Barranbinja language explained

Barranbinja
Region:New South Wales
States:Australia
Ethnicity:Barranbinya
Extinct:1979, with the death of Emily Margaret Horneville
Familycolor:Australian
Fam1:Pama–Nyungan
Fam2:Southeastern?
Fam3:Central New South Wales?
Fam4:Muruwaric
Iso3:none
Aiatsis:D26
Glotto:barr1252
Glottorefname:Barranbinya
Map:Barranbinja language.png
Mapcaption:Barranbinja (green) among other Pama–Nyungan languages (tan)

Barranbinja or Barrabinya is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of New South Wales.[1] The last speaker was probably Emily Margaret Horneville (d. 1979), who was recorded by Lynette Oates who then published a short description of it.[2] It had also been recorded by R.H. Mathews along with Muruwari,[3] though not all items in his wordlist were recognised by Horneville. Both Mathews and Oates conclude that Barranbinya and Muruwari were in a dialect relation.

Relationship with other languages

Lynette Oates' work on Muruwari and Barranbinya gives a cognate count of 44% between the two varieties, concluding that both were likely in a dialect relation. R.H. Mathews (1903), who recorded both Muruwari and Barranbinya, also commented that besides vocabulary differences, the grammar of both Muruwari and Barranbinya were essentially the same.[4]

Together, Muruwari and Barranbinya form an isolate group within the Pama-Nyungan language family, and were very different in many respects from their geographic neighbours (which belong to many different Pama-Nyungan subgroups). For more information, see the description for Muruwari.

Phonology

Phonemic inventory

The phonemic inventory is very similar to Muruwari, although the relative paucity of data means that the status of many phonemes is not clear (in round brackets).

! colspan="2"
PeripheralApicalLaminal
VelarLabialRetroflexAlveolarPalatalDental
Stops pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/
  • pronounced as /link/
pronounced as /link/
  • pronounced as /link/
pronounced as /link/
Nasals pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/
  • pronounced as /link/
pronounced as /link/
  • pronounced as /link/
pronounced as /link/
Laterals(* pronounced as /link/)
  • pronounced as /link/
(* pronounced as /link/)(* pronounced as /link/)
Rhotics
  • pronounced as /link/
(* pronounced as /link/)
  • pronounced as /link/
Semivowels pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/

All phonemes except those with a star (*) may be word-initial.

Vowel phonemes!! Front! Central! Back
High pronounced as /link/,
pronounced as /link/
pronounced as /link/,
pronounced as /link/
Low pronounced as /link/,
pronounced as /link/

Phonotactics

Nearly all words end in a vowel, though there are some rare occurrences of word-final -ny and -n, which is in stark contrast with neighbouring Muruwari and Ngiyambaa, where word-final nasals and approximants are very common. Oates speculates that this may be he result of influence from Paakantyi and other western languages, which also display a preference for word-final vowels.

Notes and References

  1. Book: Dixon, R. M. W. . R. M. W. Dixon . Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development . Cambridge University Press . 2002 . xxxv.
  2. Lynette . Oates . Barranbinya: Fragments of a N.S.W. Aboriginal language . Papers in Australian Linguistics . 17 . 185–204 . 1988.
  3. Robert Hamilton . Mathews . 1903 . The Burranbinya language . Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Geographic Society of Australia, Queensland . 18 . 57 .
  4. Robert Hamilton . Mathews . 1903 . The Burranbinya language . Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Geographic Society of Australia, Queensland . 18 . 57 .