Australian Aboriginal languages

The primary typological division in Australian languages: Pama–Nyungan languages (tan) and non-Pama–Nyungan languages (mustard and grey). Mustard-coloured languages may be related to Pama–Nyungan.
People who speak Australian Aboriginal languages as a percentage of the population in Australia, divided geographically by statistical local area at the 2011 census

The Australian Aboriginal languages consist of up to twenty-seven language families and isolates, spoken by Aboriginal Australians of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands.[1] The relationships between these languages are not clear at present. Despite this uncertainty the indigenous languages of Australia are collectively covered by the technical term "Australian languages".[2][3] By convention, these do not include the Tasmanian languages or the eastern Torres Strait language Meriam Mer.[4]

In the late 18th century, there were more than 250 distinct Aboriginal social groupings, and a similar number of languages or varieties.[5] At the start of the 21st century, fewer than 150 Aboriginal languages remain in daily use[6] and all except only 13 are highly endangered.[7] The surviving languages are located in the most isolated areas. For example, of the five least endangered Western Australian Aboriginal languages, four belong to the Ngaanyatjarra grouping of the Central and Great Victoria Desert. Yolŋu languages from north-east Arnhem Land are also currently learned by children. Bilingual education is being used successfully in some communities. Seven of the most widely spoken Australian languages, such as Warlpiri, Murriny Patha and Tiwi, retain between 1,000 and 3,000 speakers.[8] Some Aboriginal communities and linguists show support for learning programs either for language revival proper or for only "post-vernacular maintenance" (teaching Indigenous Australians some words and concepts related to the lost language).[9]

Aboriginal Tasmanians were nearly eradicated early in Australia's colonial history, and their languages were lost before much was recorded. Tasmania was separated from the mainland at the end of the Quaternary glaciation, and Tasmanian Aboriginal people apparently remained isolated from the outside world for around 10,000 years. Bowern (2012)[10] argues that there were several Tasmanian families, and that those languages are unrelated (that is, not demonstrably related) to those on the Australian mainland. The Palawa Kani movement in Tasmania is a language revival program based on the extant sources of Tasmanian languages, along with community memory.

Common features

Whether it is due to genetic unity or some other factor such as occasional contact, typologically the Australian languages form a language area or Sprachbund, sharing much of their vocabulary and many distinctive phonological features across the entire continent.

A common feature of many Australian languages is that they display so-called avoidance speech, special speech registers used only in the presence of certain close relatives. These registers share the phonology and grammar of the standard language, but the lexicon is different and usually very restricted. There are also commonly speech taboos during extended periods of mourning or initiation that have led to numerous Aboriginal sign languages.

For morphosyntactic alignment, many Australian languages have ergative–absolutive case systems. These are typically split systems; a widespread pattern is for pronouns (or first and second persons) to have nominative–accusative case marking and for third person to be ergative–absolutive, though splits between animate and inanimate are also found. In some languages the persons in between the accusative and ergative inflections (such as second person, or third-person human) may be tripartite: that is, marked overtly as either ergative or accusative in transitive clauses, but not marked as either in intransitive clauses. There are also a few languages which employ only nominative–accusative case marking.

Phonetics and phonology

Segmental inventory

A typical Australian phonological inventory includes just three vowels, usually [a, i, u], which may occur in both long and short variants. In a few cases the [u] has been unrounded to give [a, i, ɯ].

There is almost never a voicing contrast; that is, a consonant may sound like a [p] at the beginning of a word, but like a [b] between vowels, and either symbol could be (and often is) chosen to represent it. Australia also stands out as being almost entirely free of fricative consonants, even of [h]. In the few cases where fricatives do occur, they developed recently through the lenition (weakening) of stops, and are therefore non-sibilants like [ð] rather than sibilants like [s] which are common elsewhere in the world. Some languages also have three rhotics, typically a flap, a trill, and an approximant; that is, like the combined rhotics of English and Spanish.

