103-476: 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. Many of the languages have a fortis–lenis contrast in plosive consonants. Lenis/short plosives have weak contact and intermittent voicing, while fortis/long plosives have full closure,
206-492: A Marran family of considerable time depth (Sharpe 2008). Heath (1990) demonstrated an East Arnhem family of Ngandi + Nunggubuyu, to which Enindhilyagwa was added (as a closer relative to Nunggubuyu) by Van Egmond (2012). However, Green (2003) argues that only Maningrida has been established as a valid subgroup, and that the interrelationships of the other languages are as yet unclear. The evidence for Gunwinyguan and perhaps other nodes listed above may simply be reflections of
309-565: A land bridge known as the Arafura Plain which connected the present-day Australian continent with New Guinea (in a single landmass called Sahul , Meganesia , Australia-New Guinea ). This land bridge was most recently submerged by rising sea levels at the end of the last ice-age glaciation approximately 12,000 years ago, forming the Strait which now connects the Arafura and Coral seas. Many of
412-459: A 'pressed' voice quality , with the glottal opening narrower than in modal voice, a relatively high frequency of creaky voice , and low airflow. This may be due to an avoidance of breathy voice . This pressed quality could therefore serve to enhance the clarity of speech and ensure the perception of place of articulation distinctions. Probably every Australian language with speakers remaining has had an orthography developed for it, in each case in
515-696: A complete absence of uvular consonants and only a few languages with a glottal stop . Both stops and nasals occur at all six places, and in many languages laterals occur at all four coronal places. Andrew Butcher speculates that the unusual segmental inventories of Australian languages may be due to the very high presence of otitis media ear infections and resulting hearing loss in their populations. People with hearing loss often have trouble distinguishing different vowels and hearing fricatives and voicing contrasts. Australian Aboriginal languages thus seem to avoid sounds and distinctions which are difficult for people with early childhood hearing loss to perceive. At
618-456: A few cases the [u] has been unrounded to give [i, ɯ, a] . 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 letter 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
721-514: A few languages which employ only nominative–accusative case marking. The following represents a canonical 6-place Australian Aboriginal consonant system. It does not represent any single language, but is instead a simplified form of the consonant inventory of what would be found in many Australian languages, including most Arandic and Yolŋu languages. A typical Australian phonological inventory includes just three vowels, usually /i, u, a/ , which may occur in both long and short variants. In
824-547: A few nearby islands. The relationships between the language families are not clear at present although there are proposals to link some into larger groupings. Despite this uncertainty, the Indigenous Australian languages are collectively covered by the technical term "Australian languages", or the "Australian family". The term can include both Tasmanian languages and the Western Torres Strait language , but
927-487: A habitat for numerous birds , including the Torresian imperial-pigeon , which is seen as the iconic national emblem to the islanders. These islands are also a distinct physiographic section of the larger Cape York Platform province , which in turn is part of the larger East Australian Cordillera physiographic division . The islands in this cluster lie very close to the southwestern coastline of New Guinea (the closest
1030-657: A link between Australian and Papuan languages, the latter being represented by those spoken on the coastal areas of New Guinea facing the Torres Strait and the Arafura Sea . In 1986 William A. Foley 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
1133-448: A more powerful release burst, and no voicing. Rebecca Green (2004) reconstructed the paradigms of 28 Proto-Arnhem verbs. The languages included by Green are as follows, though Green only accepts Maningrida as a demonstrated branch: This is close to what Evans (1997) proposed under the name Gunwinyguan (cf. his very different proposal of Arnhem Land languages .) Marra, Warndarrang, Alawa, and Mangarrayi have been argued to constitute
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#17328521956041236-569: A process of electing island councils, intended to loosen the power of missionaries in the islands. They had become powerful by default because the government did not have resources to administer the territory. In the Western islands, where the traditional lifestyle was semi- nomadic , the council system continued to thrive. During World War II , many Torres Strait Islanders served in the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion of
