Professor Dixon presents a comprehensive study of the indigenous languages of Australia.

R. M. W. Dixon is Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University, Victoria.

List of maps; List of abbreviations and conventions; Preface; Acknowledgements; Conventions followed; List of languages and language groups; 1. The language situation in Australia; 2. Modelling the language situation; 3. Overview; 4. Vocabulary; 5. Case and other nominal suffixes; 6. Verbs; 7. Pronouns; 8. Bound pronouns; 9. Prefixing and fusion; 10. Generic nouns, classifiers, genders and noun classes; 11. Ergative/accusative morphological and syntactic profiles; 12. Phonology; 13. Genetic subgroups and small linguistic areas; 14. Summary and conclusion; References; Index of languages, dialects and language groups; Subject index.