Awabakal is an Australian Aboriginal language that was spoken around Lake Macquarie

Lake Macquarie (New South Wales)

Lake Macquarie is Australia's largest coastal salt water lake, covering an area of in the Hunter Region of New South Wales with most of the City of Lake Macquarie's residents living near its shores. It is connected to the Tasman Sea by a short channel. Lake Macquarie is twice as large as Sydney...

 and Newcastle

Newcastle, New South Wales

The Newcastle metropolitan area is the second most populated area in the Australian state of New South Wales and includes most of the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Local Government Areas...

 in New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

. The name is derived from Awaba, which was the native name of the lake.

Classification

Awabakal is a Pama–Nyungan language, most closely related to the Worimi language

Worimi language

Worimi or Gadjang is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language. It was the traditional language of the Worimi people, whose descendants now speak English.-Classification:...

. The two languages together form a branch of the Pama–Nyungan family, called Worimi (Ethnologue

Ethnologue

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...

, 2005) or the Awabagal/Gadjang subgroup (Dixon, 2002). Older taxonomies place them in the Yuin–Kuric group of Pama–Nyungan.

History

Awabakal was studied by Reverend Lancelot Edward Threlkeld from 1825 until his death in 1859. The speaker of Awabakal that taught him about the language was Biraban, the tribal leader. Threlkeld and Biraban's Specimens of a Dialect of the Aborigines of New South Wales in 1827 was the earliest attempt at exhibiting the structure of an Australian language. The 1892 An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal, the people of Awaba, or lake Macquarie contains a grammar and vocabulary.

Modern revival

The language is currently being revived. A new orthography and reconstruction of the phonology has been undertaken. To date, several publications have been produced.

Phonology

Awabakal ceased to be a spoken language since long before the creation of recording equipment, and part of the revival process has been the reconstruction of the phonology

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...

. Therefore, the exactness of the language's sounds will never be historically precise. This process has, however, produced one which will be satisfactory for the purpose of revitalisation.

Vowels

a – short cut	/a/
aa – long father	/aː/
ai – eye	/aɪ/
au – cut and bull together quickly	/aʊ/
e – air but short	/æ~e/
ei – way	/eɪ/
i – pit	/i/
ii – ear	/iː/
o – or but short	/œ/
oo – or but long	/œː/
u – bull	/u/

Consonants

b,p – closer to English p than b – The lips are tense.	[p͈] – labio-tensive
k – Like English k but further back	[q]
l – value	[l̻] – laminal, possible palatised in some situations
m – like English m	[m͈] – labio-tensive
n – something like onion	[n̻] ~ [n̺] – laminal when beginning a syllable, apical when word final
ng – sing, ring	[ŋ] – possibly further back, [ɴ], like the k
r – trilled or rolled r	[r]
t – something like tune in Australian English	[t̻] – laminal stop, slightly aspirated, sometimes similar to an affricate
w – like English w, lips not as close together	[β̞]
y – like English y, tongue not as close to the top palate	[j] – but the tongue is mid-centralised

Nouns

There exist three noun class

Noun class

In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional...

es. The first has 4 declension patterns

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

. A noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

 can exist in any of 13 cases

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...

.

1st class – Common nouns, descriptors, demonstrative

Demonstrative

In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...

s and Minaring (what?).
2nd class – Place names, words of spatial relation

Spatial relation

A spatial relation specifies how some object is located in space in relation to some reference object. Since the reference object is usually much bigger than the object to locate, the latter is often represented by a point. The reference object is often represented by a bounding box .It might be...

s and Wonta (where?).
3rd class – Persons' names, kinships terms and Ngaan (who?).

The default, unmarked

Markedness

Markedness is a specific kind of asymmetry relationship between elements of linguistic or conceptual structure. In a marked-unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one...

 case of nouns is the absolutive

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:...

. Unlike 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 many European languages

Languages of Europe

Most of the languages of Europe belong to Indo-European language family. These are divided into a number of branches, including Romance, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Greek, and others. The Uralic languages also have a significant presence in Europe, including the national languages Hungarian, Finnish,...

, in which an unmarked noun in the nominative case

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...

, and is (in the active voice

Active voice

Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages....

) the subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...

 of the sentence, Awabakal merely references a particular noun with this case.

Descriptors

There is a category of words in Awabakal called descriptors. They can stand as referring terms and are in these cases similar to nouns, like adjectives or intransitive verbs/predicative verb-adjective phrases. They can be declined into nominal cases.

Numbers

There are four number words.

• Wakool – one
• Bulowara – two
• Ngoro – three
• Wara – four or five (also the word for the palm of the hand > a handful of)

Pronominal enclitics

Pronominal enclitics are suffix

Suffix

In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

es which have several functions and can be attached to verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

s, descriptors, apposition

Apposition

Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side, with one element serving to define or modify the other. When this device is used, the two elements are said to be in apposition...

s, interrogatives

Interrogative word

In linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...

, negatives and nouns. The numbers are: singular

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

, dual

Dual (grammatical number)

Dual is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities identified by the noun or pronoun...

 and plural

Plural

In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

 with a feminine/masculine distinction in the first 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...

. They mark verbs for person, number, case and voice

Voice (grammar)

In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments . When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice...

. The "ergative

Ergative case

The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:...

" enclitcs imply an active transitive

Transitive verb

In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...

 situation and the "accusative

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...

" implies a passive

Passive voice

Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...

 intransitive

Intransitive verb

In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....

 situation. There are three true pronouns which could be called a nominative or topic case. There are only found at the beginning of an independent clause. These pronominals are found in ergative, accusative, dative and possessive cases.

Demonstratives

There are 3 degrees. They are declined for 10 cases.

• 'this' near the speaker
• 'that' near the addressee(s)
• 'that' there (but at hand)

Appositive demonstratives

Here too, there are 3 degrees. These terms indicate place. They decline for 13 cases.

Verbs

The default verbative voice of Awabakal verbs is neutral. I.e. they do not give a sense of active or passive. The pronominal enclitics indicate which voice the verb should be analysed as being in. There are 3 present tenses, 8 future and 7 past, with various voice, aspect and mood modifications.

Example:

Kariwangku minaring tataan?

kariwang+tu minaring + eat+taan?

magpie+ERG what(ABS) eat+PRES?

What does the magpie eat?

Minaringku kariwang tataan?

minaring+ku kariwang ta+taan

what+ERG magpie(ABS) eat+PRES?

What eats the magpie?

Negatives

There are 10 forms of negatives which work with different types of words or phrases.

Conjunctions

Conjunctions

Grammatical conjunction

In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. A discourse connective is a conjunction joining sentences. This definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each...

 are not commonly used in comparison to many languages. Sentences can often be connected without their use. These also have various combinations and case declinations.

Interrogatives

• Ngaan – who?
• Minaring – what?
• Wonta – where?
• Yakowai – how?
• Yakowanta – when?
• Korakowa – why not?
• Wiya – say (how about) ...

Examples

—Introduction of the Gospel of Luke

Gospel of Luke

The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...

External links

• Ethnologue report for language code:awk
• English-Awabakal dictionary
• Virtual Sourcebook of Aboriginal Studies in the Hunter Region — Threlkeld's works available online