Aborigines, Indigenous Australians

While it has sometimes proven difficult to work out familial relationships within the Pama-Nyungan language family, many Australian linguists feel there has been substantial success. Against this some linguists, such as R. M. W. Dixon, suggest that the Pama-Nyungan group – and indeed the entire Australian linguistic area – is rather a sprachbund, or group languages having very long and intimate contact, rather than a genetic linguistic phylum.
It has been suggested that, given their long presence in Australia, Aboriginal languages form one specific sub-grouping. The position Tasmanian languages is unknown, and it is also unknown whether they comprised one or more than one specific language family.