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In Wubuy (Northern Australia), nouns can be productively incorporated into verbs and adjectives. A longstanding controversy in linguistics has revolved around the question of whether these constructions are syntactic (derived by movement) or lexical (formed in the lexicon). Here I show that the arguments which may be linked to incorporated nouns show rather more freedom than generally supposed, and in this respect display similarities to compounding. I propose an analysis using aspects of Construction Morphology (e.g. B. Baker, 2008; Booij, 2010a) but with the crucial difference that incorporation structures always admit a phrasal interpretation, rather than a lexical one.

Boabs, a close relation of the African baobabs, are found only in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and a region close by in the Northern Territory. Here several of the words for the boab tree and its parts are examined with special emphasis on loanwords which cross language family boundaries going in a west-east direction. It is proposed that this linguistic diffusion may reflect dispersal of the tree into new areas on the east, in relatively recent times. On the other hand another recent diffusion from the west of new salient functions of the boab fruit spread a new term to central Kimberley where boabs are known to have been present and used by humans for many thousands of years.