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  1. Home
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  3. The Languages of Australia
  • Cited by 15
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
August 2012
Print publication year:
2011
First published in:
1980
Online ISBN:
9780511719714
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511719714
Subjects:
Other Languages and Linguistics, English Language and Linguistics: General Interest, Language and Linguistics
Series:
Cambridge Library Collection - Linguistics
Information

Book 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.

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