Reviving verbs in Dhudhuroa for language learning and teaching

Dhudhuroa is an Aborignal language of North-East Victoria. It is no longer spoken or learned as a first language due to the ongoing impacts of colonisation.

Dhudhuroa language is currently being revived and taught in several schools and kindergartens across Dhudhuroa country. The language is being spoken, taught and developed based on archival resources, including the notebooks of RH Mathews and previous analyses of those materials, including a journal article by Blake and Reid (2002) and a Draft Way Wurru and Dhudhuroa Dictionary (2007). Language revival and teaching is currently undertaken by the Dhudhuroa Language Team comprising Dhudhuroa people, educators and a linguist who are involved in this research project.

Unfortunately, current Dhudhuroa resources are limited resulting in many knowledge gaps in the language. These gaps need to be addressed to allow people to better communicate using Dhudhuroa. This project therefore aims to address identified knowledge gaps relating to Dhudhuroa verb morphology. It will build on important past work by Dhudhuroa people and linguists.

We know that verbs in Dhudhuroa have different endings depending on tense. This is similar to how English adds an ending ‘-ed’ to a verb root when forming the past tense of many verbs so that ‘walk’ becomes ‘walked’. Dhudhuroa verb morphology has been partially described in the Draft Way Wurru and Dhudhuroa Dictionary. However, it is often unclear how identified verb endings should be added to verb roots. The aim of this project is to undertake an analysis of Dhudhuroa verb morphology to address the following research questions:

• What are the verb endings in Dhudhuroa?
• What are the verbs roots in Dhudhuroa?
• How are verb roots and verb endings combined in Dhudhuroa?

This research will support people to more easily use verbs and create sentences in Dhudhuroa, building on the work undertaken by the Draft Dictionary team.