I am interested in characteristics that languages share in common, and how they can vary from one another, in their sentence structures (syntax) and word structures (morphology). These could be due to typological reasons, or history of common descent, or contact between groups speaking different languages. I focus on languages of Australia and eastern Indonesia. The topics that I have published about and am currently working on are the following:
1. Free word order (or non-confugrationality), case-marking, and argument encoding
- Austin, Peter. 1981. Case marking in southern Pilbara languages. Australian Journal of Linguistics 1(2), 211-226.
- Austin, Peter. 1982. Transitivity and cognate objects in Australian languages. In Sandra A. Thompson & Paul Hopper (eds.) Syntax and semantics Volume 15: Studies in transitivity, 37-47. New York: Academic Press.
- Austin, Peter. 1991. Double case marking in Kanyara and Mantharta languages, Western Australia. La Trobe University Working Papers in Linguistics 4, 19-35. link
- Austin, Peter. 1995. Double case marking in Kanyara and Mantharta languages, Western Australia. In Frans Plank (ed.) Agreement by Suffixaufnahme, 363-379. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Austin, Peter K. 1998. Crow is sitting chasing them: grammaticization and the verb ‘to sit’ in Mantharta languages, Western Australia. In Anna Siewierska & Jae Jung Song (eds.) Case, typology and grammar: in honour of Barry J. Blake, 19-36. Typological Studies in Language 38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Austin, Peter K. 2001. Word order in a free word order language: the case of Jiwarli. In Jane Simpson, David Nash, Mary Laughren, Peter Austin, Barry Alpher (eds.) Forty years on: Ken Hale and Australian languages, 205-323. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- Austin, Peter K. 2001. Zero arguments in Jiwarli, Western Australia. Australian Journal of Linguistics 21(1), 83-98. link
- Austin, Peter & Joan Bresnan. 1996. Non-configurationality in Australian Aboriginal languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14, 215-268. link
- Margetts, Anna & Peter K. Austin. 2007. Three participant events in the languages of the world: towards a cross-linguistic typology. Linguistics 45, 393-451. link
2. Clause linkage and switch-reference
- Austin, Peter. 1981. Switch-reference in Australia. Language 57, 309-334. link
- Austin, Peter. 1981. Case marking and clausal binding: evidence from Dhalandji. In Randal A. Hendrik, C. S. Masek & M. F. Miller (eds.) Papers from the 17th regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 1-7. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society
- Austin, Peter. 1987. Word order and clause combining in Gascoyne-Ashburton languages. In Scott DeLancy & Russell Tomlin (eds.) Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting of the Pacific Linguistics Conference, 1-11. Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon.
- Austin, Peter K. 2024. Argument coding and clause linkage in Australian Aboriginal languages. To appear in Projecting voices: Studies in language and linguistics in honour of Jane Simpson. Asia-Pacific Linguistics. link
3. Applicatives and causatives
- Austin, Peter K. 1997. Causatives and applicatives in Australian Aboriginal Languages. In Kazuto Matsumura & Tooru Hayasi (eds.) The Dative and Related Phenomena, 165-225. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo.
- Austin, Peter K. 2024. Applicative Constructions in Australian Aboriginal Languages. In Fernando Zúñiga & Denis Creissels (eds.) Applicative Constructions in the World’s Languages, 391-418. Berlin: De Gruyter link