Borrowing is said to be a pervasive phenomenon among Australian languages, particularly in the domains of flora–fauna and material culture. In-depth studies of borrowing in individual languages or small groups of languages exist, as do quantitative analyses covering selected vocabulary items across a large number of languages. To date, however, there have not been any comprehensive surveys of the flora–fauna inventories of several languages at once with the aim of investigating broad semantic and geographic patterns of borrowing. This study attempts to carry out such an investigation on the languages of Arnhem Land, within the broader context of northern Australian languages. A thorough investigation of the flora–fauna lexica of 21 languages revealed a number of loanword ‘corridors’ within which borrowing frequently occurred; the principal corridors were two coastal corridors along the northern and eastern coasts of Arnhem Land, and an inland–coastal corridor between Non-Pama-Nyungan languages and Yolŋu languages. Several words, mostly bird names, were identified as being repeatedly borrowed (Wanderwörter), and in much larger numbers than previously reported. Finally, several correspondences, presumably long-distance loans, were detected in languages as far away as the Kimberleys, Queensland and north-central Australia.

中文翻译：

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阿纳姆地区及其他地区的动植物外来词——一种民族生物学方法

据说借用是澳大利亚语言中普遍存在的现象，特别是在动植物和物质文化领域。存在对个别语言或小语种借用的深入研究，以及涵盖大量语言的选定词汇项的定量分析。然而，迄今为止，还没有对多种语言的动植物清单进行任何一次全面调查，目的是调查借用的广泛语义和地理模式。本研究试图在澳大利亚北部语言的更广泛背景下对阿纳姆地的语言进行此类调查。对 21 种语言的植物群-动物群词典的彻底调查揭示了一些经常发生借用的外来词“走廊”；主要的走廊是沿阿纳姆地北部和东部海岸的两条沿海走廊，以及一条介于非帕马-纽甘语和约尔尤语之间的内陆-沿海走廊。有几个词，主要是鸟类的名字，被确定为反复借用 (Wanderwörter)，而且数量比以前报告的要多得多。最后，在远至金伯利、昆士兰和澳大利亚中北部的语言中发现了一些通信，大概是长途贷款。