The linguistic materials contained in this series were produced between the 1920s and 1980s. They reflect a range of activities conducted by Tindale, including: the collection of vocabularies in the field; the translation of manuscript vocabularies collected by other people; the adaption of vocabularies drawn from published historical sources; and the writing of sketch grammars. The materials relate to many and diverse regions within Australia, particularly Central and South Australia, but including also Queensland and Western Australia.

The various wordlists, paper slips, and notebooks contain information also found in Tindale's expedition journals (series AA 338/1) and index cards relating to language research (series AA 338/7).