Ilana Mushin

Mark Harvey

Rod Gardner

Brett Joseph Baker

For almost 40 years, Michael Walsh has been working alongside Indigenous people: documenting language, music and other traditional knowledge, acting on behalf of claimants to land in the Northern Territory, and making crucial contributions to the revitalisation of Aboriginal languages in NSW. This volume, with contributions from his colleagues and students, celebrates his abiding interest in and commitment to Indigenous society with papers in two broad themes. 'Language, identity and country' addresses the often complex relations between Aboriginal social groups and countries, and linguistic identity. In 'Language, identity and social action' authors discuss the role that language plays in maintaining social identities in the realms of conversation, story-telling, music, language games, and in education. 'Language and Social Identity in Australian Indigenous Communities' will be of interest to students of linguistics, Indigenous studies, anthropology, and sociology.

Papers in Honour of Michael Walsh

Indigenous Language and Social Identity

Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages is the first major survey to address the issue of the effects of information packaging on Australian languages, widely known for nonconfigurationality. The papers are based on individual fieldwork and describe a wide range of Australian languages of different types, ranging from the polysynthetic languages of Arnhem Land and the Kimberley to the classical types represented by Walpiri. Topics covered include the pragmatics of information exchange, the interaction of noun class marking with polarity and referentiality, the effects of specificity on argument indexing, the discourse uses of the ergative case, the contribution of pronouns to NP reference, the interaction of tense and aspect clitics with information structure, clause-initial position, and discourse and grammar in Australian languages. The volume will appeal to scholars interested in discourse, typology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Brett Joseph Baker

Books

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