Victorian Aboriginal Languages / Levels 3 to 6 / Understanding / Systems of language
Content description
Expand vocabulary in the language through word-formation processes and recognise and use simple language structures
Elaborations
exploring known word formation processes, for example, changing a word with the addition or change of a suffix or prefix to convey different meanings
constructing expressions that refer to people, places, things and events using:
nouns and adjectives in phrases, for example, compound nouns, reduplications and nominalisations, adjectives without an associated noun
sentences without verbs, for example, ‘This (is) my bag’
pronouns, for example, personal, kinship, demonstrative and interrogative in all persons and numbers
determiners and quantifiers, for example, ‘some’, ‘every’, ‘other’, ‘few’, ‘much’, ‘all’, and words for groups
marking to indicate possession and other types of association, for example, ‘Let’s go for water’
transitive and intransitive verbs
verbs of stance used in existential expressions, for example, ‘There is a creek lying near the road’
verbs to talk about actions, processes, thoughts and feelings
moods of verbs, including statements, questions, imperatives, commands, intention, purpose, likelihood, reported speech
negation
expressing time, manner, attitude and place according to available language resources, such as:
tenses, including past, present and future/non-past
temporal expressions, for example, day–night cycle, lunar and seasonal cycles, ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘soon’, ‘recent’, ‘long ago’, expressions for cosmological time
expressions of frequency, for example, ‘often’, ‘always’, ‘once’, ‘briefly’
attitudinal particles, for example, ‘maybe’, ‘it is said’, ‘what do you say?’, ‘would you mind?’, ‘you see’
locational cases, for example, ‘in’, ‘an’, ‘at’, ‘near’, ‘besides’, ‘to’, ‘towards’, ‘from’
adverbs of manner, location and time, for example, ‘again’, ‘more’, ‘in turn’, ‘too late’, ‘as well’
structuring and linking clauses, for example, using coordination, subordination, embedding
understanding that rules vary between languages, for example, in relation to word-formation, word order at phrase and sentence level
making comparisons and identifying patterns in and between languages, for example, free and fixed word order, tenses in verbs, use of affixes versus prepositions
noticing similarities between particular vocabulary sets in languages from the same region, such as words for body parts, kinship terms
developing metalanguage for talking about language, for example, noun phrases, suffixes, prefixes, tense, transitivity, using resources from both the language and English
