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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LICK TOO MANY ROCKS The complexities of

Adnyamathanha phonology

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU

LICK TOO MANY ROCKS

The complexities of

Adnyamathanha phonology

JOHN McENTEE and

ANDREW BUTCHER

What Happens when you Lick too many Rocks

The complexities of Adnyamathanha phonology

John McEntee

Independent Researcher, Adelaide

Andrew Butcher

Flinders University, Adelaide

© 2021 John McEntee and Andrew Butcher

[email protected]

This monograph is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced, stored or transmitted by any process without written permission.

McEntee, John Crawford; Butcher, Andrew Richard

What happens when you lick too many rocks: the complexities of Adnyamathanha phonology

ISBN: 978-0-646-83613-3

Dewey number: 499.15

Cover photo: the authors with Pearl McKenzie recording Adnyamathanha language at Hawker campground, 10 July 1990 (Photo: Christel Butcher).

Contents

1. Introduction

1.1 History and geography ____________________________________________ 1

1.2 Sound inventory _________________________________________________ 3

1.3 Sources and methodology _________________________________________ 5

1.4 Word structure and word prosody ___________________________________ 6

2. Obstruent voicing contrast

2.1 Introduction ____________________________________________________ 11

2.2 Word-initial obstruents ___________________________________________ 12

2.3 Phonology of word-medial obstruents _______________________________ 13

2.4 Phonetics of word-medial obstruents ________________________________ 14

2.5 Phonetics and phonology of the rhotics ______________________________ 20

2.6 Comparative aspects of the voicing contrast __________________________ 27

2.7 Comparative aspects of the rhotics __________________________________ 29

2.8 Obstruents and rhotics: summary ___________________________________ 30

3. Pre-stopped sonorants

3.1 Introduction __________________________________________________ 31

3.2 Phonology of pre-stopped nasals __________________________________ 32

3.3 Phonology of pre-stopped laterals _________________________________ 33

3.4 Phonetics of pre-stopped sonorants ________________________________ 33

3.5 Comparative aspects of nasal pre-stopping __________________________ 39

3.6 Comparative aspects of lateral pre-stopping _________________________ 41

3.7 Pre-stopped sonorants: summary __________________________________ 43

4. Vowels

4.1 Distinctive vowel qualities _______________________________________ 45

4.2 Contrastive vowel length ________________________________________ 48

4.3 Vowel length and word stress ____________________________________ 52

5. Conclusions ____________________________________________________ 55

Appendices ________________________________________________________ 57

References ________________________________________________________ 68

Abstract

Adnyamathanha is one of the Thura-Yura languages, spoken in the northern Flinders Ranges of South Australia. It has a rather large inventory of consonant sounds, the analysis of which presents some challenges. We show that, in the most recently spoken variety of the language, there is a contrast between two series of obstruents, phonetically voiced and voiceless, in intervocalic position. There are also four phonetically distinct rhotic sounds, two of which we analyse as major allophones of the voiced apical stops. We also analyse a full series of contrastive pre-stopped nasals and a full series of contrastive pre-stopped laterals and we give reasons for preferring this analysis over one of stop + sonorant clusters. We show that there are three contrasting vowel qualities in Adnyamathanha, with no clear evidence to support a fourth, open-front unrounded phoneme. Apparently-contrastive long vowels can almost all be analysed as V+V sequences separated either by glides or morpheme boundaries. The phonetically long vowels resulting from the latter case do not appear to be stressed, although the increased duration may give this impression to English ears. We conclude, however, that a ‘once-a-phoneme-always-a-phoneme’ approach does not provide a satisfactory account of Adnyamathanha phonology. It is more helpful to recognise that, between the robust phonemic contrasts and the clearly marginal sounds, there may be a ‘cline of contrast’ with a number of intermediate phonological relationships.

Key words: Australian languages; phonology; phonetics.

Acknowledgements

This research was partly funded by a grant from The Faculties, The Australian National University, to RMW Dixon, 1988-1991.We are much indebted to our original language consultants, sadly all now deceased, for their time, patience and willingness to share their knowledge, especially with the first author over many years: particularly May Wilton, her daughter, Pearl McKenzie, and her son-in-law, John McKenzie, of Hawker, SA. We also wish to acknowledge the contribution of the late Malcolm McKenzie of Port Augusta, SA, to this work and we are grateful to Dr Geoffrey O’Grady for sharing his recordings via the AIATSIS archives. Thanks to Ivan McKenzie for double-checking Adnyamathanha forms and thanks also to Rob Amery and Jane Simpson for very helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.

Caveat

This work has been through a number of iterations. Earlier journal submissions received dramatically different peer reviews, ranging from “this paper is a must read for all linguists” through to the opinion that the work was unpublishable. A later version was (perhaps understandably) rejected by another journal as being too long. We eventually decided to publish the paper ourselves as a monograph. Readers should therefore be aware that it is not a peer-reviewed publication in the usually understood sense of the term.

AB

McEntee and Butcher Adnyamathanha Phonology

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6. Introduction

6.1 History and geography

According to the legend told to the first author by the late John McKenzie, a senior Adnyamathanha man, the human Ancestor known as Bivu was killed by his companion dogs near Mount Lyndhurst in the Northern Flinders Ranges, his body subsequently being transformed into the landform known as Ngarndamurka (Gill Bluff).

All the surrounding groups gathered to pay their last respects. People from each group licked different areas of the hill where Bivu died and, as a result, each spoke a different language. The Adnyamathanha licked the most, so that their language developed the most complicated sound system in comparison to their neighbours. (Jones and McEntee 1996:162)

This Australian version of the Tower of Babel story suggests that the reputation of Adnyamathanha for having a particularly complex phonology is of some antiquity. It is also a reputation acknowledged by speakers of neighbouring languages today. Whilst there is little disagreement amongst linguists as to the rather large inventory of consonant sounds that occur in this language (see Table 1), no single phonological analysis has yet emerged that satisfactorily accounts for all the observed phenomena.

Adnyamathanha is the language of the northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia (see Figure 1). It is a member of the Thura-Yura (TH-Y) sub-group, which includes its close relative Kuyani1, as well as Barngarla, Wirangu and Nawu to the west and the Miru languages, consisting of Nharangga, Kaurna, Nukunu, Ngadjuri and Peramangk, to the south (Simpson and Hercus 2004). Adnyamathanha’s neighbours to the north are the Karnic languages Arabana-Wangkangurru, Dhirari, Diyari, Yandruwandha (Bowern 2001) and immediately to the east the Yarli dialects Wadigali, Yardliyawarra, Pirlatapa2, and Malyangapa (Hercus and Austin 2004). Further to the east and into New South Wales lies the Paakantjic group, which includes Wiljali, Bandjigali, Wandjiwalgu, Dhanggali and Paakantji.

A number of historical factors may have contributed to some of the unique aspects of the Adnyamathanha language. To begin with, the Adnyamathanha people of today may well be descended from the blending of several originally distinct groups who sought sanctuary from the British invasion in the Flinders Ranges. These groups may have included members of the Kuyani, Yadliawarra, Pirlatapa, Barngarla and Wailpi people. For Tindale (1937), the latter name was synonymous with Adnyamathanha: “Ganjamata is the Ngadjuri name meaning ‘Hills-people,’ used for the people otherwise known as the [Wailpi]. Wailpi is their own local name and ['Anji'matana] the Kujani name for the tribe”. The Wailpi/Adnyamathanha had, according to Tindale’s (1974:218) figures, about 7,800 km2 of territory around Umberatana and Mount Serle, extending as far south as Parachilna Gorge. We can have no more accurate idea of what languages were spoken by these groups, but their coming together may be reflected in the ‘stone-licking’ story.

1 Dixon (2002) classifies them as dialects of a single language. 2 Pirlatapa may belong to either Karnic or Yarli. Too little is known of the language to decide which is more likely (Bowern 2001). Whichever group it belongs to, by virtue of its position it would clearly be greatly influenced by the other.


2

Figure 1. Adnyamathanha and surrounding languages

Secondly, as the most north-easterly of the TH-Y group, Adnyamathanha phonology has undoubtedly been subject to some influence from its non-TH-Y neighbours, particularly Diyari, but also Dhirari, Yandruwandha and Yardliyawarra. Adnyamathanha speakers would also have had contact with Kokatha, the easternmost dialect of the Western Desert Language, which penetrated to the shores of Lake Torrens, deep within TH-Y territory.

Thirdly, as the centre of an extensive trading network in a much-prized commodity, the Flinders Ranges area would have been a meeting place for many different linguistic groups. The type of red ochre known as (k)arrku from the famous Pukardu mine near present-day Parachilna was traded as far north as present-day Cloncurry, east to Tibooburra and the Darling River, west to Oodnadatta and Southern Arrernte country, as well as south to TH-Y neighbours, the Barngarla, Ngadjuri, Nawu and Kaurna. Trade in the widest sense included the cultural exchange of songs, dances and technology: for northern groups, there was the common bond


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of the Emu Dreaming and the mindari ceremony in particular (Elkin 1934:184-190; Jones 2007:352-62).

It should also be mentioned that from 1866 until the end of the 19th century, large numbers of “Afghan” cameleers were based at Beltana and later Blinman. Mount Serle station, in the heart of Adnyamathanha country, was itself a government camel depot from 1898 to 1923. Not far to the north, Marree was one of the country's most important camel junctions, with its own cameleers’ ghetto, known as “Little Asia” or “Little Afghanistan”. In fact, these men, known to the Adnyamathanha as /uɭi/3, came from different ethnic groups and from widely dispersed locations, so spoke a variety of languages, such as Urdu, Pashto, Farsi and Balochi (Hercus 1981; Simpson 2000). There were other so-called “Ghantowns” at Port Augusta, Oodnadatta and Tarcoola, which, as Simpson (2000:198) suggests, “provided the opportunity for sustained long-term contact with remote Aboriginal groups and thus the need for common ways of talking”. Many cameleers married Aboriginal women (very few married white women). Simpson (2000) cites a number of examples of Aboriginal people remembering and even using “Afghan” words and a few where such words could be said to have passed into Aboriginal speech in northern South Australia. One such example is revisited below. Finally, of course, it is impossible to discount the influence of British (especially Scottish) English on the languages of this region since the latter half of the 19th century4.

1.2 Sound inventory

Table 1 shows a maximal consonant sound inventory (n.b. not a system of phonological oppositions) as a basis for discussion. It is drawn from McEntee (1976:3-8), (1986:5-7), McEntee and McKenzie (1992:ix) – henceforth referred to jointly as McE; Tunbridge (1988a:xlii; 1991:24) – henceforth referred to as DT, and Schebeck (n.d.:33; 2000) – henceforth jointly BS.

The system is typical of Australian languages, in that it has a large number of distinctive places of articulation. All Australian languages distinguish between BILABIAL5, VELAR, LAMINAL and APICAL sounds (Dixon, 2002). However, comparatively few Australian languages have just these four categories – some 11-15 percent (Busby 1980; Hamilton 1996), concentrated mainly in eastern Queensland and eastern New South Wales. Between 20 percent and 35 percent of Australian phonologies have five places of articulation, with a further distinction made within the APICAL class between ALVEOLAR and RETROFLEX sounds. This type of system is found in many languages of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. A group of between 14 and 20 percent of languages encompass five place distinctions by splitting the LAMINAL category into contrastive DENTAL and ALVEOPALATAL sounds; these are found mainly in the Cape York Peninsula. But the most frequently occurring pattern in Australian languages (40-45 percent) embraces all six of the above places of articulation, including four CORONAL categories (Busby 1980; Hamilton 1996). As Table 1 shows, Adnyamathanha is potentially one such language. To put this in context, note that the overwhelming majority of languages of the world (81 percent) have only one CORONAL place (Maddieson 1984). Only 3.5 percent of

3 This form is most likely derived from the colonial English word coolie, which is itself probably ultimately derived from Urdu qulī ‘hired servant; slave.’ 4 One influence that touched other South Australian languages, but can largely be discounted in the case of Adny, is that of the German-speaking Lutheran missionary teachers who arrived very soon after colonisation in 1836, but had no direct contact with Adnyamathanha people on their own country. 5 Note that labels for phonological categories appear in SMALL CAPITALS in order to distinguish them from similar or identical phonetic terms used to describe articulations.


