Mirndi languages

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The Mirndi or Mindi languages are an Australian Aboriginal language family of northern Australia. The family's comes from the dual inclusive pronoun "we two" which is shared (in the form mind- or mirnd-) by all the languages. The family was first established by Neil Chadwick in the early 1980s.

[edit] Classification

The Mirndi family consists of five languages:

• Western or Yirram group

• Nungali
• "Jaminjungan", a language cluster consisting of the dialects Jaminjung and Ngaliwurru

• Eastern or Barkly group

• Jingulu
• Ngarnka
• "Wambayan", a language cluster consisting of the dialects Wambaya, Gudanji and Binbinka

Languages of the western group make use of prefixes, which is typical of non-Pama-Nyungan languages, while the eastern group are non-prefixing, typical of Pama-Nyungan languages.

[edit] References

• Chadwick, Neil (1997). "The Barkly and Jaminjungan languages: a non-contiguous genetic grouping in North Australia", in Darrell Tryon and Michael Walsh (eds.): Boundary rider: essays in honour of Geoffrey O'Grady. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 95–106. 
• Green, Ian; Nordlinger, Rachel (2004). "Revisiting Proto-Mirndi", in Clair Bowern and Harold Koch (eds.): Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 291–312. 
• McConvell, Patrick; Evans, Nicholas (eds.) (1997). Archaeology and Linguistics: Global Perspectives on Ancient Australia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.