Section XII, 1 - Outline of Grammar.

Abstract

Discusses language classifications of Rev. J. Mathew in ‘Eagle and Crow’ and Rev. J. Fraser in “An Australian Grammar”. Australian languages appear to be closely related to Dravidian or Indian languages (see Dr Caldwell’s ‘Dravidian Grammar’).The vocabularies of the 55 dialects that follow have mostly been taken from the inhabitants of the local areas named in the index. All contributions have been written in a uniform system of orthography adopted by the Royal Geographical Society. Discusses the alphabet used in the West Australian languages, accentuation, articles, nouns, cases, gender, particles, number, adjectives, pronouns and pronominal sentences in various W.A. languages, verbs for southern dialects (burrong wongi) e.g. Guildford, Perth, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, numerals; number, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, interjections, sentences , literal translation of above sentences for northern dialects of Broome; pronouns, verbs, sentences of Beagle Bay, differences in dialects of Broome and Beagle Bay; pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, verbs, sentences for Sunday Island, words alike in form, differing in meaning (throughout W.A.); miscellaneous words and sentences, birds (F.F. Armstrong), districts covered by dialects, dialects contributed by white settlers and natives.