4

languages have three or four CORONAL categories; this percentage is made up of 16 languages, 14 of which are Australian.

Table 1: Maximal inventory of Adnyamathanha consonant sounds

labial dental alveol retro alv-pal6 velar

voiceless stop p t̪ t ʈ ȶ k

voiced stop b d̪ d ɖ ȡ ɡ

fricative v ð ʂ

nasal m n̪ n ɳ ȵ ŋ

pre-stopped nasal bm d̪n̪ dn ɖɳ ȡȵ

lateral l̪ l ɭ ȴ

pre-stopped lat d̪l̪ dl ɖɭ ȡȴ

trill r

tap/flap ɾ ɽ

approximant w ɻ j

On the other hand, the majority of Australian languages have only a single series of OBSTRUENTS. There is generally no contrast between STOPS and FRICATIVES and no ±VOICE distinction. They thus belong to the 32 percent of the world’s languages that lack a voicing distinction among the STOPS and to the 8.7 percent of languages that have no FRICATIVES (Maddieson, 2013); of these latter 48 languages, 29 are Australian. A significant group of Australian languages, mainly concentrated in the north, has two contrasting stop series, but the distinction between the two series appears, in the vast majority of cases, to be based on length and/or intraoral pressure rather than voicing (Butcher, 2004; Stoakes, Fletcher, and Butcher, 2005). Although lacking in OBSTRUENTS, Australian languages have a much richer system of SONORANT contrasts than most languages in the world. There is always a NASAL corresponding to each oral OBSTRUENT and, in the western two thirds or so of the continent, a LATERAL at each of up to four CORONAL places of articulation. Add to this that all Australian languages have LABIAL and PALATAL GLIDEs and that almost all of them have at least two contrasting RHOTICS and this means that these systems have precisely the opposite proportion of OBSTRUENTS to SONORANTS to that proposed as the normal tendency amongst the languages of the world (Lindblom and Maddieson 1988:66). A typical Australian system will consist of 70 percent SONORANTS and only 30 percent OBSTRUENTS.

6 Since there are no IPA symbols for alveopalatal sounds other than fricatives, we have chosen to represent them by the ‘curly-tail’ symbols (ȶ, ȵ, ȴ), which, though not IPA approved, are in common use by sinologists and others – see Cook (2000) for attested usage. According to Pullum and Ladusaw (1996:33), IPA usage of the curly-tail symbols [ɕ]and [ʑ] is for sounds “articulated further forward than [ç] (true palatal) but not as far forward as [ʃ] (palato-alveolar), and articulated laminally (with the flat blade of the tongue) rather than apically (with the tip of the tongue, as in retroflex [ʂ])”. As far as we are concerned, this is an accurate description of the place of articulation of ALVEOPALATAL sounds in Adnyamathanha and other Australian languages.


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Table 1 also suggests that Adnyamathanha may be one of the few Australian languages that have a voicing distinction amongst the stops, as well as a partial STOP~FRICATIVE contrast. However, two of the fricatives can easily be discounted as phonemes on various grounds. McE includes the voiceless retroflex fricative [ʂ] and the voiced dental fricative [ð] in the sound inventory, but they are omitted from the system of phonemes by DT and BS. The first occurs in only one word – the interjection /sawu/ [ʂɐwʊ], meaning ‘go away’ (usually addressed to bad weather)7 – and the second is undoubtedly an (intervocalic) allophone of /d̪/, as analysed by both DT and BS, who notes (Schebeck n.d.:37) “The sound written dh … is voiced and often tends to be pronounced with a slight friction, as the th in English ‘weather’”. All sources agree that there are two series of stops in Adnyamathanha. McE and DT refer to these as ‘voiced’ and ‘unvoiced’. BS calls them ‘stops’ and ‘lenes’. McE and DT both include /v/ and /b/ as distinct sounds. BS treats [v] as an allophone of /b/. It is also noteworthy that the above inventory includes no fewer than four rhotic sounds. All our sources agree on the existence of these sounds, but there is some disagreement as to their phonological status. None of the sources include contrastive pre-stopped nasals or laterals as part of the Adnyamathanha consonant system.

Lastly, Adnyamathanha is traditionally described as belonging to the large number of Australian languages that have three major vowel phonemes: a high front unrounded vowel /i/, a high back rounded vowel /u/ and a low central /a/. However, BS and DT report that some speakers have a much-fronted variant of the low vowel in certain environments and the latter is of the opinion that “e [= æ] is now a phoneme, because it has lost its conditioning environment in some instances” (Tunbridge 1988b:282 n10). There is also disagreement regarding the existence of a vowel length contrast in Adnyamathanha. McE has no long vowels; DT has a long vowel /aː/; BS has ‘groups of vowels’ aa, ii, uu, ai, au, ia, iu, ua, ui, but only the first of these seems to be treated as a phonemic long vowel.

The main aim of this paper, then, is to address the following questions about Adnyamathanha phonology:

1. Is there a voicing contrast among the obstruents?

2. How many rhotic phonemes are there?

3. Is there a series of pre-stopped nasal phonemes?

4. Is there a series of pre-stopped lateral phonemes?

5. How many contrastive vowel qualities are there?

6. Is there a length contrast amongst the vowels?

1.3 Sources and methodology

Throughout this paper, pronunciations from existing audio recordings of native speakers are given in phonemic8 transcription. Words attested only in written form are given in the original orthography of the source, using italic symbols. Unless otherwise indicated, Adnyamathanha forms are from McE, much augmented by unpublished field notes of the first author; Kuyani forms are from Reuther (Austin and Herbert 1991) supplemented by Hercus (n.d.); Nukunu forms are from Hercus (1992); Barngarla forms are from Schürmann (1844); Kaurna words are

7 Schürmann (1846:20) recorded a similar word in Barngarla: “To avert heavy rains, they employ sometimes a long string of seemingly extempore imprecations, beginning every sentence with the interjection Sú, expressive of anger [fn: This is the only instance of a sibilant occurring in the language]”. 8 Occasionally phonetic, in which case square brackets are used.


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from Teichelmann and Schürmann (1840) and Teichelmann (1857), supplemented by Morley and Amery (2014); Ngadjuri forms are from Berndt and Vogelsang (1941); Wirangu forms are from Hercus (1999); Diyari forms are from Reuther (McEntee1998) occasionally supplemented by Austin (2013b).

All of the comparisons between citation forms and connected speech pronunciations in Adnyamathanha given below are the result of careful transcription of (1) the connected speech form as pronounced in context and (2) the citation form as analysed with the assistance of a linguistically aware native speaker. These are represented by the first (slant-bracketed) and second (italicised) rows respectively of the examples. Any hypothetical reconstructions based on speculation by the authors are clearly indicated as such.

There are no longer any fully fluent first-language Adnyamathanha speakers and very few good-quality audio recordings of such speakers exist. For the phonetic measurements we were able to access two sets of analogue recordings that were of sufficiently good quality to enable acoustic measurements to be made:

1. A list of approximately 330 words and short sentences spoken two times each by an adult (> 60 years) male speaker recorded by Dr Geoffrey O’Grady on 27 June and 2 July 1967 at Port Augusta SA, using an open reel tape recorder (probably a Uher Report 4000) [Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, archive tapes A687B and A688A]

2. A list of 168 words spoken three times each by an adult (> 60 years) female speaker, recorded by the authors on 10 Oct 1990 at Hawker SA and on 11 Oct 1990 at Erudina Station SA, using a single-track cassette recorder (Sony TCM-5000EV) and separate omnidirectional electret condenser microphone (Sony ECMD8).

The recordings were digitised at 44.1 kHz with 24-bit resolution and, in view of the restricted amount and quality of the data, measurements were made by hand and eye, using the computer program Praat (Boersma and Weenink 2016).

1.4 Word structure and word prosody

In common with 80 percent of Australian languages, “the modal word length is two syllables” (Gasser and Bowern 2014:9) in Adnyamathanha. There are very few monosyllabic words, all of which are interjections. The canonical word structure is:

(Cinit) V C1 (C2) V (C3V)…

BS finds that over half of the words in McE consist of two syllables9 (roughly 25 percent CVCV and 20 percent CVCCV) and something over 10 percent are of the trisyllabic form CVCVCV, with the form CVCCVCV falling “well below 10 percent”.

In contrast to other TH-Y languages10, including the closely related Kuyani, Adnyamathanha has undergone systematic lenition of initial stops. Initial */p/ in the protolanguage has become /v/, initial */t̪/ and */ȶ/ have either become /j/ or disappeared, and initial */k/ has been dropped completely (Simpson and Hercus 2004). It is therefore unsurprising that a large number of words (26 percent)11 are vowel-initial and that, according

9 The significance of this finding should be weighed in light of the fact that the disyllabic words in McE (1992) were elicited according to an exhaustive commutation paradigm, whereby all possible CVC(C)V combinations were explored. The same was not done for words of three syllables or more, for obvious reasons. 10 Barngarla has lenited initial LAMINAL stops, but not PERIPHERALS. 11 13% /a/; 6% /i/; 7% /u/. This reflects the relative frequency of the vowels overall (in the lexicon).


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to Gasser and Bowern (2014), Adnyamathanha has the highest proportion of words beginning with a glide of any Australian language (29 percent). The only consonants that regularly occur in initial position are: /n̪12, m, ŋ, v, j, w/. As in other TH-Y languages, LATERALS and RHOTICS do not occur at all initially; neither do APICALS of any kind13 in autochthonous Adnyamathanha words. Intervocalically all singleton consonants are allowed and all possible homorganic NASAL- and LATERAL-plus-VOICED-OBSTRUENT clusters:

/mb, ŋɡ, nd, ɳɖ, n̪d̪, ȵȡ, ld, ɭɖ, l̪d̪, ȴȡ/

The following heterorganic clusters also occur intervocalically:

CORONAL NASAL + PERIPHERAL VOICED OBSTRUENT /nb, ȵb, nɡ/

CORONAL NASAL + PERIPHERAL NASAL /nm, ȵm, nŋ/

LATERAL + PERIPHERAL OBSTRUENT /lp, ȴp, ɭp, lv, ȴv, lk, ȴk, lɡ/

RHOTIC + PERIPHERAL OBSTRUENT /rp, rv, rk, rɡ/

As in neighbouring languages, such as Nukunu and Kuyani, CORONAL SONORANTS as the first member of such a cluster do not show the full range of place contrasts:

/n/ and /ɳ/ are neutralised to an APICAL /n/

/ȵ/ and /n̪/ are neutralised to a LAMINAL /ȵ/

/l/ and /ɭ/ are neutralised to an APICAL /l/

/ȴ/ and /l̪/ are neutralised to a LAMINAL /ȴ/

/r/ and /ɻ/ are neutralised to an APICAL /r/

In common with all other TH-Y languages (except Wirangu)14, Adnyamathanha words in citation form are vowel-final. It should be noted, however, that, in common with many other languages in Australia15 (and elsewhere), morpheme-final vowels are often deleted in connected speech. Word-final vowels following VOICELESS OBSTRUENTS are commonly de-voiced or omitted completely (see Figure 2):

(1) /waraȶ/ /waɳɖuwaȶ/ /atakuȶ/ warraty(i)16 warndu-waty(a) ata -ku17-ty(u)18 emu good -very be cold-NARR-EMPH ‘emu’ ‘very good’ ‘gee, it’s cold!’ (Dromaius novaehollandiae)

12 All initial LAMINAL NASALS are /n̪/. The first author has recorded initial /ȵ/ in only one word, /ˈȵuti-ȵuti/ ‘untidy’, and then only as an alternative to /ˈn̪uti-n̪uti/. 13 /t/ occurs initially only in one word, /ˈtadnu/ ‘although’; /ɽ/ occurs initially only in one word, /ˈɽaru-ɽaru/ ‘Red-necked Avocet (Recurvirostra novaehollandiae)’ – almost certainly from Diyari (darurdarru = ‘seagull Laridae sp.’ [Austin 2013b]). 14 A number of observers (e.g. Wyatt 1879) documented Kaurna verbs ending in /n/. It is not impossible that Teichelmann , and Schürmann (1840) may have regularised verb endings to -ndi (Robert Amery, pers. comm.). 15 Butcher (1996) gives a number of examples of vowel deletion in ‘vowel-final’ languages such as Warlpiri: /ˈȶalaŋuɭuȶu/ ‘today’ pronounced [ˈȡɐlɐŋәɭәȶ]; /ˈŋurȶu kuȶaȶu/ ‘all right?’ pronounced [ˈŋʊәȡʊ ɡʊȡɐʔ͡ȶ] and Yolŋu Matha: /ˈpiȶːart̪i ˈliŋku/ ‘say, then’ pronounced [ˈβiȶːærd̪ ˈlɪŋɡʊ]. 16 This is a borrowing from Diyari/Arabana warru-kathi, lit. ‘white skin’ (McEntee 1998; Hercus 1994)

17 We follow BS (n.d.:161): “For the ubiquitous suffix -ku I have maintained the label ‘NARR’ (for ‘narrative’) [...]. It is usually an ‘imperfect’ in the true sense of the word […], but it may also be called an ‘imperfective’ where the past function is not suggesting itself at all.” 18 Again we follow BS (n.d.:211) in attributing to -tyi/-tyu an ‘emphatic’ function.


