Languages of Australias First Peoples in Narrative: Australian Stories

(Hardback)

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Celebrating the rich diversity of meaning-making resources within 19 Australian languages, this book presents stories recorded in these languages, identifying and explaining their different patterns of meaning. The stories included range from traditional dreaming narratives, and accounts of cultural practices, to tales of anti-colonial resistance, and anecdotes of personal experience. The book opens by providing readers with the basics they need to begin reading, and uses brief extracts from one story to build knowledge about phonology, lexicogrammar and discourse semantics. Each story is then approached first in terms of their cultural and historical context and subject matter before being presented both in English translation and the original language, highlighting and explaining the subject matter and textual patterning of the languages, their phases of meanings, and the clauses that compose them. Through each chapter of the book, readers are provided with a systematic understanding of Australian languages, and the functional model of language used to describe them. They are also equipped with a model for learning First Nations languages through stories, to map relations between the languages, and to trace their histories through time. The book concludes with two stories in Papuan languages, to illustrate their deep relations with Australian languages.

Author Bio

David Rose is an Honorary Associate of the University of Sydney, Australia, and Director of Reading to Learn, an international literacy program that trains teachers across school and university sectors.