Dying Words

Nicholas Evans is Professor of Linguistics at the Australian National University and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is on the editorial boards of the journals Linguistic Typology and Australian Journal of Linguistics, and on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. He is the author of a number of books, including Bininj Gun-wok (2 volumes, 2001), Archaeology and Linguistics: Aboriginal Australia in Global Perspective (co-edited with Patrick McConvell, 1998), and A Grammar of Kayardild (1992).

Acknowledgments ix

Prologue xv

A Note on the Presentation of Linguistic Material xx

Part I The Library of Babel 1

1 Warramurrungunji’s Children 5

2 Four Millennia to Tune In 24

Part II A Great Feast of Languages 45

3 A Galapagos of Tongues 49

4 Your Mind in Mine: Social Cognition in Grammar 69

Part III Faint Tracks in an Ancient Wordscape: Languages and Deep World History 81

5 Sprung from Some Common Source 85

6 Travels in the Logosphere: Hooking Ancient Words onto Ancient Worlds 105

7 Keys to Decipherment: How Living Languages Can Unlock Forgotten Scripts 129

Part IV Ratchetting Each Other Up: The Coevolution of Language, Culture, and Thought 155

8 Trellises of the Mind: How Language Trains Thought 159

9 What Verse and Verbal Art Can Weave 182

Part V Listening While We Can 205

10 Renewing the Word 207

Epilogue: Sitting in the Dust, Standing in the Sky 229

Notes 232

References 249

Index of Languages and Language Families 274

Index 280