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44-510: Dench (1995) says that for Yinhawangka, Nhuwala and Ngarla there is insufficient data to enable them to be confidently classified, and he places them in Ngayarda for convenience. However, Bowern & Koch (2004) include them without proviso. Further, there are grounds for considering Yindjibarndi-Kurrama and Ngarluma-Kariyarra to be dialect pairs, though the indigenous perception is that they are separate languages. Palyku has sometimes been excluded; it

88-486: A calque of the Ancient Greek word ὑγρός ( hygrós , transl.  moist ), initially used by grammarian Dionysius Thrax to describe Greek sonorants . Liquid consonants are more prone to be part of consonant clusters and of the syllable nucleus . Their third formants are generally non-predictable based on the first two formants. Another important feature is their complex articulation , which makes them

132-562: A Coastal Ngayarda and an Inland Ngayarda. This is no longer considered correct, however Austin (1988) points out that von Brandenstein's errors have been reproduced by Wurm and Hattori in their map of Australian languages, which appears to be based on the same classification. Pama%E2%80%93Nyungan languages The Pama–Nyungan languages are the most widespread family of Australian Aboriginal languages , containing 306 out of 400 Aboriginal languages in Australia. The name "Pama–Nyungan"

176-443: A child's phonological development , and they are more likely to be deleted in consonant clusters before the age of three. Liquids have also been described as consonants involving "complex lingual geometries." To better determine the full range of articulatory and acoustic characteristics of liquids, the use of ultrasound paired with audio recordings is increasing. This is due to this consonant group being difficult to analyse on

220-560: A complicated gender system, diverge from it. Proto-Pama–Nyungan may have been spoken as recently as about 5,000 years ago, much more recently than the 40,000 to 60,000 years indigenous Australians are believed to have been inhabiting Australia . How the Pama–Nyungan languages spread over most of the continent and displaced any pre-Pama–Nyungan languages is uncertain; one possibility is that language could have been transferred from one group to another alongside culture and ritual . Given

264-547: A frequent example is the behaviour of /r/ and /l/: In English, comfortable is frequently pronounced /ˈkʌmf.tɚ.bəl/ in rhotic varieties, although its stem, comfort is pronounced /ˈkʌm.fɚt/, with the rhotic /ɹ/ in its original position. Liquid consonant can also undergo assimilation (cf. Sicilian pa rr ari "to speak" and Italian pa rl are ). This phenomenon is one of the reasons long liquids are common in Finnish despite being not so common worldwide. See tu ll ut from

308-416: A hard consonant class to study with precision and the last consonants to be produced by children during their phonological development . They are also more likely to undergo certain types of phonological changes such as assimilation , dissimilation and metathesis . Most languages have at least one liquid in their phonemic inventory . English has two, /l/ and /ɹ/. The grammarian Dionysius Thrax used

352-475: A mid- Holocene expansion of Pama–Nyungan from the Gulf Plains of northeastern Australia. Pama–Nyungan languages generally share several broad phonotactic constraints: single-consonant onsets, a lack of fricatives, and a prohibition against liquids (laterals and rhotics) beginning words. Voiced fricatives have developed in several scattered languages, such as Anguthimri , though often the sole alleged fricative

396-572: A mistranslation), whence it has been retained in the Western European phonetic tradition. In the sonority hierarchy , liquids are considered the most sonorous sounds after vowels and glides, with laterals considered to be less sonorous than rhotics. This explains why they are more likely to be part of consonant clusters than other consonants (excluding glides), and to follow obstruents in initial consonant clusters and precede them in final consonant clusters. Liquids also hold this position in

440-481: A mixture of histories that reflect both contact and inheritance. Bowern and Atkinson's computational model is currently the definitive model of Pama–Nyungan intra-relatedness and diachrony. Liquid consonant In linguistics , a liquid consonant or simply liquid is any of a class of consonants that consists of rhotics and voiced lateral approximants , which are also sometimes described as "R-like sounds" and "L-like sounds". The word liquid seems to be

484-451: A process known as vocalisation. See, for example, Sicilian ca u du from Latin ca l idus . According to a survey by linguist Ian Maddieson , most languages have one to three liquids (with systems of two liquids being the most common) and they are usually dental or alveolar . Liquid consonants are also rarely geminated cross-linguistically. Many languages, such as Japanese , Korean , or Polynesian languages (see below), have

