Daisy Bates collected large amounts of information about Aboriginal people throughout Western Australia, and many vocabulary lists. Isobel White has edited and summarised eleven of the thirteen manuscript sections in the National Library of Australia which comprise the Bates collection (Bates 1985). The twelfth section, 'Language: Grammar and vocabularies' is made up of 139 subcategories, all divided into six regional headings. Frances Morphy (1985) has begun analysis on this twelfth section and has identified which languages are represented by Bates's vocabularies of the South-West, and west coast as far north as Onslow. Her work is the basis for assigning Bates's vocabularies to particular languages in the present work. Where it is unclear which language a particular vocabulary in Bates's work comes from it is listed by its geographical origin.
Geoffrey O'Grady worked at Wallal Station between 1949 and 1955. He published a grammar of Nyangumarta in 1964. He also collected vocabularies and grammatical information about many Western Australian languages, including the results of a postal questionnaire he sent out in the late 1950s. This information is presented in his thesis (O'Grady 1959) and in O'Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin (1966), a general work on all Australian languages that also contains detailed notes on languages of Western Australia. Ken Hale has worked in the North-West, collecting information on Pilbara and desert languages.
Wilf Douglas has worked on various languages of the southern part of Western Australia, beginning with his work on the Western Desert language spoken at Warburton, and extending to the Nyungar languages, and Watjarri from the Gascoyne River.
Carl-Georg von Brandenstein has been working in various parts of the state since the early 1960s. He has published work about languages of the Pilbara, the South-West and the South-East of the state. His diaries contain the background data to much of his published work.
More recently, Peter Austin and Alan Dench have recorded information about the languages of the West Pilbara and Ashburton. 3.1 General references on Western Australian Aboriginal languages
3.3 Organisations supporting Aboriginal languages
3.4 Relationship between Aboriginal languages of Western Australia
Bates, D.M.
Black, P. (1983) Aboriginal languages of the Northern Territory, SAL, Batchelor.
Brandenstein, C.G. von (1969g) The diaries of C.G. von Brandenstein, 1964-1969, MS.
Capell, A. (1963) Linguistic survey of Australia, AIAS, Sydney.
McGregor,W. (1988) Handbook of Kimberley languages, Volume 1: General information, Pacific Linguistics, C-105, Canberra.
Menning, K. and D.Nash (1981) Sourcebook for Central Australian languages, IAD, Alice Springs.
Moyle, A.M. (1966) A handlist and field collections of recorded music in Australia and Torres Strait, Occasional Papers in Aboriginal Studies no.6, AIAS, Melbourne.
Oates, L.F. (1975) The 1973 supplement to 'a revised linguistic survey of Australia', Christian Book Centre, Armidale.
O'Grady, G.N., C.F. Voegelin and F.M. Voegelin (1966) 'Languages of the world: Indo-Pacific fascicle 6', pp.1-197 in Anthropological Linguistics, Vol.8, no.2.
Sharp, J. (1990-91) [Course materials in WA Aboriginal languages].
Tindale, N.B. (1974) Aboriginal tribes of Australia, ANU Press, Canberra.
Vászolyi, E.G. (1976) Aboriginal Australians speak: an introduction to Australian Aboriginal linguistics, ATEP, Mt Lawley College of Advanced Education, Perth.
Wurm, S.A. (1972) Languages of Australia and Tasmania, Mouton, The Hague.
These are some introductory works that deal with Aboriginal languages in Australia. Blake's is a brief book, as is Vászolyi's. Yallop provides more information still in a readable form, Kaldor's chapter uses examples from Western Australian languages and is also very readable, Dixon's book is more detailed and provides information more suited for linguists.
Blake, B.J. (1991) Australian Aboriginal languages: a general introduction, Second Edition, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane.
Dixon, R.M.W. (1980) The languages of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Kaldor, S. (1982) 'The Aboriginal languages of Australia', pp.31-72 in R.D. Eagleson, S. Kaldor and I.G. Malcolm English and the Aboriginal child, Curriculum Development Centre, Canberra.
Vászolyi, E.G. (1976) Aboriginal Australians speak: an introduction to Australian Aboriginal linguistics, ATEP, Mt Lawley College of Advanced Education, Perth.
Yallop, C. (1981) Australian Aboriginal languages, Andre Deutsch, London.
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS)
The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies is a government funded body that funds and promotes research and study on Aboriginal issues. Submissions for funding are accepted and grants made annually in October. Further information and advice can be obtained from the Linguistics Research Officer. A few language projects in WA have been funded through the AIATSIS (GPO Box 553 Canberra 2601, phone (06) 246 1111).
Aboriginal Languages Association (ALA)
The Aboriginal Languages Association is an Aboriginal run organisation that started in Alice Springs in 1980. The ALA has produced newsletters and has cooperated in the publication of a book outlining some issues in Aboriginal language policy in Australia.
Bunbury Aboriginal Progress Association
A group in Bunbury is developing a teaching kit for Nyungar. The group consists of Nyungar (Aboriginal) people who are working with older people to record what is still known, and have run workshops and conferences for people of the South-West. The address is PO Box 724, Bunbury, WA 6230, phone (097) 219518.
Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics (CALL) (formerly School of Australian Linguistics (SAL)) (Batchelor College, Northern Territory)
The Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics operates from Batchelor in the Northern Territory. It runs courses for Aboriginal people from all over Australia teaching linguistics and teaching how to write in Aboriginal languages. CALL also runs interpreter/translator courses for speakers of Aboriginal languages. Further information is available from CALL, Batchelor College, PO Batchelor, NT 0845.
Institute for Aboriginal Development (IAD)
The Institute for Aboriginal Development runs courses teaching local languages, offers an interpreter service and publishes language courses and language materials. The address is PO Box 2531 Alice Springs, NT 0871.
