An Australian Creole in the Northern Territory: A Description of Ngukurr-Bamyili Dialects (Part 1). Work Papers of SIL-AAB, Series B, Volume 3.

A description of the creole language spoken in the Roper River area of Australia's Northern Territory, this paper is intended for the practical use of Europeans working in the area. An introductory section discusses the role and status of pidgins and creoles in modern Australia, the development of creole in the Roper River area, and the distinction between pidgin, creole, and corrupt English. Subsequent chapters describe: (1) the sound system of the creole, based on the contrastive sounds of English and aboriginal languages and the interference and leveling patterns; (2) a proposed practical orthography; (3) nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and the noun phrase; (4) verbs and the verb phrase; (5) prepositions and the prepositional phrase; and (6) simple sentence structure. (MSE)