Mbabaram language

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Mbabaram
Spoken in:	Queensland
Language extinction:	1972 with the death of Albert Bennett.
Language family:	Pama-Nyungan Paman Southern Pama Mbabaram
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`aus`
ISO 639-3:	`vmb`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Mbabaram is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of north Queensland. It was the traditional language of the Mbabaram tribe.

The last native speaker of Mbabaram was Albert Bennett who died in 1972. Other known speakers were Jimmy Taylor and Mick Burns.

R. M. W. Dixon described his hunt for a native speaker of Mbabaram in his book Searching for Aboriginal Languages: Memoirs of a Field Worker. Most of what is known of the language is from Dixon's field research with Bennett.

1 Classification
2 Geographic distribution
3 Phonology
4 Word for "dog"
5 Bibliography
6 External links

[edit] Classification

Until R. M. W. Dixon's work on the language, "Barbaram" (as it was then known) was thought to be too different from other Australian languages to be part of the Australian phylum. Dixon revealed it to have descended from a more typical form, that was obscured by subsequent changes. Dixon (2002) himself, however, still regards genetic relationships between Mbabaram and other languages as unproven.

Bennett, the last native speaker, identified Agwamin as the language most similar subjectively to Mbabaram.

[edit] Geographic distribution

Mbabaram was spoken by the Mbabaram tribe in Queensland, southwest of Cairns (17°20′S 145°0′E).

Nearby tribal dialects were Agwamin, Djangun (Kuku-Yalanji), Muluridji (Kuku-Yalanji), Djabugay, Yidiny, Ngadjan (Dyirbal), Mamu (Dyirbal), Jirrbal (Dyirbal), Girramay (Dyirbal), and Warungu. While these were often mutually intelligible, to varying degrees, with the speech of the adjacent tribes, none were even partially intelligible with Mbabaram. The Mbabaram would often learn the languages of other tribes rather than vice versa, because Mbabaram was found difficult.

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Low-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Low		a

[edit] Consonants

	Peripheral		Laminal		Apical
	Bilabial	Velar	Palatal	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex
Stop	b	ɡ ɡʷ	ɟ	d̪	d dʷ
Nasal	m	ŋ	ɲ	n̪	n nʷ
Lateral					l
Rhotic					r	ɻ
Semivowel	w		j

[edit] Phonological history

[edit] Vowels

Mbabaram would have originally had simply three vowels, /i a u/, like most Australian languages, but several changes occurred to add /ɛ ɨ ɔ/ to the system:

[ɔ] developed from original */a/ in the second syllable of a word if the first syllable began with */ɡ/, */ŋ/, or */wu/.
[ɛ] developed from original */a/ in the second syllable of a word if the first syllable began with */ɟ/. (It may have also occurred with /ɲ/ or /ji/, but no examples are known.)
[ɨ] developed from original */i/ in the second syllable of a word if the first syllable began with */ɡ/, */ŋ/, or */w/.
[ɨ] also developed from original */u/ in the second syllable of a word if the first syllable began with */ɟ/, */ɲ/, or */j/.

The first consonant of each word was then dropped, leaving the distribution of /ɔ ɛ ɨ/ unpredictable.

[edit] Word for "dog"

Mbabaram is famous in linguistic circles for a striking coincidence in its vocabulary. When Dixon finally managed to meet Bennett, he began his study of the language by eliciting a few basic nouns; among the first of these was the word for "dog". Bennett supplied the Mbabaram translation, dog. Dixon suspected that Bennett hadn't understood the question, or that Bennett's knowledge of Mbabaram had been tainted by decades of using English. But it turned out that the Mbabaram word for "dog" really is dog, pronounced almost identically to the English word. The similarity is a complete coincidence: there is no discernable relationship between English and Mbabaram. This and other false cognates are often cited as a caution against deciding that languages are related based on a small number of comparisons.

[edit] Bibliography

Dixon, R. M. W. (1966). "Mbabaram: A Dying Australian Language". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 29: 97–121.
Dixon, R. M. W. (1991). "Mbabaram", in Dixon, R. M. W. and Blake, B. J.: Handbook of Australian Languages, Vol. 4, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge University Press.