Murrinhpatha is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in a region of tropical savannah and
tidal inlets on the north coast of the continent. Some 3000 speakers live mostly in the towns
of Wadeye and Nganmarriyanga though they maintain close ties to their traditional lands
totems and spirit ancestors. Murrinhpatha word structure is highly complex and quite distinct
from the better-known Pama-Nyungan languages of central and southern Australia. Murrinhpatha is
characterised by prolific compounding clitic clusters cumulative inflection irregular
allomorphy and phonological assimilation. This book provides a comprehensive account of these
phenomena giving particular attention to questions of morphological constituency lexical
storage and whether there is really such thing as a 'word' unit.
