Tiwi language

Tiwi language

language
name=Tiwi
speakers=1,500
states=Australia
region=Bathurst and Melville Islands, Northern Territory.
familycolor=Australian
family=Language isolate
iso2=aus|iso3=tiw

Tiwi is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken on the Tiwi Islands, within sight of the coast of northern Australia.

It is polysynthetic, though this grammatical complexity is being lost among the younger generations. According to Dixon (1980) there are around one hundred nominals that can be incorporated, but most of them are quite different from the corresponding free forms.

Unlike other Australian languages, which were once lumped together in a single language family, Tiwi has long been recognized as a language isolate.

Bibliography

* Osborne, C.R. 1974. The Tiwi language. Canberra: AIAS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies)
* R. M. W. Dixon 1980: The languages of Australia (Cambridge language surveys) Cambridge University PressISBN 0-521-22329-6 (hard covers) and ISBN 0-521-29450-9 (paperback)

External links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=tiw Ethnologue report for Tiwi]


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