Introduction

[Mark Moore]

My name is Mark Moore and I'm a candidate for a Masters degree at University
Of Queensland, Australia.  My topic is a linguistic analysis of the Wik
decision [a decision of the Australian High Court which tested the
principles of Aboriginal Land Rights], basically from a Cognitive
Linguistics perspective. My view is that Linguistics has under the influence
of Chomsky become too focussed on the clause and the sentence as a basic
unit of language.  Cognitive Linguistics has to an extent also fallen into
this trap, but it's basic premises lend it to consideration of larger and
smaller units of language, including discourse.  Besides, sentential
analysis is too limiting for consideration of such a large text, as are
formalist theories with impoverished notions of meaning.  That's my interest
at the moment; I'm hoping to contribute to this list as best as I can.