| Abstrakt: |
An attempt is made to redress the lack of scholarly attention that Daisy Bates' (1859-1951) contribution to Australian Aboriginal linguistics has received compared with her anthropological work and her contribution to Aboriginal policy by describing and evaluating her documentation of Kimberley languages. Her work includes manuscript and typescript wordlists and short sentences in a number of Kimberley languages; these are held in the Bates archives in the National Library of Australia, Canberra. Some of the materials were gathered by her, and date from the turn of the twentieth century, when Daisy Bates assisted in the refurbishment of the Beagle Bay Mission before its transfer from the Trappist order to the Pallottines, and from the short time she resided at Roebuck Plains station with her husband. Other data was collected by whites working in the region as postmen, pastoralists, teachers, missionaries, etc. It is argued that the main value of these documentations lies in the information they provide on a number of now extinct and/or moribund languages; indeed for some languages the information she provides represents virtually the totality of information available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
