Australian Aboriginal languages
Encyclopedia
The Australian Aboriginal languages comprise several language families
and isolates native to the Australian Aborigines
of Australia
and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding the languages of Tasmania
and the Torres Strait Islanders
. The relationships between these languages are not clear at present, although substantial progress has been made in recent decades.
In the late 18th century, there were between 350 and 750 distinct Aboriginal
social groupings, and a similar number of languages or dialect
s. At the start of the 21st century, fewer than 150 indigenous languages remain in daily use, and all except roughly 20 are highly endangered. Of those that survive, only 10%, usually located in the most isolated areas, are being learned by children. For example, of the 5 least endangered Western Australian Aboriginal languages, 4 belong to the Ngaanyatjarra
grouping of the Central and Great Victoria Desert
. Bilingual education
is being used successfully in some communities. Seven of the most widely spoken Australian languages, such as Warlpiri
and Tiwi
, retain between 1,000 and 3,000 speakers. Some Aboriginal communities and linguists show support for learning programs either for language revival proper or for only "post-vernacular maintenance" (teaching indigenous Australians some words and concepts related to the lost language).
The Tasmanian people were nearly eradicated early in Australia's colonial history, and their languages
were lost before much was recorded. Tasmania was separated from the mainland at the end of the last ice age, and the Tasmanian Aborigines apparently remained isolated from the outside world for around 10,000 years. Too little is known of their languages for classification, though they seem to have had phonological similarities with languages of the mainland.
, sharing much of their vocabulary and sharing many distinctive phonological
features across the entire continent.
A common feature of many Australian languages is that they display so-called mother-in-law languages, special speech registers used only in the presence of certain close relatives. These registers share the phonology and grammar
of the standard language, but the lexicon
is different and usually very restricted. There are also commonly speech taboo
s during extended periods of mourning or initiation that have led to a large number of Aboriginal sign languages
.
For morphosyntactic alignment
, many Australian languages have ergative
-absolutive case
systems. These are typically split
systems; a widespread pattern is for pronoun
s (or first
and second person
) to have nominative
-accusative case
marking and for third person
to be ergative–absolutive, though splits between animate and inanimate are also found. In some languages the persons in between the accusative and ergative inflections (such as second person, or third-person human) may be tripartite
: that is, marked overtly as either ergative or accusative in transitive clauses, but not marked as either in intransitive clauses. There are also a few languages which employ only nominative–accusative case marking.
to give [a, i, ɯ].
There is almost never a voicing contrast; that is, a consonant may sound like a [p] at the beginning of a word, but like a [b] between vowels, and either symbol could be (and often is) chosen to represent it. Australia also stands out as being almost entirely free of fricatives, even of [h]. In the few cases where fricatives do occur, they developed recently through the lenition
(weakening) of stops, and are therefore non-sibilants like [ð] rather than sibilants like [s] which are so much more common elsewhere in the world. Some languages also have three rhotics
(R sounds), typically a flap
, a trill
, and an approximant
; that is, like the combined Rs of English
and Spanish
.
Besides the lack of fricatives, the most striking feature of Australian speech sounds are the large number of places of articulation
. Nearly every language has four places in the coronal
region, either phonemically
or allophonically
This is accomplished through two variables: the position of the tongue (front or back), and its shape (pointed or flat). There are also bilabial
, velar
and often palatal
consonants, but a complete absence of uvular
or glottal consonant
s. Both plosives and nasals
occur at all six places, and in some languages laterals
occur at all four coronal places.
A language which displays the full range of stops and laterals is Kalkutungu, which has labial p, m; "dental" th, nh, lh; "alveolar" t, n, l; "retroflex" rt, rn, rl; "palatal" ty, ny, ly; and velar k, ng. Yanyuwa
has even more contrasts, with an additional true dorso-palatal series, plus prenasalized stops at all seven places of articulation, in addition to all four laterals.
