Kunjen language

Kunjen
Uw
Native to Australia
Region Cape York Peninsula, Queensland
Native speakers
2 (2005)[1]
Dialects
Uw Oykangand
Uw Olkola
Ogh-Undjan
Kawarrang
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
kjn  Oykangand
olk  Olkol
Glottolog kunj1248[2]
AIATSIS[1] Y83 Kunjen (cover term), Y188* Kokiny

Kunjen, or Uw, is a Paman language spoken on the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland, Australia, by the Uw Oykangand people, Uw Olkola, and related peoples. It is closely related to Kuuk Thaayorre, and perhaps Kuuk Yak.

Two of its dialects, Uw Olkola (Olgolo) and Uw Oykangand (Koko Wanggara), are very close, being mutually intelligible and sharing 97% of their core vocabulary.[3] Another two, Ogh-Undjan and Kawarrangg, are also close, but somewhat more distant from the first pair. Kokinj (Kokiny) is a subdialect of Ogh-Undjan. Glottolog reports a variety Athima, but this is not documented at AIATSIS.

Below is a table showing the mutual intelligibility in vocabulary between the Kunjen dialects, based on a list of 100 basic words.[4]

Uw Oykangand 97% 44% 38%
Uw Olkola 43% 38%
Ogh-Undjan 82%
Kawarrangg

A small dictionary of Kunjen has been compiled by Philip Hamilton.[5]

Respect register

As in many other Australian languages, such as Dyirbal, Kunjen also has a respect register, which is a polite way of speaking with a potential mother-in-law and is called Olkel-Ilmbanhthi. Most of the vocabulary is replaced, while affixes and function words are kept.[6]

The sentence below is in normal Uw Oykangand:

Alka-nhdh idu-rr ay
spear-instr spear-pst I
"I speared it with a spear"

The equivalent in Olkel-Ilmbanhthi is:

Udnga-nhdh yanganyunyja-rr ay
spear-instr spear-pst I
"I speared it with a spear"

Phonology

Vowels

Kunjen has 5 vowels:

Front Back
Unrounded Rounded
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a

There is a lexical vowel harmony constraint in Kunjen: Close and mid vowels do not co-occur in a word.

Consonants

Kunjen has 27 consonants:

Peripheral Laminal Apical
Bilabial Velar Palatal Dental Alveolar Retroflex
Plosive voiceless p /p/ k /k/ ch /c/ th /t̪/ t /t/
Voiced b /b/ g /g/ j /ɟ/ dh /d̪/ d /d/
Nasal Plain m /m/ ng /ŋ/ ny /ɲ/ nh /n̪/ n /n/
Prestopped bm /ᵇm/ gng /ᶢŋ/ jny /ᶡɲ/ dnh /ᵈ̪n̪/ dn /ᵈn/
Trill rr /r/
Approximant Central w /w/ y /j/ r /ɻ/
Lateral ly /ʎ/ lh /l̪/ l /l/

References

  1. 1 2 Kunjen (cover term) at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies  (see the info box for additional links)
  2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Kunjen–Undjan–Athima". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. Description of the languages Uw Olkola and Uw Oykangand
  4. Sommer, Bruce A. (January 1970). "An Australian Language Without CV Syllables". International Journal of American Linguistics 36: 57–58. doi:10.1086/465090.
  5. Uw Oykangand and Uw Olkola wordlist
  6. Evans, Nicholas (2006). "Warramurrungunji Undone: Australian Languages in the 51st Millennium". In Brenzinger, Matthias. Language Diversity Endangered. pp. 354–355.


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