Besides the lack of fricatives, the most striking feature of Australian speech sounds is the large number of places of articulation. Nearly every language has four places in the coronal region, either phonemically or allophonically. This is accomplished through two variables: the position of the tongue (front or back), and its shape (pointed or flat). There are also bilabial, velar and often palatal consonants, but a complete absence of uvular or glottal consonants. Both stops and nasals occur at all six places, and in some languages laterals occur at all four coronal places.

A language which displays the full range of stops and laterals is Kalkatungu, which has labial p, m; "dental" th, nh, lh; "alveolar" t, n, l; "retroflex" rt, rn, rl; "palatal" ty, ny, ly; and velar k, ng. Wangganguru has all this, as well as three rhotics. Yanyuwa has even more contrasts, with an additional true dorso-palatal series, plus prenasalized consonants at all seven places of articulation, in addition to all four laterals.

A notable exception to the above generalizations is Kalaw Lagaw Ya, which has an inventory more like its Papuan neighbours than the languages of the Australian mainland, including full voice contrasts: /p b/, dental /t̪ d̪/, alveolar /t d/, the sibilants /s z/ (which have allophonic variation with [tʃ] and [dʒ] respectively) and velar /k ɡ/, as well as only one rhotic, one lateral and three nasals (labial, dental and velar) in contrast to the 5 places of articulation of stops/sibilants. Where vowels are concerned, it has 8 vowels with some morpho-syntactic as well as phonemic length contrasts (i iː, e eː, a aː, ə əː, ɔ ɔː, o oː, ʊ ʊː, u uː), and glides that distinguish between those that are in origin vowels, and those that in origin are consonants. Kunjen and other neighbouring languages have also developed contrasting aspirated consonants ([pʰ], [t̪ʰ], [tʰ], [cʰ], [kʰ]) not found further south.

Coronal consonants

Descriptions of the coronal articulations can be inconsistent.

The alveolar series t, n, l (or d, n, l) is straightforward: across the continent, these sounds are alveolar (that is, pronounced by touching the tongue to the ridge just behind the gum line of the upper teeth) and apical (that is, touching that ridge with the tip of the tongue). This is very similar to English t, d, n, l, though the Australian t is not aspirated, even in Kalaw Lagaw Ya, despite its other stops being aspirated.

The other apical series is the retroflex, rt, rn, rl (or rd, rn, rl). Here the place is further back in the mouth, in the postalveolar or prepalatal region. The articulation is actually most commonly subapical; that is, the tongue curls back so that the underside of the tip makes contact. That is, they are true retroflex consonants. It has been suggested that subapical pronunciation is characteristic of more careful speech, while these sounds tend to be apical in rapid speech. Kalaw Lagaw Ya and many other languages in North Queensland differ from most other Australian languages in not having a retroflexive series.

The dental series th, nh, lh are always laminal (that is, pronounced by touching with the surface of the tongue just above the tip, called the blade of the tongue), but may be formed in one of three different ways, depending on the language, on the speaker, and on how carefully the speaker pronounces the sound. These are interdental with the tip of the tongue visible between the teeth, as in th in English; dental with the tip of the tongue down behind the lower teeth, so that the blade is visible between the teeth; and denti-alveolar, that is, with both the tip and the blade making contact with the back of the upper teeth and alveolar ridge, as in French t, d, n, l. The first tends to be used in careful enunciation, and the last in more rapid speech, while the tongue-down articulation is less common.

Finally, the palatal series ty, ny, ly. (The stop is often spelled dj, tj, or j.) Here the contact is also laminal, but further back, spanning the alveolar to postalveolar, or the postalveolar to prepalatal regions. The tip of the tongue is typically down behind the lower teeth. This is similar to the "closed" articulation of Circassian fricatives (see Postalveolar consonant). The body of the tongue is raised towards the palate. This is similar to the "domed" English postalveolar fricative sh. Because the tongue is "peeled" from the roof of the mouth from back to front during the release of these stops, there is a fair amount of frication, giving the ty something of the impression of the English palato-alveolar affricate ch or the Polish alveolo-palatal affricate ć. That is, these consonants are not palatal in the IPA sense of the term, and indeed they contrast with true palatals in Yanyuwa. In Kalaw Lagaw Ya, the palatal consonants are sub-phonemes of the alveolar sibilants /s/ and /z/.

