Warndarrang (waɳʈaraŋ), also spelt Warndarang, Wanderang, Wandaran, and other variants is an extinct Aboriginal Australian language in the Arnhem family, formerly spoken by the Warndarrang people in southern Arnhem Land, along the Gulf of Carpentaria.^[1] The last speaker was Isaac Joshua, who died in 1974, while working with the linguist Jeffrey Heath.

Warndarrang is characterised by an unusually simplified nominal case system but highly intricate pronominal and demonstrative systems. It is a primarily prefixing language with agglutinating verbal complexes and relatively straightforward syntax.

Warndarrang is closely related to Mara, which was traditionally spoken to the south of Warndarang and today has a handful of speakers. The languages Alawa and Yugul, spoken to the west of Warndarrang and both apparently extinct, are also related.

Heath's Warndarang grammar contains a 100-page grammatical description, a handful of texts, and a brief wordlist. A Warndarang story of the Hodgson Downs massacre is published separately, and both Margaret Sharpe and Arthur Capell collected material in the 1960s and 1940s, respectively, much of which is unpublished but was incorporated into Heath's grammar.

Language and speakers

Warndarang is a member of the Gunwinyguan family, the second-largest Australian language family after Pama–Nyungan.^[2] Warndarang is an extinct language — the last speaker died in 1974 — but was traditionally spoken along the Gulf of Carpentaria, in Arnhem Land (Northern Territory, Australia) near the mouths of the Roper, Phelp, and Rose Rivers. The term ɳuŋguɭaŋur, meaning "corroboree people," was used by Warndarang speakers to refer to the people in the Roper River area, though waɳʈaraŋ was used to refer to speakers of Warndarang specifically.^[3]

Within the Gunwinyguan languages, Warndarang is most closely related to Mara, a language today spoken by only a handful of people. Warndarang and Mara, together with Alawa and Yugul, form what used to be known as the "Mara-Alawic family"^[3] and today is considered a subgrouping of the Gunwinyguan family.^[2] Mara was traditionally spoken to the south of Warndarang, along the coast and the Limmen Bight River, while Yugul and Alawa were spoken inland, to the west of Warndarang. Yugul and Alawa both appear to be extinct. Warndarang territory was bordered on the north by the languages Ngandi and Nunggubuyu, with which Warndarang had significant contact.^[3] Ngandi is extinct, though many Nunggubuyu children are semi-speakers.^[2]

The Warndarang people classified themselves into four patrilineal semimoieties used in ritual settings: mambali, muruŋun, wuʈal, and guyal (wuyal). Mambali and muruŋun were considered to be associated, as were wuʈal and guyal, enough so that a person of one semimoiety learned and was permitted to sing the traditional songs of the associated semimoiety.^[3] Each semimoiety was associated with a particular watering hole and animal totems (for example, muruŋun had the totem ŋarugalin, "dugong "), though anybody could drink from the watering holes and a person was permitted to consume his or her totem.^[4] This structure is very similar to those of the Mara and Nunggubuyu people.^[3]

The majority of Warndarang material was collected by the linguist Jeffrey Heath in 1973 (two days) and 1974 (fifteen days) from a single informant, Isaac Joshua. Isaac was born in approximately 1904 in the Phelp River region, moving as a young man to work as a stockman with the Mara people. As such, he had spoken very little Warndarang in decades preceding Heath's arrival, speaking instead in Mara, English, Kriol, or Nunggubuyu, but proved to be a good informant, especially knowledgeable on flora-fauna and religiously significant terms. Brief work on Warndarang by Margaret Sharpe in the 1960s also used Isaac Joshua as the sole informant, though Arthur Capell's work in the 1940s used Isaac's brother, Joshua Joshua. An elderly woman by the name of Elizabeth Joshua remembered a small amount of Warndarang, and Heath checked a few points with her after Isaac's death.^[3]

Grammar

(All grammatical information from Heath 1980^[3] unless otherwise noted.)

Phonetics

Consonant inventory

Warndarang has a consonant inventory similar to that of many Australian languages. There are five main places of articulation – bilabial, apico-alveolar, retroflex, lamino-alveolar, and velar – with a stop and a nasal in each, with the addition of a rarely used interdental stop. There are also two laterals, two rhotics, and two semi-vowels. The presence of a glottal stop is debatable; the glottal stops that Heath heard were unstable and appeared to be optional.

As there is no standard Warndarang orthography, the following is used through this article. IPA symbols, when different from the presented orthography, are included in brackets.

Vowel inventory

Warndarang has three commonly used vowels: /a/, /i/, and /u/. A small number of words also contain an /e/, though there is some evidence that these are all loanwords. (Mara also has a very small quantity of lexical items containing an /e/, all of which are related to insect terminology.) Additionally, the vowel /o/ appears in exactly one Warndarang word: the interjection yo!, meaning "yes, good!" and found in many nearby languages as well as in the local English-based creole. Heath observed no allophones within the five vowels.

Phonology

Rules for consonant clusters

Word- or stem-final clusters in Warndarang are formed by the combination of a lateral, rhotic, or semi-vowel (l, ɭ, r, ɻ, y, or w) and a velar or lamino-alveolar stop or nasal (g, ŋ, j, or ɲ). The only word- or stem-initial clusters are nasal-stop combinations in which the nasal is usually not pronounced.

