Reviewed by Jason Brown, University of British Columbia

This work constitutes a ‘salvage study’ of the Wulguru language; in other words, a study not based on firsthand fieldwork but rather on forms that have been reconstructed from early texts. The primary source of data for this study is the journal of Charles Price from the late nineteenth century. Since Wulguru, a Pama-Nyungan language formerly spoken around Townsville, in northeast Queensland, Australia, ceased to be natively spoken before a complete linguistic documentation could be completed, this reconstruction from a fragmentary record is likely to be the best approximation of the grammar available.

In Ch. 1, Mark Donohue provides a background to the study and also discusses previous work on Wulguru. Here, D describes the unique situation of Wulguru and differentiates its dialects.

Ch. 2 documents the phonology of the language. D identifies the Wulguru phonemes and explains the phonological rules that can be deduced from the texts. Wulguru exhibits consonantal place contrasts between labial, coronal, and velar, and within the coronals, between apico-alveolar, lamino-dental, and palatal. Additionally, there is both a trilled and an approximant rhotic. Vowels exhibit a three-way contrast as well as a contrast in length.

In Ch. 3, D discusses morphology, perhaps the richest area available for documentation. In particular, word classes, pronominals, nominal morphology (including case endings), and verbal morphology are explored. D surveys the functions of the ergative/instrumental case marker, which is infrequent in the texts, as well as the purposive/allative/dative, genitive, and locative markers. He lists the deictics and the reduplicated forms. Finally, D closes with a discussion of verbal derivation, the verbal conjugation system, aspect, and the optional use of agreement on the verb.

In Ch. 4, D outlines the limited syntactic observations about Wulguru. He discusses word order preferences as well as the use of equational sentences. D presents evidence for the possibility of various syntactic pivots and comments on the various ways of expressing negation.

Ch. 5 provides several short texts collected by Price along with his original translations and notes. Each text is followed by D’s interpretation or commentary as well as textual and translation notes on the forms that are found in the texts. D notes that the form of the Lord’s Prayer indicates that much of the translation was done by a Wulguru speaker and not by Price himself. This is suggested by the literal translations of the text, which are a commentary on the white suppression of the Wulguru people.

Ch. 6 contains a general lexicon and a verbal lexicon. These are followed by an English-Wulguru finderlist, which facilitates searching the lexicon in English.

Throughout this work, D does an incredible job of carefully reconstructing the grammar of Wulguru, while also offering informed speculation in places the material from Price’s journals are not entirely clear.