The Proto-Pama–Nyungan language (abbreviated pPN) is the putative ancestor of all the languages of the Pama–Nyungan family, encompassing the majority of the Australian Aboriginal languages, except for the Non-Pama–Nyungan languages spoken in the north and, presumably, the poorly documented Tasmanian languages. Alpher published a reconstruction of its phonology in 2004.[1] There are some linguists, notably R. M. W. Dixon, who do not believe in the possibility of reconstructing this protolanguage.[2] Proto-Pama–Nyungan may have been spoken as recently as about 5,000 years ago, much more recently than the 40,000 to 60,000 years Indigenous Australians are believed to have been inhabiting Australia. How the Pama–Nyungan languages spread over most of the continent and displaced any pre-Pama–Nyungan languages is uncertain; one possibility is that language could have been transferred from one group to another alongside culture and ritual.[3][4]
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Proto-Pama–Nyungan's phonological inventory, as reconstructed by Barry Alpher (2004), is quite similar to those of most present-day Australian languages.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | u uː |
| Low | a aː | |
Vowel length is contrastive only in the first (i.e. stressed) syllable in a word.
| Bilabial | Apico- alveolar |
Apico- postalveolar |
Laminal | Dorso- velar |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | p | t | rt | c, cʸ | k |
| Nasal | m | n | rn | ñ | ng |
| Lateral | l | rl | λ | ||
| Rhotic | rr | r | |||
| Semivowel | w | y |
Proto-Pama–Nyungan seems to have had only one set of laminal consonants; the two contrasting sets (lamino-dental and lamino-alveopalatal or "palatal") found in some present-day languages can largely be explained as innovations resulting from conditioned sound changes.
Nevertheless, there are a small number of words where an alveopalatal stop is found where a dental would be expected, which are symbolised as *cʸ. There is no convincing evidence, however, of an equivalent nasal *ñʸ or lateral *λʸ.