8

/n̪imbaȶiȶ/ /wan̪d̪ak/ /irpak/ nhimba-tyi ~ty(i) wandha -k(a) irrpa-k(u) thus -EMPH~EMPH leave.alone-IMP tease-NARR ‘thus, like this’ ‘leave it alone!’ ‘teasing’

Figure 2. Word-final vowel dropping

Figure 2 shows a waveform and spectrogram illustrating the pronunciation of the final word in (1), /irpaku/ ‘teasing’, as [ɪrpɐkʰ] by our female speaker. In these cases, the vowel-final rule of the underlying phonology is not reflected in the surface realisations in connected speech19.

Utterance-final vowels are particularly prone to disappearing, for example:

(2) /awi ŋaɭaːka imaːŋɡut/ /ŋuɳaŋuɳaʈamandat̪/ awi ngarla-aka im(a)-angk(u)-ut(u) ngurna~ngurna-rta-ma-nd -ath(u) water big -piece get -PST -2SG.A swallow~swallow -PRS -TR -PROG-1SG.A ‘Did you get much rain?’ ‘I am swallowing’

We have stated above that OBSTRUENTS before or after NASALS are always voiced. Apparent contradictions to this rule, such as in (3), arise in connected speech from the dropping of word-internal unstressed vowels.

19 Note the contrast to Wirangu (which is not a vowel-final language), where, according to Hercus (1999:37), final vowel elision “happens only if the resulting final consonant is a permissible final in Wirangu”.


9

(3) /aȡȵamat̪n̪a/ /jakŋari/ /wil̪t̪u/ /ɳaʈɳamilaŋkalu/ adnya-math(a)-nha20 yak(a)ngarri wil(a-a)thu nhart(a)-nha mil(a)-angk(u)-alu rock -PL -? rascal lick -1SG.A what -? hurt -PST -3SG.A ‘the rocks mob’ ‘rascal’ ‘Bless you!’21 ‘whatchamacallit’

Notice that in the final example of (3) the vowel deletion is accompanied by an assimilation of place of articulation from the RETROFLEX OBSTRUENT to both DENTAL NASALS: The word for ‘what?’ or ‘why?’ in Adnyamathanha, /n̪aʈa-n̪a/ in its citation form, when incorporated into the expression /n̪aʈan̪amilaŋkalu/ ‘whatchamacallit, thingamajig’, is contracted to [ɳaʈɳa], with place-of-articulation assimilation spreading in both directions and across vowels, violating the no-initial-APICALS rule, as well as producing an apparently illegal pre-stopped nasal following a nasal onset (see below, section 3.2). A similar example is the expression used when someone sneezes, [wil̪t̪u] ‘Bless you!’, which in its full form is /wila-at̪u/. The long vowel is deleted and in this case, the alveolar LATERAL assimilates to the DENTAL

OBSTRUENT. The dropping of vowels in connected speech frequently gives rise to other phonetic combinations that are not accounted for above. Examples are:

(4) /wɪbmwaʈ/ /valnpil̪a/ /junlu viruviru/ /vaɖɳ̩ȵȡuɻu/ wibm(a)-wart(a) val(a)-n(a)-pilha yuny(u)rla virru~virru va-rdn(a-u)ndyu-ru history -big DEM -DU Babbler “virru~virru” 3.SG-? - ? -POSS (name of mythical dog) ‘those two’ ‘Rainbow Bee-eater’ ‘his/hers’ The two dogs of the ancestor Bivu, mentioned in the opening paragraph, were named Vutu and Wibmawarta. When imitating the hero calling to them, however, story-tellers pronounce the latter [wɪbmwaʈ], with a highly illegal three-term cluster (and missing final vowel). And in the pronunciation of the third person dual kinship pronoun /valanapil̪a/22, speakers commonly omit the second and third vowels, producing an illegal three-term heterorganic cluster [valnbil̪a]. Similarly, the word denoting a number of species of Babbler is /juȵuɭa/, but the compound word for ‘Rainbow Bee-eater’ (Merops ornatus) is pronounced [junluviruviru] (lit. ‘the Babbler [that calls] “virru-virru”’), where vowel dropping produces a phonologically ‘impossible’ homorganic NASAL + LATERAL cluster. The third person singular possessive pronoun (‘his/hers’) /vaɖɳuȵȡu-ɻu/23 is often pronounced without the second vowel, as [vaɖɳ̩ȵȡuɻu], resulting in a four-term heterorganic sequence, although the medial nasal segment (apparently beginning as an apical and ending as a laminal) is undoubtedly syllabic.

As with most Australian languages, the primary stress in Adnyamathanha disyllabic words falls on the first syllable24, for example:

20 BS (n.d.:140): “The meaning of this suffix remains unclear, and that is why it remains unlabelled in the interlinear translations [...] It occurs for instance in the name Atnyamathanha and a host of place names. It is always the last suffix in such names. It also occurs in certain nouns and in several frozen forms. I propose to consider the suffix -nha as being neutral with respect to the nuances to be introduced by the suffix replacing it.” 21 Lit. ‘I lick’; said when another sneezes. 22 BS (2000:342) has valana-pila; McE (1992:63) has /valanbila/. In fact, the first is the canonical form and the latter a faster or more casual version. The exact meaning is: ‘any two people called exactly the same kinship term by Ego.’ 23 BS (2000:152) has vantyuru; Schürmann (1844:11) recorded the equivalent word in Barngarla as Parnüntyuru. 24 There are, as to be expected, one or two exceptions among interjections and onomatopoeia, as, e.g. in the answering call /kuˈku/, where the primary stress is on the second syllable (A calls out to gain B’s attention. B answers A’s call with /wai/. A then answers /kuˈku/).


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(5) /ˈvaɳa/ /ˈvaɖɳa/ /ˈvaɳɖa/ /ˈvaɭpa/ varna vardna varnda varlpa Hakea leucoptera Varanus gouldii limestone.pebbles ashes ‘Needlewood’ ‘Gould’s Sand Goanna’ ‘stone oven’ ‘ashes’ Primary stress also occurs on the first syllable of tri-syllabic words, for example:

(6) /ˈmaɳgara/ /ˈmaɭɖaku/ /ˈŋamaka/ marngarra marldaku ngamaka girl thundercloud nesting hollow in a tree ‘girl’ ‘thundercloud’ ‘nesting hollow in a tree’ and of most complex words with bound suffixes, e.g:

(7) /ˈŋaɭaˌpan̪a/ /ˈŋaɻaˌpan̪a/ /ˈjaɳɖiˌanduɾa/ ngarla-pa- nha ngara-pa-nha yarndi-and-uda big -? -? liar -little -? sit -PRS -2.PL ‘plenty, enough’ ‘Sturt Desert Pea’ ‘sit down, you mob’ (Swainsona Formosa)

/ˈwiɾaˌŋuɳi/ /ˈvaŋɡiˌȶiri/ /ˈaʈaɳˌburuɳˌburuɳ/ wida -ngurni vangki-tyi -rri arta-rnburru~rnburru gum.tree-ABL ribs -EMPH -PL Grass.tree -having~having25 ‘from the gum tree’ ‘centipede [gen]’ ‘Raspy cricket’ (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) (Chilopoda sp.) (Gryllacrididae sp.)

In words of four or more syllables, an apparent secondary stress may be heard on the third (and subsequent odd) syllables, as marked above. However, secondary stress has proven to be a somewhat elusive concept acoustically (see the survey by Gordon and Roettger 2017:7) and it is quite possible that native speakers of a language that has lexical stress (English) are predisposed to hear stress in languages where it does not exist. There could be a number of reasons for this, including an expectation of rhythmicity on the part of the listener and a lack of weak vowels in the target language. For a fuller discussion as to why linguists hear ‘secondary stress’ in Australian languages, see Tabain, Fletcher, and Butcher (2014:62-4).

When two or more polysyllabic morphemes combine to form a compound or reduplication in Adnyamathanha, the initial consonant of the second morpheme (if there is one) is deleted and, where the final vowel of the first morpheme is different from the initial vowel of the following one, it assimilates to the latter. Examples of this are:

(8) /wad̪n̪aami/ /wajiruut̪aku/ /n̪aḻapilaaŋɡalu/ wadnh(i -ng)ami wayirr(i-ng)utha-ku nhaḻa-p(a-n)il(i)-angk(u-v)alu little -mother sorted -do -NARR tease -TR - feel -PST -3.SG ‘mother’s younger sister’ ‘organising’ ‘feel sorry for one being teased’

In citation forms, speakers may render VV sequences as a disyllabic hiatus (or dieresis), but in normal connected speech this contracts to a single syllable (syneresis), with a phonetically long vowel. The fact that this syllable is now ‘heavy’ (i.e. bimoraic) gives rise to a perception of prominence on the vowel, which has led to the proposal that there is a shift of stress to the long vowel. McEntee (1988:4-5), for example, suggests that an original CV́(C)CV sequence, when combined with a second CV́(C)CV structure, produces CV(C)CV́V(C)CV;

25 See Footnote 39.


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CV́(C)CVCV + CV́(C)CVCV results in CV(C)CVCV́V(C)CVCV and so on. Examples of this would be:

(9) /ŋaˈɭaaka/ /viɖˈɳaapa/ /ŋaˈɭaami/ /ŋaˈŋaan̪iku/ ngarla-aka virdni-(v)apa ngarla-(ng)ami nganga -anhi26-ku big -piece bad -young big -mother bob.along/throb -DUR-NARR ‘big one’ ‘little’ ‘mother’s older sister; ‘keep bobbing along;

female kangaroo’ keep throbbing’

This interpretation significantly increases the range of potential word structures and stress patterns in connected speech.

Most words of more than four syllables in Adnyamathanha are compounds or reduplications and many contain a VV sequence at a morpheme boundary, for example:

(10) /ŋaɭakan̪aawi/ /janduruukuɻa/ /juwuɭaat̪aku/ ŋarla-aka-nha-awi yandu -rru-ukura yuwurla-(y)atha-ku big -piece-? -water loaded up -upper.back vapour -stretch -NARR ‘sea, lake’ ‘young witchetty grub larva’ ‘navigating across country’27 /iɳɖiriiɳɖiri/ /in̪d̪ariin̪d̪aɾi/ /valkaȵaalkaȵi/ irndirri~irndirri indharri~indharri valka-nyi~(v)alka-nyi (probably onomatopoeic) (probably onomatopoeic)28 jump -PL ~ jump -PL ‘sound of branches ‘willy-wagtail’ ‘jack hopper ant’ rubbing together’ (Rhipidura leucophrys) (Myrmecia pilosula)

This pattern also occurs in plural forms such as:

(11) /wakaɭaapina/ /janmaraapina/ /ŋaɭakaapina/ wakarla-(v)apina yanmari-(v)apina ngarla-aka-(v)apina crow -PL step -PL big -piece-PL ‘mob of crows’ ‘several steps’ ‘big ones’

The question as to whether or not the stress in these words is really shifted from the initial, ‘light’, syllable to the later ‘heavy’ VV sequence is something that we take a closer look at in Section 4.3.

2. Obstruent voicing contrast 2.1 Introduction

Most Australian languages belong to the one third or so of the world’s languages that lack a voicing distinction among the OBSTRUENTS (Maddieson 1984; 2013). Only a handful of Australian languages have a true voicing distinction (Butcher 2004), by which we mean (1) one based on some kind of glottal timing difference (so not the duration-based ‘fortis-lenis’ distinctions of Arnhem Land) and (2) one made at more than just one or two places of articulation (so not the APICALS-only distinctions of a number of languages, such as Diyari or Djapu).

