Re: Dyirbal?

sorry i didn't reply to rodlox's question sooner - i've been having
trouble with my mail client and am now reduced to using pine :palmfaces:

as many members have pointed out, it's australian, not austronesian - my
mistake.  i know of it from comrie, who refers to dixon some.  i know of
no good online resources on it.  comrie  also mentions that it is
syntactically ergative, while its geographically and linguistically close
neighbours are only morphologically ergative.

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004, Herman Miller wrote:
> Rodlox wrote:
>
> >  two questions -- where in Austronesia is/was Dyirbal spoken?
>
> In northern Queensland, Australia.
>
> >  &, aside from
> > Syntactic Ergativity, what other fun stuff does it and-or its language
> > subfamily (its closer relations within the broad Austroneasian Family) have?
> > *curious*
> >
> >  ps: does it have a learn-the-grammar website?
> >
> >  thanks.
> >
>
> I read a couple of books by R.M.W. Dixon back in the mid-1980's, one on
> Dyirbal and a larger one on the related language Yidiny, but I don't
> remember much about them beyond the ergativity. It was around that time
> that I started adding ergative features to my own languages, such as
> Kazvarad. Dyirbal is also known for its gender system, which gave the
> title to George Lakoff's book _Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things_. It
> basically has four genders, which might seem to be arbitrary but
> actually had some semantic basis -- birds are feminine because they are
> believed to be the spirits of women, for instance.
>