Reconstituting texts in the Hunter River-Lake Macquarie language

Researchers: Dr Jim Wafer and Professor Hilary Carey 

Project: The aim of the project is to complete a modern edition of the surviving texts in the language of the Hunter River-Lake Macquarie region. Most of the texts are translations undertaken by the early 19th century missionary Lancelot Threlkeld, but several much shorter texts were recorded by others, including the Wollombi poet Eliza Hamilton Dunlop.

The edition will include transcriptions from the manuscript sources; a reconstitution in phonemic orthography; interlinear gloss (morphemic analysis); lay gloss; free translation; annotations; an historical and linguistic introduction; and an appendix of materials that supplement the standard work on the language (Amanda Lissarrague's Salvage grammar and wordlist, 2006).

It is expected that other, shorter, publications on particular specialised aspects of the data will also result from the project.

First page of Lancelot Threlkeld's manuscript translation of the gospel of Luke

Outputs to date:

Wafer, Jim and Hilary M. Carey, in press. "Waiting for Biraban: Lancelot Threlkeld and the 'Chibcha phenomenon' in Australian missionary linguistics." To appear in Language and History.