A notable exception to the above generalizations is Kala Lagaw Ya
, which has an inventory more like its Papuan
neighbours than the languages of the Australian mainland, including full voice contrasts: /p b/, dental /t̪ d̪/, alveolar /t d/, the sibilants /s z/ (which have allophonic variation with [tʃ] and [dʒ] respectively) and velar /k ɡ/, as well as only one rhotic, one lateral and three nasals (labial, dental and velar) in contrast to the 5 places of articulation of stops/sibilants. Where vowels are concerned, it has 8 vowels with some morpho-syntactic as well as phonemic length contrasts (i iː, e eː, a aː, ə əː, ɔ ɔː, o oː, ʊ ʊː, u uː. Kunjen and other neighbouring languages have also developed contrasting aspirated plosives
([pʰ], [t̪ʰ], [tʰ], [cʰ], [kʰ]) not found further south.
The "alveolar" series t, n, l (or d, n, l) is straightforward: across the continent, these sounds are alveolar
(that is, pronounced by touching the tongue to the ridge just behind the gum line of the upper teeth) and apical
(that is, touching that ridge with the tip of the tongue). This is very similar to English t, d, n, l, though the Australian t is not aspirated
, though again here Kala Lagaw Ya is a notable exception, as all the stops are aspirated.
The other apical series is the "retroflex", rt, rn, rl (or rd, rn, rl). Here the place is further back in the mouth, in the postalveolar
or prepalatal
region. The articulation is actually most commonly sub-apical
; that is, the tongue curls back so that the underside of the tip makes contact. That is, they are true retroflex consonant
s. It has been suggested that sub-apical pronunciation is characteristic of more careful speech, while these sounds tend to be apical in rapid speech. Kala Lagaw Ya differs from most other Australian languages in not having a retroflexive series.
The "dental" series th, nh, lh are always laminal
(that is, pronounced by touching with the surface of the tongue just above the tip, called the blade of the tongue), but may be formed in one of three different ways, depending on the language, on the speaker, and on how carefully the speaker pronounces the sound. These are interdental
with the tip of the tongue visible between the teeth, as in th in American English; interdental with the tip of the tongue down behind the lower teeth, so that the blade is visible between the teeth; and denti-alveolar, that is, with both the tip and the blade making contact with the back of the upper teeth and alveolar ridge, as in French
t, d, n, l. The first tends to be used in careful enunciation, and the last in more rapid speech, while the tongue-down articulation is less common.
Finally, the "palatal" series ty, ny, ly. (The stop is often spelled dj, tj, or j.) Here the contact is also laminal, but further back, spanning the alveolar to postalveolar, or the postalveolar to prepalatal regions. The tip of the tongue is typically down behind the lower teeth. This is similar to the "closed" articulation of some Circassian fricatives (see Postalveolar consonant
). The body of the tongue is raised towards the palate
. This is similar to the "domed" English postalveolar fricative sh. Because the tongue is "peeled" from the roof of the mouth from back to front during the release of these stops, there is a fair amount of frication, giving the ty something of the impression of the English palato-alveolar
affricate
ch or the Polish
alveolo-palatal
affricate ć. That is, these consonants are not palatal
in the IPA sense of the term, and indeed they contrast with true palatals in Yanyuwa
. In Kala Lagaw Ya, the palatal consonants are sub-phonemes of the alveolar sibilants /s/ and /z/.
These descriptions do not apply exactly to all Australian languages, as the notes regarding Kala Lagaw Ya demonstrate. However, they do describe most of them, and are the expected norm against which languages are compared.
. Sounds not found in English are usually represented by digraph
s, or more rarely by diacritic
s, such as underlines, or extra symbols, sometimes borrowed from the International Phonetic Alphabet
. Some examples are shown in the following table.
. Dixon argues that after perhaps 40,000 years of mutual influence, it is no longer possible to distinguish deep genealogical relationships from areal features in Australia, and that not even Pama–Nyungan is a valid language family. However, few other linguists, Australian or otherwise, accept Dixon's thesis. Kenneth L. Hale
describes Dixon's skepticism as an "extravagantly and spectacularly erroneous" and "wrong-headed" phylogenetic assessment which is "so bizarrely faulted, and such an insult to the eminently successful practitioners of Comparative Method Linguistics in Australia, that it positively demands a decisive riposte." In the same paper, Hale provides pronominal and grammatical evidence (with suppletion) as well as more than fifty basic-vocabulary cognates (showing regular sound correspondences) between the proto-Northern-and-Middle Pamic (pNMP) family of the Cape York Peninsula
on the Australian northeast coast and proto-Ngayarta of the Australian west coast, some 3,000 km apart, (as well as from many other languages) to support the Pama–Nyungan grouping, whose age he compares to that of Proto-Indo-European
.