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528-451: A purely auditory base. Liquids seem to be more or less subjected to certain sound changes or phonological processes than other consonants. On an auditory level, liquid consonants resemble each other, which is likely the reason they undergo or trigger assimilation , dissimilation and metathesis . Cross-linguistically, liquids tend to be more prone to metathesis than other consonants, especially long-distance metathesis. In Spanish,

572-461: A single liquid phoneme that has both lateral and rhotic allophones . English has two liquid phonemes, one lateral, / l / and one rhotic, / ɹ / , exemplified in the words l ed and r ed . Many other European languages have one lateral and one rhotic phoneme. Some, such as Greek , Italian and Serbo-Croatian , have more than two liquid phonemes. All three languages have the set /l/, /ʎ/, /r/ , with two laterals and one rhotic. Similarly,

616-473: A taxonomic term. The Pama–Nyungan family accounts for most of the geographic spread, most of the Aboriginal population, and the greatest number of languages. Most of the Pama–Nyungan languages are spoken by small ethnic groups of hundreds of speakers or fewer. Many languages, either due to disease or elimination of their speakers, have become extinct, and almost all remaining ones are endangered in some way. Only in

660-429: Is /ɣ/ and is analysed as an approximant /ɰ/ by other linguists. An exception is Kala Lagaw Ya , which acquired both fricatives and a voicing contrast in them and in its plosives from contact with Papuan languages . Several of the languages of Victoria allowed initial /l/ , and one— Gunai —also allowed initial /r/ and consonant clusters /kr/ and /pr/ , a trait shared with the extinct Tasmanian languages across

704-496: Is ἀν δ ρός an d rós , with the insertion of a [d] sound between a nasal consonant and the liquid [r]. Another example is the Irish word bolg "belly", usually pronounced with an epenthetic schwa [ə] after the liquid [lˠ]: [ˈbˠɔlˠəg] . Liquids can often be the result of lenition , the change of a consonant towards characteristics that are typical of vowels, making it "weaker". They are also likely to become vowels or glides ,

748-498: Is a merism : it is derived from the two end-points of the range, the Pama languages of northeast Australia (where the word for "man" is pama ) and the Nyungan languages of southwest Australia (where the word for "man" is nyunga ). The other language families indigenous to the continent of Australia are often referred to, by exclusion, as non-Pama–Nyungan languages, though this is not

792-425: Is expected based on the first two formants. In articulatory phonetics , liquids are described as controlled gestures , which are slower and require more precise tongue movement during the "homing phase", when the tongue adjusts towards the place of articulation of the consonant. Due to the fact that babies prefer ballistic gestures , which rely on the propelling motion of the jaw, liquids usually occur later in

836-497: Is in turned loaned into English as colonel , with an orthography inspired by Italian but with the /ˈkɚnəl/ or /ˈkɜːnel/ pronunciation with the rhotic r , which is absent in writing. Epenthesis , or the addition of sounds, is common in environments where liquids are present, especially consonant clusters . The epenthetic sound can be a vowel or a consonant. For example, the genitive of the Ancient Greek noun ἀνήρ anḗr "man"

880-470: Is somewhat divergent. The name ngayarda comes from the word for "man" in many of the languages of the group. They form a branch of the Pama–Nyungan family . The Ngayarda group is justified on the basis of lexicostatistics as well as the following grammatical features first proposed by O'Grady (1966) as diagnostic of this group: C.G. von Brandenstein devised a classification which divided this group into

924-457: The Lower Burdekin languages . A few more inclusive groups that have been proposed, such as Northeast Pama–Nyungan (Pama–Maric), Central New South Wales , and Southwest Pama–Nyungan , appear to be geographical rather than genealogical groups. Bowern & Atkinson (2012) use computational phylogenetics to calculate the following classification: According to Nicholas Evans ,

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968-436: The Ancient Greek word ὑγρός ( hygrós , transl.  moist ) to describe the sonorant consonants ( /l, r, m, n/ ) of classical Greek . It is assumed that the term referred to their changing or inconsistent (or "fluid") effect on meter in classical Greek verse when they occur as the second member of a consonant cluster (see below). This word was calqued into Latin as liquidus (possibly because of

