Walmajarri language

Walmajarri
Region Western Australia
Native speakers
 500 (2005) to 520 (2006 census)[1]
Dialects
  • Walmatjarri
  • Tjuwalinj
  • Pililuna
Language codes
ISO 639-3 wmt
Glottolog walm1241[2]
AIATSIS[1] A66

Walmajarri (many other names; see below) is a Pama–Nyungan language spoken in Western Australia.

Names

Names for this language break down along the three dialects:

Speakers

Communities with a Walmajarri population are:

The Walmajarri people used to live in the Great Sandy Desert. Subsequent events took them to the cattle stations, towns and missions in the North and scattered them over a wide area. The geographical distance accounts for the fact that there are several dialects, which have been further polarized by the lack of contact and further influenced by neighbouring languages.

Phonology

Vowels

Front Back
High i, iː u, uː
Low a, aː

Consonants

Peripheral Laminal Apical
Bilabial Velar Palatal Alveolar Retroflex
Stop p k c t ʈ
Nasal m ŋ ɲ n ɳ
Lateral ʎ l m
Rhotic ɲ
Approximant w j ɻ

Morphology

Warlmajarri is a suffixing language. There are no prefixes.

Syntax

Warlmajarri has 4 syntactic cases: nominative, ergative, dative and assessory case. The cases assign different meanings to the noun phrases of a sentence. Therefore, the word order can vary quite freely. Subject, Object or Verb can appear initial, final, medial in sentence.

However, the second position of a sentence is always reserved for the Verbal Auxiliary. Sometimes referred to as a Catalyst, the Verbal Auxiliary indicates the mood of a sentence (similar to the English auxiliaries), but also cross-references its noun phrases. The person and number of the noun phrases in their syntactic cases are shown in the Verbal Auxiliary.

References

  1. 1 2 Walmajarri at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Walmajarri". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
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