Australian Languages
- LAST REVIEWED: 14 April 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0005
- LAST REVIEWED: 14 April 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0005
Introduction
At the time of the first European settlement of Australia in 1788, there were approximately 250 distinct languages spoken, representing about twenty-eight phylic families. In the early 21st century only twenty of these languages are being learned by children. These languages are important to all areas of linguistics as the only languages spoken by hunter-gatherers who were not in contact with agriculturalists and as languages with many interesting syntactic, phonological, and morphological features. Speakers of Aboriginal languages and heritage owners are also at the forefront of language preservation and revitalization activities. This article provides an overview of the main areas in the field, language resources, and both classic and state-of-the-art materials. A great number of important additional resources exist at present in manuscript form; this work is not cited here.
Textbooks
There are a few books that provide general overviews of Australian languages, though unfortunately there is as yet no single textbook for a class on Australian languages as a whole. Walsh and Yallop 1993 is a little dated now, as is Dixon 1980. McGregor 2004 comes closest. Though it is focused on a particular region, its coverage of linguistic topics is balanced and provides a good introduction for students with no background in Australian languages. Dixon 2002 was meant to be a general textbook and reference work on Australian languages, but it is not very suitable as an introduction to the subject. It is included as a major recent work on Australian languages but should be used with caution.
Dixon, R. M. W. 1980. The languages of Australia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
This is a classic work; although it is now rather dated (and out of print), it has good coverage of Pama-Nyungan languages and a variety of topics of general interest.
Dixon, R. M. W. 2002. Australian languages: Their nature and development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511486869E-mail Citation »
References to the recent literature are very selective, and the author advocates a theory of change that is not widely accepted by other Australianists (see Bowern 2006, cited in Diffusion and Language Contact, for further discussion).
McGregor, William B. 2004. The languages of the Kimberley, Western Australia. New York: RoutledgeCurzon.
While the focus of this book is the Aboriginal languages of the Kimberley region (Northwest Australia), it is also suitable as a more general textbook for a class on Australian languages. It covers several language families (including some of the northern Pama-Nyungan languages) and presents a clear introduction to some of the most important features of Australian languages.
Walsh, Michael, and Colin Yallop, eds. 1993. Language and culture in Aboriginal Australia. Canberra, Australia: Aboriginal Studies.
An introduction to language and culture, with short chapters on topics such as language and law, song language, and sound systems.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Acceptability Judgments
- Acoustic Phoneitcs
- Acquisition, Second Language, and Bilingualism, Psycholin...
- Adpositions
- Affixation
- African Linguistics
- Afroasiatic Languages
- Agreement
- Algonquian Linguistics
- Altaic Languages
- Analogy in Language and Linguistics
- Anaphora
- Animal Communication
- Aphasia
- Applicatives
- Arawak Languages
- Argument Structure
- Artificial Languages
- Athabaskan Languages
- Australian Languages
- Austronesian Linguistics
- Auxiliaries
- Balkans, The Languages of the
- Berber Languages and Linguistics
- Bilingualism and Multilingualism
- Biology of Language
- Blocking
- Caddoan Languages
- Caucasian Languages
- Causatives
- Celtic Languages
- Celtic Mutations
- Chomsky, Noam
- Chumashan Languages
- Classifiers
- Clauses, Relative
- Clinical Linguistics
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Colonial Place Names
- Comparative Reconstruction in Linguistics
- Comparative-Historical Linguistics
- Complementation
- Complexity, Linguistic
- Compositionality
- Compounding
- Computational Linguistics
- Conditionals
- Conjunctions
- Connectionism
- Consonant Epenthesis
- Contrastive Analysis in Linguistics
- Conversation Analysis
- Conversation, Maxims of
- Conversational Implicature
- Cooperative Principle
- Coordination
- Copula
- Creoles
- Creoles, Grammatical Categories in
- Critical Periods
