A Critical Review of Writings on The Vocabulary of Australian English

Abstract

It is more than sixty years since Morris's Austral English was published, yet this, deficient in many respects and dated as it is, remains the only historical dictionary of Australian English. A number of shorter vocabularies, none of which includes historical information, have been published this century and there have been articles and book-length studies of varying quality. But few of these have been based on a fresh scrutiny of evidence from primary sources, and it is pleasing to note that, with the establishment of the Australian Language Research Centre under the direction of Professor G. H. Russell, a beginning has now been made on a full-scale investigation of the sounds and vocabulary of Australian English.