Tiwi has around one hundred nominals that can be incorporated into verbs, most of them quite different from the corresponding free forms.

Hart in 1930 in order to have a discernible tribal name that can represent the Melville and Bathurst indigenous members.

[8] The term Tiwi was later accepted by the Melville and Bathurst islanders, and they have subsequently incorporated this name as a constituting part of their social identities.

[9] Woranguwe/Worunguwe The name Woranguwe (or Worunguwe) was used by the Iwaidja community to specifically refer to the indigenous members of the Melville Islands.

Tiwi is a polysynthetic language with a heavy use of noun incorporation such that all elements of a sentence may be expressed in a single morphological and phonological word as in the following example.

The table below from Osborne (1974:52)[11] lists the suffixes marking each gender as well as their rate of occurrence among 200 tokens from each class.

The form of the reduplicant is always Ca- (where C becomes the initial consonant of the stem), thus muruntani 'white man' and muruntaka 'white woman' pluralise to mamuruntawi 'white people'.

[12] These changes have affected the verb morphology and lexicon of Tiwi, resulting in a language that is relatively isolating, compared with its polysynthetic predecessor.

Modern Tiwi contains many loan words, verbs, and nouns borrowed from the English language.

[12] In more informal speech acts and conversations, children and younger generation would use loan words that are similar to English pronunciations on a phonological level.

The main change that separates Traditional and Modern Tiwi is the level of complexity in the verb.

(she) she.NPST-LOC-morning-CONT-with-CV-light-CV-walk-MOV Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);Japinaramorningjirrashewokapatwalkampi-jiki-mishe.NPST-CONT-dokutawuover.therewithwithlayit.lightJapinara jirra wokapat ampi-jiki-mi kutawu with layit.morning she walk she.NPST-CONT-do over.there with lightIn addition, Modern Tiwi has a less complex morphological structure that often omits object prefixes, while they are maintained in the traditional dialect.

The Tiwi members believed that the foods they hunt and gather in nature helps maintain their physical well-being.

Tiwi men and women participated in a relatively equal division of labour in their hunting-gathering efforts, where they would hunt for "bush foods" such as fish, turtle eggs, mussels, yams, and mangrove worms.

They believed that if pregnant women ate them, their sharp pointed tips would pierce the womb, which would release the sickness and kill the baby.

For example, the pandanus is believed to be an ideal treatment for diarrhea, where the leaves are cut and the middle part is chewed and swallowed.

If the leaves are cut from the centre of the plant, and are placed on the patient's forehead for around two to three days, it is believed that this procedure can help alleviate headaches.

[21] A text excerpt of the Tiwi language was published in 1974 by C. R. Osborne, under the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra, Australia.

The second part depicts the story of Purukupaɹli, a Tiwi man who performs a dancing ceremony to express bereavement and to mourn the death of his own son.

In addition, the text also contains textual and explanatory notes that detail the lexical definitions for specific Tiwi terms, background information of items in the Tiwi culture, and the non-verbal gestures that were also performed as a part of the funeral dancing ceremonies.