(1986) noted lexical similarities between R.M.W. Dixon's 1980 reconstruction of proto-Australian and the languages of the East New Guinea Highlands. He believed that it was naïve to expect to find a single Papuan or Australian language family when New Guinea and Australia had been a single landmass (called the Sahul continent
) for most of their human history, having been separated by the Torres Strait
only 8000 years ago, and that a deep reconstruction would likely include languages from both. However, Dixon later abandoned his proto-Australian proposal and thus more research into the area is needed before drawing conclusions.
. Note when cross-referencing that most language names have multiple spellings: rr=r, b=p, d=t, g=k, dj=j=tj=c, j=y, y=i, w=u, u=oo, e=a, and so on. A range is given for the number of languages in each family, as sources count languages differently.
In addition, there is the extinct and poorly attested Minkin language
. Conventionally left as an isolate, there is little data on which to determine its classification; it may have been a member of Iwaidjan or Tangkic.
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
and isolates native to the Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...
of Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding the languages of Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
and the Torres Strait Islanders
Torres Strait Islanders
Torres Strait Islanders are the indigenous people of the Torres Strait Islands, part of Queensland, Australia. They are culturally and genetically linked to Melanesian peoples and those of Papua New Guinea....
. The relationships between these languages are not clear at present, although substantial progress has been made in recent decades.
In the late 18th century, there were between 350 and 750 distinct Aboriginal
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
social groupings, and a similar number of languages or dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s. At the start of the 21st century, fewer than 150 indigenous languages remain in daily use, and all except roughly 20 are highly endangered. Of those that survive, only 10%, usually located in the most isolated areas, are being learned by children. For example, of the 5 least endangered Western Australian Aboriginal languages, 4 belong to the Ngaanyatjarra
Ngaanyatjarra
Ngaanyatjarra is an Indigenous Australian cultural group in the Western Desert, Central Australia.-Meaning and origin of the name:Ngaanya literally means 'this' and -tjarra means 'with/having' ; the compound term means 'those that use "ngaanya" to say "this"'...
grouping of the Central and Great Victoria Desert
Great Victoria Desert
The Great Victoria Desert is a barren and sparsely populated desert area of southern Australia.-Location and description:The Great Victoria is the biggest desert in Australia and consists of many small sandhills, grassland plains, areas with a closely packed surface of pebbles and salt lakes...
. Bilingual education
Bilingual education
Bilingual education involves teaching academic content in two languages, in a native and secondary language with varying amounts of each language used in accordance with the program model.-Bilingual education program models:...
is being used successfully in some communities. Seven of the most widely spoken Australian languages, such as Warlpiri
Warlpiri language
The Warlpiri language is spoken by about 3000 of the Warlpiri people in Australia's Northern Territory. It is one of the Ngarrkic languages of the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family, and is one of the largest aboriginal languages in Australia in terms of number of speakers.-...
and Tiwi
Tiwi language
Tiwi is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken on the Tiwi Islands, within sight of the coast of northern Australia. It is one of about 10% of Australian languages still being learned by children....
, retain between 1,000 and 3,000 speakers. Some Aboriginal communities and linguists show support for learning programs either for language revival proper or for only "post-vernacular maintenance" (teaching indigenous Australians some words and concepts related to the lost language).
The Tasmanian people were nearly eradicated early in Australia's colonial history, and their languages
Tasmanian languages
The Tasmanian languages, or Palawa languages, were the languages indigenous to the island of Tasmania. Based on short wordlists, it appears that there were anywhere from five to sixteen languages on Tasmania....
were lost before much was recorded. Tasmania was separated from the mainland at the end of the last ice age, and the Tasmanian Aborigines apparently remained isolated from the outside world for around 10,000 years. Too little is known of their languages for classification, though they seem to have had phonological similarities with languages of the mainland.
