A matter of interpretation: Language planning for a sleeping language, Kaurna, the language of the Adelaide Plains, South Australia

Abstract

Kaurna, the language indigenous to the Adelaide Plains in South Australia, is being reclaimed from nineteenth-century written historical sources. There are no sound recordings of the language as it was spoken in the nineteenth century, and little has been handed down orally to the present generation. Fortunately, the nineteenth-century records of the language are reasonably good for the time, having been recorded by Christian Teichelmann and Clamor Schürmann, German missionaries who were trained in philology and a range of languages including Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Chinese. The language was also recorded, in part, by a number of other English, German and French observers. The Kaurna language is now being revived: rebuilt, re-learnt and reintroduced on the basis of this nineteenth-century documentation. In this process, numerous problems of interpretation are being encountered. However, the tools that linguistics provides are being used to interpret the historical corpus. A range of concrete examples are analysed and discussed to illustrate the kinds of problems faced and the solutions adopted. 2009, changes were made to the Environment Protection Act 1993 (SA) that inserted Pt 10A into the Act to address site contamination. Although site contamination had been recognised in South Australia as a problem since the early 1980s, it took almost 30 years to achieve a comprehensive set of legislative controls in that State. While a number of the new controls reflect similar provisions in existing legislation elsewhere, one unique aspect relates to the provisions that deal with responsibility for site contamination. The starting point is that the person who caused site contamination should be held responsible for addressing that contamination. However, under s 103E, a vendor or transferor of land may seek to transfer liability for site contamination subject to meeting certain requirements. This article looks at those requirements, noting the conflict that has arisen on how they should be interpreted. The article is critical of the failure to initiate complementary changes to the land-use planning legislation in South Australia, without which it will be difficult to achieve the full effect and benefits of the site contamination controls.