Phraseology and Culture in English

Classifying
A commonly occurring feature of Aboriginal languages referred to by 
Dixon (1980: 272) is that they may use generic classifiers to accompany 
nouns. It is possible that some multiword expressions in Aboriginal Eng-
lish, such as paper wrapping, ‘wrapping’ and waterflood ‘flood’ repre-
sent some influence of this feature. 
b) Adjective + Noun Compounding 
Adjective + noun compounds in Aboriginal English, as in Standard Eng-
lish, are distinguishable from adjective + noun collocations in that the ad-
jective carries the stress and the compound does not necessarily carry the 
meaning which would be carried by a syntactic construction with the same 
adjective preceding the same noun. Thus, for example, old girl is a com-
pound which is used reciprocally as a form of address between grandpar-
ents and grandchildren and does not carry the stigma ‘old girl’ would carry 
in the usage of non-Aboriginal Australians. Some other examples are: 
own mob 
‘one’s family and relations’ 
claimin(g) cousin ‘person claiming to be a cousin by blood (whether or 
not the claim is accepted)’ 
tough go ‘a 
mishap’ 
little hairy man 
‘a visitant from the spirit world’ 
hairy man 
‘a man, by contrast with a younger person’ 
c) Preposition + Noun and Noun + Preposition Compounding 
A preposition may form the first element in a compound with a noun, as 
in outcamp ‘a camp located some distance away from a town or station’; 
more commonly, the nominal element is followed by the prepositional 
element, as in: 
crash in as 
in 
they ad a crash in ‘they had a collision’, 
campin(g) out which can function adjectivally, as in a campin out spot,
and
dinner out as 
in 
a dinner out ‘a meal out in the open’. 
2. Suffixing 
a) Noun / Pronoun Suffixing 
The suffix -fella, which may be applied to nouns, pronouns, numerals and 
adjectives in creole, is maintained on a limited number of noun bases in 
Aboriginal English, e.g. blackfella, ‘Aboriginal’; whitefella, ‘non-Abor-
iginal’, and may, in certain areas of creole influence, also be used with 
pronouns, e.g.
youfella bin bring them cake ‘you brought them cake’ (Eagleson, Kaldor 
and Malcolm 1982: 87) and to distinguish a dual pronoun form, twofella
or tupela.

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b) Adjective Suffixing 
The suffix -fella may also occur on adjectives (though it could be seen to 
have the effect of converting them to nouns), as in little fella and a mother 
horse ‘pony and a mother horse’. Similarly, the suffix -one, which, in 
creole
2
, regularly occurs on adjectives, may occur in a similar way in Abo-
riginal English, as in really juicy one ‘[it’s] really juicy’; Little birds. 
Grey one. ‘little grey birds’.
3. Collocation 
There are many distinctive collocations involved in the noun phrase in Abo-
riginal English. Mention will be limited here to two kinds. 
a) Determiner-noun collocations 
The demonstrative adjective this/dis, that/dat, them/dem often collocates 
with the noun in contexts where an article, or else no determiner, would 
be used in Standard English, as in the following examples: 
We went to dat Malcolm Dam ‘We went to Malcolm Dam’ 
We ’as in that old house 
‘We were in the old house’ 
We ’as walkin along the pipe 
and…that tree was in the road 
and that leaf was sticking out 
of the…pipe 
‘We were walking along the pipe and a 
tree was in the way and a leaf was sticking 
out of the pipe.’ [reference is to a water 
pipeline about 1 metre in diameter]
There was this ole man 
‘There was an old man’ (This example, 
though not the others, may be seen to 
overlap with informal narrative style in 
Standard English). 
A number of other determiner-noun collocations entail the use of lexical-
ised determiners expressing indefinite plural, derived from non-count quan-
tificational nouns ‘lot’ and ‘mob’ fused with, or replacing articles, as in 
lotta and (big) mob(s) (of/a). These are illustrated in the following: 
They found lotta emu egg 
‘They found a lot of emu eggs’ 
mob a little cat 
‘a lot of little cats’ 
seen big mob of little ’airy fellas 
‘saw many little Spirit Beings’ 
there was big mobs of crows on the tree ‘there were a lot of crows on 
the tree’ 
bi-i-i-ggest mob of emus 
‘a very big flock of emus.’ 
As the above example shows, big mob may be given greater emphasis 
(though not the superlative meaning) by the addition of the suffix -est to, 
and by the elongation of the vowel in, big.
Mob also functions distinctively in that it is not limited to use with count 
nouns. Hence, a comment like the following is unexceptional: 
my mum used to buy biggest mob of yoghurt. 

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384
Ian G. Malcolm and Farzad Sharifian
Another pervasive collocation is the use of ‘all’ and ‘the’ (sometimes fused 
to alla, as in Kriol) before a plural noun, giving a sense of indefinite plu-
ral, as in 
all the hostel kid they was stand-
ing on the door 
‘a lot of hostel kids were standing on the 
door’
all the little pigs were running ‘the little pigs were running’ 
e cutting all the fish tails off 
‘he is cutting the tails off the fish’. 
The term shame, which functions as a noun in Standard English, is more 
likely to function as an adjective (possibly derived from the past partici-
ple ‘ashamed’, but also constituting a calque, since it has a direct equiva-
lent in Nyungar, tju) in Aboriginal English, used in the complement posi-
tion, although the be copula may not be present: 
Don’t be shame in front of me ‘Don’t embarrass me’. 
e too shame 
‘he’s too embarrassed’ 
The above glosses should not be taken as precise. The term ‘shame’ in 
Aboriginal English has no precise semantic equivalent in Standard English. 
b) Prepositional phrases 
Prepositions in Aboriginal English may collocate with nouns in distinc-
tive ways, suggesting that time, space and certain causal / consequential 
relationships may be conceptualised differently from in Standard English. 
Time
The expression of points or periods in time may not follow Standard Eng-
lish patterns. The prepositional relationship may be implied without the use 
of a preposition, as in Only dark time they come around, ‘They only come 
around in the dark,’ or the time point markers in, at, on may be inter-
changed, as in and at morning I got the ball ‘and in the morning I got the 
ball.’ 
Place
Aboriginal English speakers use the expression ‘go up (or down) to’ for 
what in Standard English would not require the ‘to’, as in
I climb up to the pepper tree 
‘I climbed (up) the pepper tree’ 
Toyota was comin down to a big hill ‘The four-wheel-drive was coming 
down a big hill’ 
We went up to another sand ’ill 
’cross the road 
‘We went up another sandhill on 
the other side of the road’. 
On the other hand, Aboriginal speakers omit the prepositions ‘at’ or ‘in’ 
when preceding them with ‘out’, as in: 
This was out Wiluna ‘This was out at / in Wiluna’ 
Dey was out bush. 
‘They were out in the bush.’ 

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