ABSTRACT
At the time of first colonization, there were approximately 250 distinct and healthy languages indigenous to Australia. Now, only about 20 Australian languages are still being acquired by children as a first language. Arrernte 2 , spoken in the deserts of Central Australia, is one of those 20 viable languages, as is its better known neighbor to the northwest, Warlpiri. While the acquisition of Warlpiri has been studied extensively, primarily through the work of Bavin (1993, 1992, 1991, 1990), there has been very little consolidated work on the acquisition of the other healthy Australian languages, and the study to be reported here represents the first investigation of any kind into the acquisition of Arrernte. In particular, this chapter will examine the construction of complex motion events in Arrernte narratives from both a developmental and a cross-linguistic perspective, and in so doing it attempts to bring together two distinct domains of research - ethnographic and ethnolinguistic research among Aboriginal communities in Central Australia, on the one hand, and crosslinguistic developmental research on the acquisition of narrative rhetorical style, on the other.
