new language discovered in remote Australia

[Joel S. Berson]

I think W Brewer is being unfair.  Perhaps it is "merely" a "dialect"
rather than a "language", but it has a speaking, self-perpetuating,
youthful population, and certainly is "new" because it did not exist
30 or so years ago.  Worth my tax dollars. (And definitely in "remote
Australia": about midway between Darwin and Alice Springs, with
nothing I'm aware of to the east or west except a rabbit-proof fence.)

I found this especially intriguing because the language (vocabulary
and grammar) is said to have been invented by the children of this
village.  (As the articles note, it does have borrowed and merged elements.)

A perhaps more-informative article appeared three weeks ago in the
NYTimes Science pages (with map), online on July 14 and in print on
July 16.  It's worth reading just for the history of the formation of
the village (omitted, expectedly, from the Australian article David
Daniel pointed to, and also, unexpectedly, from Wikipedia's article
on Lajamanu) -- forcible removal from their home territory of an
aboriginal population in 1948.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/science/linguist-finds-a-language-in-its-infancy.html

Joel

W Brewer wrote:
>Depends on what your definition of  <language> is. Call it just another
>English pidgin and nobody cares.  "But the discovery of a new language in
>remote Australia is causing a ripple of excitement among linguists around
>the world."  Congratulations, Ms. O'Shannesssy, from the University of
>Michigan. Your tax dollars at work.

At 8/5/2013 03:29 PM, David A. Daniel wrote:
>Y'all probably know all about this but it was new to me and I thought it was
>interesting so I figured I'd send it along.
>DAD
>
>New language discovered in remote desert town
>http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/new-language-discovered-in-remote-
>desert-town/story-fni0xqrb-1226679750797
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org