1339-455: A relationship of all Arnhem languages when only a subset of them was investigated. That is, these groups may be based on shared retentions of Proto-Arnhem rather than distinct historical developments. (However, in reviewing Green, Evans pointed out that much of the Maningrida morphology was also shared by Mangarrayi.) An agnostic view of the family would list each language separately, except for
1442-573: A single body to form a Torres Strait Island Regional Council, or Torres Strait Island Region , created by the Queensland Government in the interest of financial viability, and accountability and transparency of local governments throughout the State. It is administered from Thursday Island , but Thursday, Horn Island , Prince of Wales Island and many others are under the Shire of Torres council. In
1545-778: 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. Dixon, in the meantime, later abandoned his proto-Australian proposal. Glottolog 4.1 (2019) recognises 23 independent families and 9 isolates in Australia, comprising a total of 32 independent language groups. According to Claire Bowern 's Australian Languages (2011), Australian languages divide into approximately 30 primary sub-groups and 5 isolates. It has been inferred from
1648-489: A study in Diachronica that hypothesised, by analysing noun class prefix paradigms across both Pama-Nyungan and the minority non-Pama-Nyungan languages, that a Proto-Australian could be reconstructed from which all known Australian languages descend. This Proto-Australian language, they concluded, would have been spoken about 12,000 years ago in northern Australia. For a long time unsuccessful attempts were made to detect
1751-487: A waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea . They span an area of 48,000 km (19,000 sq mi), but their total land area is 566 km (219 sq mi). The Islands are inhabited by the indigenous Torres Strait Islanders . Lieutenant James Cook first claimed British sovereignty over the eastern part of Australia at Possession Island in 1770, but British administrative control only began in
1854-529: 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
1957-419: A width of approximately 150 kilometres (93 mi) at its narrowest point; the islands lie scattered in between, extending some 200 to 300 kilometres (120 to 190 mi) from furthest east to furthest west. The total land area of the islands comprises 566 km (219 sq mi). 21,784 hectares (53,830 acres) of land are used for agricultural purposes. The Torres Strait itself was previously part of
2060-559: Is 67 kilometres (42 mi) west of Boigu, the nearest of the Top Western islands. The islands in this cluster lie south of the Strait's midway point, and are also largely high granite hills with mounds of basaltic outcrops, formed from old peaks of the now submerged land bridge. Moa (Banks Island) is the second-largest in the Torres Strait, and Badu (Mulgrave Island) is slightly smaller and fringed with extensive mangrove swamps. Other smaller islands include Mabuiag , Pulu and further to
2163-461: Is a smaller island with steep hills, composed largely of granite . This island actually represents the northernmost extent of the Great Dividing Range , the extensive series of mountain ranges which runs along almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia. This peak became an island as the ocean levels rose at the end of the last ice age. The isolated and uninhabited Deliverance Island
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#17328521956042266-515: Is a valid language family. However, few other linguists accept Dixon's thesis. For example, Kenneth L. Hale describes Dixon's scepticism as an erroneous phylogenetic assessment which is "such an insult to the eminently successful practitioners of Comparative Method Linguistics in Australia, that it positively demands a decisive riposte". Hale provides pronominal and grammatical evidence (with suppletion) as well as more than fifty basic-vocabulary cognates (showing regular sound correspondences) between
2369-531: 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
2472-555: Is highly unusual. The anticipatory assimilation of nasality is quite common in various languages around the world. Typically, a vowel will become nasalized before a following nasal consonant. However, this process is resisted in Australian languages. There was a historical process in many languages where nasal + stop C 1 C 2 clusters lost the nasal element if C INIT was a nasal. Also, many languages have morphophonemic alterations whereby initial nasals in suffixes are denasalized if
2575-591: Is less than 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) offshore). Saibai (one of the largest of the Torres Strait Islands) and Boigu (one of the Talbot Islands ) are low-lying islands which were formed by deposition of sediments and mud from New Guinean rivers into the Strait accumulating on decayed coral platforms. Vegetation on these islands mainly consists of mangrove swamps, and they are prone to flooding. The other main island in this group, Dauan (Mt Cornwallis),
