Enindhilyagwa language

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Anindilyakwa
Enindhilyakwa, Enindhilyagwa
Native to Australia
Northern Territory
Region Groote Eylandt, Northern Territory, Australia
Ethnicity Warnindhilyagwa
Native speakers
1,486 (2016 census) [1]
Macro-Pama–Nyungan?
Language codes
ISO 639-3 aoi
Glottolog anin1240 [2]
AIATSIS [3] N151
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Anindilyakwa is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Warnindhilyagwa people on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory of Australia. A 2001 Australian government study identified more than 1000 speakers of the language, [4] although there are reports of as many as three thousand. In 2008, it was cited in a study on whether humans had an innate ability to count without having words for numbers. While the language traditionally had terms for numbers up to 20, they are no longer known to younger speakers. [5] [6] In the 2016 census, around 1500 people said they spoke Anindilyakwa. [7]

Warnindhilyagwa

The Warnindhilyagwa, otherwise (formerly) known as Ingura, are an Indigenous Australian people living on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory of Australia.

Groote Eylandt island off the Northern Australian coast

Groote Eylandt is the largest island in the Gulf of Carpentaria and the fourth largest island in Australia. It is the homeland of, and is owned by, the Warnindhilyagwa who speak the Anindilyakwa language.

Gulf of Carpentaria A large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the Arafura Sea

The Gulf of Carpentaria is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea. The northern boundary is generally defined as a line from Slade Point, Queensland in the northeast, to Cape Arnhem, Northern Territory in the west.

Contents

Anindilyakwa may be most closely related to Nunggubuyu, on the adjacent mainland, but that is yet to be confirmed. [3]

Nunggubuyu or Wubuy is an Australian Aboriginal language, the traditional language of the Nunggubuyu people. It is the primary traditional language spoken in the community of Numbulwar in the Northern Territory. The language is classified as severely endangered by UNESCO, with only 272 speakers according to the 2016 census. Most children in Numbulwar can understand Nunggubuyu when spoken to, but cannot speak it themselves, having to reply in Kriol. To counter this, starting in 1990, the community has been embarking on a revitalisation programme for the language by bringing in elders to teach it to children at the local school.

Names

Spellings of the name include:

Robert Malcolm Ward Dixon is a Professor of Linguistics in the College of Arts, Society, and Education and The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Queensland. He is also Deputy Director of The Language and Culture Research Centre at JCU. Doctor of Letters, he was awarded a Honorary Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa by JCU in 2018. Fellow of British Academy; Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America, he is one of three living linguists to be specifically mentioned in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics by P. H. Matthews (2014).

It also known as Groote Eylandt, after its location. Another name is Ingura or Yingguru.

Classification

Anindilyakwa is related to the Arnhem languages of the mainland. [8] [9]

Macro-Gunwinyguan languages Australian Aboriginal languages

The Macro-Gunwinyguan languages, also called Arnhem or Gunwinyguan, are a family of Australian Aboriginal languages spoken across eastern Arnhem Land in northern Australia. Their relationship has been demonstrated through shared morphology in their verbal inflections.

Phonology

Vowels

The analysis of Anindilyakwa's vowels is open to interpretation. Stokes [10] analyses it as having four phonemic vowels, /i e a u/. Leeding [11] analyses it as having just two, /ɨ a/.

Consonants

Peripheral Coronal
Bilabial Velar Laminal Apical
rounded unrounded Palatal Dental Alveolar Retroflex
Stop pkctʈ
Nasal mŋʷŋɲnɳ
Lateral ʎ(ɭ)
Rhotic rɻ
Semivowel wj

Phonotactics

All Anindilyakwa words end in a vowel. Clusters of up to three consonants can occur within words.

Grammar

Noun classes

Anindilyakwa has five noun classes, or genders, each marked by a prefix:

In linguistics, grammatical gender is a specific form of noun class system in which the division of noun classes forms an agreement system with another aspect of the language, such as adjectives, articles, pronouns, or verbs. This system is used in approximately one quarter of the world's languages. In these languages, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called gender; the values present in a given language are called the genders of that language. According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words."

For bound pronouns, instead of "human male" and "non-human male" classes there is a single "male" class.

All native nouns carry a class prefix, but some loanwords may lack them.

Numerals

According to Stokes [12] the language traditionally had numerals up to twenty but since the introduction of English, English words are now used almost exclusively for numbers above five.

Example

This song is a translation of the church song "This is the day", sung by the local churchgoers in the community of Angurugu. The spelling and translation requires confirmation.

AnindilyakwaApproximate translation
Mema mamawurra

Ngumanekburrakama God

Narriyekiyerra, Akuwerikilyelyingmajungwuna

Narriyekiyerra

Akuwerikilyelyingmajungwuna

This day

Made by God

We will rejoice and be glad in it

This is the day made by God

We will rejoice in it

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References

  1. "Census 2016, Language spoken at home by Sex (SA2+)". stat.data.abs.gov.au. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Anindilyakwa". Glottolog 3.0 . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. 1 2 N151 Anindilyakwa at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  4. http://www.deh.gov.au/soe/techpapers/languages/indicator3d.html Archived July 17, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
  5. UCL Media Relations, "Aboriginal kids can count without numbers" Archived 20 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine
  6. The Science Show, Genetic anomaly could explain severe difficulty with arithmetic, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  7. "2016 Census QuickStats: Anindilyakwa (Groote)". www.censusdata.abs.gov.au. Australian Bureau of Statistics . Retrieved 27 August 2017.
  8. Bowern & Koch, 2004. Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, p 44
  9. Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, December 23, 2011 (corrected February 6, 2012)
  10. Stokes, J. (1981). "Anindilyakwa phonology from phoneme to syllable". In Waters, B. (ed.). Australian phonologies: collected papers. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics, Australian Aborigines Branch. pp. 138–81.
  11. Leeding, V. J. (1989). Anindilyakwa phonology and morphology. PhD dissertation. University of Sydney.
  12. Stokes, J. (1982). "A description of the mathematical concepts of Groote Eylandt Aborigines". In Hargrave, S. (ed.). Work Papers of SIL-AAB: Language and Culture. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics, Australian Aborigines Branch. pp. 33–152.