Book: Australian aboriginal languages

[Scott McGinnis]

Australian Languages

R.M.W. Dixon, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia


Aboriginal people have been in Australia for at least 40,000 years,
speaking about 250 languages. Through examination of published and
unpublished materials on each of the individual languages, Dixon surveys
the ways in which the languages vary typologically and presents a
profile of this long-established linguistic area. The areal distribution
of most features is illustrated with more than 30 maps and an index of
languages and language groups is provided.

Contents:

1. The language situation in Australia;
2. Modelling the language situation;
3. Overview;
4. Vocabulary;
5. Case and other nominal suffixes;
6. Verbs;
7. Pronouns;
8. Bound pronouns;
9. Prefixing and fusion;
10.Generic nouns, classifiers, genders and noun classes;
11.Ergative/accusative morphological and syntactic profiles;
12.Phonology;
13.Genetic subgroups and small linguistic area;
14.Summary and conclusion.

Cambridge Language Surveys

2002/c. 800 pp./3 line diagrams/33 maps/38 tables
0-521-47378-0/Hb/List: $90.00*