Common features
Whether or not it is due to genetic unity, typologically the Australian languages form a language area or SprachbundSprachbund
A Sprachbund – also known as a linguistic area, convergence area, diffusion area or language crossroads – is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity and language contact. They may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related...
, sharing much of their vocabulary and sharing many distinctive phonological
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
features across the entire continent.
A common feature of many Australian languages is that they display so-called mother-in-law languages, special speech registers used only in the presence of certain close relatives. These registers share the phonology and grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
of the standard language, but the lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
is different and usually very restricted. There are also commonly speech taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
s during extended periods of mourning or initiation that have led to a large number of Aboriginal sign languages
Australian Aboriginal sign languages
Many Australian Aboriginal cultures have or traditionally had a manually coded language, a sign-language counterpart of their spoken language. This appears to be connected with various speech taboos between certain kin or at particular times, such as during a mourning period for women or during...
.
For morphosyntactic alignment
Morphosyntactic alignment
In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs...
, many Australian languages have ergative
Ergative case
The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:...
-absolutive case
Absolutive case
The absolutive case is the unmarked grammatical case of a core argument of a verb which is used as the citation form of a noun.-In ergative languages:...
systems. These are typically split
Split ergativity
Split ergativity is shown by languages that have a partly ergative behaviour, but employ another syntax or morphology — usually accusative — in some contexts...
systems; a widespread pattern is for pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s (or first
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
and second person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
) to have nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
-accusative case
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
marking and for third person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
to be ergative–absolutive, though splits between animate and inanimate are also found. In some languages the persons in between the accusative and ergative inflections (such as second person, or third-person human) may be tripartite
Tripartite language
A tripartite language, also called an ergative–accusative language, is one that treats the subject of an intransitive verb, the subject of a transitive verb, and the object of a transitive verb each in different ways...
: that is, marked overtly as either ergative or accusative in transitive clauses, but not marked as either in intransitive clauses. There are also a few languages which employ only nominative–accusative case marking.
Segmental inventory
A typical Australian phonological inventory includes just three vowels, usually [a, i, u], which may occur in both long and short variants. In a few cases the [u] has been unroundedRoundedness
In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...
to give [a, i, ɯ].
There is almost never a voicing contrast; that is, a consonant may sound like a [p] at the beginning of a word, but like a [b] between vowels, and either symbol could be (and often is) chosen to represent it. Australia also stands out as being almost entirely free of fricatives, even of [h]. In the few cases where fricatives do occur, they developed recently through the lenition
Lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a kind of sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word lenition itself means "softening" or "weakening" . Lenition can happen both synchronically and diachronically...
(weakening) of stops, and are therefore non-sibilants like [ð] rather than sibilants like [s] which are so much more common elsewhere in the world. Some languages also have three rhotics
Rhotic consonant
In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...
(R sounds), typically a flap
Flap consonant
In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.-Contrast with stops and trills:...
, a trill
Trill consonant
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....
, and an approximant
Approximant consonant
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
; that is, like the combined Rs of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
.
Besides the lack of fricatives, the most striking feature of Australian speech sounds are the large number of places of articulation
Place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...
. Nearly every language has four places in the coronal
Coronal consonant
Coronal consonants are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal , domed , or subapical , as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such...
region, either phonemically
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
or allophonically
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
This is accomplished through two variables: the position of the tongue (front or back), and its shape (pointed or flat). There are also bilabial
Bilabial consonant
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
, velar
Velar consonant
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
and often palatal
Voiceless palatal plosive
The voiceless palatal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is c....
consonants, but a complete absence of uvular
Uvular consonant
Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and...
or glottal consonant
Glottal consonant
Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
s. Both plosives and nasals
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
occur at all six places, and in some languages laterals
Lateral consonant
A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....
occur at all four coronal places.
