Gavan Breen

Gavan Breen began his working life as a metallurgist, but switched to linguistics in his early thirties to become involved in the salvage of dying Australian languages. He has spent many years recording and analysing almost-extinct (now extinct) languages in western Queensland and adjacent parts of inland Australia. He has worked with the School of Australian Linguistics, training native speakers of Australian languages in vernacular literacy, basic linguistics and other skills relevant to teaching and literature production in bilingual education, translation and interpreting, lexicography and other language-related work. He has also done substantial work on Arrernte and other living languages of Central Australia, especially in phonology, the interrelationship of kinship and grammar, and compilation of dictionaries.

Innamincka Talk: A grammar of the Innamincka dialect of Yandruwandha with notes on other dialects »

Authored by: Gavan Breen

Publication date: April 2015

Innamincka Talk: A grammar of the Innamincka dialect of Yandruwandha with notes on other dialects is one of a pair of companion volumes on Yandruwandha, a dialect of the language formerly spoken on the Cooper and Strzelecki Creeks and the country to the north of the Cooper, in the northeast corner of South Australia and a neighbouring strip of Queensland. The other volume is entitledInnamincka Words. Innamincka Talk is the more technical work of the two and is intended for specialists and for interested readers who are willing to put some time and effort into studying the language.Innamincka Words is for readers, especially descendants of the original people of the area, who are interested in the language, but not necessarily interested in its more technical aspects. It is also a necessary resource for users of Innamincka Talk. These volumes document all that could be learnt from the last speakers of the language in the last years of their lives by a linguist who was involved with other languages at the same time. These were people who did not have a full knowledge of the culture of their forebears, but were highly competent, indeed brilliant, in the way they could teach what they knew to the linguist student.

Download for free

Innamincka Words: Yandruwandha dictionary and stories »

Edited by: Gavan Breen

Publication date: April 2015

Innamincka Words: Yandruwandha dictionary and stories is one of a pair of companion volumes on Yandruwandha, a dialect of the language formerly spoken on the Cooper and Strzelecki Creeks and the country to the north of the Cooper, in the northeast corner of South Australia and a neighbouring strip of Queensland. The other volume is entitled Innamincka Talk: a grammar of the Innamincka dialect of Yandruwandha with notes on other dialects. Innamincka Words is for readers, especially descendants of the original people of the area, who are interested in the language. It is also a necessary resource for users of the more technical Innamincka Talk. These volumes document all that could be learnt from the last speakers of the language in the last years of their lives by a linguist who was involved with other languages at the same time. These were people who did not have a full knowledge of the culture of their forebears, but were highly competent, indeed brilliant, in the way they could teach what they knew to the linguist student.

Download for free