On The Development And Features Of Australian English Vocabulary

The official language of Australia is English. However, after 200--year--development, it turns out to be one of the regional varieties of English--Australian English (Aussie English). As the particular historical condition, regional difference and cultural characteristics result in the specialty, Aussie English is different from British English in many ways, namely pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary and grammar. The author focuses on Aussie lexis and tries to promote our understanding on Aussie English and in addition, to offer more researching entity for English regional variety.From the perspective of sociolinguistics, Aussie English is one of the English varieties as American English, which is universally recognized. As the language has been uprooted and relocated throughout colonial and postcolonial history, varieties of English have emerged by undergoing a fundamentally uniform process which can be described as a progressing of five characteristic stages: foundation, exonerative stabilization, nativization, endonormative stabilization, and differentiation. Nowadays, Aussie English is undergoing the fifth process, the emerging of new dialects within Australia.This paper makes both synchronic and diachronic study on Aussie lexis. Diachronically speaking, it discusses the sources of Aussie English--Aboriginal languages and British English and also relates the development of Aussie lexis with four major historical developing periods--Early Days, the Pastoral Era, the Gold Rushes and the Modern Period in order to illustrate that it is environment that give rise to the special features of Aussie English. As for the lexis, we will unavoidably think of the borrowed words from Aboriginal languages and convicts' jargon. Despite of the complexity of Aboriginal languages, European settlers gradually employed parts of indigenous words. As is well known, the earliest European migrants were a large amount of prisoners and their keepers, whose jargon certainly became a part of current unique Aussie English. Like other technical languages, it is characterized by very general terms and very particular terms. Much of the language of the prison is sheer exuberant slang without any purpose to assert group solidarity, or disguise intentions from a...