Language documentation, including fieldwork methodology, annotation of corpus data and the structure of reference grammars.
Current research projects:
  • Gurindji and Bilinarra dictionaries and databases. funded byDepartment of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sports (DRALGAS) (P.I. Felicity Meakins). Held through University of Queensland
  • Discourse and prosody across language family boundaries: two corpus-based case studies on contact-induced syntactic and prosodic convergence in the encoding of information structure. funded byDokumentation Bedrohter Sprachen (DOBES). (P.I. Eva Schultze-Berndt, Claudia Wegener, Candide Simard and Felicity Meakins). Held through Universität Bielefeld (Germany)
  • Life after death: Exploring the birth of Gurindji Kriol, a new Aboriginal mixed language. funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) DP0985024 (P.I.: Felicity Meakins)
  • The Documentation of Gurindji Kriol, an Australian Mixed Language. funded by the Endangered Languages Documentation Project (ELDP) IPF0134. (P.I.: Felicity Meakins). Held through the University of Manchester.
  • Phonological development in child speakers of mixed language. funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) DP0985395 (P.I. Caroline Jones, University of Wollongong)
  • Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures(APiCS) project. funded by MPI (Leipzig, Germany). (P.I. Susanne Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Magnus Huber, and Martin Haspelmath)
  • Jaminjungan and Eastern Ngumpin Documentation project funded by Dokumentation Bedrohter Sprachen (DOBES). (P.I. Eva Schultze-Berndt, University of Manchester)
 Selected publications: 
         (See here for pdfs)
  
Books
 
  • 2011. Case-marking in Contact: The Development and Function of Case Morphology in Gurindji Kriol. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
  • to appear (in 2012). Ivy Kulngari Hector, George Jungurra Kalabidi, Spider Banjo, Topsy Nangari Ngarnjal Dodd, Ronnie Jangala Wirrba Wavehill, Dandy Danbayarri, Violet Nanaku Donald Wadrill, Bernard Puntiyarri, Ida Bernard Malyik, Biddy Wavehill, Helen Morris, Lauren Campbell, Felicity Meakins and Glenn Wightman. Bilinarra, Gurindji and Malngin Plants and Animals
  • to appear (in 2013). Felicity Meakins, Justin Spence, Lauren Campbell with Glenn Wightman. A Dictionary of Bilinarra. Batchelor: Batchelor Press. 
  • to appear (in 2013). Patrick McConvell, Helen and Norm McNair, Erika Charola, Felicity Meakins, and Lauren Campbell with Glenn Wightman. A Dictionary of Gurindji. Batchelor: Batchelor Press.
  • to appear. Felicity Meakins and Rachel Nordlinger. A Grammar of Bilinarra, an Australian Aboriginal language of the Victoria River District (NT) . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 
Papers
  • submitted. Caroline Jones and Felicity Meakins. The form and function of janyarrp: Gurindji child-directed speech.
  • submitted. Felicity Meakins and Caroline Jones. A challenge to neo-Whorfians: Language shift without cognitive shift
  • to appear. Felicity Meakins and Gillian Wigglesworth. How much input is enough? Correlating passive knowledge and child language input in an endangered language. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
  • to appear. Felicity Meakins and Carmel O'Shannessy. Typological constraints on verb integration in two Australian mixed languages. Journal of Language Contact
  • to appear. Nominals as adjuncts or arguments: Further evidence from language mixing. In R. Pensalfini. Language Description Informed by Theory. Amsterdam. John Benjamins.
  • to appear. Mixed languages. In Y. Matras and P. Bakker. Contact languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • to appear (in 2013). Gurindji Kriol . In S. Michaelis, P. Maurer, M. Haspelmath and M. Huber  (Eds). Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Structures, vol II: The language surveys. Oxford: OUP.
  • to appear (in 2013). Kriol . Eva Schultze-Berndt, Felicity Meakins and Denise Angelo. Kriol. In S. Michaelis, P. Maurer, M. Haspelmath and M. Huber  (Eds). Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Structures, vol II: The language surveys. Oxford: OUP.
  • to appear (in 2012). Gurindji Kriol language structure subdatabase. In S. Michaelis, P. Maurer, M. Haspelmath and M. Huber  (Eds). Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library.
  • to appear (in 2012). Caroline Jones, Felicity Meakins and Shujau Muawiyath. Learning vowel categories from maternal speech in Gurindji Kriol. Language Learning 62.4
  • to appear (in 2012). Language contact varieties. In H. Koch and R. Nordlinger. The Field of Linguistics: Australia. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • 2012. Carmel O'Shannessy and Felicity Meakins. Comprehension of competing argument marking systems in two Australian mixed languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15.2: 378-96.
  • 2012. Which mix? - code-switching or a mixed language  - Gurindji Kriol. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 27.1: 105-140.
  • 2011. Caroline Jones, Felicity Meakins and Heather Buchan. Voicing in citation speech in Gurindji Kriol and local Australian English. Australian Journal of Linguistics 31.3: 305-27.
  • 2011.Borrowing contextual inflection: Evidence from northern Australia. Morphology 21.1: 57-87
  • 2011. Spaced out: Inter-generational changes in the expression of spatial relations by Gurindji people . Australian Journal of Linguistics 31.1: 43-78
  • 2010. Felicity Meakins and Carmel O'Shannessy. Ordering arguments about: Word order and discourse  motivations in the development and use of the ergative marker in two Australian mixed languages. Lingua 120.7: 1693-1713
  • 2010b. "The importance of understanding language ecologies for language revitalisation", In J. Hobson and S. Poetch (Eds.), Reawakening languages: Theory and practice in the revitalisation of Australia's Indigenous languages. Sydney: Sydney University Press.
  • 2010a. The development of asymmetrical serial verb constructions in an Australian mixed language. Linguistic Typology 14.1: 1-38
  • 2009. The case of the shifty ergative marker: A pragmatic shift in the ergative marker in one Australian mixed language. In J. Barddal & S. Chelliah (Eds.), The Role of Semantics and Pragmatics in the Development of Case. Amsterdam: John  Benjamins. pp. 59-91
  • 2008. Land, language and identity: The socio-political origins of Gurindji Kriol. In M. Meyerhoff and N. Nagy. Social Lives in Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 69-94.
  • 2008. Unraveling languages: Multilingualism and language contact in Kalkaringi. In J.Simpson & G. Wigglesworth (Eds.), Children’s Language and Multilingualism: Indigenous Language Use at Home and School. New York: Continuum. pp. 247- 64.
  • 2005. Felicity Meakins and Carmel O’Shannessy.  “Possessing Variation: Inalienability and age-  related factors in the possessive constructions of two Australian mixed languages.” Monash University Linguistics Papers. 4.2: 43-63.
  • 2005. Patrick McConvell and Felicity Meakins. “Gurindji Kriol: A Mixed Language Emerges from Code-Switching.” Australian Journal of Linguistics. 25.1: 9-30.
 