2678-541: 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
2781-565: Is succeeded by the Nyingarn Project , which digitises manuscripts and crowdsources transcriptions through DigiVol. In recent decades, there have been attempts to revive indigenous languages. Significant challenges exist, however, for the revival of languages in the dominant English language culture of Australia. The Kaurna language , spoken by the Kaurna people of the Adelaide plains, has been
2884-533: Is the large number of places of articulation . Some 10-15% of Australian languages have four places of articulation, with two coronal places of articulation, 40-50% have five places, and 40-45% have six places of articulation, including four coronals. The four-way distinction in the coronal region is commonly accomplished through two variables: the position of the tongue (front, alveolar or dental, or retroflex ), and its shape ( apical or laminal ). There are also bilabial , velar and often palatal consonants , but
2987-626: 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. The first Aboriginal people to use Australian Aboriginal languages in the Australian parliament were Aden Ridgeway on 25 August 1999 in the Senate when he said "On this special occasion, I make my presence known as an Aborigine and to this chamber I say, perhaps for
3090-595: The 2016 census , the population of the Torres Strait Islands was 4,514, of whom 4,144 (91.8%) were Torres Strait Islanders . These inhabitants live on only 14 of the 274 islands. For comparison, people identifying themselves as of Torres Strait Islander descent living in the whole of Australia numbered 32,345, while those of both Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal descent numbered a further 26,767. The islands span an area of some 48,000 km (19,000 sq mi). The strait from Cape York to New Guinea has
3193-666: The Australian Army . It is the only Australian Army unit to have been formed out of indigenous Australians. From 1960 to 1973, Margaret Lawrie captured some of the Torres Strait Islander people's culture by recording their recounting of local myths and legends. Her anthropological work, stored at the State Library of Queensland , has recently been recognised and registered with the Australian UNESCO Memory of
Macro-Gunwinyguan languages - Misplaced Pages Continue
3296-597: The Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (previously under the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs ). Thursday Island functions as the administrative centre of the islands. The TSRA now represents the local communities at both Commonwealth and State levels; previously, State representation operated via a Queensland statutory authority called
3399-561: The Eastern Daly languages . Capell (1940) lists the following basic vocabulary items for the Gunwinyguan languages: Capell (1942) lists the following additional basic vocabulary items for the Gunwinyguan languages: Below are some reconstructed Proto-Gunwinyguan (i.e., Proto-Gunwinyguan proper ) animal and plant names from Harvey (2003): Australian Aboriginal languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in
3502-869: The Government of Queensland to specific Islander and Aboriginal Councils under the provisions of the Community Services (Torres Strait) Act 1984 and the Community Services (Aboriginal) Act 1984 ), consisting of: This shows the localities of the Torres Strait Islands in alphabetical order. (2016 Census) km Politicians who have declared support for independence, include Bob Katter and former Queensland Premier Anna Bligh , who in August 2011 wrote to Prime Minister Julia Gillard in support of Torres Strait Islands independence from Australia ; Prime Minister Gillard said in October 2011 "her government will respectfully consider
3605-573: 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. Torres Strait Islands The Torres Strait Islands are an archipelago of at least 274 small islands in the Torres Strait ,
3708-574: 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
3811-593: The Queensland Supreme Court and the High Court of Australia , the latter court found that the Mer people had owned their land prior to annexation by Queensland. This ruling overturned the long-established legal doctrine of terra nullius ("no-one's land"), which held that native title over Crown land in Australia had been extinguished at the time of annexation. The ruling thus has had far-reaching significance for
3914-601: The Torres Strait in 1606. Torres had joined the expedition of Pedro Fernandes de Queirós , which sailed west from Peru across the Pacific Ocean, in search of Terra Australis . Lieutenant James Cook first claimed British sovereignty in 1770 over the eastern part of Australia at Possession Island , calling it New South Wales in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third. British administrative control did not begin until 1862 in
