Australian Kriol emerged around a century ago and while research on Kriol has regularly noted geographic variation (e.g. Sandefur, 1986), it has never been studied systematically. This paper analyses geographic distribution of... [ view full abstract ]
Australian Kriol emerged around a century ago and while research on Kriol has regularly noted geographic variation (e.g. Sandefur, 1986), it has never been studied systematically. This paper analyses geographic distribution of a Kriol lexeme that has two main functions: a quotative (correlating to the English quotative ‘like’) and an exemplifier (correlating to the English ‘like so’). The etymology of the lexeme is the English form ‘like that’.
The lexeme was first described by Hudson (1983: 76) who identified two variants – represented orthographically as layet and laigajet – in use in the Fitzroy Valley variety. The Kriol Bible uses the form lagijat, while other scholars have transcribed the lexeme variably (e.g. Angelo & Schultze-Berndt, 2016, Ponsonnet, 2016).
The present study of geographic variation of the lagijat variable stems from sociolinguistic interviews involving over 60 participants from nine Kriol-speaking communities east of Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia carried out in 2016. Interviews produced 48 hours of conversational Kriol data. Transcription, tagging and analysis are ongoing. The present study is a component of a larger investigation into geographic variation in Australian Kriol. Initial analysis into the lagijat variable has categorised four main variants:
- A tri-syllabic variant realised as lagijat~lagajat
- A di-syllabic variant realised as laijat~laithad
- A monosyllabic stop-final variant: la:t
- A monosyllabic open syllable variant: la
Current analysis encompasses three communities and ten participants, producing 300 tokens of the variable. (This will be expanded to six communities and twenty participants for the purposes of the paper). Present analysis includes two communities, Ngukurr and Minyerri, considered to speak the same variety: Roper Kriol. Ngukurr participants predominantly use variants 1 (46%) and 4 (42%) while nearby Minyerri prefers variants 2 (38%) and 3 (36%). These early findings do not correspond to the current depiction of both communities speaking the same Kriol variety. Further analysis of the lagijat variable combined with analyses of other variables will provide the first quantitative analyses of geographic variation in Kriol while also increasing the documentation and description of this new language.
