Mr Laurits Knudsen

This paper explores the use and semantics of six directional terms in the Indigenous Australian language Wik-Mungkan (Paman > Middle-Paman), a language spoken on the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. These terms include two elevational terms, and four terms traditionally translated as English cardinal directions. However, recent research on similar terms has demonstrated that supposedly absolute systems are often intimately anchored in the environment, rather than based on abstracted spatial axes. This motivates the study of the specific semantics of the Wik-Mungkan terms instead of assuming correspondence with the English terms. To achieve this, the study employs multiple methods. First, through consultations with Wik-Mungkan speakers about the meaning of the terms. Second, a multi-modal and geotagged corpus of the terms and their denotational value. The corpus consists of around 400 total tokens of the directional terms, from both natural data and in task-based elicitation, which are analyzed. The corpus includes data on the location of each recording and the direction denoted by each term. These data allow for examination of how the terms are used, and how the variance in use relates to the available environmental anchoring phenomenon. The results demonstrate empirically that these geocentric terms are sensitive to the physical environment, to such a degree that there is overlap between directions covered by different terms when the environmental anchors of the terms are in competition. Identified environmental anchors include an inland/coastwards axis; the sun; river; location of significant landmarks; and alignment of the road network. By integrating denotational geotagged data from various contexts with language consultants' insights, we demonstrate that the conceptualization of the Wik-Mungkan terms is highly sensitive to environmental context, mediated by human interaction with environmental features.