4017-533: The genetic relationship to the mainland Australian languages of the former is unknown, while the latter is Pama–Nyungan , though it shares features with the neighbouring Papuan , Eastern Trans-Fly languages, in particular Meriam Mir of the Torres Strait Islands , as well as the Papuan Tip Austronesian languages. Most Australian languages belong to the widespread Pama–Nyungan family, while
4120-429: The lenition (weakening) of stops, and are therefore non-sibilants like [ð] rather than the sibilants like [s] that 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) and many have four laterals. Besides the lack of fricatives, the most striking feature of Australian speech sounds
4223-471: The mother of pearl as decoration, started in earnest in the 1860s. By the 1890s, the islands were supplying more than 50 per cent of the world's pearl shells. The London Missionary Society (LMS) mission, led by Rev. Samuel Macfarlane, arrived on Erub (Darnley Island) on 1 July 1871. After the Anglican Church took over their mission in the 20th century, they referred to the events as " The Coming of
Macro-Gunwinyguan languages - Misplaced Pages Continue
4326-579: The 1900s at Daisy Bates Online provides a valuable resource for those researching especially Western Australian languages, and some languages of the Northern Territory and South Australia . The project is co-ordinated by Nick Thieberger , who works in collaboration with the National Library of Australia "to have all the microfilmed images from Section XII of the Bates papers digitised". The project
4429-514: 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. Descriptions of
4532-408: The C 1 (C 2 ) position, and are most commonly sonorant + obstruent sequences. In languages with pre-stopped nasals or laterals, those sounds only occur at C 1 . Australian languages typically resist certain connected speech processes which might blur the place of articulation of consonants at C 1 (C 2 ), such as anticipatory assimilation of place of articulation, which is common around
4635-546: The Eastern Torres Language Meriam Mir . Yumplatok (also known as Torres Strait Creole and Broken) is a contemporary Torres Strait Island language spoken in the Torres Strait . The contact with missionaries, traders and other English speakers since the 19th century led to the development of a pidgin language . It developed more fully as a creole language , with its own distinctive sound system, grammar, vocabulary, usage and meaning. Torres Strait Creole
4738-534: 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. Some have suggested that
4841-615: The Island Coordinating Council (ICC). The Torres Strait Island Region local government area superseded the ICC in March 2008. In March 2008, fifteen Torres Strait Islander Councils were amalgamated into a single body to form a Torres Strait Island Regional Council, or Torres Strait Island Region , created by the Queensland Government in the interest of financial viability, and accountability and transparency of local Governments throughout
4944-626: The Italaig of the south, and the Muwalaig of the north. Many Kauraraig also live there, having been forcibly moved there in 1922–1923. Badu and Mabuiag are the Maluigal Deep Sea People . These islands, also known as the Thursday Island group, lie closest to Cape York Peninsula, and their topography and geological history is very similar. Muralag (Prince of Wales Island) is the largest of
5047-537: The Light ", and established an annual celebration on 1 July. In 1872, the boundary of Queensland was extended to include Thursday Island and other islands in Torres Strait within 60 miles of the Queensland coast. In June 1875, a measles epidemic killed about 25% of the population, with some islands suffering losses of up to 80%, as the islanders had no natural immunity to European diseases. In 1879, Queensland annexed
5150-587: The New Guinea coast. In 1898–1899, the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition led by Alfred Cort Haddon visited the Torres Strait Islands. Among its members was W. H. R. Rivers , who later gained notability for his work in psychology and treating officers in the Great War. They collected and took about 2000 cultural artefacts, ostensibly to save them from destruction by missionaries. But all of
5253-549: The North Queensland Regional Aboriginal Corporation Language Centre (NQRACLC) in 2008, and has been contributing oral histories and the results of his own research to their database. As part of the efforts to raise awareness of Wiradjuri language a Grammar of Wiradjuri language was published in 2014 and A new Wiradjuri dictionary in 2010. The New South Wales Aboriginal Languages Act 2017 became law on 24 October 2017. It
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#17328521956045356-601: The State. It is administered from Thursday Island , but Thursday, Horn Island , Prince of Wales Island and many others are under the Shire of Torres council. At the local level, there are two authorities. One is the Shire of Torres , which governs several islands and portions of Cape York Peninsula and operates as a Queensland local government area . The other is the Torres Strait Island Region , created in 2008, which embodies 15 former island councils. These former councils had been previously relinquished by