These descriptions do not apply exactly to all Australian languages, as the notes regarding Kalaw Lagaw Ya demonstrate. However, they do describe most of them, and are the expected norm against which languages are compared.

Orthography

Probably every Australian language with speakers remaining has had an orthography developed for it, in each case in the Latin script. Sounds not found in English are usually represented by digraphs, or more rarely by diacritics, such as underlines, or extra symbols, sometimes borrowed from the International Phonetic Alphabet. Some examples are shown in the following table.

Language Example Translation Type
Pitjantjatjara paṉa 'earth, dirt, ground; land' diacritic (underline) indicates retroflex 'n'
Wajarri nhanha 'this, this one' digraph indicating 'n' with dental articulation
Yolŋu yolŋu 'person, man' 'ŋ' (from IPA) for velar nasal

Classification

Australian language families. From west to east:
  Mindi (2 areas)
  Daly (4 families)
  Tiwi (offshore)
  Arnhem, incl. Gunwinyguan
  Pama–Nyungan (3 areas)

Internal

Most Australian languages are commonly held to belong to the Pama–Nyungan family, a family accepted by most linguists, with Robert M. W. Dixon as a notable exception. For convenience, the rest of the languages, all spoken in the far north, are commonly lumped together as "Non-Pama–Nyungan", although this does not necessarily imply that they constitute a valid clade. Dixon argues that after perhaps 40,000 years of mutual influence, it is no longer possible to distinguish deep genealogical relationships from areal features in Australia, and that not even Pama–Nyungan is a valid language family.[11]

However, few other linguists accept Dixon's thesis. For example, Kenneth L. Hale describes Dixon's skepticism as an "extravagantly and spectacularly erroneous" and "wrong-headed" phylogenetic assessment which is "so bizarrely faulted, and such an insult to the eminently successful practitioners of Comparative Method Linguistics in Australia, that it positively demands a decisive riposte."[12] In the same paper, Hale provides pronominal and grammatical evidence (with suppletion) as well as more than fifty basic-vocabulary cognates (showing regular sound correspondences) between the proto-Northern-and-Middle Pamic (pNMP) family of the Cape York Peninsula on the Australian northeast coast and proto-Ngayarta of the Australian west coast, some 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) apart, to support the Pama–Nyungan grouping, whose age he compares to that of Proto-Indo-European.

It is often noted that it is odd for one family to dominate so much of a continent when the speakers are not agricultural and have no technological advantage over their neighbours. Johanna Nichols suggests that the northern families may be relatively recent arrivals from Maritime Southeast Asia, perhaps later replaced there by the spread of Austronesian. That could explain the typological difference between Pama–Nyungan and non-Pama–Nyungan languages, but not how a single family came to be so widespread. Evans suggests that the Pama–Nyungan family spread along with the now-dominant Aboriginal culture that includes the Australian Aboriginal kinship system. Dixon of course believes that the languages are not related, but merely a long-standing Sprachbund.

External

It has been suggested that most or all Australian languages have a relationship with the Trans–New Guinea family[13][14] or the Sepik–Ramu languages.[15] Neither of these conclusions is currently widely accepted. William A. Foley (1986) noted lexical similarities between Robert M. W. Dixon's 1980 reconstruction of proto-Australian and the East New Guinea Highlands languages. He believed that it was naïve to expect to find a single Papuan or Australian language family when New Guinea and Australia had been a single landmass (called the Sahul continent) for most of their human history, having been separated by the Torres Strait only 8000 years ago, and that a deep reconstruction would likely include languages from both. However, Dixon later abandoned his proto-Australian proposal[16] and thus more research into the area is needed before drawing conclusions.