Of the languages surrounding Adnyamathanha for which reliable data exist, most have been analysed as having the more usual single series of OBSTRUENT phonemes. These include

26 Tunbridge (1988b) is alone in having -enhi in Adnyamathanha; Hercus (n.d.) has /-aȵi/ in Kuyani. 27 See McE (1991:204). 28 Possibly from Diyari thindri-thindri.


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Kuyani (Hercus n.d.), Kaurna (Amery and Simpson 2013:29), Barngarla (Clendon 2015:13), Arabana-Wangkangurru (Hercus1994:26), Wirangu (Hercus 1999:26) and Nukunu (Hercus 1992:3), although in the latter case [ɽ] is analysed as /ɖ/, the VOICED cognate of the VOICELESS

RETROFLEX STOP /ʈ/. The other languages in the area said to have some degree of voicing contrast are: Diyari, Yandruwandha, Pirlatapa, Yawarrawarrka, Wangkumarra and Kullilla. According to Austin (1988), Diyari, Ngamini and Yarluyandi have ‘a very limited voicing contrast’ (i.e at the APICAL places of articulation only). Wangkumarra (Breen n.d.; McDonald and Wurm 1979:7), Yandruwandha and Yawarrawarrka (Breen 2015a:10) appear to have a voicing contrast for PERIPHERALS and LAMINALS intervocalically and for all places following homorganic NASALS.

2.2 Word-initial obstruents

In word-initial position in Adnyamathanha, as a consequence of the above-mentioned lenition processes, stops of any sort are rare, occurring only in one or two archaic forms and in a few loanwords from neighbouring languages29. On the other hand, as */p/ has been lenited to /v/, rather than disappearing entirely, /v/ is by far the most commonly occurring initial OBSTRUENT30. McE lists some 400 /v/-initial lexemes (some 14 percent of the lexicon), most of which have cognates with initial /p/ in related languages, as illustrated in Appendix 1.

In his analysis of Adnyamathanha, BS does not show a contrast between [b] and [v], choosing to symbolise the single VOICED LABIAL OBSTRUENT as /v/ on the grounds of customary orthography. This is also an accurate phonetic representation of this phoneme amongst contemporary speakers, although as BS (Schebeck n.d.:35) and DT (Tunbridge 1988a:xlii) correctly point out, older speakers are recorded using a bilabial articulation [β]31. Although we agree with BS’s analysis, which we adopt here, it is worth noting that the sound [b] still survives in a few words – all old words relating to mythology and ceremony.

One of these is the name of the ancestral being mentioned in the introduction: Bivu (pronounced either [bivʊ] or [bibʊ]), which is no doubt a fossilised form (mainly used by and to children); /baɳa-ȡara/32 is the Adnyamathanha name for Lake Benagerie; /baru-baru/33 is the men’s word for a bird species; /buȴa-buȴa/ is a men’s epithet for Bivu, referring to the sound of the wind in the samphire bushes at Lake Frome. There is also a word /biɾi-biɾi/, denoting a caterpillar species, which may be a borrowing from Diyari34.

29 Such borrowings (mainly from Kuyani) often coexist with older cognate forms which have undergone initial dropping, resulting in etymological doublets (cf. ‘guard’ and ‘ward’ in English). These either have somewhat different meanings (for example: /jawi/ ‘to sniff [something up close]’ versus /t̪awi/ ‘to smell [at a distance]’); or are used in different registers (for example: /ˈadnu/ ‘(everyday word for) Central Bearded Dragon’ vs /ˈkaɳi/ ‘(men’s term for) Central Bearded Dragon’); or both (for example: /udna/ ‘[everyday term for] excrement’ versus /kudna/ ‘[very impolite, men-only term for] vagina’. 30 By contrast, in languages such as Barngarla and Kaurna, which have not undergone systematic initial dropping, /k/ is the most commonly occurring initial consonant. 31 Berndt and Vogelsang (1941:3) note what appears to be the same phenomenon in Ngadjuri: “The distinct [v] sound occurs…This is often a [bv] sound hard to distinguish from the [b]; it is rare in Australia but occurs in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia”; Teichelmann (1857) notes of Kaurna that “in [the words] Bia and Bandi [the letter b] is pronounced almost like v”; and J.M. Black (1920:80) observes with regard to Kaurna and other SA languages “[v] is the bilabial v, the ordinary sound of German w (was, ewig) and of the Spanish b and v between vowels (cabo, ave).” (whereby the Spanish comparison would seem more appropriate than the German). 32 Probably a borrowing from Paakantyi or Malyangapa – the first part is the word for ‘goanna.’ 33 Note that this word forms a minimal pair with /ˈvaru-varu/, meaning ‘straggly hair’ (McE 1992:61). 34 Diyari /ˈmiɾi-wiɾi/ means ‘maggot’ (Austin 2013b).


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Figure 3 shows waveforms and spectrograms illustrating the marginal distinction between initial VOICED and VOICELESS LABIAL OBSTRUENTS in Adnyamathanha by our female speaker: (a) /biv(u-na)/, mythical human ancestor; (b) /puɖ(ɭi)/ ‘star’ (archaic pronunciation); (c) /vuɖ(ɭi)/ ‘star’ (contemporary pronunciation). The solid vertical lines in the waveform indicate the beginning and end of voice onset time (a,b) or labial constriction (c).

Figure 3. Initial voiced and voiceless labial obstruents

As to other initial obstruents, McE lists 25 lexemes beginning with [k], 23 beginning with [t̪], 11 beginning with [ȶ], and three beginning with [p]. Thus, only five Adnyamathanha words could be said to begin with a VOICED stop – all bilabials35 – one loan and four archaic forms. We must conclude that the voicing contrast in initial position is highly marginal.

2.3 Phonology of word-medial obstruents

Table 2 shows that VOICED and VOICELESS OBSTRUENTS contrast intervocalically in Adnyamathanha at LABIAL, VELAR, ALVEOLAR, RETROFLEX and DENTAL places of articulation (for further examples, see column 1 of Appendix 2). There are more examples of medial /v/ than of any other VOICED OBSTRUENT. There is only one example of an intervocalic VOICED

VELAR OBSTRUENT, although there are several more examples following an ALVEOLAR TRILL. There are several examples of potential APICAL contrasts; however, since the phonemic identity of the VOICED APICALS is not established at this point, we postpone our discussion of this until Section 2.5. As to the LAMINALS, while the number of words containing DENTAL OBSTRUENTS is quite restricted, Austin’s (1988:14) assertion that “there is one word that contains dh [= d̪] … idhi ‘finch’” is clearly not accurate. However, there are no instances of medial voiced [ȡ],

35 To these we might add one occurrence of initial voiced [ȡ], in the word /ˈȡapati/, meaning ‘johnny cake’, an “Afghan” loan from Hindi/Urdu /caˈpati/ ‘flat bread’.


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except in the homorganic SONORANT + OBSTRUENT clusters /ȵȡ, ȴȡ/, where the voicing contrast is neutralised for CORONALS (see Section 1.4 above). As already noted, there is also a contrast between VOICELESS and VOICED PERIPHERAL obstruents following /r/ or any LATERAL, although there are very few examples of the latter, all consisting of LATERAL + /v/36. There is also one possible instance of [b] in a cluster: the word /wiɭvutara/, meaning ‘a stream or trail (of blood, oil, wool, etc)’ has the alternative pronunciation [wiɭbutara].

Table 2. Minimal pairs demonstrating medial obstruent VOICING contrasts

/vapa/ small, young /vava-/ to harp on about

/ŋalpa-/ to enter /ŋalva-/ to tuck in bed

/ika/ heap, mob /iɡa/ Native Orange (Capparis mitchellii)

/urku/ Boobook Owl (Ninox novaeseelandiae)

/urɡa/ Ghost Moth (Xyleutes boisduvali)

/ata-/ to be cold /ada/ numbness

/iti/ down, feathers /idi-/ to move away

/aʈa/ Grass Tree (Xanthorrhoea quadrangulata)

/aɖa-/ to limp

/uʈu/ hole, pit /uɖu/ apex (crown of head)

/wat̪a-/ to peep at /wad̪a/ animal sp.

/wit̪i-/ to poke, spear /wid̪i-/ to laugh

2.4 Phonetics of word-medial obstruents

In order to ascertain the phonetic basis of the voicing distinction in Adnyamathanha, we measured a number of parameters in a combined total of 180 tokens from both speakers: the duration of the voiceless portion of the closure or approximation (Clos), the voice termination time – the duration of glottal pulsing into the closure or approximation (VTT) – and the voice onset time (VOT). The results are shown in Table 3 and Figure 4, where n is the number of tokens measured and standard deviations are given in brackets. In view of the diversity of realisation of the VOICED OBSTRUENTS, presentation of the overall means is not meaningful.

It seems the acoustic characteristics of the voicing contrast differ somewhat according to place of articulation – mainly with regard to the realisation of the VOICED member of the opposition. VOICELESS OBSTRUENTS in citation forms have a closure length of between 70-140 ms with voicing continuing some 10-25 percent into the closure. There was a clear difference between the male and female speakers as regards voicing into the closure of VOICELESS

ALVEOPALATALS. The male speaker had a mean VTT of 44 ms, whereas the female speaker had hardly any voicing in her ALVEOPALATAL closures at all (x̄ = 3 ms). Voice onset times are around 25-40 ms for VOICELESS APICAL and DENTAL OBSTRUENTS, but 50-90 ms for ALVEOPALATALS and VELARS. LABIAL VOTs are in between, ranging from 40-70 ms.

36 These include two plant names, /ˈiȴvi/ ‘Spotted Emu Bush (Eremophila maculata)’ and /ˈwilvi-wilvi/ ‘Sturt’s Desert Rose (Gossipium sturtianum). There is just one example in our audio corpus: /ˈaȴviri/, meaning ‘tongue-tied’.


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Table 3. Mean durations of components of intervocalic VOICED and VOICELESS

OBSTRUENTS

VOICELESS (all stops) VOICED

VTT (ms)

Clos (ms)

VOT (ms)

n VTT (ms)

Clos (ms)

VOT (ms)

man-ner

n

LABIALS 30 (19) 87 (15) 44 (25) 31 88 (14) 0 (0) 0 (0) fric 22

ALVEOLAR 26 (8) 81 (32) 31 (9) 12 31 (7) 0 (0) 0 (3) tap 25

RETROFLEX 27 (14) 89 (20) 27 (10) 31 46 (4) 0 (0) 0 (0) flap 2*

DENTALS 21 (11) 110 (19) 31 (8) 14 74 (18) 3 (2) 6 (9) stop/fric

12

ALVEOPAL 19 (26†) 82 (12) 87 (9) 10

VELARS 22 (9) 56 (26) 52 (18) 18 52 (10) 56 (2) 31 (6) stop 3*

MEANS (SD) 25 (16) 85 (26) 42 (23) 116

Figure 4. Mean durations of components of intervocalic VOICED and VOICELESS

OBSTRUENTS

†large difference between male and female speakers on this measure (see text) *these tokens produced by female speaker only


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Figure 5. Medial VOICELESS and VOICED LABIAL OBSTRUENTS

