Kayardild language

Kayardild
Region South Wellesley Islands, north west Queensland, Australia
Native speakers
8 (2005) to 25 (2006 census)[1]
Dialects
Kayardild
Yangkaal[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
gyd  Kayardild
nny  Yangkaal/Nyangga (two different languages)
Glottolog kaya1318[3]
AIATSIS[1] G35 Kayardild, G37 Yangkaal

Kayardild is a Tangkic language spoken on the South Wellesley Islands, north west Queensland, Australia, with fewer than ten fluent speakers remaining. Other members of the family include Lardil, Yukulta (Ganggalida) and Yangkaal. It is famous for its many unusual case phenomena, including case stacking of up to four levels, the use of clause-level case to signal interclausal relations and pragmatic factors, and another set of 'verbal case' endings which convert their hosts from nouns into verbs morphologically.

Sounds

Kayardild consonant phonemes[4]
Peripheral Laminal Apical
Bilabial Velar Palatal Dental Alveolar Retroflex
Plosive p k c t ʈ
Nasal m ŋ ɲ n ɳ
Trill r
Lateral ʎ l
Approximant w j ɻ
Kayardild vowel phonemes[4]
Front Back
Close i iː u uː
Open a aː

References

  1. 1 2 Kayardild at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies  (see the info box for additional links)
  2. Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge University Press. p. xxxix.
  3. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Kayardild–Yangkaal". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  4. 1 2 Evans (1995a:727)

Bibliography

Further reading



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