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coombs.anu.edu.au>Title: Bininj Gun-Wok Subtitle: A pan-dialectal grammar of Mayali, Kunwinjku and Kune (Volumes 1 and 2) Publication Year: 2004 Publisher: Pacific Linguistics http://pacling.anu.edu.au/ Author: Nicholas Evans Paperback: ISBN: 0858835304, Pages: xxix + 733 pp, Price: A$145.00 Comment: + 10% GST in Australia. In two volumes. Abstract: The term Bininj Gun-wok was recently coined to cover a large group of related dialects spoken in Western Arnhem Land, Australia, including Kunwinjku, Mayali, Gun-djeihmi, Kune, and others; many of these dialects have not been described before. Bininj Gun-wok, in turn, belongs to the so-called Gunwinjguan family, the largest family of non-Pama-Nyungan languages. It is one of the few Australian languages still being passed on to children, and in fact the number of speakers is increasing. This detailed pan-dialectal grammar takes care to set the language in its cultural context throughout, with rich ethnographic discussion of the many special kinship-based speech registers and a sizeable text collection with examples of all major dialects. Bininj Gun-wok is a heavily polysynthetic language, with three productive types of noun incorporation, incorporation of one verb into another, two applicatives, reflexive/reciprocal formation, prefixes representing subject and object/indirect object, and a large number of further adverbial-type prefixes. Within the nominal system, it has four genders in some dialects, reducing to simpler systems in others. A major focus of the grammar is the many problems of how meanings are constructed in a polysynthetic language, and how the many elements of the verbal morphology interact with one another in the composition of grammatical structure. This volume will be of interest to a wide range of readers: morphologists and syntacticians, Australianists, linguistic anthropologists, dialectologists, typologists, and educationists and others working in Western Arnhem Land. Lingfield(s): Language Description Subject Language(s): Gunwinggu (Language code: GUP) Written In: English (Language Code: ENG) See this book announcement on our website: http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=8485.Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue