Henry Leslie-O'Neill

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Study

I am a PhD candidate at the Australian National University. I'm collaborating with Miriwoong people at the Mirima Dawang Woorlab-gerring language and culture centre to co-design learning materials for the Miriwoong language. We aim to create practical resources to help Miriwoong people learn Miriwoong, as well as sharing research and stories based on our experience to support other language workers developing similar materials.

My supervisors on this project are Dr Susy Macqueen, Prof Steven Bird, and Dr Knut Olawsky.

Work

Research assistant

I have previously worked as a research assistant on various projects for linguists at the University of Melbourne, ANU, and elsewhere. This included working with Dr. John Mansfield and Haoyi Li to develop a database of linguistic variation, sourcing data from grammatical descriptions of languages all over the world. We recently published some of this research.

I also investigated child-directed speech in Wumpurrarni English (a contact language spoken in Tennant Creek, Northern Territory) with Prof. Gillian Wigglesworth, Prof. Jane Simpson, and Vincent Murphy. We are currently trying to figure out the syntactic structure and the usage of 'directives'.

I've also helped Bardi author Munya Andrews find translations of words in various Aboriginal languages for a new book of hers, and I've transcribed children talking about what they loved and hated during COVID-19 lockdowns for the 'Bear in a Window' project.

Tutor

I'm also an experienced tutor, having tutored at the tertiary level for over two years, and at the primary and secondary level for two years before that. In 2021 I was the tutor for Syntax at the University of Melbourne, and I've tutored many different subjects at UniMelb colleges including The Secret Life of Language, Phonetics, Syntax, Grammar of English, and even some philosophy! 

Hear it from my students: 

The Kriol version of our Miriwoong learner's guide: Dijan boog bla lernem Miriwoong (The book for learning Miriwoong)

Resource development

I've always been passionate about creative projects, stemming from a childhood of writing short stories, designing zines, screenprinting t-shirts, and various other endeavours. I bring this passion into my work and study, most recently through my research and work in Kununurra. The Miriwoong team and I have co-designed a 20-chapter learner's guide to Miriwoong, teaching everything you need to know to have a simple conversation in Miriwoong. The book is aimed at Miriwoong adults, who predominantly speak Kriol as a first language, so it's become likely the first learner's guide to teach a traditional Indigenous language through contact-language instruction. We've also created pictures for it, a set of trilingual stories to learn with, and various language games to help practice. As you can tell, I'm very proud of what we've achieved together!

Previous Study

I completed my Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in 2020, writing a thesis on the syntactic variation of 'locative phrases' in Wumpurrarni English, a contact language spoken in the Northern Territory which derives from Warumungu, English, and other contact languages such as Kriol. I love academic research and am proud of achieving first class honours in almost every subject throughout my degree.

What I'm even more proud of, though, are the projects which have had a useful and positive impact for people. For example, on exchange at the University of British Columbia, I collaborated with the Witsuwit'en Language and Culture Society to create a 'How to Count in Witsuwit'en' booklet. The Society printed 100 copies and used them in their language revitalisation program! This was one early inspiration for my current PhD project.

I was the president of the UniMelb Linguistic Society in 2020, which was a great chance to lead the committee and organise events like linguistics trivia, a Beyond the BA seminar, and the launch for our undergraduate journal. I was also on the ANU linguistic society's committee in 2022.

The first page of 'How to Count in Witsuwit'en'.

Publications

Presentations

Vowel clusters depicting pre-lateral DRESS-TRAP merging for participants in a publication.

Thesis proposal review for current PhD project, Dec 2022.

Things that aren't linguistics??

Every now and then I venture outside the wonderful world of linguistics to...

Write!

Art!

Fashion!

Fish!

I live and work on unceded Miriwoong dawang. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present.