Figure 6. Medial VOICELESS and VOICED VELAR OBSTRUENTS


17

Figure 7. Medial VOICELESS and VOICED ALVEOLAR OBSTRUENTS

Figure 8. Medial VOICELESS and VOICED RETROFLEX OBSTRUENTS


18

Figure 9. Medial VOICELESS and VOICED DENTAL OBSTRUENTS


19

Figure 10: Medial VOICELESS PALATO-ALVEOLAR OBSTRUENT

The diversity is much greater amongst the VOICED OBSTRUENTS, however. As BS (n.d.:42) puts it: “It is a little difficult to suggest a common term for the distinctive feature by which these sounds contrast with the others of the same points of articulation.” Some of these differences are apparent in Figures 5 through 10, which show waveforms and spectrograms illustrating the distinction between medial VOICELESS and VOICED OBSTRUENTS in Adnyamathanha. Figure 5 shows LABIAL OBSTRUENTS in (a) /ipi/, ‘alive’ and (b) /ivi/, ‘sheep’ from our female speaker. VOICED LABIALS are always fully voiced fricatives, around 80-90 ms in length. Figure 6 illustrates VELAR OBSTRUENTS in (a) /ika/, ‘mob’ and (b) /iɡa/, ‘Native Orange (Capparis mitchellii)’ from our female speaker. VOICED VELARS have the longest closures, being not significantly different from their VOICELESS counterparts (but occur in only one word). Voicing continues about half way into the closure and VOTs are the longest of all the VOICED OBSTRUENTS, although still only half that of the VOICELESS VELARS. Figure 7 demonstrates ALVEOLAR OBSTRUENTS in (a) /ita/, ‘string’ and (b) /ida/, ‘tooth’ from our male speaker and Figure 8 shows RETROFLEX OBSTRUENTS in (a) /jaʈa/, ‘ground’ and (b) /maɖa/, ‘for nothing’ from our female speaker. VOICED APICALS are very short (20-45 ms) and also fully voiced, with zero VOTs – almost all are in fact realised as taps or flaps. We return to a discussion of these sounds in the following section. Figure 9 illustrates DENTAL OBSTRUENTS in (a) /it̪i/, ‘twig’and (b) /id̪i/, ‘Chestnut-eared finch (Taeniopygia guttata castanotis)’ by the female speaker and in (c) /wid̪i/, ‘laughing’ by the male speaker. VOICED DENTALS range between 70 and 95 ms in length. Figure 9(b) shows an example of a token that is perhaps best described as a very lax stop with glottal pulsing that begins at a high intensity but declines steeply during the course of the closure. Compare this with Figure 9(c), which shows the same phoneme produced as a dental fricative with glottal pulsing ceasing about half-way through the constriction. The waveforms are similar, but the latter spectrogram shows aperiodic energy throughout the visible frequency range, indicating a fricative realization. Figure 10 illustrates the production by our female speaker of a VOICELESS PALATO-ALVEOLAR OBSTRUENT in the word /vaȶa/, ‘angry’. The most noticeable feature of these sounds is the long VOT (twice the


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overall mean) and the high frequency of the friction, indicating turbulence at the point of constriction (affrication), rather than at the glottis (aspiration). The mean duration of vowels before VOICELESS OBSTRUENTS is 103 ms and that before VOICED OBSTRUENTS is 127 ms, a difference of some 23 percent.

Thus, in answer to BS’s quandary, there is clearly a contrast between presence and absence of glottal pulsing as well as a moderate but consistent VOT difference at all places of articulation. LABIALS also differ consistently in manner of articulation, as do most APICALS.

2.5 Phonetics and phonology of the rhotics

We have stated above that almost all VOICED APICAL OBSTRUENTS are realised as taps (see Figures 7(b) and 8(b)). But clearly a crucial element of the voicing question is how these are to be analysed. It has been claimed that ‘there are four rhotics’ in Adnyamathanha and some other TH-Y languages (McE; Simpson and Hercus 2004). Rhotics are notoriously difficult to define phonetically. Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996:215) even suggest that the use of the term is “largely based on the fact that these sounds tend to be written with a particular character in orthographic systems derived from the Greco-Roman tradition, namely the letter ‘r’”. Lindau (1985:166) considers articulatory and acoustic criteria for defining rhotics and reaches the conclusion that

there is no physical property that constitutes the essence of all rhotics. Instead, the relation between members of the class of rhotics are [sic] more of a family resemblance. Each member of the rhotic class resembles some other member with respect to some property, but it is not the same property that constitutes the resemblance for all members of the class.

According to Lindau, 75 percent of the world’s languages have an ‘r’-sound and 18 percent contrast two or three RHOTICS. This is based on Maddieson’s (1984:83) survey of 317 languages, which also shows that 27 percent (16/60) of the world’s languages that have two or more rhotics are Australian. Of the 19 Australian languages included in the survey, 63 percent have two rhotics and 21 percent have three or four. All Australian rhotics are apical articulations37 and Adnyamathanha is no exception to this.

Table 4. Mean durations of intervocalic rhotics.

*these tokens produced by female speaker only

37 For a consummate exposition of the issues surrounding the class of RHOTICS in Australian languages, including historical aspects (albeit with no specific discussion of TH-Y languages) see Breen (1997).

clos (ms) n

approx 81 (23) 19 trill 86 (39) 16 tap 31(7) 25 flap 46 (4) 2*


21

Figure 11. Mean durations of intervocalic rhotics.

The combined durational data from both speakers are summarised in Table 4 and Figure 11. All indications are that these four sounds are acoustically quite distinct from one another. Tap, flap and approximant are consistently realised as [ɾ], [ɽ] and [ɻ] respectively, with the latter two (50-115 ms) being roughly twice the duration of the former two (25-45 ms).

The spectrograms and waveforms in Figure 12 illustrate the four putative rhotic sounds in Adnyamathanha as pronounced by our female speaker: (a) /maɾa/, ‘spear point’; (b) /mara/, ‘fresh, new’; (c) /maɽa/, ‘for nothing’; (d) /maɻa/, ‘hand’ (an archaic word).

As in most Australian languages, pronunciation of /ɻ/ varies. This may be due, in part to the fact that the ALVEOLAR vs. RETROFLEX rhotic opposition amongst the continuants depends not only on the difference in point of constriction, but also on the constriction type (trill versus approximant), thereby leaving greater scope for variation. The variation is between postalveolar [ɹ̠] and fully retroflex [ɻ], and we use the latter symbol for the phoneme for the sake of consistency.

The pronunciation of /r/ also has a number of variants. Most common in citation form (as in the present data) is a voiced trill [r] with two tongue-tip vibrations, as in Figure 12(b), or occasionally more, as in Figure 13(a). The latter shows the word /ara/, ‘up, above’, pronounced by our male speaker as a voiced trill [r] with four tongue-tip vibrations. It is also often realised with only one vibration of the tongue and thus might be thought to be difficult to distinguish from the tap [ɾ]. However, the overall stricture duration remains longer38 and there is often some accompanying weak friction ([r̝]). In some cases, our female speaker also pronounced the /r/ phoneme without any tongue vibration, in which case the sound becomes a weak (ungrooved) fricative [z̞], as shown in Figure 13(b), which illustrates her pronunciation of /wiri/, meaning a ‘type of club’.

38 The exception to this is the pre-consonantal (/V_C/) environment, where the length distinction is neutralised. In this environment the RHOTIC is usually heard as a tap [ɾ] and only occasionally as a trill [r] in the slowest and most careful of pronunciations (see Figure 15b).


22

Figure 12. Four contrastive sounds that could be classed as rhotics.


23

Figure 13. Different realisations of the /r/ phoneme

Figure 14. Parameter relations among the rhotics

With the possible exception of the few fricative realisations of /r/, all four sounds could be phonetically classed as rhotics – i.e. the place of articulation is alveolar to retroflex and the manner of articulation is trill, tap, flap or approximant. Figure 14 uses a modified version of Lindau’s (1985:167) diagram to illustrate the phonetic parameters that relate the four putative rhotics to each other.


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Table 5. Some minimal quadruplets of rhotics

tap trill flap approximant /aɾa/ numbness /ara/ high,

above /aɽa-/ to limp /aɻa/ Nardoo

Marsilea drummondii

/viɾi/- to carry /viri/ fingernail /viɽi/ 1st-born boy’s name

/viɻi/ Boxthorn Lycium australe

/uɾu/ mind /uru/ all /uɽu/ apex (crown of head)

/uɻu/ nectar (from Grass Tree)

The sets of words in Table 5 and Appendix 3 clearly illustrate that the four rhotic sounds are not only acoustically distinguishable, but also phonologically contrastive in Adnyamathanha. There is no doubt, then, that we are dealing with four distinct phonemes here. The only question is whether the ALVEOLAR taps and RETROFLEX flaps [ɾ] and [ɽ] are in fact to be classed phonologically as RHOTICS, contrasting with /r/ and /ɻ/, or as OBSTRUENTS – voiced counterparts of /t/ and /ʈ/. In the former camp are Simpson and Hercus (2004:185), who state that “Intervocalically, the core T[H-]Y languages have at least a three-way distinction in rhotic sounds and one, Adnyamathanha, may have a four-way distinction between rhotics intervocalically”. In the latter group are BS, who omits [ɾ, ɽ] from the phoneme system and treats them as allophones of /d, ɖ/ respectively and (presumably) DT, who includes <d> and <rd> in her chart twice, once as VOICED STOPS and once as ‘FLAPS’.

Table 6. Medial voiceless, voiced and continuant APICALS

voiceless voiced continuant/ata-/ to be cold /ada, aɾa/

numbness /ara/ high up, above

/iti/ down feathers /idi-, iɾi-/

to move away

/ira/ fire

/uta/ kangaroo tick Ornithodorous gurneyi

/udu, uɾu/

mind /uru/ all

/aʈa/

Grass Tree Xanthorrhoea quadrangulata

/aɖa, aɽa/

to limp /aɻa/ Nardoo Marsilea drumondii

/iʈa/

bird (gen.) /iɖa, iɽa/ kangaroo louse Heterodoxus longitarsus

/viɻa/ moon

/uʈu/

hole, pit /uɖu, uɽu/

crown of head


Taking a strictly synchronic approach, there are essentially three criteria to be considered: (1) Are there minimal pairs between apical voiced stops and tap/flaps? (2) Do the sounds in question behave phonotactically like other VOICED OBSTRUENTS or like other RHOTICS (and


25

SONORANTS generally)? And (3) which solution best fits into the pattern of the remainder of the system of contrasts? Table 6 shows that there are three-way contrasts at both APICAL places of articulation, between a VOICELESS STOP, a VOICED STOP, tap or flap and a VOICED TRILL or APPROXIMANT. However, there are no minimal pairs contrasting voiced stops with taps or flaps. It can be argued that the voiced stops represent a more careful (and less frequently heard) pronunciation of the tap or flap. It seems, moreover, that the tap/flap variants are only permitted once in a polysyllabic word – the second of two consecutive VOICED APICAL OBSTRUENTS in a word being pronounced always as a stop. Thus /ŋadada/ ‘elevated’ is pronounced [ŋɐɾɐdɐ] and /wadidi/ ‘Butterfly Bush’ (Petalostylis labicheoides) is always [wɐɾɪdɪ]. We may also note that the reduplicated form /adin̪a~adin̪a/, ‘later on,’ is pronounced by younger speakers as [̍adin̪aːdin̪a], with voiced stop allophones in both cases. This may be part of a more general restriction on the co-occurrence of identical rhotics in the same word. The ‘having’ suffix /-mbara/39, provides an interesting example. This morpheme should perhaps more appropriately be represented as /-m(b)VRV/, as it can occur with any of the three vowels and any of the (phonetic) rhotics except [ɽ]; for example:

(12) /uɭkambara/ /wanamaɾa/ /waɭɖambiri/ /n̪iliili-mburu/ urlka -mbarra wana -mada warlda -mbirri nhili~nhili -mburru Umbrella wattle40-having flood.debris41-having heat/summer42-having sorrow~sorrow43-having ‘March fly’ ‘Case moth caterpillar’ ‘cicada’ ‘Fire beetle’ (Tabanida sp.) (Psychida sp.) (Cicadoidea sp.) (Merimna atrata) Thus the major allomorph(s) would seem to be with an alveolar trill, /-mbVrV/ (with one apparent example of [-maɾa]). But, when there is an alveolar rhotic, /r/ or /ɾ/, in the root, the allomorph /-mbVɻV/ is used, for example:

(13) /aɾambaɻa/ /virambuɻa/ ada-mbara virra -mbura numbness44-having throwing.stick45-having ‘spider’ ‘Thread-waisted mud wasp’

(Araneida sp.) (Sceliphron laetum)

39 Most Australian languages have one or more nominal affixes with the broad meaning of ‘-having’; for an extensive discussion by many contributors, see Dixon (1976:203-310). The best-known example of such a suffix would probably be the -tjarra ending of the Western Desert dialects. In Adny, as with the cognate form in Arabana-Wangkanurru (-mara ‘accompanied by’ – used with kinship terms) it is “highly probable that the suffix is derived from the word mara ‘hand’” (Hercus 1994:92). The semantic range of the morpheme in Adny is rather different, however, where it could perhaps more accurately be said to indicate inalienable possession of a characteristic (‘thin waist’, ‘ability to numb’, etc). In this respect it seems to bear similarities to the -wil/-bil/-mil forms of the Kulin languages (Hercus 1986:26). In some cases a more appropriate gloss might be ‘-associated-with’ (‘a plant species’, ‘a season of the year’, etc). As the range of examples suggests, it seems to appear mainly (but not exclusively) in names for arthropods (see McEntee 1978). 40 Acacia oswaldii 41 Referring to the caterpillar’s habit of covering itself with a ‘case’ of plant debris and sand. 42 Referring to the season and weather conditions when the insect is most abundant. 43 Referring to the beetle’s resemblance to a widow in mourning. 44 Referring to the effects of the venomous bite of some species. 45 Referring to the insect’s thin elongated abdomen.


