Lucy Davidson
Lucy Davidson is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Research Unit for Indigenous Language at the University of Melbourne. Her primary research interest relates to how children communicate at different stages of development, with a particular curiosity in the strategies children use in their interactions with peers.
Since 2013 this interest in children’s communicative competence in general has been focussed on that of Indigenous children in Australia. Her PhD thesis explored peer talk amongst a group of young children who speak the traditional Australian language Murrinhpatha, in the remote Aboriginal community of Wadeye in Northern Australia. In this study she investigated the children’s use of category terms (e.g. girl, grown up, brother, teacher) to achieve social goals.
In her current role, Lucy continues to work in Wadeye, investigating narratives produced by children in middle childhood. She is also working with the Aboriginal communities of Pipalyatjara and Kalka, in the centre of Australia, to study the speech of young children acquiring Pitjantjatjara, the traditional Australian language of that area. In this study Lucy is exploring a more structural element of communication, the development of nominal case marking.
