For 10 entries in his Dictionary Reuther presents sentences in Diyari and their translations into neighbouring languages that have the same or similar meaning. We have extracted these from the Dictionary and sorted them alphabetically by their English translation. Then, we have added modern forms of the words (using the same spelling system as Diyari), where they are known, plus relevant comments. These are based on research on neighbouring languages by Gavan Breen, Luise Hercus, and Peter Austin (see References). The languages included are Diyari, Wangkangurru, Thirrari, Arabana, Ngamini, Kuyani, Yandruwandha, and Yawarrawarka, with occasional forms in Pilardapa and Karangura. Here is an example:
The format of entries is as follows
- in the left column are the language names;
- in the middle column are the Reuther forms in green;
- in the right column are modern forms in purple, where they are known. Gaps in the table, especially for Kuyani, mean that we do not have information for that particular word. Hyphens indicate word structure (morphological) analysis;
- where words are unknown from contemporary sources we sometimes reconstitute what they might have been, and these are given in orange. Asterisks indicate completely unknown forms;
- *Editor: notes give further information about the materials in the entry, especially their grammatical structure. For Kuyani forms comparisons with the related Adnyamathanha language (spoken in the Flinders Ranges, and not included by Reuther) can often be useful. Where specialist linguistic terms are employed in the Editor notes, these are given in blue.
Note: the sentence examples occur only with entries at the beginning of Volume I of Reuther’s dictionary. We do not know if he collected comparisons for later entries and volumes, but did not include them in the manuscript. It is disappointing that we do not have more parallel sentences like these, especially as modern information on the structures of Pilardapa and Karangura, in particular, is very limited (see Austin 1991, 2016 in the References).
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