Nyangumarta language

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Nyangumarta
Native to Australia
Region Western Australia
Native speakers
 310  (2006 census)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 nna
AIATSIS[2] A61

Nyangumarta is spoken by the Nyangumarta people and other Indigenous Australians in the region of Western Australia to the south and east of Lake Waukarlykarly, including Eighty Mile Beach, and part of the Great Sandy Desert inland to near Telfer. There are believed to be about 520 first language speakers of Nyangumarta and many more partial speakers.[3] It is also the most widely spoken Aboriginal language in the town of Port Hedland.

Classification

Nyangumarta is a member of the Marrngu branch of the Pama–Nyungan languages. The other members of this group are Mangarla and Karajarri, with which it shares features and vocabulary.

Geographic distribution

Variation/Dialects

Nyangumarta has two main dialects: Ngurlipartu, spoken in the southern, inland region, and Wanyarli, spoken in the northern, coastal region.

Phonology

Nyangumarta has a typical Australian phoneme inventory, with a large number of consonant phonemes, including multiple lateral and rhotic phonemes, but few vowel phonemes.

Consonants

There are 17 consonant phonemes in Nyangumarta, with 5 pairs of homorganic plosives and nasals.

Peripheral Apical Laminal
Bilabial Velar Alveolar Post-Alveolar Palatal
Obstruents p k t ʈ c
Nasals m ŋ n ɳ ɲ
Laterals l ɭ ʎ
Rhotics ɾ ɻ
Approximants w j

There are no voicing contrasts in Nyangmurta.

Allophones of the consonants tend to vary in manner of articulation rather than place of articulation- e.g. plosives are usually voiceless word-initially, but voiced intervocalically and following nasals, and some plosives have fricative allophones.

Vowels

There are 3 contrastive vowels in Nyangmarta.

Front Back
High i u
Low a

Nyangmurta does not contrast roundedness or length in vowels.

Syllable Structure

Monosyllabic words are permitted in Nyangumarta, but they must be at least bimoraic, with short vowels and consonants each counting as one mora, and long vowels as two. All words must begin with a consonant, although, if the initial consonant is a glide followed by its matching vowel [i.e. a sequence of /ji/ or /wu/] the glide may be dropped by some speakers. Additionally, word-initial consonant clusters are not permitted in this language, except when a cluster is created through a process of vowel elision.

References

  1. ↑ Nyangumarta reference at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
  2. ↑ Nyangumarta at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  3. ↑ Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre
  • Janet Catherine Sharp. (2004). Nyangumarta, A Language of the Pilbara Region of Western Australia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics


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