- Cross-Language Speech Perception and Production
- Definiteness
- Dene-Yeniseian
- Dependencies
- Dependencies, Long Distance
- Derivational Morphology
- Determiners
- Dialectology
- Dialogue
- Diglossia
- Disfluency
- Distinctive Features
- Dravidian Languages
- Ellipsis
- Endangered Languages
- English as a Lingua Franca
- English, Early Modern
- Ergativity
- Eskimo-Aleut
- Euphemisms and Dysphemisms
- Evidentials
- Exemplar-Based Models in Linguistics
- Existential
- Existential Wh-Constructions
- Experimental Linguistics
- Fieldwork
- Finite State Languages
- First Language Attrition
- Formulaic Language
- Francoprovençal
- French Grammars
- Frisian
- Gabelentz, Georg von der
- Gender
- Genealogical Classification
- Generative Syntax
- Genetics and Language
- Gestures
- Grammar, Categorial
- Grammar, Construction
- Grammar, Descriptive
- Grammar, Functional Discourse
- Grammars, Phrase Structure
- Grammaticalization
- Harris, Zellig
- Heritage Languages
- History of Linguistics
- History of the English Language
- Hmong-Mien Languages
- Hokan Languages
- Honorifics
- Humor in Language
- Hungarian Vowel Harmony
- Iconicity
- Ideophones
- Idiolect
- Idiom and Phraseology
- Imperatives
- Indefiniteness
- Indo-European Etymology
- Inflected Infinitives
- Information Structure
- Innateness
- Interface Between Phonology and Phonetics
- Interjections
- Intonation
- IPA
- Iroquoian Languages
- Islands
- Jakobson, Roman
- Japanese Word Accent
- Jones, Daniel
- Juncture and Boundary
- Kiowa-Tanoan Languages
- Kra-Dai Languages
- Labov, William
- Language Acquisition
- Language and Law
- Language Contact
- Language Documentation
- Language, Gender, and Sexuality
- Language Geography
- Language Ideologies and Language Attitudes
- Language in Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Language Revitalization
- Language Shift
- Language Standardization
- Languages of Africa
- Languages of the Americas, Indigenous
- Languages of the World
- Learnability
- Lexemes
- Lexical Access, Cognitive Mechanisms for
- Lexical Semantics
- Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Lexicography
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Areas
- Linguistic Landscapes
- Linguistic Prescriptivism
- Linguistic Profiling and Language-Based Discrimination
- Linguistic Relativity
- Literature and Linguistics
- Loanwords
- Machine Translation
- Mande Languages
- Markedness
- Mass-Count Distinction
- Mathematical Linguistics
- Mayan Languages
- Mental Health Disorders, Language in
- Mesoamerican Languages
- Metaphor
- Metathesis
- Metonymy
- Minority Languages
- Mixed Languages
- Mixe-Zoquean Languages
- Modification
- Mon-Khmer Languages
- Morphological Change
- Morphology
- Morphology, Subtractive
- Movement
- Munda Languages
- Muskogean Languages
- Nasals and Nasalization
- Negation
- Niger-Congo Languages
- Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages
- Northeast Caucasian Languages
- Nostratic
- Number
- Numerals
- Oceanic Languages
- Papuan Languages
- Penutian Languages
- Philosophy of Language
- Phonetics
- Phonetics, Articulatory
- Phonological Research, Psycholinguistic Methodology in
- Phonology
- Phonology, Computational
- Phonology, Early Child
- Pidgins
- Polarity
- Politeness in Language
- Polysemy
- Pragmatics, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Computational
- Pragmatics, Experimental
- Prague Linguistic Circle, The
- Presupposition
- Pronouns
- Psycholinguistics
- Quechuan and Aymaran Languages
- Questions
- Reciprocals
- Reduplication
- Reflexives and Reflexivity
- Relevance Theory
- Salish Languages
- Saussure, Ferdinand de
- Semantic Change
- Semantic Maps
- Semantic Roles
- Sentence Processing in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers
- Sign Language Linguistics
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociolinguistics, Variationist
- Sonority
- Sound Change
- South American Indian Languages
- Specific Language Impairment
- Speech Perception
- Speech Production
- Speech Synthesis
- Suppletion
- Switch-Reference
- Syllables
- Syncretism
- Synonymy
- Syntactic Change
- Syntactic Knowledge, Children’s Acquisition of
- Tense, Aspect, and Mood
- Tone
- Tone Sandhi
- Topic
- Transcription
- Transitivity and Voice
- Translation
- Trubetzkoy, Nikolai
- Tucanoan Languages
- Tupian Languages
- Typology
- Usage-Based Linguistics
- Uto-Aztecan Languages
- Valency Theory
- Verbs, Serial
- Visual Word Recognition
- Voice and Voice Quality
- Vowel Harmony
- Whitney, William Dwight
- Word Classes
- Word Formation in Japanese
- Word Stress
- Writing Systems
- Yiddish
- Zapotecan Languages