The languages of Australia
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The languages of Australia
（Cambridge library collection, . Linguistics）
Cambridge University Press, 2011
- : pbk
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Note
First published 1980 in the series: Cambridge language surveys
Bibliography: p. [515]-533
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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.
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Tribe and languages
- 3. Speech and song styles
- 4. The role of language in Aboriginal Australian society today
- 5. Vocabulary
- 6. Phonology
- 7. Phonological change
- 8. Classification of Australian languages
- 9. Word classes
- 10. Nouns
- 11. Pronouns
- 12. Verbs
- 13. Syntax
- 14. Summary.
by "Nielsen BookData"
