ABSTRACT

The quotative system – lexical and morphosyntactic strategies for the direct reporting of speech and thought – has undergone a major transformation in mainstream World Englishes. Diachronic studies of quotation in Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand English have all documented the same trends: a relatively stable system, using a small number of quotative variants, becomes more varied and complex, with a decline in the frequency of canonical say correlating with an increasing tendency to quote thought. This study, modelled on two foregoing sociolinguistic analyses of mainstream West Australian and New Zealand Englishes, examines quotation in recordings of 26 speakers of Australian Aboriginal English born between 1907 and 1961, including 16 oral histories. The results indicate that, unlike their settler English-speaking counterparts, these speakers have not only preserved the dominance of say: they have come to use it in distinctive ways, with semantic and grammatical innovations not observed in other varieties, in a system which serves to enrich narrative in a speaker population unique for its millennia of oral tradition. The findings suggest processes of grammaticalization and, observed alongside similar expanding frequency and versatility of be like in mainstream Englishes, may signal a parallel evolutive effect in a different language ecology.

摘要

引语系统——直接报告言语和思想的词汇和形态句法策略——在主流世界英语中发生了重大转变。对澳大利亚、英国、加拿大和新西兰英语的历时性引用研究都记录了相同的趋势：一个相对稳定的系统，使用少量的引用变体，变得更加多样化和复杂，规范说的频率下降与引用思想的增加趋势相关。本研究以上述对西澳大利亚和新西兰主流英语的两项社会语言学分析为蓝本，考察了 1907 年至 1961 年间出生的 26 位澳大利亚土著英语使用者的录音中的引用，包括 16 段口述历史。结果表明，与他们的定居者说英语的同行不同，这些说话者不仅保留了say的主导地位：他们已经开始以独特的方式使用它，在其他变体中没有观察到语义和语法创新，在一个服务的系统中以丰富其数千年的口头传统独特的演讲者群体的叙述。研究结果表明了语法化的过程，并且观察到类似的扩展频率和多功能性就像在主流英语中一样，可能标志着不同语言生态中的平行进化效应。