Gamilaraay, a Sleeping Language of New South Wales, Australia

The main aim of this paper is to present the situation of Gamilaraay, an Aboriginal language spoken in New South Wales, Australia, currently undergoing a revitalization (Giacon 2007) . After discussing the classification of the world’s languages according to their vitality, the author presents the language situation in Australia and offers a definition of revival linguistics (see Zuckermann & Walsh 2011), a new branch of linguistics as yet little known in Poland, justifying its relevance to the revitalization of Aboriginal languages. Special attention is given to the language situation in New South Wales, and to the specific revivalistic attempts undertaken by linguists there (Troy & Walsh 2010). Some morphological, syntactical and lexical features of Gamilaraay are described in order to show the complexities of language revival and problems revivalists have to face.