Darkinjung language
Darkinjung | |
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Hawkesbury–MacDonald River | |
Region | Darkinung |
Extinct | before sound recordings |
Revival | A small number of second-language users in revival program |
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Dialects |
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Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | xda |
Glottolog | hawk1239 |
AIATSIS[1] | S65 |
ELP | Darkinyung |
Darkinjung (Darrkinyung; many other spellings; see below) is an
Alternate names
The name of the language has various spellings as recorded by both Mathews and W.J. Enright, among others, whom worked off of documentation from the 19th century: Since 2003 there has been a movement from the Darkinyung language group to revitalise the language. They started working with the original field reports of Robert H. Mathews and W. J. Enright. Where there were gaps in the sparsely populated wordlists, words were taken from lexically similar nearby languages. This led to the publication of the work Darkinyung grammar and dictionary: revitalising a language from historical sources.[5] This may be ordered from the publisher, Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative.[6]
Much of our understanding of Darkinjung phonology comes from papers published by R.H. Mathews in 1903. When analysing these sources, we may generalise that there were around 15 consonants phonemes, and approximately 3 vowels.[5]
In Darkinjung, like many Australian languages, b, d, and g are interchangeable with p, t, and k and will not change the meaning of the word. The fact that this table shows b, d, and g is arbitrary.
Darkinjung makes use of what Mathews refers to as "tags," or suffixes to denote relationships between objects in sentences.[5]
Number tags -bula "two" and -biyn "several"
miri-bula dog-two 'a couple of dogs' Possessor Tag: -gayi
guri- man gayi POSS bargan boomerang 'a man's boomerang' Locative "at, on, in" tags: -a/ -da/ -dja/ -ga/ -wa
The locative tags -ga and -wa appear to be found after stems ending in vowels.[5]
gawin-da bank-LOC nhayi that.over.there 'on the other side' Words with locational information seem to coincide with nouns that also carry a locative tag:
wallang-gayn-dja behind-?-LOC gundji-ga hut-LOC gara-dhi hide-PRES 'around the house, hidden' Ergative case tags: -a/ -da/ -ga/ -ya. Words that end in the consonant ŋ receive that tag /-ga/
nyugang-ga woman-ERG wagar perch mana-yi get-PAST 'the woman caught a perch'Revitalisation effort
Phonology
Consonants
Bilabial
Dental
Alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Plosive
b
ɟ
g
Nasal
m
ɲ
ŋ
Trill
Approximant
w
j
Lateral
Vowels
Front
Back
High
ɪ
ʊ
ɐ
Morphology
"Tags"
References
Additional References
External links