Jiwarli dialect

Not to be confused with Juwarliny dialect, see Mangarla language.
Jiwarli
Region Western Australia
Extinct April 1986 with the death of Jack Butler.
Language codes
ISO 639-3 dze
Glottolog djiw1239[1]
AIATSIS[2] W28

Jiwarli (also spelt Djiwarli, Tjiwarli) is an Australian Aboriginal language formerly spoken in Western Australia. It is a variety of the Mantharta language of the large Pama–Nyungan family.

The last native speaker of Jiwarli, Jack Butler, died in April 1986. Prof Peter K. Austin (Linguistics Department, SOAS) collected all the available material on Jiwarli during fieldwork with Jack Butler 1978–1985. He has published a volume of texts on the language and a bilingual dictionary (Jiwarli-English with English-Jiwarli finderlist); both are currently out of print.

Phonology

Vowels

Front Back
High i, iː u, uː
Low a, aː

Consonants

Peripheral Laminal Apical
Bilabial Velar Palatal Dental Alveolar Postalveolar
Stop p k c t̪ t ʈ
Nasal m ŋ ɲ n̪ n ɳ
Lateral ʎ l̪ l m
Rhotic ɲ ɻ
Semivowel w j

Phonotactics

Word-initially, only non-apical stops, nasals and glides are allowed; that is, words may only begin with one of {/p k j th m ng nh w y/}. Words may not begin with vowels.

All words end in vowels. Roots may end on a consonant, however -pa is added to all roots ending in l rl rr and -ma is added to all roots ending in a nasal that would violate the vowel-final word constraint.

References

  1. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Djiwarli". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  2. ↑ Jiwarli at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, April 23, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.