Families

Australian languages divide into a dozen or so families.[17] Note when cross-referencing that most language names have multiple spellings: rr=r, b=p, d=t, g=k, dj=j=tj=c, j=y, y=i, w=u, u=oo, e=a, and so on. A range is given for the number of languages in each family, as sources count languages differently.

Survival

It has been estimated that there were some 250 Aboriginal languages, with an average of between 3,108 - 4,800 speakers per language,[18] at the time of European arrival in Australia. Today less than 50 different Aboriginal languages are spoken widely,[19] with only 9 having at least 1000 living speakers.[20] On these grounds it is anticipated that despite efforts at linguistic preservation, many of the remaining languages will disappear within the next generation.[21] The important interdependence between Australian Indigenous culture and language means with diminishing numbers of native speakers, much of the Indigenous culture is lost too.

During the period of the stolen generations, Aboriginal children were removed from their families and placed in institutions where they were punished for speaking their indigenous language. Different, mutually unintelligible language groups were often were mixed together, with Australian Aboriginal English or Australian Kriol language as the only lingua franca. The result was a disruption to the inter-generational transmission of these languages that severely impacted their future use. Today, that same transmission of language between parents and grandparents to their children is a key mechanism for reversing language shift.[22] For children, proficiency in the language of their cultural heritage has a positive influence on their ethnic identity formation,[23][24][25] and it is thought to be of particular benefit to the emotional well-being of Indigenous children. There is some evidence to suggest that the reversal of the Indigenous language shift may lead to decreased self-harm and suicide rates among Indigenous youth.[26][27][28]

Living Aboriginal Languages

These have more than 100 people speaking those languages.[29]

1 language ~ 100 • Wiradjuri ~ 100

• None

• None

5 languages ~ 2,000
• Ngarrindjeri ~ 100
• Adyamathanha ~ 100
• Yankunytjatjara ~ 600
• Pitjantjatjara ~ 1,200 (shared with Northern Territory and Western Australia)

9 languages ~ 10,000
• Yidiny ~ 100
• Kuku Yalanji ~ 300
• Guugu Yimidhirr ~ 800
• Guguberra ~ 100
• Kuuk Thaayore ~ 300
• Wik Mungkan ~1,000
• Yumplatok ~ 6,000
• Kalaw Lagaw Ya ~ 1,200
• Meriam Mir ~ 200

16 languages ~ 5,400
• Noongar ~ 200
• Wangkatha ~ 300
• Ngaanyatjarra ~ 1,000
• Manytjilyitjarra ~ 100
• Martu Wangka ~ 600
• Bandijima ~ 100
• Yindjibarndi ~ 300
• Nyangumarta ~ 300
• Bardi ~ 100
• Pintupi (shared with Northern Territory) ~ 200
• Kukatja ~ 400
• Walmatjarri ~ 500
• Gooniyandi ~ 400
• Djaru ~ 300
• Kija ~ 200
• Bunuba ~ 100
• Miriwoong ~ 200

18 languages ~ 28,800
• Luritja ~ 1,200
• Arrernte ~ 3,000
• Alyawarr ~ 1,700
• Anmatyerre ~ 1,000
• Warlpiri ~ 2,100
• Kaytetye ~ 300
• Warumungu ~ 300
• Gurindji ~ 600
• Jamindjung ~ 100
• Murrinh Patha ~ 1,500
• Tiwi ~ 1,700
• Iwaidja ~ 100
• Maung ~ 300
• Kunwinjku ~ 1,200
• Burrara ~ 1,000
• Yolngu ~ 3,000
• Nunggubuyu ~ 100
• Anindilyakwa ~ 1,300
• Yanyuwa ~ 300

Total 48 languages ~ 46,300 of which 12 have approximately only 100 speakers.

