This edited volume represents the first book-length study of the history of research on Australian Aboriginal languages, and collects together 18 original papers on a wide variety of topics, spanning the period from first settlement to the present day.
The introduction sets the scene for the book by presenting an overview of the history of histories of research on the languages of Australia , and identifying some of the major issues in Aboriginal linguistic historiography as well as directions for future investigations. Part 1 presents three detailed investigations of the history of work on particular languages and regions. The eight papers of Part 2 study and re-evaluate the contributions of particular individuals, most of who are somewhat marginal or have been marginalised in Aboriginal linguistics. Part 3 consists of six studies specific linguistic topics: sign language research, language revival, pidgins and creoles, fieldwork, Fr. Schmidt's work on personal pronouns, and the discovery that Australia was a multilingual continent.
Overall, the volume presents two major challenges to Australianist orthodoxy. First, the papers challenge the typically anachronistic approaches to the history of Aboriginal linguistics, and reveal the need to examine previous research in the context of their times — and the advantages of doing so to contemporary understanding and language documentation. Second, the widespread presumption that the period 1910-1960 represented the “dark ages” of Aboriginal linguistics, characterised by virtually no linguistic work, is refuted by a number of studies in the present volume.