1012-597: The Iberian languages contrast four liquid phonemes. /l/ , /ʎ/ , /ɾ/ , and a fourth phoneme that is an alveolar trill in all but many varieties of Portuguese , where it is a uvular trill or fricative (also, the majority of Spanish speakers lack /ʎ/ and use the central /ʝ/ instead). Some European languages, for example Russian and Irish , contrast a palatalized lateral–rhotic pair with an unpalatalized (or velarized ) set (e.g. /lʲ/ /rʲ/ /l/ /r/ in Russian). Elsewhere in

1056-545: The comparative method . In his last published paper from the same collection, Ken Hale describes Dixon's scepticism as an erroneous phylogenetic assessment which is "so bizarrely faulted, and such an insult to the eminently successful practitioners of Comparative Method Linguistics in Australia, that it positively demands a decisive riposte." In the same work Hale provides unique pronominal and grammatical evidence (with suppletion) as well as more than fifty basic-vocabulary cognates (showing regular sound correspondences) between

1100-455: The root tul- "to come" and the past participle suffix - nut . A specific form of liquid assimilation, liquid harmony , is present is some languages. In Sundanese, some morphemes have two different realisations depending on what liquid is present in the root. Liquids are also prone to dissimilation when they occur in sequence. For example, Old Italian co l onne ll o "colonel" is borrowed into Middle French as co r onne l , which

1144-580: The Bass Strait. At the time of the European arrival in Australia, there were some 300 Pama–Nyungan languages divided across three dozen branches. What follows are the languages listed in Bowern (2011b) and Bowern (2012) ; numbers in parentheses are the numbers of languages in each branch. These vary from languages so distinct they are difficult to demonstrate as being in the same branch, to near-dialects on par with

1188-591: 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 km apart (as well as from many other languages), to support the Pama–Nyungan grouping, whose age he compares to that of Proto-Indo-European . Bowern offered an alternative to Dixon's binary phylogenetic-tree model based in

1232-495: The central inland portions of the continent do Pama–Nyungan languages remain spoken vigorously by the entire community. The Pama–Nyungan family was identified and named by Kenneth L. Hale , in his work on the classification of Native Australian languages. Hale's research led him to the conclusion that of the Aboriginal Australian languages, one relatively closely interrelated family had spread and proliferated over most of

1276-439: The classic tonguetwister st r č p r st sk r z k r k "push (your) finger through (your) throat." This is also true for General American English (see the words barr el and anch or ) and other English accents . Sequences of an obstruent and a liquid consonant are often ambiguous as far as syllabification is concerned. In these cases, whether the two consonants are part of the same syllable or not heavily depends on

1320-519: The closest relative of Pama–Nyungan is the Garawan language family , followed by the small Tangkic family. He then proposes a more distant relationship with the Gunwinyguan languages in a macro-family he calls Macro-Pama–Nyungan . However, this has yet to be demonstrated to the satisfaction of the linguistic community. In his 1980 attempt to reconstruct Proto-Australian, R. M. W. Dixon reported that he

1364-482: The continent, while approximately a dozen other families were concentrated along the North coast. Evans and McConvell describe typical Pama–Nyungan languages such as Warlpiri as dependent-marking and exclusively suffixing languages which lack gender, while noting that some non-Pama–Nyungan languages such as Tangkic share this typology and some Pama–Nyungan languages like Yanyuwa , a head-marking and prefixing language with

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1408-721: The differences between the Scandinavian languages . Down the east coast, from Cape York to the Bass Strait , there are: Continuing along the south coast, from Melbourne to Perth: Up the west coast: Cutting inland back to Paman, south of the northern non-Pama–Nyungan languages, are Encircled by these branches are: Separated to the north of the rest of Pama–Nyungan is Some of inclusions in each branch are only provisional, as many languages became extinct before they could be adequately documented. Not included are dozens of poorly attested and extinct languages such as Barranbinja and

1452-467: The features that would allow for a phylogenetic approach. This finding functioned as a kind of rejoinder to Dixon's scepticism. Our work puts to rest once and for all the claim that Australian languages are so exceptional that methods used elsewhere in the world do not work on this continent . The methods presented here have been used with Bantu, Austronesian, Indo-European, and Japonic languages (among others). Pama-Nyungan languages, like all languages, show