Medial (inter-word or inter-stem) double consonant clusters are common. Nasal + stop clusters, both homorganic (formed with phonemes from the same place of articulation) and non-homorganic, are frequent, as are nasal + nasal clusters. Stop + nasal clusters are rare, but they do occur. Liquids (laterals or rhotics) can be combined with stops or nasals, though (stop or nasal) + liquid are not found. Geminate clusters (in which the same consonant is repeated twice) are found only in reduplicated words such as garaggarag, "darter (Anhinga novaehollandiae)."

Medial triple clusters are rare, though are seen in laterals or rhotics followed by homorganic (same place of articulation) nasal + stop clusters, as in buɻŋgar "dirty water" (both /ŋ/ and /g/ are velar). A small number of reduplicated words display other consonant combinations, as in guralgguralg "common koel (Eudynamys orientalis)".

Rules for vowel clusters

When two vowels come into contact across morphemes, the cluster is simplified to one vowel. Gemination, the repetition of the same vowel, results in that vowel. Any vowel followed by an /i/ will become an /i/. /u/ + /a/ will become an /u/, and /a/ + /u/ will become an /a/. Heath was not able to acquire enough data to determine a rule for /i/ + /a/ or /i/ + /u/, and only the underlying triple-vowel sequence /uai/, which becomes an /i/, was observed out of all possible three-vowel combinations.

Rules for word-initial phonemes

At the beginnings of words or stems, apico-alveolar and retroflexed consonants are not distinguished. When words are reduplicated or pronounced directly after a vowel, however, Heath was able to hear slight retroflexion, and so these words are typically analyzed to begin with a retroflex, with the exceptions of /nd/ versus /ɳʈ/, in which Heath found a contrast, and the single word daga meaning "sister," which was never heard as *ʈaga.

Nearly all Warndarang words begin with consonants; the few, chiefly adverbial, exceptions are posited by Heath as underlyingly beginning with a semivowel ?pojem= or /y/.

Rules for stops

Stops are typically voiced in all but syllable-final positions, where they are voiceless, and nearly all stops are lenis. The interdental stop d̪, however, which occurs primarily in loans from Nunggubuyu, is fortis and voiceless no matter its position. Nasal-stop combinations can occur only at the beginning of prefixed noun stems, though in prefix-less nouns only the stop is pronounced, with the sole exception of the archaic reduplicated verb mbir-mbir "to make a nest".

Stops occurring for the second time in words are frequently lenited: a second /b/ or /g/ will become a ?pojem= and a second /j/ a /y/. This pattern is usually observed in reduplicated words, as in gujirwujir "jellyfish" or jaɻi-yaɻi "to do continuously." Exceptions occur, however – for example, there is no lenition in the word buwa-buwa "to face punishment by spearing" and the noun mawaɻayimbirjimbir "hook spear" has the first j leniting, not the second.

Stop nasalization occurs when a stop is followed by a nasal across a morpheme boundary, though such nasalization is optional: both giadmayi (underlying form) and gianmayi are acceptable forms of "they (two) went." Stop germination across morpheme boundaries almost always results in simplification to a single phoneme.

Reduplication

Reduplication is found frequently in Warndarang. A reduplicated verb typically indicates that the action is repeated, done continuously, or performed by many people. For example, ala-biyi-wiyima means "they were all fighting" and waɻ-waɻŋawiɳʈima means "I saw him frequently." In nouns and adjectives, reduplication often but not always takes the meaning of plurality, often with humans, as in wulu-muna-munaɳa-ɲu "white people" or wu-ɭuɭga-ɭuɭga "islands."

Reduplication can be full (the entire word is repeated), monosyllabic (only one syllable of the word is repeated), or bisyllabic (two syllables of the word are repeated).

Nominal morphology

Nouns and adjectives can be distinguished in meaning only; they are treated identically grammatically. Therefore, when the word "noun" is used in this section, it refers to both nouns and adjectives.

Nominal classes

Nouns referring to humans fall into one of six classes, denoted by prefixes:

ɻa- is used for human nouns where the number or gender are either unknown, unimportant, or clear from context.

There are also six noun classes for non-human nouns, also marked by prefixes. The assignment of nouns to a noun class is apparently arbitrary, though there are a few generalizations:

Some nouns were found to vary in their noun classes, alternating prefixes without any apparent change in meaning. Note that while there is a singular-dual distinction, there is no morphological way to distinguish non-human singular nouns from non-human plural nouns.

Case markings

Nouns in Warndarang can be marked with suffixes for one of six cases:

The nominative case is used for the subjects of clauses are well as both direct and indirect objects and in some situations where the instrumental or purposive might be more expected. Unlike in many other Australian languages, the subject–object distinction is marked on the verb and not on the noun.

Additionally, there is also an absolutive suffix, which is added before the locative or the nominative marking and to most unmarked nouns. This suffix depends on the last phoneme of the stem:

There is also a rare diminutive suffix -gaɲa-.

Articles

In addition to the class markers, there are also articles that mark the number and gender of the nouns.

In human nouns, there are 4 articles. For non-human nouns, there are 6 articles corresponding to the non-human noun classes.

The –nu in these articles can be optionally omitted.

Kin termsedit

Typically, possession in Warndarang is simply marked with juxtaposition, in which a pronoun possessive and the possessor in the nominative case directly follows the possessed object. In kinship terms, however, possession is marked with special affixes. First person kinship possession is marked with ŋa-, second person kinship possession is marked with ø-, and third person by a noun class prefix and the absolutive suffix. There is no distinction of number in the possessors. For example: