"A Preliminary Report on the Languages of Australia"
by Gerhardt Laves
The writer has spent two years in Australia studying
aboriginal languages under the auspices of the Australian National
Research Council. In addition to extensive survey work, he has
made an intensive study of six languages in selected areas. On the
basis of this work, it is found that all the Australian languages
belong to a single language family or stock. They have in common a
phonetic system in which variations are ascribable only to local
development. Comparative studies in vocabulary and word-elements have
progressed far enough to surmise widespread affinities, notably in the
words for certain parts of the body and in the pronouns. The
languages are tentatively grouped into three divisions,- the North-western Languages of northern Western Australia and western Northern
Territory; the Cape York Languages which appear only in the Cape York
Peninsula of northern Queensland; and the Transcontinental Languages
which appear over the entire remaining area. The Northwestern
Languages are distinct from the other two groups in that they use
prefixes with the verbs and with certain classes of nouns. The Cape
York Languages, only cursorily studied by the writer, appear to differ
sufficiently from the others in phonetics and vocabulary to justify
classing them as a separate group. Although there is some
criss-crossing in the lines of division on the basis of phonetics,
each of the three groups has enough distinctive features to necessitate the
present preliminary grouping.