Worrorran Revisited: The case for genetic relations among languages of the Northern Kimberley region of Western Australia

Abstract

In this book we attempt to establish the genetic related ness of a set of some twenty named regional speech varieties of the Northern Kimberley region of Western Australia . We argue that, contrary to recent claims by some scholars, they constitute a genetic family-like unit. The case is argued by application of the comparative method, along with a lexical-statistical method, a modified version of lexicostatistics, that compares lexical similarities (in both form and semantics) within the basic vocabularies of the languages with no presumption of genetic relatedness. The results of these two independent methods are in substantial agreement, thus providing independent support for our proposals. The main thrust of the volume is an application of the comparative method, whereby we establish the genetic relatedness of the languages by reconstructing features-mainly phonological and grammatical, to a lesser extent lexical-of a protolanguage from which features of the modern languages could plausibly have derived. We also present comparative evidence that three primary subgroups can be distinguished in the family.