5459-473: The Strait's islands, and forms the centre of this closely grouped cluster. The much smaller Waiben Thursday Island is the region's administrative centre and most heavily populated. Several of these islands have permanent freshwater springs, and some were also mined for gold in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Because of their proximity to the Australian mainland, they have also been centres of pearling and fishing industries. Nurupai Horn Island holds
5562-658: The Torres Strait Islands in 1862. The islands are now mostly part of Queensland , a constituent State of the Commonwealth of Australia , but are administered by the Torres Strait Regional Authority , a statutory authority of the Australian federal government . A few islands very close to the coast of mainland New Guinea belong to the Western Province of Papua New Guinea , most importantly Daru Island with
5665-543: The Torres Strait Islands, marked by the appointment of John Jardine, police magistrate at Rockhampton , as Government Resident in the Torres Straits. He originally established a small settlement on Albany Island , but on 1 August 1864 he settled at Somerset Island. Although the Torres Strait Islanders had long dived for pearl shells themselves, the international industry of pearl and trochus shells, for using
5768-594: The Torres Strait's request for self-government". Other figures who have supported independence include Australian Indigenous rights campaigner Eddie Mabo . Torres Strait Islander peoples, the indigenous peoples of the islands, are predominantly Melanesians, culturally most akin to the coastal peoples of Papua New Guinea . Thus, they are regarded as being distinct from Aboriginal peoples of Australia and are generally referred to separately, despite ongoing historical trade and inter-marriage with mainland Aboriginal people. There are also two Torres Strait Islander communities on
5871-595: The World Programme . The proximity of the islands to Papua New Guinea became an issue when the territory started moving to gain independence from Australia, which it gained in 1975. The Papua New Guinea government objected to the position of the border close to the New Guinean mainland, and the subsequent complete control that Australia exercised over the waters of the strait. The Torres Strait Islanders opposed being separated from Australia and insisted on no change to
5974-476: The above generalisations is Kalaw Lagaw Ya , spoken in the Torres Strait Islands , 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
6077-419: The approximately 250 once spoken, but with a high rate of attrition as elders died out. Of the 90, 70% by 2001 were judged as 'severely endangered' with only 17 spoken by all age groups, a definition of a 'strong' language. On these grounds it is anticipated that despite efforts at linguistic preservation, many of the remaining languages will disappear within the next generation. The overall trend suggests that in
6180-567: The artefacts collected by Samuel Macfarlane were sold in London, mostly to European museums. In 1904, the peoples of the Torres Strait Islands were made subject to the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 , which gave draconian powers to the Queensland government in placing legal restrictions on natives and on their land use. In 1899, John Douglas had initiated
6283-405: The border. The Australian Federal government wished to cede the northern islands to appease Papua New Guinea, but were opposed by the Queensland government and Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen . An agreement was struck in 1978 whereby the islands and their inhabitants remained Australian, but the maritime boundary between Australia and Papua New Guinea was defined as running through
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#17328521956046386-462: The centre of the strait. In practice the two countries co-operate closely in the management of the strait's resources. In 1982, Eddie Mabo and four other Torres Strait Islander people from Mer (Murray Island) started legal proceedings to establish their traditional land ownership. Because Mabo was the first-named plaintiff, it became known as the Mabo Case . In 1992, after ten years of hearings before
6489-408: 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
6592-436: The early stages of language acquisition. The weakening of C INIT , on the other hand, is very unusual. No Australian language has consonant clusters in this position, and those languages with fortis and lenis distinctions do not make such distinctions in this position. Place of articulation distinctions are also less common in this position, and lenitions and deletions are historically common here. While in most languages
