iPedia Free Information Center

Information about Gunwinyguan Languages

The Gunwinyguan languages form the second largest family of Australian Aboriginal languages. They are spoken in Arnhem Land in northern Australia. The most populous language is Gunwinygu, with some 1500 speakers.

Although the validity of the Gunwinyguan family is widely accepted, the inclusion of some lesser known language isolates is debated. Ethnologue, for example, includes the Burarran languages, Kakadu, and Enindhilyagwa, which are not included here. What follows is based on a recent classification by Nicholas Evans at the University of Melbourne.

Classification

Evans has proposed that Gunwinyguan is related to the Pama-Nyungan languages in a family he calls Macro-Pama-Nyungan. A full list of languages currently classified as Gunwinyguan can be found here.

References

  • McConvell, Patrick and Nicholas Evans. (eds.) 1997. Archaeology and Linguistics: Global Perspectives on Ancient Australia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press
 •  • [ e]
Languages of Australia
EnglishAustralian English Australian Aboriginal English Torres Strait English
Major indigenous languagesArrernte Kala Lagaw Ya Tiwi Walmajarri Warlpiri Western Desert Language
Pidgins, creoles, and mixed languagesAustralian Aboriginal Pidgin English Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin Gurindji Kriol Kriol Queensland Kanaka English Torres Strait Creole Light Warlpiri
Sign languagesAuslan Australian Aboriginal sign languages
A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language. As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics.
..... Click the link for more information.
Indigenous Australian languages comprise several language families and isolates native to Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding Tasmania. The relationships between these languages are not clear at present, although substantial progress has been made in
..... Click the link for more information.
Arnhem Land is an area of 97,000 km² in the north-eastern corner of the Northern Territory, Australia. The region was named by Matthew Flinders after the Dutch ship Arnhem which explored the coast in 1623.
..... Click the link for more information.
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic") relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language.
..... Click the link for more information.
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in
..... Click the link for more information.
Burarran languages form a small family of Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Australia.

The Burarran family includes four languages, none closely related:
  • Guragone
  • Burarra
  • Ndjebbana (or Djeebbana, also called

..... Click the link for more information.
Gaagudju (also spelt Gagadu and Kakadu) is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language formerly spoken in Arnhem Land, northern Australia, in the environs of Kakadu National Park. Its last speaker, Big Bill Neidjie, died on 23 May 2002.
..... Click the link for more information.

 Enindhilyagwa}}}
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: aus
ISO 639-3: aoi Enindhilyagwa (several other names; see below) is an Australian language isolate spoken by the Warnindhilyagwa people on Groote Eylandt in the
..... Click the link for more information.
Nicholas Evans was born in Los Angeles, USA in 1956; he is a dual citizen of Australia and the United States.

Holding a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Australian National University, he is Reader and an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Applied
..... Click the link for more information.
The University of Melbourne, is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. The second oldest university in Australia, and the oldest in Victoria, its main campus is in Parkville, an inner suburb just north of the Melbourne CBD.
..... Click the link for more information.
Ngalakan or Ngalakgan is an Australian Aboriginal language. It is one of the Northern Non-Pama-Nyungan languages.

Sounds

Consonants


Bilabial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive
..... Click the link for more information.
Wagiman is a near-extinct Australian Aboriginal language spoken by less than 10 people in and around Pine Creek, in the Katherine Region of the Northern Territory.

Introduction

Parts of Speech

Wagiman
..... Click the link for more information.
The Wardaman people are a small group of Indigenous Australians living about 200km South-West of Katherine in the Northern Territory of Australia. They speak the Wardaman language which is said to be a near-extinct Australian Aboriginal language.
..... Click the link for more information.
Nunggubuyu is an Australian Aboriginal language. It is spoken in East Arnhem Land in northern Australia.

Phonology

Consonants


Bilabial Interdental Alveolar Retroflex Alveo-Palatal Velar
Stop b
..... Click the link for more information.
Waray is an Australian language spoken in the Adelaide River area of the Northern Territory.

External links

  • Ethnologue report for Waray

..... Click the link for more information.
The Pama-Nyungan languages are the most widespread family of Australian languages.

The Pama-Nyungan family was identified and named by Kenneth Hale, in his work on the classification of Native Australian languages.
..... Click the link for more information.
Macro-Pama-Nyungan is a recently proposed Australian language family that links the two largest language families in Australia, the Pama-Nyungan family, which covers seven-eighths of the continent, and Gunwinyguan, the principal family of Arnhem Land in northern Australia.
..... Click the link for more information.
Although Australia has no official language, it is largely monolingual with English being the de facto national language. It is also home to over 200 indigenous languages, as well as relatively recent arrivals besides English.
..... Click the link for more information.
English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
..... Click the link for more information.
Australian English (AuE, AusE, en-AU) is the form of the English language used in Australia.[1]

History

Australian English began diverging from British English shortly after the foundation of the Australian penal colony of New South Wales
..... Click the link for more information.
Australian Aboriginal English (AAE) is a term referring to the various varieties of the English language used by Indigenous Australians. These varieties, which developed differently in different parts of Australia, differ systematically from Standard Australian English (SAE).
..... Click the link for more information.
Torres Strait English is a dialect of the English language spoken by the Torres Strait Islanders of north Queensland, Australia. It is distinct from Torres Strait Creole, though most Islanders can speak both the creole and English.
..... Click the link for more information.
Indigenous Australian languages comprise several language families and isolates native to Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding Tasmania. The relationships between these languages are not clear at present, although substantial progress has been made in
..... Click the link for more information.
Arrernte (or Aranda) is a language or group of closely related languages spoken in and around Alice Springs (Mparntwe in Arrernte) in the Northern Territory, Australia.
..... Click the link for more information.
Kala Lagaw Ya (correctly Kalaw Lagaw Ya — back/west+gen place+gen speech; several other names; see below) is a language spoken on all the western and central Torres Strait Islands, Queensland, Australia.
..... Click the link for more information.
Tiwi is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken on the Tiwi Islands, within sight of the coast of northern Australia.

It is polysynthetic, though this grammatical complexity is being lost among the younger generations.
..... Click the link for more information.
Walmajarri (many other names; see below) is a South-West Pama-Nyungan language spoken in Western Australia.

Names

Names for this language include:
  • Walmajarri, Walmatjarri, Walmatjari, Walmadjari, Walmatjiri, Walmajiri, Walmatjeri, Walmadjeri, Walmadyeri,

..... Click the link for more information.
Warlpiri language is spoken by about 3000 of the Warlpiri people in Australia's Northern Territory. It is one of the Ngarrkic languages of the large Southwest branch of the Pama-Nyungan family, and is one of the largest aboriginal languages in Australia in terms of number of
..... Click the link for more information.
Western Desert Language is the name used to refer to an otherwise un-named Australian Aboriginal language. It is one of the Wati languages of the large Southwest branch of the Pama-Nyungan family.
..... Click the link for more information.
pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups who do not share a common language, in situations such as trade. Pidgins are not the native language of any speech community, but are instead learned as second languages.
..... Click the link for more information.


This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Herod_Archelaus


page counter