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Similar, but not identical, restrictions are found in other Australian languages – such as Arrernte46 and Wangkumara47 – that all seem to have the common goal of avoiding the occurrence of more than one contrasting RHOTIC in the same word.

This could be seen as evidence in favour of categorising the Adnyamathanha taps as RHOTICS. However, such a ‘4-RHOTICS’ (/r, ɻ, ɾ, ɽ/) analysis would leave us with a restricted system of voicing contrasts, which excluded the APICALS. McE, who favours this approach, has VOICED OBSTRUENTS /v, ɡ, d̪/ intervocalically, with the addition of [d] and [ɖ] in homorganic SONORANT+ OBSTRUENT clusters. The status of the latter pair is unclear. Are they phonemes (unsatisfactory, because their distribution is restricted to this one environment)? Are they allophones of /t/ and /ʈ/ (unsatisfactory, because at other places of articulation contrastive /v, ɡ, d̪/, etc appear in this position)? Or are they allophones of /ɾ/ and /ɽ/ (unsatisfactory, because, apart from this being a very unusual position for RHOTICS to occur, these two would have a different distribution from the other two – /r/ and /ɻ/)? Furthermore, under this analysis /ɾ/ and /ɽ/ (or even a neutralised APICAL flap) do not occur before (PERIPHERAL) OBSTRUENTS, as the ALVEOLAR TRILL and the LATERALS do, leading to the conclusion that “[i]n Adnyamathanha consonant clusters the four-way rhotic distinction appears to have been neutralised” (Simpson and Hercus, 2004:185).

Figure 15. Pronunciation of the neutralised RHOTIC in clusters

McE analyses this neutralised rhotic occurring before /p/ and /k/ as an alveolar tap phoneme /ɾ/ – for example: /aɾku/ ‘red ochre’, /uɾkaɻi/ ‘brown snake (Pseudonaja sp.)’ and /aɾpa-i-/ ‘to be painted’. Both DT and BS analyse the language as having a full set of VOICED

46 Henderson (1998:120) states that “sequences of two identical rhotics separated by /ә/ do not occur within or across morphemes”. If a word contains more than one RHOTIC, only the first can be contrastive (either /r/ or /ɻ/); any subsequent RHOTICS are neutralised to /ɻ/. 47 Breen (n.d.) points out that the purposive suffix (usually translated as ‘for’) is normally /-ra/, but occasionally /-da/ for no obvious reason. However, if the preceding consonant is /r/, the /-da/ variant is always used.


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OBSTRUENTS – /v, ɡ, d, ɖ, d̪, (ɟ)/ – and two RHOTICS – /r, ɻ/ – with [ɾ, ɽ] as intervocalic allophones of /d, ɖ/, although for BS, all voiced stops in NASAL+ OBSTRUENT clusters are allophones of the corresponding VOICELESS STOPS. DT analyses the sound occurring before /p/ and /k/ as belonging to the /d/ phoneme, for example: Adkuna (vari) ‘red ochre (creek)’, Udkari ‘mythological brown snake’ and (Wakarla) Adpa-indanha ‘painting (of crows)’, which results in otherwise unlicensed VOICED OBSTRUENT + VOICELESS OBSTRUENT clusters. BS analyses this neutralised rhotic as /r/, for example: arrku ‘red ochre’, urrkari ‘brown snake’ and arrpa- ‘to paint (up)’ (Schebeck 2000) and we agree with this analysis. In this context (RHOTIC + PERIPHERAL clusters), the RHOTIC has a wide range of possible pronunciations, ranging from a schwa-colouring of the preceding vowel, via weak fricative, through to a trill – usually with a single vibration, but in careful pronunciation sometimes more. Figure 15 illustrates opposite ends of this range. Figure 15(a) shows the word /irki/, ‘beetle’, with the RHOTIC pronounced as schwa by our female speaker. Figure 15(b) depicts the word /irkaɭɖa(ɻa)/, ‘knee cap’, with the RHOTIC pronounced as a trill by our male speaker (arrows indicate the closed phases of the two tongue-tip vibrations).

In summary, then, we propose that, intervocalically following a stressed vowel, Adnyamathanha has a voicing contrast at all places of articulation (with the ALVEOPALATAL case representing an ‘accidental gap’). In NASAL-initial clusters OBSTRUENT phonemes occur at all places of articulation, but the contrast is neutralised in this position in favour of the VOICED member of the opposition. We analyse [ɾ] and [ɽ] as intervocalic allophones of /d/ and /ɖ/ and there is therefore a two-way (/r ~ ɻ/) RHOTIC distinction, as in the majority of Australian languages. As with other APICAL SONORANTS, however, this contrast is neutralised in consonant (RHOTIC + PERIPHERAL) clusters in favor of the ALVEOLAR member of the opposition, /r/.

2.6 Comparative aspects of the voicing contrast

From Appendix 1 it is clear that almost all of the cognates of Adnyamathanha medial OBSTRUENTS in surrounding languages relate to Adnyamathanha VOICELESS OBSTRUENTS. But there seems to be little evidence that the medial VOICED OBSTRUENTS result from a regular conditioned sound change. For example, Hale (1976:50) has shown that in Middle Paman languages such as Wik Muminh, a voicing contrast has arisen when a previous proto-Paman vowel length distinction disappeared, leaving a previously allophonic length difference in the following intervocalic consonant without a conditioning factor. The word /wid̪i-/48 ‘to laugh’ may be one such example in Adnyamathanha; it equates to /witi-/ in Kuyani but is transcribed by Schürmann (1844) as wiiti- in Barngarla, giving just the hint of a possibility that the voiced STOP may have arisen from a former allophone conditioned by a preceding long vowel. This is an isolated case, however. Adnyamathanha words with VOICED OBSTRUENTS seem to have arisen in a number of different ways. Some, such as /waȴva-/ vs. /waȴpa-/ are presumably alternative pronunciations of the same form. Others, such as /java-java-/, /irva-irva-/ and /vud̪a-vud̪a-/ are reduplicated forms, where lenition may have been facilitated by the increased number of syllables in the prosodic word – a phenomenon not uncommon in other languages.

Some words containing VOICED OBSTRUENTS are likely to be loan words. The only attested example in Adnyamathanha of an intervocalic VOICED VELAR, /iɡa/ is possibly a loan from Diyari, although an archaic form /ija/ appears in the Adnyamathanha place name Iya-vurtu (lit. ‘shady Native Orange tree’). Also, we recall that Diyari has a voicing contrast at the APICAL places of articulation only. Furthermore, none of the Adnyamathanha words with VOICED OBSTRUENTS appear to have cognates in the surrounding languages with a contrast. On

48 E.C. Black (1937) has widji-ku for this word – i.e. with an ALVEOPALATAL rather than a DENTAL.


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the contrary, there are Adnyamathanha words with VOICELESS intervocalic OBSTRUENTS that have cognates in Yandruwandha with VOICED OBSTRUENTS. For example, Adnyamathanha /japa/ ‘hole’ equates to /daba/ in Yandruwandha and Adnyamathanha /uʈu/ ‘hollow (n)’ has the cognate /kudru/.

Austin (1990:9) proposes that (non-APICAL) VOICED STOPS originated in the Karnic languages as allophones in NASAL-STOP clusters where the word-initial consonant was itself a NASAL. Forms beginning with a non-NASAL consonant had voiceless stop allophones in these clusters. For example, proto-Karnic */ŋaɳka/ ‘beard’ descends as /ŋaɳɡa/ in Yandruwandha and Yarluyandi, whereas */kuŋku/ ‘head’ remains as /kuŋku/ or /kuŋka/. Austin (1988:14): suggests that

Adnyamathanha is in the process of acquiring the voicing contrast, possibly by diffusion from its northern neighbours Diyari and Yandrruwandha ….and that the contrast has been diffusing between languages, probably centered in Yandrruwandha or the Ngura subgroup [Wangkumarra and Kullilla], the two language groups that have the widest range of contrast.

Whilst this is an entirely plausible hypothesis, the evidence for its applicability to Adnyamathanha is not overwhelming. One reason for this is that there are very few examples of Adnyamathanha VOICED OBSTRUENTS with cognates in these nearby languages with a contrast. On the other hand, there are a number of Adnyamathanha VOICED OBSTRUENTS, with cognates in languages with a single OBSTRUENT series. Examples are: /vid̪a/ ‘lungs’, for which Teichelmann (1857) gives the cognate birra with an alternative bitha49 in Kaurna and Schürmann (1844) gives pitha in Barngarla; /ad̪i/ ‘exhaustion’, which is recorded as both kadi and kathi in Kaurna and /mad̪u-/ ‘to meddle’, which is cognate with the verb ‘to stroke’ in Kaurna, which is given the alternative pronunciations mado- or matho- by Teichelmann (1857). Perhaps the most interesting cases are those where each member of an Adnyamathanha minimal pair has a cognate in different neighbouring languages. For example, Adnyamathanha /api-/ ‘to shut’ corresponds to /kapi-/ in Kuyani and Adnyamathanha /avi-/ ‘to vomit’ corresponds to /kapi-/ (kappe-) in Kaurna; Adnyamathanha /vurku-/ ‘to sprinkle’ corresponds to /purka-/ in Kuyani and Adnyamathanha /vurɡu/ ‘dew’ corresponds to /purku/ in Barngarla (burko), Wirangu and Kaurna.

As far as the APICALS are concerned, we find that there are a number of cognates with OBSTRUENTS in surrounding languages that relate to Adnyamathanha words with VOICELESS /t/ and /ʈ/ (see Appendix 2). In some cases, again, the VOICELESS cognate in Adnyamthanha may well be related to a VOICED form by a language-internal process of lenition, as perhaps in /aʈu/ ‘woman’ vs. /aɖupa/ ‘married couple’. Similarly, as the Adnyamathanha voicing contrast only functions in intervocalic position following a stressed vowel, an alveolar tap between unstressed vowels will correspond to an undifferentiated ALVEOLAR STOP in related languages that do not have the contrast at all: thus, Adnyamathanha /ipidi/ ‘motherless’ corresponds to Kaurna ipiti. It is important to realise that these words were probably phonetically identical – pronunciation of the Kaurna word was highly likely to have been the same as our Adnyamathanha speakers’ [ɪpɪɾɪ] – although the phonological analysis is different because Kaurna does not have a voicing contrast, which means the [ɾ] is analysed as a STOP, unspecified for voicing (but conventionally symbolised as /t/). There are very few Adnyamathanha words with VOICED APICAL STOPS in a stressed syllable that have cognates in neighbouring languages and for those that do exist, the correspondence in the other language always seems to be to a RHOTIC: for example, Adnyamathanha /idi-/ ‘to move away’ corresponds to Kuyani /iɾi-/. But,

49 Teichelmann (1857) notes with regard to the pronunciation of bitha: “(th = Engl. th)”, which we take to indicate [ð].


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once again this pair is phonetically the same – pronunciation in both languages would be [ɪɾɪ]– only the phonological analysis is different because, as Kuyani has no voicing contrast at other places of articulation, the voiced apicals have been analysed as RHOTICS50. Adnyamathanha /uɖu/ ‘crown of head’, however, corresponds to Kaurna kurru51, with an apparent difference in place of articulation.