A language which displays the full range of stops and laterals is Kalkutungu, which has labial p, m; "dental" th, nh, lh; "alveolar" t, n, l; "retroflex" rt, rn, rl; "palatal" ty, ny, ly; and velar k, ng. Yanyuwa
Yanyuwa language
The Yanyuwa language is spoken by the Yanyuwa people around the settlement of Borroloola in the Northern Territory, Australia....
has even more contrasts, with an additional true dorso-palatal series, plus prenasalized stops at all seven places of articulation, in addition to all four laterals.
A notable exception to the above generalizations is Kala Lagaw Ya
Kala Lagaw Ya
Kala Lagaw Ya is a language belonging to all the western and central Torres Strait Islands, Queensland, Australia. On some islands it has now largely been replaced by Brokan...
, which has an inventory more like its Papuan
Papuan languages
The Papuan languages are those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian. The term does not presuppose a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan peoples as distinct from Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.-The...
neighbours than the languages of the Australian mainland, including full voice contrasts: /p b/, dental /t̪ d̪/, alveolar /t d/, the sibilants /s z/ (which have allophonic variation with [tʃ] and [dʒ] respectively) and velar /k ɡ/, as well as only one rhotic, one lateral and three nasals (labial, dental and velar) in contrast to the 5 places of articulation of stops/sibilants. Where vowels are concerned, it has 8 vowels with some morpho-syntactic as well as phonemic length contrasts (i iː, e eː, a aː, ə əː, ɔ ɔː, o oː, ʊ ʊː, u uː. Kunjen and other neighbouring languages have also developed contrasting aspirated plosives
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
([pʰ], [t̪ʰ], [tʰ], [cʰ], [kʰ]) not found further south.
Coronal consonants
Descriptions of the coronal articulations can be inconsistent.The "alveolar" series t, n, l (or d, n, l) is straightforward: across the continent, these sounds are alveolar
Alveolar consonant
Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
(that is, pronounced by touching the tongue to the ridge just behind the gum line of the upper teeth) and apical
Apical consonant
An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue .This is not a very common distinction, and typically applied only to fricatives...
(that is, touching that ridge with the tip of the tongue). This is very similar to English t, d, n, l, though the Australian t is not aspirated
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
, though again here Kala Lagaw Ya is a notable exception, as all the stops are aspirated.
The other apical series is the "retroflex", rt, rn, rl (or rd, rn, rl). Here the place is further back in the mouth, in the postalveolar
Postalveolar consonant
Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...
or prepalatal
Palatal consonant
Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
region. The articulation is actually most commonly sub-apical
Sub-apical consonant
A subapical consonant is a consonant made by contact with the underside of the tip of the tongue. The only common subapical articulations are in the postalveolar to palatal region, which are called "retroflex"....
; that is, the tongue curls back so that the underside of the tip makes contact. That is, they are true retroflex consonant
Retroflex consonant
A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...
s. It has been suggested that sub-apical pronunciation is characteristic of more careful speech, while these sounds tend to be apical in rapid speech. Kala Lagaw Ya differs from most other Australian languages in not having a retroflexive series.
The "dental" series th, nh, lh are always laminal
Laminal consonant
A laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only...
(that is, pronounced by touching with the surface of the tongue just above the tip, called the blade of the tongue), but may be formed in one of three different ways, depending on the language, on the speaker, and on how carefully the speaker pronounces the sound. These are interdental
Interdental consonant
Interdental consonants are produced by placing the blade of the tongue against the upper incisors...
with the tip of the tongue visible between the teeth, as in th in American English; interdental with the tip of the tongue down behind the lower teeth, so that the blade is visible between the teeth; and denti-alveolar, that is, with both the tip and the blade making contact with the back of the upper teeth and alveolar ridge, as in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
t, d, n, l. The first tends to be used in careful enunciation, and the last in more rapid speech, while the tongue-down articulation is less common.
Finally, the "palatal" series ty, ny, ly. (The stop is often spelled dj, tj, or j.) Here the contact is also laminal, but further back, spanning the alveolar to postalveolar, or the postalveolar to prepalatal regions. The tip of the tongue is typically down behind the lower teeth. This is similar to the "closed" articulation of some Circassian fricatives (see Postalveolar consonant
Postalveolar consonant
Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...
). The body of the tongue is raised towards the palate
Palate
The palate is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but, in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separate. The palate is divided into two parts, the anterior...
