Well, we better start somewhere since I've been asked repeatedly about language and lingustics by iDIDJ friends.
The subtitle of this book is "Aboriginal Australia in Global Perspective".
To quote the blurb:
Quote:
This book brings together exciting new work in the fields of archaeology, linguistics and genetics. In doing so, it reveals a diverse and dynamic view of Australia's Aboriginal past and its place in prehistory of the Pacific region. Each discipline provides various pieces of the jigsaw; when these are put together, a fuller picture emerges. The dates and excavations of archaeology can be fitted to linguistic models of cultural contact and spread, as well as to genetic evidence of past patterns of marriage and migration. All three disciplines point to sweeping changes in the mid-Holocene, which can be linked to the expansion of the Pama-Nyungan language family over most of the continent. The book includes introductory chapters, which survey the methods used and current state of knowledge in each contributing discipline. It also includes sections dealing with regional patterns within Australia, cultural contact, the Pama-Nyungan question, and the broader Asia-Pacific perspective.
This is a mammoth tome with a broad coverage of topics and issues. There is plenty of material here for those interested in language and linguistic issues relating to the Yolngu and other 'Top End' groups. Of particular interest are chapters by Neville White, Mark Harvey and Nicolas Evans.
The table of contents:
Part One. Introduction
1. Clues to Australia's human past: pulling together the strands by Patrick McConvell and Nicolas Evans
2. Building on each other's myths: archaeology and linguistics in Australia by Sandra Bowdler
3. Comparative linguistics and Australian prehistory by Harold Koch
4. Genes, languages and landscapes in Australia by Neville White
Part Two. Perspectives from afar
5. On the correlation between linguistic and archaeological reconstructions by Ilia Peiros
6. Language classification and models of the peopling of the Americas by Ruth Gruhn
7. Dialect distribution and small group interaction in Greenlandic Eskimo by Michael Fortescue
8. Prehistoric cultural explanations for widespread language families by Peter Bellwood
9. Sprung from two common sources: Sahul as a linguistic area by Johanna Nichols
Part Three. Culture Contact
10. Structural parallelism and convergence in the Princess Charlotte Bay languages by Bruce Rigsby
11. The temporal interpretation of linguistic diversity in the Top End by Mark Harvey
12. Comparative flora terminology of the central Northern Territory by David Nash
13. Long lost relations: Pama-Nyungan and Northern kinship by Patrick McConvell
14. Macassan loans and linguistic stratification in western Arnhem Land by Nicolas Evans
Part Four. Areal study and the Australian east coast
15. A continent of foragers: Aboriginal Australia as a 'regional system' by Ian Keen
16. Chipping away at the past: a northern New South Wales perspective by Terry Crowley
17. Little Big Men: alliance and schism in northeastern New South Wales during the late Holocene
18. 'Worth a thousand words'? Words, images and material culture: a New England case study by Isabel McBryde
Part Five. The Pama-Nyungan enigma
19. Cognate search in the Pama-Nyungan language family by Geoff O'Grady & Susan Fitzgerald
20. The distribution of large blades: evidence for recent changes in Aboriginal ceremonial exchange networks by Harry Allem
21. Small tools and social change by Robert Layton
22. The cradle of the Pama-Nyungans: archaeological and linguistic speculations by Nicolas Evans & Rhys Jones
This is an excellent overview of linguistics and archaeological research in Australia by leading scholars in their respective fields.
