McGregor W. A Functional Grammar of Gooniyandi

John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1990. — 638 p. — (Studies in Language Companion Series). — ISBN: 9027230250This volume sets out to provide a comprehensive description of the grammar of Gooniyandi, a non-Pama-Nyungan language of the southern-central Kimberley region of Western Australia. It covers phonetics and phonology, word phrase and clause structure, and the semantics of closed-class grammatical items. The major focus is, however, on meaning: how do Gooniyandi speakers mean with and in their language. To this end, the theoretical framework of systemic functional grammar, particularly as elaborated in Halliday's recent work, is adopted. Certain refinements to the theory are proposed in order to better account for the Gooniyandi evidence. Of obvious importance to those studying Australian aboriginal languages, this work has an importance to a wider audience for its effective presentation of theory justification.