AbstractWhen it was published, in 1972, Professor R. M. W. Dixon’s The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland had a decisive influence in several directions. By the inclusion of culturally informative examples from texts, it helped reveal the role of language in society. Its clear organisation became a benchmark for descriptive grammars. And the analysis of ergativity opened a new theoretical window. Dixon continued fieldwork with the remaining fluent speakers almost every year through 2001, building up a considerable corpus. He refined and extended the grammatical analysis, taking full account of recent advances in typological theory (for quite a few of which he had played a significant role). A New Grammar of Dyirbal is self-contained; it does not assume any familiarity with the 1972 grammar. A special feature is that, whereas in the earlier work structural features were explained through simple sentences crafted by linguist and speakers, in this present volume almost every example comes directly from a text. In this way, the book provides insight into Dyirbal traditional culture and beliefs. A pervasive characteristic of the language is its ‘ergative syntax’—the operation of an ‘S/O pivot’—a feature which recurs in a dozen chapters. There is a split-case system; two antipassive derivations, with contrastive meanings; one derivation which can have either applicative or causative effect; two relative clause constructions with a wider functional range than in most languages. And much more.