The concept of homonymic clash avoidance (Gilliéron 1919), whereby potential homophony is ‘avoided’, usually by lexical replacement52 is generally regarded as ‘at most a minor tendency in language change’ (Durkin 2011), but perhaps we cannot exclude the possibility of some such motivation playing a role here, albeit by means of ‘phonological splitting’, rather than lexical replacement. DT gives as an example the English loanword sheep, which has been adopted into the languages of the area, with each language seeming to have re-phonologised the loanword in its own way: Kuyani (Hercus n.d.) has used reduplication (/ipi-ipi/), Yandruwandha (Breen 2015b) has used the ALVEOPALATAL (/ȶipi/) and Diyari (Austin 2013b) has done both (/ȶipi-ȶipi/). Adnyamathanha, on the other hand, has used the VOICED intervocalic OBSTRUENT (/ivi/). As there was already a word /t̪ipi/, ‘alive’ in these languages, which has become /ipi/ in Adnyamathanha and Barngarla, DT suggests that the occurrence of the VOICED consonant in the Adnyamathanha version “may be a dissimilation device for the entry of a later word that would otherwise be homophonous with one already in the language” (Tunbridge 1988b:281, n4). In our view, the fact that /ipi/ and /ivi/ are of different word classes in different semantic fields renders the possibility of their being confused remote, however53.

2.7 Comparative aspects of the rhotics

Appendix 4 shows some cognates of Adnyamathanha phonetic rhotics in related languages. The comparison is somewhat hampered by a lack of distinction in Berndt and Vogelsang (1941), who have only one type of r in their transcription of Ngadjuri, although there seems to be some correspondence between their intervocalic d and the tap or (more often) the flap in other languages. For example, Ngadjuri gudaki is cognate with Adnyamathanha /uɖaki/ ‘white cockatoo feather’, Kaurna kurraki, Nukunu /kudaki/54 and Barngarla urlaki or urdaki55, all meaning ‘white cockatoo’. Similarly, Ngadjuri wada ‘rat’ corresponds to Adnyamathanha /waɖa/. For reasons already discussed above, Berndt and Vogelsang’s (1941) d also sometimes corresponds to /ʈ/ in a language or a word position where there is no voicing contrast – compare. Ngadjuri akadi ‘head’, which is cognate with Adnyamathanha and Nukunu /(k)akaʈi/ (where /ʈ/, being in an unstressed syllable, is most frequently realised as [ɽ] in both cases). There is a similar lack of consistency in Schürmann’s (1844) Barngarla transcriptions, which use rr indiscriminately for most rhotics. Clendon (2015:15ff) does some excellent detective work on

50 This is, of course, not the only option. It is possible to analyse most TH-Y languages as having a voicing contrast in the two APICAL places of articulation only – in other words treat the two voiced apicals as VOICED STOPS even though there is no voicing contrast at the other places of articulation (thus violating criterion 3 adduced above). We have already seen that this is the preferred analysis for Arabana-Wangkangurru (Hercus 1994) and Diyari (Austin 2013a:32). 51 This is Teichelmann’s (1857) spelling. Teichelmann and Schürmann (1840) have kuro for ‘crown of head’ (and kurru for ‘vessel; grass tree’). 52 Gilliéron’s (1919) most famous example is from south western France, where regular sound change would have been expected to produce phonetically identical lexical reflexes from Latin gallus ‘cockerel’ and cattus ‘cat’. The claim is that reflexes of other words, such as pullus or vicarius came into use for ‘cockerel’ to avoid such a homonymic clash. 53 We consider a rather more feasible example of homonymic clash below (section 3.4). 54 Valentine (1886:138) has quodockee ‘white cockatoo’ in the language of ‘the Doora tribe’ of Mt. Remarkable. 55 Green (1886:124) has woolaki ‘white cockatoo’ in the ‘Wonoka’ language of ‘the Arkaba-tura tribe, whose country is about 70 miles north of Pt Augusta’.


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this and concludes that the variety Schürmann was transcribing probably had three rhotics (no /ɽ/) and that perhaps, “while Schürmann recognised a rhotic contrast, he did not record it systematically and did not recognise its significance”. The same is no doubt true for Kaurna and Ngadjuri, which means that comparisons involving the languages for which we have only written records must be very tentative, especially when no supporting evidence is available from those for which we have audio recordings. To take just one example, no firm conclusion can be drawn as to the nature of the rhotic(s) in Ngadjuri maduka and Bangarla marrurko ‘widow’.

What we can say is that all of these languages appear to have distinguished the two continuant RHOTICS: ALVEOLAR trilled /r/ and RETROFLEX approximant /ɻ/. With one or two exceptions, correspondences between forms containing these sounds are consistent. We have already established that Adnyamathanha in addition distinguishes ALVEOLAR and RETROFLEX

STOPS /d/ and /ɖ/ and it is clear from Hercus (n.d.) that Kuyani does also. Nukunu may also make a four-way distinction, although, as in Adnyamathanha, there are very few words containing a VOICED RETROFLEX STOP56. For Kaurna, Amery and Simpson (2013:29, 33) propose only three RHOTICS (no TAP~FLAP distinction) and opt to use the rd spelling for the single APICAL TAP.

2.8 Obstruents and rhotics: summary

There are strikingly fewer examples of VOICED OBSTRUENTS than VOICELESS OBSTRUENTS overall in medial position in Adnyamathanha (although the proportion appears to be reversed in the DENTAL category). Despite this asymmetry, occurrences are sufficiently numerous to warrant the conclusion that a voicing contrast exists in the contemporary (or most recently spoken) form of the language: at five places of articulation in the post-tonic position intervocalically and at the PERIPHERAL places of articulation following LATERALS and /r/. We thus propose the OBSTRUENT/RHOTIC system for Adnyamathanha given in Table 7.

Table 7. Proposed system of OBSTRUENT and RHOTIC contrasts for contemporary Adnyamathanha

PERIPHERAL APICAL LAMINAL LABIAL VELAR ALVEOLAR RETRO DENTAL ALVEOPAL

VOICELESS

OBSTRUENT p k t ʈ t̪ ȶ

VOICED

OBSTRUENT v ɡ d ɖ d̪ (ȡ)

RHOTIC r ɻ

56 There are only two such words in Hercus’s (1992) vocabulary: /ˈkuɖi/ ‘phlegm’ and /ˈkawi-wawaɖa/ ‘rock hole’ (but see footnote 54 for a possible third).


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3. Pre-stopped sonorants 3.1 Introduction

Pre-stopped sonorants are nasal and lateral articulations preceded by a homorganic oral stop closure – meaning a complete closure of the oral cavity without lowering of the velum or the sides of the tongue. PRE-STOPPED NASALS are phonemically distinct from ‘plain’ NASALS in a number of Australian languages, notably the Arandic sub-group (Butcher 1990; 1999; Harvey, Lin, Turpin, and Demuth 2015). As far as we know, the only Australian language that has been reported as having PRE-STOPPED LATERALS with phonemic status is Adnyamathanha’s near neighbour, Arabana (Harvey, San, Carew, Strangways, Simpson, and Stockigt 2019). On the other hand, phonetically pre-stopped nasals and laterals occur in free variation with their plain counterparts across Australia (Butcher and Loakes 2008), the prevalence varying from language to language and speaker to speaker. Butcher (1999) and Butcher and Loakes (2008) have suggested that the pre-stopping of sonorants arises as a by-product of a strategy to enhance the clarity of formant transitions at the left edge of the consonant. Australian languages need to maintain a large number of place distinctions and formant transitions at vowel-consonant boundaries are important cues to these distinctions. It is, therefore, important to enhance spectral clarity at such boundaries (Butcher 2006). It is suggested that speakers delay the opening of a side-branch resonator (the nasal cavity or supra-lingual space) until the last possible moment, thereby avoiding ‘muddying’ the spectrum at the VC boundary by the introduction of extra poles and zeros. The lowering of the velum or tongue side is therefore delayed to coincide with the articulatory closure (rather than preceding it, as in languages such as English). Pre-stopping arises as a consequence of delaying too long. Round (2014) contends that, whereas this may explain the development of pre-stopping in post-vocalic nasals, there is no evidence for a similar effect in laterals. This is puzzling, as it is well accepted that, as a side-branch resonator, the supra-lingual space formed by a lateral articulation, while having less of a ‘muddying’ effect than the nasal equivalent, nevertheless introduces at least one additional pole and a zero into the spectrum in the 2000 Hz region (Stevens 1998:543-4). It seems more plausible to suggest that there is a similar perceptual motivation for the pre-stopping of both types of sonorant than to maintain that pre-stopped laterals have arisen simply through speakers following “the same gestural template provided by pre-stopped nasals” (Round 2014).

According to Simpson and Hercus (2004) all of the TH-Y languages have undergone pre-stopping except for the more westerly dialects of Wirangu (Hercus 1999:33). They conclude that pre-stopping was not present in the TH-Y proto-language. Hercus (1994:42-3) provides the definitive account of pre-stopping in the area. She states:

The comparative data between the various Lake Eyre languages leave no doubt that pre-stopping is a fairly recent regional feature…[It is] likely that the wave of change that brought about pre-stopping came to Arabana-Wangkangurru through languages to the south, particularly Kuyani, and not via Aranda.

Thus, most of the TH-Y languages appear to have pre-stopped variants occurring as allophones of intervocalic NASALS and LATERALS when preceded by a short stressed vowel in disyllabic words. In most cases pre-stopping is blocked in words of four syllables and more, especially reduplications and compounds57.

57 As Jane Simpson (pers. comm) points out, it may also be important to distinguish between compounding (e.g. /ˈwanamada/) and reduplication (e.g. /wadna-wadna/) (for one thing, the constraint of similarity on reduplication may result in the under-application of phonological rules), but here too there seems to be no clear pattern.


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3.2 Phonology of pre-stopped nasals

The main question to be answered, then, is not whether pre-stopped sonorants are present in Adnyamathanha, but whether they contrast phonemically with plain NASALS and LATERALS. Table 8 and Appendix 5 show that there is a contrast intervocalically in Adnyamathanha between PRE-STOPPED NASALS and plain NASALS (or alternatively between homorganic STOP +

NASAL clusters and singleton NASALS) at all places of articulation except VELAR. As with the voicing contrast, there is a heavy asymmetry, in this case in favour of pre-stopped forms. It is tempting to attribute lack of pre-stopping in forms such as /vamaɭɖi-amaɭɖi-/, /wanamada/, and /uȵa-uȵa/ to the polysyllabic environment, if it were not for the existence of polysyllabic forms, such as /vabma-vabma/, /wadna-wadna/, and /juȡȵu-juȡȵu/, with pre-stopping, as well as many disyllabic forms without. Similarly, there seem to be no regularities relating to word class, with both nouns, such as /wana/ and /wadna/, and verbs, such as /vuna-/ and /vudna-/, containing both plain and pre-stopped nasals.

Table 8. Minimal pairs demonstrating contrastive PRE-STOPPED NASALS in

Adnyamathanha

/wami/ bend in creek /wabma/ snake

/ima-/ to pick up, get /ibma/ raw

/jana-/ to come /jadna/ they

/ina-/ to count, sort /idna/ foot

/vaɳa/ Silver Needle-wood (Hakea leucoptera)

/vaɖɳa/ Sand goanna (Varanus gouldii)

/jaɳa/ hairless /jaɖɳa/ back

/an̪ a/ that /jad̪ n̪ a/

Processionary C’pillar (Ochrogaster contraria)

/jun̪ u/ straight ahead /jud̪ n̪ u-/ to lean back

/vaȵa/ ashes /aȡȵa/ rock

/viȵa/ revenge party /iȡȵa/

Western Quoll (Dasyurus geoffroii)

Importantly, pre-stopping is blocked if the syllable onset is (or historically was) also a NASAL. Thus, alternations in Adnyamathanha such as:

(14) /udna/ /aȡȵa/ /uȡȵu/ /vaɖɳa/ /iȡȵa/ (k)udna58 (k)adnya (k)udnyu vardna (th)idnya excrement rock corpse goanna Dasyurus geoffroii ‘excrement’ ‘rock’ ‘corpse’ ‘goanna sp.’ ‘Western Quoll’ /ŋuna/ /ŋaȵa-ku/ /ŋuȵa/ /n̪aɳa/ /miȵa/ nguna ngana-ku ngunya nharna minya arm woo - NARR bindweed mean dew ‘arm’ ‘courting, ‘bindweed’ ‘mean person’ ‘dew’ wooing’

58 Symbols in parenthesis represent initial sounds present in cognates in other TH-Y languages and presumed to have been present in these Adny words at the time the pre-stopping process was occurring.


