A Grammar of Kayardild: With Historical-Comparative Notes on Tangkic

The material for this book was gathered during field trips to Mornington and Bentinck Islands in June 1982-January 1983, May-July 1984, October 1985, April-May 1986, September October 1987, June 1988, August 1989, April and December 1992, September 1994, and during June 1987 when a group of Bentinck Islanders attended a Kayardild literacy course at the School of Australian Linguistics in Batchelor, Northern Territory. Before my first field trip I was able to do some preliminary analysis of Stephen Wurm's 1960 recordings and fieldnotes on Kayardild, and examine the insightful works on the related languages Yukulta (Keen 1972, 1983) and Lardil (Hale 1973, Hale et al 1981; Klokeid 1976).
The project was initiated following a request to Bob Dixon by the Bentinck Island community, who were concerned about the fate of their language and wanted a linguist to record it. Between 1982 and 1985 my research concentrated on Kayardild grammar and text collection, and the grammar in Part I is a substantially revised version of Evans (1985), a dissertation submitted for the degree of Ph.D. at the Australian National University. Subsequently I was able to continue gathering the text and lexical materials contained in Parts II and III of this book, and to revise various parts of the grammar.