Jawa Curriculum Support Centre
The Jawa Curriculum Support Centre and the Kimberley Regional Office of Catholic Education support schools that use Aboriginal languages through the teacher-linguists they employ. Jawa prints books and other materials to support Aboriginal language programmes in schools. The address is PO Box 365, Broome, WA 6725.
Kimberley Language Resource Centre (KLRC)
The Kimberley Language Resource Centre is an Aboriginal controlled organisation which is concerned with language issues in the Kimberley, such as language maintenance, supporting schools that use Aboriginal languages, and recording dying languages. A report written by the KLRC 'Keeping Language Strong' describes the language needs of Aboriginal people in the Kimberley. A Handbook of Kimberley languages has been produced by Bill McGregor working for the KLRC. The address is PMB 11, Halls Creek, WA 6770, phone (091) 686 005.
Pundulmurra College (Certificate in Aboriginal Language Work)
This course was set up in 1990 and trains Western Australian Aboriginal people in language recording, writing and literature production. Courses are generally run by a tutor in the students' community, and students come in to Port Hedland for a fortnight of course work. The address is PO Box 2017, Sth Hedland, WA 6722, phone (091) 721477.
Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)
The Summer Institute of Linguistics is a missionary organisation whose members translate the Bible into Aboriginal languages. The members of SIL have also been involved in literacy courses in Western Australia at Fitzroy Crossing, Halls Creek, Jigalong, around Derby, Port Hedland and Roebourne. A number of books, articles, primers and dictionaries have been produced by SIL. Together with the KLRC they have produced a very useful book for introducing Aboriginal languages into schools. (Richards, E. (n.d.) Pinarri: introducing Aboriginal languages in Kimberley schools KLRC/ SIL, Berrimah). It includes exercises and activities and examples from Walmajarri. SIL's address is PO Berrimah, NT 0828, phone (089) 844488.
Universities
There is a lot of linguistic work done by university lecturers or graduate students who spend some time in a community learning a language. Their papers and books are written for university students but are usually quite difficult for people outside of universities to read. Their work is often the only way that an Aboriginal language will be recorded.
Wangka Maya, The Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre
An Aboriginal controlled organisation which supports Aboriginal languages in the Pilbara. It supports schools that use Aboriginal languages, and records dying languages. The centre has produced books and dictionaries, and records stories with older Aboriginal people in the area. The address is 3 Edgar St., (PO Box 693) Port Hedland, WA 6721, phone (091) 732621.
Yamaji Language Centre
This centre began operation in 1990 and works with languages of the Gascoyne region. The address is c/- PO Box 50, Geraldton, WA 6530.
Just because there are similar features in two languages does not necessarily mean that the languages are related, the shared features may be there because the languages are near each other, or there are common social activities, for example speakers of one language may marry speakers of the other.
When we say that two languages are related, we are suggesting that they descend from a common ancestor language. Italian, Spanish and French all descend from an earlier language, Latin, and English and Italian, Spanish and French are all descended from a single language we call Indo-European that we think was spoken around 4,000 years ago. Similarly all Australian languages appear ultimately to descend from one language, called Proto Australian by linguists.
In the part of Western Australia that this handbook deals with, all of the languages appear to descend from one earlier language, called Proto Pama-Nyungan by linguists. The languages of the southern part of Australia are all Pama-Nyungan languages (see section 3.5 ), and all belong to the Nyungic group, according to Wurm (1972). Ultimately, all Aboriginal languages in Australia have been shown to descend from one earlier language, Proto Australian.
Wurm's classification is based on lexicostatistics, the comparison of a list of words in neighbouring languages to establish the relationship between the languages. If the two languages share more than 71per cent of the word list, then they are taken to be dialects of the same language. The table below outlines the percentages of shared vocabulary purportedly required to show various relationships between languages.
Shared vocabulary Relationship
less than 15% different families
16% > 25% different groups of the same family
26% > 50% different subgroups of the same group
51% > 70% different languages of the same subgroup
71% >100% different dialects of the same language
Subsequent comparisons have taken more than just vocabulary into account. The chart in section 3.5 is based on Wurm's classification, and O'Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin (1966), but with revisions due to more recent research, especially by Austin (1981d, 1985a) and Dench (1983b, 1985d), who look at other parts of language, beyond word lists as a basis for comparison.
The lexicostatistic method leaves a great deal to be desired in its claims to show relationships between languages. As more work is done to record languages and to understand the way in which Aboriginal societies work, we have come to recognise the complexity of relationships that mesh language group and social group in Australia (see Merlan (1981), Miller (1972) and Rigsby and Sutton (1980-82)). Aboriginal people may belong to a number of language groups, perhaps having been born into one, been raised in another, and having married into still another. Due to all of these features, multilingualism is common: it is rare to find a native-speaker of an Aboriginal language who does not speak, or at least understand, another Aboriginal language.
With this shifting of speakers between languages and between language groups comes borrowing of words and other parts of grammar across languages (see Heath (1978) for a discussion of movement of parts of languages into other languages in Arnhem Land). Given the complexity of social and territorial relationships we cannot attempt to show relationships between languages solely on the basis of word lists.
Further Reading
3.5 Family tree list of southern Western Australian languages
Heath, J. (1978) Linguistic diffusion in Arnhem Land, AIAS, Canberra.
Merlan, F. (1981) 'Land, language and social identity in Aboriginal Australia', pp.133-148 in Mankind, Vol.3, no.2.
Miller, W.R. (1972) 'Dialect differentiation in the Western Desert language', pp.61-78 in Anthropological Forum,Vol.3, no.1.
Rigsby, B. and P.Sutton (1980-82) 'Speech communities in Aboriginal Australia', pp.8-23 in Anthropological Forum, Vol.5, no.1.