. This is similar to the "domed" English postalveolar fricative sh. Because the tongue is "peeled" from the roof of the mouth from back to front during the release of these stops, there is a fair amount of frication, giving the ty something of the impression of the English palato-alveolar
Palato-alveolar consonant
In phonetics, palato-alveolar consonants are postalveolar consonants, nearly always sibilants, that are weakly palatalized with a domed tongue...
affricate
Affricate consonant
Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
ch or the Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
alveolo-palatal
Alveolo-palatal consonant
In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar sounds, usually fricatives and affricates, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate...
affricate ć. That is, these consonants are not palatal
Palatal consonant
Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
in the IPA sense of the term, and indeed they contrast with true palatals in Yanyuwa
Yanyuwa language
The Yanyuwa language is spoken by the Yanyuwa people around the settlement of Borroloola in the Northern Territory, Australia....
. In Kala Lagaw Ya, the palatal consonants are sub-phonemes of the alveolar sibilants /s/ and /z/.
These descriptions do not apply exactly to all Australian languages, as the notes regarding Kala Lagaw Ya demonstrate. However, they do describe most of them, and are the expected norm against which languages are compared.
Orthography
Probably every Australian language with speakers remaining has had an orthography developed for it, in each case in the Latin alphabetLatin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
. Sounds not found in English are usually represented by digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
s, or more rarely by diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s, such as underlines, or extra symbols, sometimes borrowed from the International Phonetic Alphabet
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
. Some examples are shown in the following table.
| Language | Example | Translation | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pitjantjatjara | pana | 'earth, dirt, ground; land' | diacritic (underline) indicates retroflex 'n' |
| Wajarri Wajarri language Wajarri is an Australian Aboriginal language. It is one of the Kartu languages of the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family.Wajarri country is inland from Geraldton, Western Australia, and extends as far south and west as Mullewa, north to Gascoyne Junction and east to Meekatharra... |
nhanha | 'this, this one' | digraph indicating 'n' with dental articulation |
| Gupapuyŋu | yolŋu | 'person, man' | 'ŋ' (from IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic... ) for velar nasal |
Classification
Internal
Most Australian languages are commonly held to belong to the Pama—Nyungan family, a family accepted by most linguists, with R.M.W. Dixon as a notable exception. For convenience, the rest of the languages, all spoken in the far north, are commonly lumped together as "Non-Pama–Nyungan" without this meaning to imply their constituting a valid cladeClade
A clade is a group consisting of a species and all its descendants. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch" on the "tree of life". The idea that such a "natural group" of organisms should be grouped together and given a taxonomic name is central to biological...
. Dixon argues that after perhaps 40,000 years of mutual influence, it is no longer possible to distinguish deep genealogical relationships from areal features in Australia, and that not even Pama–Nyungan is a valid language family. However, few other linguists, Australian or otherwise, accept Dixon's thesis. Kenneth L. Hale
Kenneth L. Hale
Kenneth Locke Hale was a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studied a huge variety of previously unstudied and often endangered languages—especially indigenous languages of North America, Central America and Australia...
describes Dixon's skepticism as an "extravagantly and spectacularly erroneous" and "wrong-headed" phylogenetic assessment which is "so bizarrely faulted, and such an insult to the eminently successful practitioners of Comparative Method Linguistics in Australia, that it positively demands a decisive riposte." In the same paper, Hale provides pronominal and grammatical evidence (with suppletion) as well as more than fifty basic-vocabulary cognates (showing regular sound correspondences) between the proto-Northern-and-Middle Pamic (pNMP) family of the Cape York Peninsula
Cape York Peninsula
Cape York Peninsula is a large remote peninsula located in Far North Queensland at the tip of the state of Queensland, Australia, the largest unspoilt wilderness in northern Australia and one of the last remaining wilderness areas on Earth...
on the Australian northeast coast and proto-Ngayarta of the Australian west coast, some 3,000 km apart, (as well as from many other languages) to support the Pama–Nyungan grouping, whose age he compares to that of Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
.
