Victorian Aboriginal Languages / Levels 7 to 10 / Understanding / Systems of language
Content description
Expand vocabulary and understand and use a range of vocabulary sets and grammatical structures that are available in the language
Elaborations
understanding case and case marking on nouns, pronouns and adjectives
explaining how verbs can be derived from nouns and vice versa, comparing with similar processes in English and other known languages
composing and varying messages according to the available resources of the language, such as:
suffixes, including ‘having’, ‘for want of’, ‘similar to’, ‘like’
verbless sentences, for example, equative, descriptive, possessive
verb categories, including intransitive, transitive, causative, inchoative, reflexive–reciprocal
verb aspect, including continuous, transitory, perfective, imperfective
verb-stem morphology, including compound verbs, reduplicated verbs, habitual/characteristic, derivation (nouns into verbs)
expressing time, manner, attitude and place, according to the available language resources, such as:
elaborations of past tense
temporal expressions, for example, ‘beforehand’, ‘afterwards’, ‘too late’, ‘originally’
expressions of frequency, immediacy and duration, for example, ‘persistently’, ‘at once’, ‘a few times’, ‘for a while’
attitudinal words, particles and interjections, for example, terms expressing endearment, embarrassment, shame or pity
locational cases as used in locative phrases, and extensions of these, for example, expressing origin or causation
structuring and linking clauses, focusing on issues of agreement with transitive and intransitive verbs, using verb-linking devices, for example, serialisation and embedding
discussing lexical and grammatical relationships between the language and other languages of the region, for example, common words and structures
discussing grammatical and lexical contrasts between the language and English/ other known languages, for example, the figurative use of language, vocabulary associated with specialised domains
