Sound change in Aboriginal Australia: word-initial engma deletion in Kunwok
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Alexandra Helen Marley
Abstract
This paper examines word-initial engma deletion in Bininj Kunwok. Loss of initial consonants is a well-documented historical process in many Australian languages (Blevins, Juliette. 2001. Where have all the onsets gone? Initial consonant loss in Australian Aboriginal languages. In Jane Simpson, David Nash, Mary Laughren, Peter Austin & Barry Alpher (eds.), Forty years on: Ken Hale and Australian languages, 481–492. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics), but there has been no systematic analysis of initial consonant loss as a synchronic variable (Fletcher, Janet & Andrew Butcher 2014. Sound patterns of Australian languages. In Harold Koch & Rachel Nordlinger (eds.), The languages and linguistics of Australia, 91–138. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton). In the case of Kunwok, word-initial velar nasal deletion (e.g. nganabbarru ∼ anabbarru ‘buffalo’) has been described as having regional distribution and is a prominent feature of speakers from the western and southern peripheries of the dialect chain, but variable in speakers from the central region (Evans, Nicholas. 2003. Bininj Kunwok: A pan-dialectal grammar of Mayali, Kunwinjku and Kune. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics). This study tests the distribution of the word-initial engma for both linguistic conditioning and sociolinguistic factors, and arrives at three conclusions. First, that preceding environment is a contributing factor. Second, that morphological class is a categorical conditioning factor. And third, that the phenomenon is spreading and there is evidence of language change in progress. This paper also takes into consideration community perspectives, noting that the sound change in progress is accompanied by a change in perceptions.
Funding source: ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100021101
Award Identifier / Grant number: CE140100041
Funding source: ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity
Award Identifier / Grant number: FL130100111
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the First Australians as the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia, and pay my respects to Elders past and present. This research was only possible thanks to the support and generosity of the Bininj people of West Arnhem Land, in particular the Mamardawerre community. This research was funded by an ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship Grant (FL130100111) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CE140100041). Thanks also go to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their feedback on draft versions of this manuscript. Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in this study. The Australian National University HREC Protocol: 2014/224.
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0062).
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Introduction to sound change in endangered or small speech communities
- Where have all the sound changes gone? Phonological stability and mechanisms of sound change
- Where have all the sound changes gone? Examining the scarcity of evidence for regular sound change in Australian languages
- Cross-dialectal synchronic variation of a diachronic conditioned merger in Tlingit
- Vowel harmony in Laz Turkish: a case study in language contact and language change
- The evolution of tonally conditioned allomorphy in Triqui: evidence from spontaneous speech corpora
- Sound change and gender-based differences in isolated regions: acoustic analysis of intervocalic phonemic stops by Bora-Spanish bilinguals
- Place uniformity and drift in the Suzhounese fricative and apical vowels
- Flexibility and evolution of cue weighting after a tonal split: an experimental field study on Tamang
- The emergence of bunched vowels from retroflex approximants in endangered Dardic languages
- The expanding influence of Thai and its effects on cue redistribution in Kuy
- Speech style variation in an endangered language
- Sound change in Aboriginal Australia: word-initial engma deletion in Kunwok
- The dental-alveolar contrast in Mapudungun: loss, preservation, and extension
- Sound change or community change? The speech community in sound change studies: a case study of Scottish Gaelic
- Phonetic transfer in Diné Bizaad (Navajo)
- The evolution of flap-nasalization in Hoocąk
- Sound change and tonogenesis in Sylheti
- Exploring variation and change in a small-scale Indigenous society: the case of (s) in Pirahã
- Rhotics, /uː/, and diphthongization in New Braunfels German
- Generational differences in the low tones of Black Lahu
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Introduction to sound change in endangered or small speech communities
- Where have all the sound changes gone? Phonological stability and mechanisms of sound change
- Where have all the sound changes gone? Examining the scarcity of evidence for regular sound change in Australian languages
- Cross-dialectal synchronic variation of a diachronic conditioned merger in Tlingit
- Vowel harmony in Laz Turkish: a case study in language contact and language change
- The evolution of tonally conditioned allomorphy in Triqui: evidence from spontaneous speech corpora
- Sound change and gender-based differences in isolated regions: acoustic analysis of intervocalic phonemic stops by Bora-Spanish bilinguals
- Place uniformity and drift in the Suzhounese fricative and apical vowels
- Flexibility and evolution of cue weighting after a tonal split: an experimental field study on Tamang
- The emergence of bunched vowels from retroflex approximants in endangered Dardic languages
- The expanding influence of Thai and its effects on cue redistribution in Kuy
- Speech style variation in an endangered language
- Sound change in Aboriginal Australia: word-initial engma deletion in Kunwok
- The dental-alveolar contrast in Mapudungun: loss, preservation, and extension
- Sound change or community change? The speech community in sound change studies: a case study of Scottish Gaelic
- Phonetic transfer in Diné Bizaad (Navajo)
- The evolution of flap-nasalization in Hoocąk
- Sound change and tonogenesis in Sylheti
- Exploring variation and change in a small-scale Indigenous society: the case of (s) in Pirahã
- Rhotics, /uː/, and diphthongization in New Braunfels German
- Generational differences in the low tones of Black Lahu
