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The Gundungurra Language, by R. H. Mathews
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gundungurra Language, by R. H. Mathews This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Gundungurra Language
Author: R. H. Mathews
Release Date: June 19, 2007 [EBook #21866]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GUNDUNGURRA LANGUAGE ***
Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
[Transcriber's Note: In this version, the following replacements were made: a with macron is [a|], a with circumflex is [a^], i with macron is [i|], o with circumflex is [o^], and n with tilde is [n~].]
THE GUNDUNGURRA LANGUAGE.
BY R. H. MATHEWS, L.S.
(Read October 4, 1901.)
The Dhar'rook and Gun'dungur'ra tribes respectively occupied the from the mouth of the Hawkesbury river to Mount Victoria, and thence southerly to Berrima and Goulburn, New South Wales. On the south and southeast they were joined by the Thurrawal, whose language has the same structure, although differing in vocabulary.
Besides the verbs and pronouns, many of the nouns, adjectives, prepositions and adverbs are subject to inflection for number and person. Similar inflections have, to some extent, been observed in certain islands of the Pacific Ocean, but have not hitherto been reported in Australia. I have also discovered two forms of the dual and plural of the first personal pronoun, a sp