1 - The language situation in Australia

Summary

In this volume I attempt to characterise what the indigenous languages of Australia are like, how individual languages have developed their particular structural profiles, and the ways in which the languages are related. A portrait is provided of the Australian linguistic area, which is certainly the longest-established linguistic area in the world.

This first chapter briefly describes relevant aspects of traditional Aboriginal society, the language situation at the time of White invasion and then the prehistory of the continent. A final section deals with the diffusion of cultural traits. Chapter 2 discusses ways of modelling the language situation, and applies the Punctuated Equilibrium model (presented in Dixon 1997). An appendix reviews the status of the lexicostatistic classification and the ‘Pama-Nyungan’ idea, in its various manifestations.

Chapter 3 gets down to business, providing a typological overview of the parameters of grammatical and phonological variation across the continent. Individual topics are then dealt with in detail in the following chapters – vocabulary in chapter 4, case and other nominal affixes in chapter 5, verb systems and inflections in chapter 6, pronouns in chapter 7, bound pronouns in chapter 8, prefixing and fusion in chapter 9, classifiers and noun classes in chapter 10. In chapter 11 there is discussion of ergative and accusative profiles and how languages shift with respect to them. Chapter 12 deals with phonology. Chapter 13 discusses genetic subgroups, small linguistic areas, origin places and directions of expansion, and shifting isoglosses. Finally, chapter 14 ties together some conclusions.