Kriol ~ 20,000

See also

References

Notes
  1. ↑ Bowern, Claire & Quentin Atkinson. 2012. Computational phylogenetics and the internal structure of Pama-Nyungan. Language 88(4). 817–845.
  2. ↑ Dixon 1989: 253-254
  3. ↑ Dixon, R.M.W. (1980). The languages of Australia. Cambridge: CUP. ISBN 0521294509.
  4. ↑ Hunter, Jessica, Claire Bowern & Erich Round. 2011. Reappraising the Effects of Language Contact in the Torres Strait. Journal of Language Contact 4(1). 106–140. doi:10.1163/187740911X558798.
  5. ↑ Romaine, Suzanne (1991). Language in Australia. Cambridge University Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-521-33983-4.
  6. ↑ Dalby 1998: 43
  7. ↑ "According to Zuckermann’s most recent figures, only 13 of the 330 Aboriginal languages spoken when Australia was colonised remain “alive and kicking”, by which he means spoken by children", Anna Goldsworthy, The Monthly, September 2014, VOICES OF THE LAND: In Port Augusta, an Israeli linguist is helping the Barngarla people reclaim their language, retrieved 12 September 2016.
  8. ↑ UNESCO atlas (online)
  9. ↑ Zuckermann 2009
  10. ↑ Bowern, Claire. 2012. The riddle of Tasmanian languages. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.1842. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/09/22/rspb.2012.1842 (21 December, 2012).
  11. ↑ Dixon 2002: 48,53
  12. ↑ O'Grady and Hale 2004: 69
  13. ↑
  14. ↑
  15. ↑
  16. ↑ Dixon, R. M. W. 2002. Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge University Press
  17. ↑ Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, 23 December 2011 (corrected 6 February 2012)
  18. ↑ McConvell, P (2001). "State of Indigenous languages in Australia 2001". Australia State of the Environment Technical Paper series 2.
  19. ↑ Daniel., Nettle, (2000). Vanishing voices : the extinction of the world's languages. Romaine, Suzanne, 1951-. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195152463. OCLC 65192583.
  20. ↑ "AUSTLANG". austlang.aiatsis.gov.au. Retrieved 2017-07-07.
  21. ↑ Doug., Marmion,. Community, identity, wellbeing : the report of the Second National Indigenous Languages Survey. Obata, Kazuko., Troy, Jakelin., Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Canberra, A.C.T. ISBN 9781922102249. OCLC 907883967.
  22. ↑ Forrest, Walter (2017-06-23). "The intergenerational transmission of Australian Indigenous languages: why language maintenance programmes should be family-focused". Ethnic and Racial Studies. 0 (0): 1–21. ISSN 0141-9870. doi:10.1080/01419870.2017.1334938.
  23. ↑ Rumbaut, Ruben G. (1994). "The Crucible within: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Segmented Assimilation among Children of Immigrants". The International Migration Review. 28 (4): 748–794. doi:10.2307/2547157.
  24. ↑ Phinney, Jean S.; Horenczyk, Gabriel; Liebkind, Karmela; Vedder, Paul (2001-01-01). "Ethnic Identity, Immigration, and Well-Being: An Interactional Perspective". Journal of Social Issues. 57 (3): 493–510. ISSN 1540-4560. doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00225.
  25. ↑ Zhou, Min; Bankston, Carl L. (1998). Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States. Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 9780871549945. doi:10.7758/9781610445689.
  26. ↑ Anderson, Heather; Kowal, Emma (2012-09-01). "Culture, History, and Health in an Australian Aboriginal Community: The Case of Utopia". Medical Anthropology. 31 (5): 438–457. ISSN 0145-9740. PMID 22881383. doi:10.1080/01459740.2011.636411.
  27. ↑ Biddle, Nicholas; Swee, Hannah (2012-09-01). "The Relationship between Wellbeing and Indigenous Land, Language and Culture in Australia". Australian Geographer. 43 (3): 215–232. ISSN 0004-9182. doi:10.1080/00049182.2012.706201.
  28. ↑ Hallett, Darcy; Chandler, Michael J.; Lalonde, Christopher E. (2007-07-01). "Aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide". Cognitive Development. 22 (3): 392–399. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2007.02.001.
  29. ↑ austlang.aiatsis.gov.au
    omniglot.com/writing/langfam.http
Bibliography
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