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A study of the more than two hundred different Aboriginal languages of Australia. Professor Dixon deals first with the general character of these languages, and their use and role in Australia today. He stresses that they are in no sense 'primitive' languages, but have a rich and complex grammar with the many subtle and distinctive features. He goes on to demonstrate this in the first-ever study of their genetic relationships, probable origins and historical development, and their grammatical and phonological behaviour. This is in many ways a pioneering work, and a fundamental one. The Press has already published two major scholarly studies by Professor Dixon of individual Australian languages, Dyirbal and Yidin. He offers here the synthesis that they pointed towards, provisional still in many of its details, but sufficiently convincing in outline to stimulate the next stage of professional research, to provide the general linguist with the kind of survey to the interested Australian something of the extraordinary linguistic heritage of the continent, now and for some time past seriously at risk.
The Languages and Linguistics of Australia: A Comprehensive Guide is part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of the continents of the world. The volume provides a thorough overview of Australian languages, including their linguistic structures, their genetic relationships, and issues of language maintenance and revitalisation. Australian English, Aboriginal English and other contact varieties are also discussed.
This book addresses controversial issues in the application of the comparative method to the languages of Australia which have recently come to international prominence. Are these languages ‘different’ in ways that challenge the fundamental assumptions of historical linguistics? Can subgrouping be successfully undertaken using the Comparative Method? Is the genetic construct of a far-flung ‘Pama-Nyungan’ language family supportable by classic methods of reconstruction? Contrary to increasingly established views of the Australian scene, this book makes a major contribution to the demonstration that traditional methods can indeed be applied to these languages. These studies, introduced by chapters on subgrouping methodology and the history of Australian linguistic classification, rigorously apply the comparative method to establishing subgroups among Australian languages and justifying the phonology of Proto-Pama-Nyungan. Individual chapters can profitably be read either for their contribution to Australian linguistic prehistory or as case studies in the application of the comparative method.
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.
Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: Good, University of Hannover (English Seminar), course: English and its dialects, language: English, abstract: Abstract When a language is spread all over the world, it naturally is not exactly the same everywhere. The language takes different forms in different places and these forms are distinguishable from each other by certain characteristics. These forms are dialects. In the case of English there are extraordinarily many dialects since the English language is spoken in many countries and functions as the lingua franca of the world. English has achieved global status. It is the language which is most prevalently taught and used as a foreign language in more than a 100 countries. Apart from that, there are several nations which have large numbers of the people speaking English as their mother tongue, i.e. the USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Among these, Australia is said to be one of the most monolingual countries. However, this is not the only reason why investigations about Australian English are interesting. Since Australia is a very young nation, the dialect which has developed there, started its way up only 200 years ago. In addition, many linguists have referred to the striking homogeneity of Australian English (AusE). Subjective opinions about this dialect cause great deals of controversy and although this reaction might be observed with many dialects, AusE is in some way predestined for evoking controversial feelings. In this paper I will try to give comprehensible explanations why the Australian dialect is a very special form of English.