6695-561: The east Naghir (correct form Nagi , aka Mount Ernest Island). Culturally this was the most complex part of Torres Strait, containing three of the four groupings/dialects of the Western-central Islanders, Nagi being culturally/linguistically a Central Island (Kulkalaig territory, specifically part of Waraber tribal waters), Moa is part of the Muwalaig-Italaig-Kaiwalaig [Kauraraig/Kaurareg] tribal areas, with two groups,
6798-480: The encroachment of colonial society broke up Indigenous cultures. For some of these languages, few records exist for vocabulary and grammar. At the start of the 21st century, fewer than 150 Aboriginal languages remained in daily use, with the majority being highly endangered . In 2020, 90 per cent of the barely more than 100 languages still spoken are considered endangered. Thirteen languages are still being transmitted to children. The surviving languages are located in
6901-621: 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;
7004-528: The established Maningrida branch: *Green does not address Anindilyakwa, Alawa, or Yugul. Yugul is too poorly attested for comparison based on her methods; the other two await validation. Yangmanic, including Wardaman , had once been included in Gunwinyguan, but has been removed from recent classifications. Evans (1997) proposes that these languages are related to Pama–Nyungan in a family he calls Macro-Pama–Nyungan , but this has not yet been demonstrated. In 2003, he proposed that they are also related to
7107-520: The first time: Nyandi baaliga Jaingatti. Nyandi mimiga Gumbayynggir. Nya jawgar yaam Gumbyynggir. " (Translation: My father is Dhunghutti. My mother is Gumbayynggir. And, therefore, I am Gumbayynggir.) In the House of Representatives on 31 August 2016 Linda Burney gave an acknowledgment of country in Wiradjuri in her first speech and was sung in by Lynette Riley in Wiradjuri from the public gallery. 2019
7210-538: The five major island groups and the navigational importance of stars to the seafaring people of the Torres Strait". The five points of the star on the flag represent the following regions (which do not match administrative regions): A celebration known as Flag Day takes place on 29 May each year, the anniversary of the day the flag was officially presented to the people of the Torres Strait. The Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA), an Australian Commonwealth statutory authority created in 1994, exercises governance over
7313-459: The hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intelligible varieties) up to possibly 363. The Indigenous languages of Australia comprise numerous language families and isolates , perhaps as many as 13, spoken by the Indigenous peoples of mainland Australia and
7416-492: The islands include dugongs (an endangered species of sea mammal widely found throughout the Indian Ocean and tropical Western Pacific, including Papua-New Guinean and Australian waters), as well as green , ridley , hawksbill and flatback sea turtles. The Torres Strait Islands may be grouped into five distinct clusters, which exhibit differences of geology and formation as well as location. The Torres Strait provides
7519-608: The islands. The TSRA has an elected board comprising 20 representatives from the Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal communities resident in the Torres Strait region. One representative per established local community wins election to the board under the Queensland Community Services (Torres Strait) Act 1984 and Division 5 of the ATSIC Act 1989 . The TSRA itself falls under the portfolio responsibilities of
7622-457: The land claims of both Torres Strait Islanders and Australian Aboriginal people. Its effects are still being felt in the 21st century, as indigenous communities establish claims to their traditional lands under the Native Title Act of 1993 . On 1 July 1994, the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) was created. In March 2008, fifteen Torres Strait Islander Councils were amalgamated into
7725-497: The language, from which the language was reconstructed. "Some Aboriginal people distinguish between usership and ownership . There are even those who claim that they own a language although they only know one single word of it: its name." 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
7828-558: 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
7931-487: 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
8034-467: The mainland at the end of the Quaternary glaciation , and Indigenous Tasmanians remained isolated from the outside world for around 12,000 years. Claire Bowern has concluded in a recent study that there were twelve Tasmanian languages, and that those languages are unrelated (that is, not demonstrably related) to those on the Australian mainland. In 1990 it was estimated that 90 languages still survived of