External
It has been suggested that most or all Australian languages have a relationship with the Trans–New Guinea languages. or the Sepik–Ramu languages. Neither of these conclusions is currently widely accepted. William FoleyWilliam Foley
William Foley is an American linguist and professor at the University of Sydney. He specialises in Papuan and Austronesian languages. He is perhaps best known for his 1986 book The Papuan Languages of New Guinea and his partnership with Robert Van Valin in the development of role and reference...
(1986) noted lexical similarities between R.M.W. Dixon's 1980 reconstruction of proto-Australian and the languages of the East New Guinea Highlands. He believed that it was naïve to expect to find a single Papuan or Australian language family when New Guinea and Australia had been a single landmass (called the Sahul continent
Australia (continent)
Australia is the world's smallest continent, comprising the mainland of Australia and proximate islands including Tasmania, New Guinea, the Aru Islands and Raja Ampat Islands...
) for most of their human history, having been separated by the Torres Strait
Torres Strait
The Torres Strait is a body of water which lies between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. It is approximately wide at its narrowest extent. To the south is Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost continental extremity of the Australian state of Queensland...
only 8000 years ago, and that a deep reconstruction would likely include languages from both. However, Dixon later abandoned his proto-Australian proposal and thus more research into the area is needed before drawing conclusions.
Subgrouping
Traditionally, Australian languages have been divided into about two dozen families. What follows is a tentative classification of genealogical relationships among the Australian families, following the work of Nick Evans and associates at the University of Melbourne. Although not all subgroupings are mentioned, there is enough detail to fill in the rest using a standard reference such as Ethnologue: Languages of the WorldEthnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
. Note when cross-referencing that most language names have multiple spellings: rr=r, b=p, d=t, g=k, dj=j=tj=c, j=y, y=i, w=u, u=oo, e=a, and so on. A range is given for the number of languages in each family, as sources count languages differently.
- Presumptive isolates:
- EnindhilyagwaEnindhilyagwa languageEnindhilyagwa is an Australian language isolate spoken by the Warnindhilyagwa people on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia. A 2001 Australian government identified more than one thousand speakers of the language, although there are reports of as many as three thousand...
(Andilyaugwa) - LaragiyaLaragiya languageThe Laragiya language is an Australian language isolate spoken by just six people near the city of Darwin in northern Australia as of 1983. Ethnologue reported that it was extinct....
(extinct?) - NgurmburNgurmbur languageThe Ngumbur language is an Australian language isolate spoken by just one person in Arnhem Land, northern Australia, as of 1981. By 2009 Ethnologue reported that it was extinct.Ngumbur is not known to be related to any other language...
(extinct? perhaps a member of Macro-Pama–Nyungan) - TiwiTiwi languageTiwi is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken on the Tiwi Islands, within sight of the coast of northern Australia. It is one of about 10% of Australian languages still being learned by children....
- Enindhilyagwa
- Previously established families:
- Bunaban (2 languages in two branches) [accepted by Dixon]
- DalyDaly languagesThe Daly languages are proposed to be the third largest family of Indigenous Australian languages . They are spoken within the vicinity of the Daly River in the Northern Territory....
(11-19 languages in five branches, including Murrinh-Patha) [5 families per Dixon, one questionable] - LimilnganLimilngan languagesThe Limilngan languages are a small family of Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Australia. There are only two languages in this group, Limilngan and Wulna, which as of 1981 had only three and one speakers, respectively, and which may now be extinct.-See also:* Australia* Aboriginal...
(2 languages, extinct?) - JarrakanJarrakan languagesThe Jarrakan languages are a small family of Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Australia. The name is derived from the word jarrak, which means "language" in Kija.The three main Jarrakan languages are:...
formerly spelled "Djeragan" (3-5 languages in two branches) - NyulnyulanNyulnyulan languagesThe Nyulnyulan languages are a small family of closely related Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Australia.The languages form two branches established on the basis of lexical and morphological innovation....
(8 languages in two branches) [accepted by Dixon] - Wororan (7-12 languages in three branches) [3 families per Dixon]
- Newly proposed families:
- Mirndi, consisting of
- Yirram (2-4 languages)
- West BarklyWest Barkly languagesThe West Barkly or simply Barkly languages are a branch of the Mirndi languages spoken around in the Barkly Tableland of Northern Territory, Australia. The branch consists of three languages: Jingulu, and Ngarnka and Wambaya. The last two languages form yet another branch themselves, called Eastern...
(3 languages in two branches)
- Arnhem LandArnhem Land languagesThe Arnhem Land languages are a proposed Australian language family spoken over a large part of Arnhem Land in northern Australia. The languages within the group are distinctive and not mutually intelligible....
macrofamily, consisting of- BurarranBurarran languagesBurarran or Maningrida is a small family of Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Australia. It includes four languages, none closely related:*Guragone*Burarra...
(4 languages in three subfamilies, including [N]djeebbana and Nakkara) - Iwaidjan (4-8 languages in four branches) [likely 4 families per Dixon]
- GiimbiyuGiimbiyu languagesThe Giimbiyu or Mangerrian languages form a small family of Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Australia.The Giimbiyu family includes two branches,*Mangerr*Urningangga and Arri...
(2-3 languages in two branches) - the GaagudjuGaagudju languageGaagudju is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language formerly spoken in Arnhem Land, northern Australia, in the environs of Kakadu National Park. Its last speaker, Big Bill Neidjie, died on 23 May 2002.-Classification:Gaagudju has traditionally been classified with the Gunwinyguan languages...
(Kakadu) isolate (extinct?) - the UmbugarlaUmbugarla languageThe Umbugarla language is an Australian language isolate spoken by just three people in Arnhem Land, northern Australia, as of 1981. It may now be extinct....
isolate (extinct?)
- Burarran
- Macro-Pama Nyungan, consisting of
- (perhaps) Ngurmbur
- GunwinyguanGunwinyguan languagesThe Gunwinyguan languages form the second largest family of Australian Aboriginal languages. They are spoken in Arnhem Land in northern Australia. The most populous language is Gunwinygu, with some 1500 speakers....
(15-17 languages in six branches, including the Kungarakany isolate) - Greater Pama–Nyungan:
- Tangkic (4 languages in two branches)
- the GarawaGarawa languageGarawa is a recently extinct Australian Aboriginal language of northern Australia.-Classification:...
(2 languages) [accepted by Dixon] - Pama–Nyungan proper (approximately 175 languages in 14 extant and numerous extinct branches) [few of the branches are accepted by Dixon]
- Mirndi, consisting of
In addition, there is the extinct and poorly attested Minkin language
Minkin language
The Minkin language is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language, perhaps a language isolate, of northern Australia. It was spoken in the area around Burketown, on the southern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, in an area that contains the headwaters of the Leichhardt River.The classification of...
. Conventionally left as an isolate, there is little data on which to determine its classification; it may have been a member of Iwaidjan or Tangkic.
See also
- Australian Aboriginal sign languagesAustralian Aboriginal sign languagesMany Australian Aboriginal cultures have or traditionally had a manually coded language, a sign-language counterpart of their spoken language. This appears to be connected with various speech taboos between certain kin or at particular times, such as during a mourning period for women or during...
- Gunwinyguan languagesGunwinyguan languagesThe Gunwinyguan languages form the second largest family of Australian Aboriginal languages. They are spoken in Arnhem Land in northern Australia. The most populous language is Gunwinygu, with some 1500 speakers....
- Australian AboriginesAustralian AboriginesAustralian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...
- List of Indigenous Australian group names
- List of Australian place names of Aboriginal origin
- Macro-Pama–Nyungan languages
- Southwest Pama–Nyungan languages
- List of Australian repeated place names
External links
- AustLang database of Australian languages
- The Linguist List MultiTree Project: Australian Family Tree
- Map of indigenous Australian languages from Muturzikin.com
- Aboriginal Languages of Australia
- The Horton map of Australian indigenous languages
- Languages of Australia, as listed by EthnologueEthnologueEthnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
- National Indigenous Languages Survey Report 2005 PDF format, size 2.6 MB Accessed 16 February 2009
- Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS)
- Ethnologue report on all languages by alphabetical order
- Finding the meaning of an Aboriginal word
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Social Justice Report 2009 for more information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and policy.