Nyangumarta language

Nyangumarta
Native to	Australia
Region	Western Australia
Native speakers	250 (2005) to 310 (2006 census)
Language family	Pama–Nyungan Marrngu Nyangumarta
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nna
Glottolog	nyan1301
AIATSIS	A61

Nyangumarta is spoken by the Nyangumarta people and other Indigenous Australians in the region of Western Australia to the south and east of Lake Waukarlykarly, including Eighty Mile Beach, and part of the Great Sandy Desert inland to near Telfer. There are believed to be about 520 first language speakers of Nyangumarta and many more partial speakers. It is also the most widely spoken Aboriginal language in the town of Port Hedland.

Classification

Nyangumarta is a member of the Marrngu branch of the Pama–Nyungan languages. The other members of this group are Mangarla and Karajarri, with which it shares features and vocabulary.

Geographic distribution

Variation/Dialects

Nyangumarta has two main dialects: Ngurlipartu, spoken in the southern, inland region, and Wanyarli, spoken in the northern, coastal region.

Phonology

Nyangumarta has a typical Australian phoneme inventory, with a large number of consonant phonemes, including multiple lateral and rhotic phonemes, but few vowel phonemes.

Consonants

There are 17 consonant phonemes in Nyangumarta, with 5 pairs of homorganic plosives and nasals.

	Peripheral		Apical		Laminal
	Bilabial	Velar	Alveolar	Post-Alveolar	Palatal
Obstruents	p	k	t	ʈ	c
Nasals	m	ŋ	n	ɳ	ɲ
Laterals			l	ɭ	ʎ
Rhotics			ɾ	ɻ
Approximants	w				j

There are no voicing contrasts in Nyangmurta.

Allophones of the consonants tend to vary in manner of articulation rather than place of articulation- e.g. plosives are usually voiceless word-initially, but voiced intervocalically and following nasals, and some plosives have fricative allophones.

Vowels

There are 3 contrastive vowels in Nyangmarta.

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Low	a

Nyangmurta does not contrast roundedness or length in vowels.

Syllable Structure

Monosyllabic words are permitted in Nyangumarta, but they must be at least bimoraic, with short vowels and consonants each counting as one mora, and long vowels as two. All words must begin with a consonant, although, if the initial consonant is a glide followed by its matching vowel [i.e. a sequence of /ji/ or /wu/] the glide may be dropped by some speakers. Additionally, word-initial consonant clusters are not permitted in this language, except when a cluster is created through a process of vowel elision.

References

• Janet Catherine Sharp. (2004). Nyangumarta, A Language of the Pilbara Region of Western Australia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics