Kayardild Language
Kayardild is a moribund Tangkic language spoken by the Kaiadilt on the South Wellesley Islands, north west Queensland, Australia, with fewer than ten fluent speakers remaining.
Other members of the family include Yangkaal (spoken by the Yangkaal people), Lardil, and Yukulta (Ganggalidda). 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. It is also well-known for only allowing subordination one level deep. Kayardild is the only known spoken language where tense markers appear on both nouns and verbs.
| Kayardild | |
|---|---|
| Region | South Wellesley Islands, north west Queensland, Australia |
| Ethnicity | Kaiadilt, Yanggal |
Native speakers | 8 (2016 census) |
Macro-Pama–Nyungan?
| |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:gyd – Kayardildnny – Yangkaal/Nyangga (two different languages) |
| Glottolog | kaya1318 |
| AIATSIS | G35 Kayardild, G37 Yangkaal |
| ELP | Kayardild |
| Yangkaal | |
 Kayardild Traditional area | |
 Kayardild is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Phonology
| Peripheral | Laminal | Apical | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Velar | Palatal | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | |
| Plosive | p | k | c | t̪ | t | ʈ |
| Nasal | m | ŋ | ɲ | n̪ | n | ɳ |
| Trill | r | |||||
| Lateral | l | |||||
| Approximant | w | j | ɻ | |||
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː | u uː |
| Open | a aː | |
References
Bibliography
- Evans, Nick (1995a). "Current Issues in Australian languages". In Goldsmith, John A. (ed.). The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics (1st ed.). Blackwell. pp. 723–761.
- Evans, Nicholas (1995b). A Grammar of Kayardild: With Historical-comparative Notes on Tangkic. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-012795-9.
Further reading
- Evans, Nicholas (1988). "Odd topic marking in Kayardild". In Austin, Peter (ed.). Complex sentence constructions in Australian Languages. Typological Studies in Language. Vol. 15. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 219–266. doi:10.1075/tsl.15.11eva. ISBN 978-90-272-2887-1.
- Evans, Nicholas (1992). Kayardild Dictionary and Thesaurus. University of Melbourne: Department of Linguistics and Language Studies.
- Evans, Nicholas (1995c). "The Kayardild language". In Robinson, Julia (ed.). Voices of Queensland. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
- Evans, Nicholas (1995d). "Multiple case in Kayardild: anti-iconicity and the diachronic filter". In Plank, F. (ed.). Double case. Agreement by Suffixaufnahme. Oxford University Press. pp. 396–428. ISBN 9780195087758.
- Evans, Nicholas (2001). "Typologies of agreement: some problems from Kayardild". Transactions of the Philological Society. 101 (2): 203–234. doi:10.1111/1467-968X.00118. hdl:1885/33294.
- Evans, Nicholas (2006). "Kayardild". In Brown, Keith (ed.). Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 6. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 168–169.
- Round, Erich (2009). Kayardild Morphology, Phonology, and Morphosyntax (PhD thesis). Yale University.
- Round, Erich (2013). Kayardild Morphology and Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-965487-1.
- Round, Erich; Corbett, Greville G. (2016). "The theory of feature systems: one feature versus two for Kayardild tense-aspect-mood". Morphology. 27 (1): 1–55. doi:10.1007/s11525-016-9294-3.
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