8137-838: The middle of Torres Strait, consisting of many small sandy cays surrounded by coral reefs , similar to those found in the nearby Great Barrier Reef . The more northerly islands in this group however, such as Gerbar (Two Brothers) and Iama (Yam Island) , are high basaltic outcrops, not cays. Nagi is a culturo-linguistic part of this group, and also has high basaltic outcropping. The low-lying inhabited coral cays, such as Poruma (Coconut Island) , Warraber Island and Masig (Yorke Island) are mostly less than 2 to 3 kilometres (1.2–1.9 miles) long, and no wider than 800 metres (2,600 feet). Several have had problems with saltwater intrusion . The islands of this group (principally Mer (Murray Island) , Dauar and Waier, with Erub Island and Stephen Island (Ugar) further north) are formed differently from
8240-436: The most appropriate unit to describe the phonotactics of Australian languages is the phonological word. The most common word length is two syllables , and a typical phonological word would have the form: (C INIT )V 1 C 1 (C 2 )V 2 (C FIN ) with the first syllable being stressed. The optionality of C FIN is cross-linguistically normal, since coda consonants are weak or nonexistent in many languages, as well as in
8343-780: The most isolated areas. Of the five least endangered Western Australian Aboriginal languages, four belong to the Western Desert 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 , Murrinh-patha and Tiwi , retain between 1,000 and 3,000 speakers. Some Indigenous communities and linguists show support for learning programmes either for language revival proper or for only "post-vernacular maintenance" (Indigenous communities having
8446-581: The nearby coast of the mainland, Bamaga and Seisia . According to the Torres Strait Treaty, residents of Papua New Guinea are permitted to visit the Torres Strait Islands for traditional purposes. There are three languages spoken on the islands. The two indigenous languages are the Western-Central Torres Strait Language (called by various names, including Kalaw Lagaw Ya, Kalaw Kawaw Ya, Kulkalgau Ya and Kaiwaligau Ya), and
8549-544: The not too distant future all of the Indigenous languages will be lost, perhaps by 2050, and with them the cultural knowledge they convey. 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 mixed together, with Australian Aboriginal English or Australian Kriol language as
8652-433: 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. For children, proficiency in the language of their cultural heritage has a positive influence on their ethnic identity formation, and it
8755-480: The opportunity to learn some words and concepts related to the lost language). The National Indigenous Languages Survey is a regular Australia-wide survey of the status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages conducted in 2005, 2014 and 2019. Languages with more than 100 speakers: Total 46 languages, 42,300 speakers, with 11 having only approximately 100. 11 languages have over 1,000 speakers. Most Australian languages are commonly held to belong to
8858-452: The other Torres Strait Islands. They were classified as part of the British colony of Queensland and, after 1901, of the Australian state of Queensland. But some of them lie just off the coast of New Guinea. In 1885, John Douglas was appointed as Government Resident Magistrate residing on Thursday Island. He made periodic tours of all the islands and was known to all the natives. He established
8961-551: The preceding stem contains a nasal consonant. While the existence of phonemic pre-stopped nasals and laterals, contrasting with plain nasals and laterals, has been documented in some Australian languages, nasals and laterals are pre-stopped on a phonetic level in most languages of the continent. These phenomena are the result of a general resistance to the anticipatory assimilation of nasality and laterality. The lack of assimilation makes coda nasals and laterals more acoustically distinct. Most speakers of Australian languages speak with
9064-478: The probable number of languages and the estimate of pre-contact population levels that there may have been from 3,000 to 4,000 speakers on average for each of the 250 languages. A number of these languages were almost immediately wiped out within decades of colonisation, the case of the Aboriginal Tasmanians being one notorious example of precipitous linguistic ethnocide . Tasmania had been separated from
9167-570: 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 . Johanna Nichols suggests that the northern families may be relatively recent arrivals from Maritime Southeast Asia , perhaps later replaced there by
9270-480: The provincial capital, Daru . Only 17 of the islands are inhabited. The Torres Strait Islands' population was recorded at 4,514 in the 2016 Australian census , with 91.8% of these identifying as Indigenous Torres Strait Island peoples . Although counted as Indigenous Australians , Torres Strait Islander peoples, being predominantly Melanesian , are ethnically and culturally different from Aboriginal Australians . The Spanish Explorer Luís Vaez de Torres sailed
9373-474: The region's airport, and as a result is something of an entrepôt with inhabitants drawn from many other communities. Kiriri (Hammond Island) is the other permanently settled island of this group; Tuined (Possession Island) is noted for Lt. James Cook's landing there in 1770. Moa in the Near Western group is culturally and linguistically speaking part of this group. This cluster is more widely distributed in