1496-416: The following: He believes that Lower Murray (five families and isolates), Arandic (2 families, Kaytetye and Arrernte), and Kalkatungic (2 isolates) are small Sprachbunds . Dixon's theories of Australian language diachrony have been based on a model of punctuated equilibrium (adapted from the eponymous model in evolutionary biology ) wherein he believes Australian languages to be ancient and to have—for

1540-403: The hierarchy of syllable peaks, which means that liquids are theoretically more likely to be syllabic (or, in other words, be part of a syllable nucleus ) than any other consonants, although some studies show that syllabic nasals are overall more favoured. Thus Czech and other Slavic languages allow their liquid consonants /l/ and /r/ to be the center of their syllables – as witnessed by

1584-497: The individual language, and closely related languages can behave differently (such as Icelandic and Faroese). In Latin and Ancient Greek, obstruent + liquid consonant clusters (known as muta cum liquida ) supposedly were ambiguous in this sense, and as such were often used to manipulate meter. Acoustically , liquids seem to have a third formant of unexpected value when compared to the first and second formants. This contrasts with non-liquid approximants , whose third formant value

1628-476: The most part—remained in unchanging equilibrium with the exception of sporadic branching or speciation events in the phylogenetic tree . Part of Dixon's objections to the Pama–Nyungan family classification is the lack of obvious binary branching points which are implicitly or explicitly entailed by his model. However, the papers in Bowern & Koch (2004) demonstrate about ten traditional groups, including Pama–Nyungan, and its sub-branches such as Arandic, using

1672-528: The other side, there are many indigenous languages in the Amazon Basin and eastern North America, as well as a few in Asia and Africa, with no liquids. Polynesian languages typically have only one liquid, which may be either a lateral or a rhotic. Non-Polynesian Oceanic languages usually have both /l/ and /r/ , occasionally more (e.g. Araki has /l/ , /ɾ/ , /r/ ) or less (e.g. Mwotlap has only /l/ ). Hiw

1716-559: The principles of dialect geography . Rather than discarding the notion that multiple subgroups of languages are genetically related due to the presence of multiple dialectal epicentres arranged around stark isoglosses , Bowern proposed that the non-binary-branching characteristics of Pama–Nyungan languages are precisely what we would expect to see from a language continuum in which dialects are diverging linguistically but remaining in close geographic and social contact. Bowern offered three main advantages of this geographical-continuum model over

1760-529: The punctuated equilibrium model: First, there is a place for both divergence and convergence as processes of language change; punctuated equilibrium stresses convergence as the main mechanism of language change in Australia. Second, it makes Pama-Nyungan look much more similar to other areas of the world. We no longer have to assume that Australia is a special case. Third, and related to this, we do not have to assume in this model that there has been intensive diffusion of many linguistic elements that in other parts of

1804-421: The relationship of cognates between groups, it seems that Pama–Nyungan has many of the characteristics of a sprachbund , indicating the antiquity of multiple waves of culture contact between groups. Dixon in particular has argued that the genealogical trees found with many language families do not fit in the Pama–Nyungan family. Using computational phylogenetics , Bouckaert, Bowern & Atkinson (2018) posit

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1848-511: The world are resistant to borrowing (such as shared irregularities). Additional methods of computational phylogenetics employed by Bowern and Atkinson uncovered that there were more binary-branching characteristics than initially thought. Instead of acceding to the notion that Pama–Nyungan languages do not share the characteristics of a binary-branching language family, the computational methods revealed that inter-language loan rates were not as atypically high as previously imagined and do not obscure

1892-641: The world, two liquids of the types mentioned above remains the most common attribute of a language's consonant inventory except in North America and Australia. A majority of indigenous North American languages do not have rhotics at all and there is a wide variety of lateral sounds , though most are obstruent laterals rather than liquids. Most indigenous Australian languages , in contrast, are very rich in liquids, with some having as many as seven distinct liquids. They typically include dental, alveolar, retroflex and palatal laterals, and as many as three rhotics. On

1936-473: Was unable to find anything that reliably set Pama–Nyungan apart as a valid genetic group. Fifteen years later, he had abandoned the idea that Australian or Pama–Nyungan were families. He now sees Australian as a Sprachbund ( Dixon 2002 ). Some of the small traditionally Pama–Nyungan families which have been demonstrated through the comparative method , or which in Dixon's opinion are likely to be demonstrable, include

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