Margaret Sharpe
Margaret Sharpe | |
|---|---|
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Queensland (PhD) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Linguist |
| Sub-discipline | Australian Aboriginal languages |
Margaret Clare Sharpe is a linguist of Australian Aboriginal languages, specializing in Yugambeh-Bundjalung languages, with particular regard to Yugambir, She has also done important salvage fieldwork on the Northern Territory Alawa language.
Career[]
Sharpe completed her doctoral dissertation on the language of the Alawa people at the University of Queensland in 1965.[1] After a further stint of fieldwork between June 1966 and May 1968, this was updated and issued as a monograph under the imprint of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in 1972.[2] In the meantime she worked with one of the last speakers of Yugambir, Joe Culham, then in his eighties, and managed to write up the results in a 53-page analysis published shortly after his death in 1968.[3]
As part of her work on Alawa, she translated both Alawa-language stories and kriol versions of the same given by her informant Barnabas Roberts concerning violent encounters between white settlers and the Alawa,[4] and, according to one reviewer, their juxtaposition underlined that Aboriginal story-telling in their English dialects can be at times as, if not more, revealing as what is recorded of an event in their mother tongue.[a]
Sharpe went on to do extensive work as lecturer at the Department of Aboriginal and Multicultural Studies of the University of New England, on the Yugambeh-Baandjalung dialect chain. She has also been active in teaching indigenous groups about the disappearing languages their forefathers spoke.[6]
Sharpe has written three novels, one of which, A Family Divided, deals with interracial conflict and friendship.
Sharpe speaks a version of Bundjalung, "though not terribly fluently" and has recorded talk in conversations with the Yugambeh language instructor Shaun Davies.[7] She remains an adjunct lecturer, and is now returning to her original interest in science by completing a PhD in astrophysics.[8]
Honours[]
In 2017, Sharpe was designated a Kaialgumm, "champion in the fight", by the Yugambeh Museum in recognition of her decades-long scholarship and teaching in documenting, and helping to revive, the Yugambeh language[9]
Notes[]
- ^ Perhaps the best illustration of the value of Aboriginal English is Barnabas Roberts' story, given to Margaret Sharpe in 1967...Roberts' Roper Creole/English testimony of violent contact between Aborigines and whites, and Sharpe's Alawa translation of a related incident are placed back-to-back. Even the translator admits that the Aboriginal English is "fuller than the Alawa version (in translation) in some respects" Hercus and Sutton p.63. It certainly is.'[5]
Citations[]
- ^ Sharpe 1965.
- ^ Sharpe 1972.
- ^ Cunningham 1969.
- ^ Sharpe 1986, pp. 63–64,381ff..
- ^ Headon 1988, p. 37.
- ^ Sharpe 1993, pp. 73–84.
- ^ Marciniak & Sharpe 2017, pp. 2:35ff.
- ^ MS Blog.
- ^ UNE 2017.
Sources[]
- Cunningham, M. (1969). A Description of the Yugumbir Dialect of Bandjalang (PDF). Volume 1. University of Queensland Papers. pp. 69–122.
|volume=has extra text (help) - Headon, David (1988). ""The Coming of the Dingoes": Black/White Interaction in the Literature of the Northern Territory". In Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath (ed.). Connections: Essays on Black Literatures. Aboriginal Studies Press. pp. 25–40. ISBN 978-0-855-75186-9.
- Marciniak, Catherine; Sharpe, Margaret (22 August 2017). "Margaret Sharpe: Linguist of Australian Aboriginal Languages". ABC North Coast.
- Sharpe, M. (1986). "Moving into the Mission; Stealing on the Station". In Hercus, Luise; Sutton, Peter (eds.). This is what Happened: Historical Narratives by Aborigines. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. ISBN 978-0-855-75144-9.
- Sharpe, M. (1993). "Teaching a Disappearing Language". In Walsh, Michael; Yallop, Colin (eds.). Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginal Studies Press. pp. 73–84. ISBN 978-0-855-75241-5.
- Sharpe, Margaret C. "Margaret Sharpe blog".
- Sharpe, Margaret C. (1965). Alawa Phonology and Grammar (PDF). University of Queensland.
- Sharpe, Margaret C. (1972). Alawa Phonology and Grammar. Canberra: Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies.
- Sharpe, Margaret C. (1985). "Bundjalung settlement and migration" (PDF). Aboriginal History. 9 (1): 101–124.
- Sharpe, Margaret C. (1998). Dictionary of Yugambeh including neighbouring dialects (PDF). Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 0-85883-480-4.
- Sharpe, Margaret C. (1999). Alawa Wanggaya: Alawa-Kriol-English Dictionary. Katherine, NT: Diwurruwurru-Jaru.
- Sharpe, Margaret C.; Tunbridge, Dorothy (2003) [First published 1997]. "Traditions of extinct animals, changing sea-levels and volcanoes among Australian Aboriginals: evidence from linguistic and ethnographic research". In Blench, Roger; Spriggs, Matthew (eds.). Archaeology and Language I: Theoretical and Methodological Orientations. Routledge. pp. 345–361. ISBN 9781134828777.
- Sharpe, Margaret C. (2005). An Introduction to the Yugambeh-Bundjalung Language and its Dialects (4th ed.). Armidale, NSW: University of New England.
- Sharpe, Margaret C. (2007). "A revised view of the verbal suffixes of Yugambeh-Bundjalung". In Siegel, Jeff; Lynch, John Dominic; Eades, Diana (eds.). Language Description, History and Development: Linguistic Indulgence in Memory of Terry Crowley. John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 53–68. ISBN 978-9-027-25252-4.
- Sharpe, Margaret C. (2008). "Alawa and its Neighbours: Enigma Variations 1 and 2". In Bowern, Claire; Evans, Bethwyn; Miceli, Luisa (eds.). Morphology and Language History: In honour of Harold Koch. John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 59–70. ISBN 978-9-027-29096-0.
- "UNE lecturer declared a 'champion' of Aboriginal language". Armidale: University of New England. 24 July 2017.
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