Edible Gender, Mother-in-Law Style, and Other Grammatical Wonders: Studies in Dyirbal, Yidiñ, and Warrgamay

This book builds on R. M. W. Dixons most influential work on the indigenous languages of Australia over the past forty years, from his trailblazing grammar of Dyirbal published in 1972 to later grammars of Yidi (1971) and Warrgamay (1981). Edible Gender, Mother-in-Law Style, and Other Grammatical Wonders includes further studies on these languages, and the interrelations between them. Following an account of the anthropological and linguisticbackground, part I provides a thorough examination of, and comparison between, the gender system in Dyirbal (one of whose members refers to edible vegetables) and the set of nominal classifiers in Yidi. The chapters in part II describe Dyirbals unusual kinship system and the mother-in-law language style, andexamines the origins of mother-in-law vocabulary in Dyirbal and in Yidi. There are four grammatical studies in part III, dealing with syntactic orientation, serial verb constructions, complementation strategies, and grammatical reanalysis. Part IV covers grammatical and lexical variation across the dialects of Dyirbal, compensatory phonological changes, and a study of language contact across the Cairns rainforest region. The two final chapters, in Part V, recount the sad stories ofhow the Yidi and Dyirbal languages slowly slipped into oblivion.