9476-404: The remainder are classified as "non-Pama–Nyungan", which is a term of convenience that does not imply a genealogical relationship. In the late 18th century there were more than 250 distinct First Nations Peoples social groupings and a similar number of languages or varieties . The status and knowledge of Aboriginal languages today varies greatly. Many languages became extinct with settlement as
9579-558: The rest. They are volcanic in origin, the peaks of volcanoes which were active in Pleistocene times. Consequently, their hillsides have rich and fertile red volcanic soils, and are thickly vegetated. The easternmost of these are less than 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the northern extension of the Great Barrier Reef. The national flag features a white Dhari (headdress) and, underneath, a white five-pointed star, symbolising "peace,
9682-785: The same time, Australian languages make full use of those distinctions, namely place of articulation distinctions, which people with otitis media-caused hearing loss can perceive more easily. This hypothesis has been challenged on historical, comparative, statistical, and medical grounds. A language which displays the full range of stops, nasals 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 prenasalised consonants at all seven places of articulation, in addition to all four laterals. A notable exception to
9785-472: 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. Nicholas Evans suggests that the Pama–Nyungan family spread along with the now-dominant Aboriginal culture that includes the Australian Aboriginal kinship system. In late 2017, Mark Harvey and Robert Mailhammer published
9888-464: The subject of a concerted revival movement since the 1980s, coordinated by Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi , a unit working out of the University of Adelaide . The language had rapidly disappeared after the settlement of South Australia and the breaking up of local indigenous people. Ivaritji, the last known speaker of the language, died in 1931. However, a substantial number of primary source records existed for
9991-538: The system under which the hereditary native chief of each island was installed as chief magistrate, supporting the local traditional system. He also established Native Police, but the only island on which the Native Police were armed was Saibai . There they were provided with Snider carbines to repel the attacks of the Marind-anim (formerly known as Tugeri), the headhunters who raided the islands from their territory on
10094-497: 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
10197-432: The western Torres Strait Islands are the remaining peaks of this land bridge which were not completely submerged when the ocean levels rose. The islands and their surrounding waters and reefs provide a highly diverse set of land and marine ecosystems , with niches for many rare or unique species. Saltwater crocodiles inhabit the islands along with neighbouring areas of Queensland and Papua New Guinea . Marine animals of
10300-420: The word-initial position is prominent, maintaining all a language's contrasts, that is not the case in Australia. Here the prominent position is C 1 (C 2 ), in the middle of the word. C 1 is typically the only position allowing all of a language's place of articulation contrasts. Fortis/lenis contrasts can only occur at C 1 , or at C 2 when C 1 is a sonorant. Consonant clusters are often restricted to
10403-415: The world. In Australia, this type of assimilation seems only to have affected consonants within the apical and laminal categories. There's little evidence of assimilation between the labial, apical, laminal, and dorsal categories. Many proto-Pama–Nyungan /-np-/ and /-nk-/ clusters have been preserved across Australia. Heterorganic nasal + stop sequences remain stable even in modern connected speech, which
10506-543: Was the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL2019), as declared by the United Nations General Assembly . The commemoration was used to raise awareness of and support for the preservation of Aboriginal languages within Australia, including spreading knowledge about the importance of each language to the identity and knowledge of Indigenous groups. Warrgamay/Girramay man Troy Wyles-Whelan joined
10609-623: Was the first legislation in Australia to acknowledge the significance of first languages. In 2019 the Royal Australian Mint issued a 50-cent coin to celebrate the International Year of Indigenous Languages which features 14 different words for "money" from Australian Indigenous languages. The coin was designed by Aleksandra Stokic in consultation with Indigenous language custodian groups. The work of digitising and transcribing many word lists created by ethnographer Daisy Bates in
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