Reviews 
 
 
 Community Resources    
 
  • 2011. Kamparnup Karu (Children's Bush Medicine). DVD in Gurindji and English. with Connie Ngarrmaya, Violet Donald, Topsy Dodd and Lisa and Keethan Smiler.
  • 2011. Violet Donald Stories (Water, Damper, Bush Onions, Water Lilies). DVD in Gurindji and English. with Violet Donald.
  • 2011. Kunawa (Cattle Creek). DVD in Gurindji, Kriol and English. with Connie Ngarrmaya, Ena and Sarah Oscar and Teresa Yupuny.
  • 2009. Kajangarna Mangarri 3 (Water, Damper, Bush Onions, Water Lilies). DVD in Gurindji and English. with Violet Donald, Biddy Wavehill, Topsy Dodd and Kitty Mintawurr. 19min.
  • 2009. Kajangarna Mangarri 2 (Witchetty grubs, Bush Plums, Conkerberries, Bush Potatoes and Bush Bananas). DVD in Gurindji and English. with Violet Donald, Biddy Wavehill, Topsy Dodd. 30min.
  • 2009. Stories from the Station Days. DVD and booklet in Gurindji and English. with Violet Donald, Biddy Wavehill, Topsy Dodd and Kitty Mintawurr. 56min.
  • 2009. Yiparrartu (Emu) Dreaming. DVD in Gurindji and English. with Violet Donald, Teresa Yupuny and Kathleen Sambo. 25min.
  • 2009. Ochres: Yartu, Kalnga, Karntawarra, Ngunyjungunyju. DVD and booklet in Gurindji and English. with Violet Donald, Biddy Wavehill, Topsy Dodd, Teresa Yupuny and Kathleen Sambo. 39min.
  • 2010. Artefacts (Kuturu, Kilkilpkaji, Yukurrukurru, Kawarla). DVD and booklet in Gurindji and English. with Violet Donald, Biddy Wavehill, Topsy Dodd, Jimmy Wavehill.
  • 2008. Kawarla (Coolamon) Production. DVD and booklet in Gurindji and English. with Violet Donald, Biddy Wavehill, Peggy Wavehill, Jimmy Wavehill, Teresa  Yupuny, and Kitty Mintawurr. 33mins.
  • 2008. Kajangarna (Bush Medicine) 1. DVD and booklet in Gurindji and English. with Violet Donald, Biddy Wavehill, Topsy Dodd and Peggy Wavehill. 21mins.
  • 2008. Kajangarna Mangarri 1 (Bush Bananas, Ashes, Bush Onions, Yams). DVD and  4 booklets with Violet Donald, Biddy Wavehill, Topsy Dodd, Teresa Yupuny and Kathleen Sambo. 33:30mins
  • 2008. Ngarlu (Bush Honey). DVD and booklet in Gurindji and English. with Violet Donald, Biddy Wavehill, and Topsy Dodd. 11mins
  • 2008. Wirriji (Hair String) Production. DVD and booklet in Gurindji and English with Violet Donald 22:30mins
  • 2004. Children's Bush Medicine. DVD and booklet in Bilinarra and English. with Ivy Hector, Mildred Hector and Barbara Bobby.
  • 2004. Nangangari, Barrjirda and Lardaj Dreaming. 3 DVDs and booklets in Bilinarra  and English. with Ivy Hector, Mildred Hector and Barbara Bobby.
 
Other Activities:
  • I make Aboriginal language resources in Gurindji and Bilinarra, for example DVDs and booklets on bush foods and medicines, artefact production, Dreaming stories and ceremonial life. I have also been involved in producing dictionaries of Gurindji and Bilinarra with other linguists including Patrick McConvell, Erika Charola, Lauren Campbell and Justin Spence. I am also in the process of compiling a Gurindji Kriol grammar and a Bilinarra grammar jointly with Rachel Nordlinger. These have been the result of fieldwork over the last eight years in the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory (Australia).
 

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