Aboriginal English has items in their lexicon which would be found almost nowhere else in the world, and it has certain syntactic features distancing it from most English varieties. A characteristic lexeme in Aboriginal English is ‘fella,’ a shortening of ‘fellow,’ which pertains to a person. The word for policeman in Aboriginal English is ‘monatj’ in Western Australia and ‘booliman’ in Queensland. Other characteristic lexemes include ‘mob’ (a group of people) and ‘whitefella’ (a white person). A morphological feature is the absence of the plural morpheme ‘-s’ in certain words, wherein the phrase ‘seven miles’ would be replaced instead by ‘seven mile.’ There are also numerous near-unique syntactic features in Aboriginal English. In sentences consisting of a subject and a predicate complement, the copula verb is omitted; for example, in the sentence ‘he good’ the predicate complement (good) is assigned to the subject (he) without the use of the copula verb (is). The use of the auxiliary ‘bin’ (a weak form of the auxiliary ‘been’) signifies present perfect (not present perfect continuous like ‘been’) and all other verbs are used in the infinitive form rather than the past participle. The Standard English sentence ‘he has burnt it and made it clean’ would be written in Aboriginal English has ‘he bin burn it and make it clean.’ The infinitive forms of the verbs ‘burn’ and ‘make’ are used with ‘bin’ signifying past tense. Another syntactic characteristic is the use of ‘eh?’ and ‘unna?’ as interrogative tags, for instance in the interrogative ‘it’s good, unna?’ These examples are not commonly found in many other languages (with the lexemes mentioned found in almost no other language), which point to the fact that the lexicon and syntax of Aboriginal English is quite distinct from most other varieties of English.
Semantic features of Aboriginal English exist in the difference in meaning of certain lexical items between Aboriginal and Standard English, and these features are again found in relatively few other languages. In most languages, the word ‘mother’ refers to the maternal biological parent; in Aboriginal English however, it refers to the maternal parent and her sisters. This points to the cultural feature of the maternal aunts being so close to the subject that they are referred to as ‘mother’ rather than ‘aunt.’ By extension, ‘aunt’ specifically refers to the paternal aunts, the maternal aunts having already fallen under the title of ‘mother.’ The phrases ‘secret men’s business’ (male rituals) and ‘secret women’s business’ (female rituals) are commonplace in Aboriginal English, and these exemplify the semantic difference of the word ‘business.’ In Standard English it has quite a few meanings including that pertaining to a profit-making entity, but none of them match the Aboriginal meaning – traditional lore and ritual. The words ‘National Sorry Day,’ which is a reminder of the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families (known later as the Stolen Generation), were well chosen given the semantic discrepancy in the word ‘sorry.’ Where it means an apology or regret in Standard English, it refers to a state of mourning in Aboriginal English. The Aborigines would be mourning this forcible removal whilst the rest of the population were apologetic for it – to describe this as a ‘Sorry Day’ was really apt. These semantic features of Aboriginal English are quite unique to it, which facilitates the distinctiveness of Aboriginal English as a whole.
We have examined distinctive features of Aboriginal English in terms of the various subsystems. Within each subsystem it was concluded that Aboriginal English was highly distinct; as a whole language (taking together all the subsystems) we can deduce that Aboriginal English is unique. It needs to be stressed that although we are discussing features of Aboriginal English using Standard English as a benchmark, we should not fall into the trap of considering it a primitive or degenerate version of English. Firstly, Aboriginal English has equal linguistic merit with all other forms of English, as it facilitates the functions of language – communication, identity, maintaining social relationships, an instrument of action, and facilitation of cognitive and conceptual development. Secondly, its syntax is complex – consider the example of the use of the word ‘bin’ as an auxiliary. Also, we need to understand that these features do not make the Aboriginal variety inferior, simply different. As put by language expert Bruce Moore: “We said ‘Aboriginal English? Substandard!’ We forgot that 50 years ago, people were saying ‘Australian English? Substandard!’”