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:

"Henry is enthusiastic about the subject and explains it in a way that's really easy to grasp!"
"I appreciate how he tailors tutes to our feedback and is willing to focus on areas we request/need more help in."
"Henry is always happy to answer my questions, no matter how simple they may be. It means a lot to me."

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

Mansfield, J., Leslie-O'Neill, H., Li, H. (2023). Dialect differences and linguistic divergence: A crosslinguistic survey of grammatical variation. Language Dynamics and Change, 1-45. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-bja10026
Leslie-O’Neill, H. (2021). This ‘Pull’s as Hot as ‘Hal’: A Quantitative Acoustic Study of Two Pre-Lateral Vowel Mergers. Lifespans and Styles, 7(1), 23-35. https://doi.org/10.2218/ls.v7i1.2021.5641
Leslie-O'Neill, H. (2020). The Expression of Location in Wumpurrarni English: Continua and Coherence in an Australian Contact Language [Honours thesis]. University of Melbourne. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/290612

Presentations

Ningarmara, I., Kelly, C., Galbat-Newry, G., Simon, S., Leslie-O'Neill, H. (2024, September). Co-designing a Kriol learner's guide to Miriwoong. Australian Languages Workshop, Canberra.
Dingle, D., Gallagher, B., Kennedy, E., Leslie-O'Neill, H. (2023, August). Teaching Miriwoong Language Across Generations. PULiiMA Indigenous Languages and Technology Conference, Darwin.
Leslie-O'Neill, H. (2023, March). Learning stories: writing creatively to interpret fieldwork and positionality. Centre for Cultural and Creative Research, University of Canberra.
Leslie-O'Neill, H. (2022, December). TPR: Co-designing language learning materials for Miriwoong. ANU.
Leslie-O'Neill, H., Murphy, V., Simpson, J., & Wigglesworth, G. (2021, December). Directives to Children in Wumpurrarni English. Australian Linguistics Society Conference.
Mansfield, J., Leslie-O'Neill, H., Li, H. (2021, December). 7000 ways of saying the same thing: Connecting linguistic diversity with sociolinguistic variation. Australian Linguistics Society Conference.
Leslie-O’Neill, H. (2020, October). The Expression of Location in Wumpurrarni English. Third forum on Englishes in Australia (AusEng2020). Video
Murphy, V., & Leslie-O’Neill, H. (2020, February). Corpora, automation and analysis: A lilwanwan study of Wumpurrarni English. Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Seminars, University of Melbourne.