The Languages of Australia

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Jan 20, 2011 - Foreign Language Study - 572 pages
Described by Ken Hale as 'nothing less than a masterpiece' and by P. H. Matthews as 'absolutely clear, astonishingly complete, factually fascinating', The Languages of Australia (first published in 1980 and now reissued) was a landmark in Australian linguistics. This pioneering work of synthesis covered more than two hundred Aboriginal languages, and stimulated the next generation of scholarship in the field. The author's subsequent search for an overarching theoretical model to explain the unusual properties of Australian languages finally led him to adopt a 'punctuated equilibrium' model of language development. Dixon proposed this in The Rise and Fall of Languages (1997), which provided the framework for his major work Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development (2002). The Languages of Australia is still sought after, however, as a benchmark in the discipline and because its first four chapters provide a valuable non-technical introduction that does not appear in the 2002 volume.
 

Contents

Tribe and language
23
Speech and song styles
47
The role of language in Aboriginal Australian society today
69
Vocabulary
97
Phonology
125
Phonological change
195
Classification of Australian languages
220
Word classes
266
Nouns
292
Pronouns
327
Verbs
378
Syntax
438
Summary
467
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