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can be explained by the presence or absence of an initial NASAL blocking the pre-stopping process59 and, if this were the only type of plain versus pre-stopped NASAL alternation to be found in the language, we could be confident we were dealing with a case of conditioned allophony. However, as Appendix 5 shows, there are many more examples of such alternations that cannot be explained in this way.

3.3 Phonology of pre-stopped laterals

Table 9 and Appendix 6 show that there is a contrast intervocalically in Adnyamathanha between PRE-STOPPED LATERALS and plain LATERALS (or between homorganic STOP + LATERAL clusters and singleton LATERALS) at all CORONAL places of articulation.

Table 9. Minimal pairs demonstrating contrastive PRE-STOPPED LATERALS in

Adnyamathanha.

/wila-/ to lick /widla-/ to spoil, waste

/ulu/ gum leaves /udlu/ louse

/ŋaɭa/ big /ŋaɖɭa/ limb (of tree)

/vaɭu/ meat /vaɖɭu/ feather

/ul̪ a/ a bit /ud̪ l̪ a/ alone

/wal̪ i/ peacemaker /wad̪ l̪ i-i-/ to tread in mess

/aȴa/ loose, slack /aȡȴa/ hand wave, signal

/miȴaɻu/ wind; walking stick /miȡȴi/ very soft

3.4 Phonetics of pre-stopped sonorants

Figures 16 and 17 illustrate some typical features of PRE-STOPPED SONORANTS in Adnyamathanha.

Figure 16 shows waveforms and spectrograms of plain and PRE-STOPPED intervocalic NASALS. It compares (a) a plain NASAL in the word /n̪ina/, ‘you (2.SG)’ with (b) a PRE-STOPPED

NASAL in the word /udna/, ‘excrement’, both recorded from our male speaker. Note that the stop and nasal components of the latter are of approximately equal duration. The stop appears to be produced with lax closure and heavy voicing.

Figure 17 compares waveforms and spectrograms of plain and PRE-STOPPED intervocalic LATERALS pronounced by our male speaker: (a) is a plain LATERAL in /jaɭi/ ‘tongue’ and (b) is PRE-STOPPED LATERAL in /aɖɭa/ ‘fire’. As with the PRE-STOPPED NASALS, the duration of the stop component in the latter is approaching that of the sonorant component and once again the stop is heavily voiced and sufficiently lax in articulation to have some energy in the lower frequencies.

59 The blocking of pre-stopping by the presence of an initial NASAL does not seem to be universal among TH-Y languages. Teichelmann (1857), for example, recorded both nunno and nudno for ‘body, corpse’ in Kaurna (Robert Amery, pers. comm.).


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Figure 16. Plain and PRE-STOPPED intervocalic NASALS

Figure 17. Plain and PRE-STOPPED intervocalic LATERALS


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Table 10. Mean durations of components of intervocalic SONORANT + STOP sequences

son (ms)

voiced clos (ms)

voiceless clos (ms)

VOT (ms)

n

SING STOP 65 (25) 7 (15) 7 (10) 38

SING NAS 89 (36) 27

HOM NAS 108 (22) 18 (12) 10 (9) 21 (16) 58

HET NAS 124 (25) 26 (16) 8 (14) 18 (19) 13

P-S NAS 71 (21) 52 (19) 5 (26) 23 (18) 48

SING LAT 88 (38) 33

HOM LAT 107 (24) 22 (14) 27 (8) 20 (11) 13

HET LAT 62 (14) 12 (17) 70 (23) 45 (18) 57

P-S LAT 70 (23) 41 (20) 17 (12) 18 (19) 48

We measured the duration of singleton NASALS and LATERALS as well as the components of homorganic and hetororganic SONORANT + STOP sequences and (homorganic) stop + sonorant sequences (= putative PRE-STOPPED SONORANTS). The combined mean measurements from our two speakers are given in Table 10 and Figure 18. All measurements are from tokens in a /#(C)V́_V/ environment; standard deviations are in brackets; n is the number of tokens measured.

Firstly, we may note that mean durations of single NASALS (89 ms) and LATERALS (88 ms) are of comparable magnitude and both are somewhat longer than the overall closure durations of VOICED OBSTRUENTS (72 ms). Homorganic and heterorganic NASAL+STOP clusters and homorganic LATERAL+STOP clusters are very similar in terms of their component durations. Central to our investigation here, is the nature of the corresponding components of the two types of pre-stopped SONORANT. As we can see, the durations of the stop components (voiced and voiceless components together), with a mean of just under 60 ms in both types, are slightly shorter than those of singleton VOICED OBSTRUENTS (x̄ = 72 ms), but of greater duration than those in SONORANT + (VOICED) OBSTRUENT sequences (around 40 ms). The sonorant components are some 20 percent shorter than their singleton counterparts and some 35 percent shorter than in the corresponding homorganic cluster. The stop components are substantially voiced (and are certainly perceived as such), although the VOTs within the nasal releases (essentially voiceless nasals) are somewhat longer than those found in singleton VOICED

OBSTRUENTS.


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Figure 18. Intervocalic STOPS, SONORANTS and components of all possible SONORANT +

STOP combinations in Adnyamathanha


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Figure 19. Nasal-stop combinations in languages with contrastive PRE-STOPPED

NASALS


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Figure 19 shows mean durations of components of intervocalic nasal-stop combinations in three languages with contrastive PRE-STOPPED NASALS: (a) Eastern Arrernte (from Butcher 1990) (b) Kaytetye (from Harvey et al. 2015), and (c) Arabana (from Harvey et al. 2019) ). Compared with phonologically contrastive PRE-STOPPED NASALS in Arandic languages, the Adnyamathanha counterparts are shorter overall (compare Figure 20a with Figure 21a and b). As this also applies to singleton STOPS and NASALS, it may be the result of a slower speaking rate overall by the Arandic speakers. Furthermore, the stop components of Arandic PRE-

STOPPED NASALS are generally agreed to be phonetically voiceless, whereas those of Adnyamathanha are voiced (although often with voiceless nasal release). It should also be borne in mind that Harvey et al.’s (2015) measurements are from tokens in a /#V_V́ / environment, whereas all other measurements discussed here are from tokens in a /#(C)V́ _V/ environment. The Arabana data from Harvey et al. (2019), however, bear some strong similarities to our Adnyamathanha results (compare Figure 18a with Figure 19c). Mean singleton NASALS are around 90 ms in both languages and singleton STOP closures are in the seventies (ms), although VOTs appear to be considerably shorter in our Adnyamathanha speakers than in Arabana. Singleton STOP closures in both languages are also less than half the duration of their Kaytetye equivalents. The nasal components of the PRE-STOPPED NASALS in Adnyamathanha, Arabana and Arrernte are of comparable length (around 70 ms), although 50 percent longer in Kaytetye. However, taking all components together (voiced closure, voiceless closure and VOT) the stop phases of both Adnyamathanha and Arabana PRE-STOPPED NASALS

are two thirds the length of their Arandic counterparts (although we may note that there appear to be no measurable VOTs in the Arabana data).

Figure 20. LATERAL+STOP combinations in Arabana

Figure 20 shows mean durations of components of intervocalic lateral-stop combinations in Arabana, a language with contrastive lateral pre-stopping, measured from tokens in a /#(C)V́ _V/ environment (from Harvey et al. 2019). A comparison of Figure 20 with Figure 18(b) shows that, as with the corresponding NASALS, our Adnyamathanha speakers produce the lateral sounds in a very similar way to Harvey et al.’s (2019) Arabana speakers. Single LATERALS are of similar length in the two languages at around 90 ms; PRE-STOPPED LATERALS are also of comparable duration overall. The main difference is that in Arabana the lateral component of the pre-stopped lateral is twice as long as the stop component (of similar length to the single lateral), whereas in Adnyamathanha these two components are closer to each other in length.


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Figure 21. Sonorant+stop combinations in languages with non-contrastive pre-stopping

Comparison of the Adnyamathanha pre-stopped SONORANTS with non-contrastive pre-stopping in other languages reveals a different picture. Figure 21 shows durations of SONORANTS in three languages with non-contrastive pre-stopping: Gupapuyŋu and Warlpiri (from Butcher and Loakes 2008) measured from tokens in a /#(C)V́_V/ environment and Kaytetye (from Harvey et al 2015) measured from tokens in a /#V_V́ / environment. Firstly, both singleton NASALS in Gupapuyŋu and singleton LATERALS in Warlpiri were around 50 percent longer than their counterparts in Adnyamathanha, whilst plain LATERALS in Kaytetye were 75 percent longer than in Adnyamathanha. But the phonetically pre-stopped variants of the SONORANTS in Gupapuyŋu and Warlpiri were only very slightly longer than the plain variants, because the stop components of the former were extremely brief – around 20 ms in both Gupapuyŋu NASALS and Warlpiri LATERALS. This is only 12-15 percent of the overall consonant duration, compared to 54 percent in Adnyamathanha PRE-STOPPED SONORANTS (30 percent in Arabana PRE-STOPPED LATERALS, 52 percent in Kaytetye PRE-STOPPED NASALS and 69 percent in Eastern Arrernte PRE-STOPPED NASALS). We conclude that, in terms of duration, PRE-STOPPED NASALS and PRE-STOPPED LATERALS in Adnyamathanha and Arabana are very similar and that both lie somewhere between the well-established phonologically contrastive PRE-STOPPED NASALS of Arandic languages and the phonetically pre-stopped variants of plain (phonetically long) SONORANTS found in many other Australian languages. Whether this can be considered as representing three stages of the development of contrastive pre-stopping must remain a matter of speculation.

3.5 Comparative aspects of nasal pre-stopping

From Appendix 5 we can see that, whilst Adnyamathanha intervocalic PRE-STOPPED NASALS have many cognates in related languages, Adnyamathanha plain NASALS have very few. Almost all Adnyamathanha PRE-STOPPED NASALS correspond to pre-stopped nasals in related


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languages. Amongst the rare examples of plain NASALS with cognates are /ina-/ ‘to count or sort’, which is the same in Barngarla and contrasts in both languages with /idna/ ‘foot’, and /wina-/ ‘to trickle’, which is identical in Kuyani and contrasts in both languages with /widna/ ‘reeds’. However, just as the origin of forms with VOICED OBSTRUENTS is often unclear (section 2.6), so is that of many forms with plain NASALS. Some of the non-pre-stopped forms could be said to be archaic. There is a tendency for plain NASALS to predominate in polysyllabic forms and (therefore) in verbs, as opposed to other word classes, as verb stems are never pronounced without suffixes. But, as Appendix 5 shows, there are plenty of counterexamples. There are few obvious loanwords from non-pre-stopping languages, the most likely candidates being Diyari, Yandruwandha and the Paakantjic group. However, /piȵa/ ‘revenge party’ probably comes from Diyari60.

Simpson and Hercus (2004) state that “[p]re-stopping in the southern T[H-]Y languages [i.e. Narangga and Kaurna], and perhaps also Nukunu, appears to be a low-level phonetic rule, usually in variation with non pre-stopped equivalents”. It is not clear whether this ‘variation’ refers to free variation or conditioned (allophonic) variation, nor whether pre-stopping in the northern languages is, by implication, not ‘a low-level phonetic rule’ (and therefore phonologically contrastive?). According to Clendon (2015:12), in Barngarla “all nasal … sounds that are not velar can be pre-stopped when they occur at the start of the second syllable in a word” [emphasis added], suggesting free variation, and yet he refers later in the same paragraph to “[t]he pre-stopped nasal phonemes” [emphasis added]. He also states that “[p]re-stopping appears to have been to some extent optional in the area around Port Lincoln”. Also at odds with Simpson and Hercus (2004), other sources (Amery and Simpson 2013:29) suggest that Kaurna has phonemic PRE-STOPPED NASALS, at least among the CORONAL categories, although the examples are few. Thus, it seems that in the north, Kuyani had allophonic variation between plain and pre-stopped nasals at all places of articulation (Hercus n.d.), whereas Barngarla may have had a phonemic contrast, except among VELARS (Clendon 2015). In the south, Narangga and Nukunu (Hercus 1992:3) had free variation, with no pre-stopping of BILABIALS and Kaurna may have had contrastive pre-stopping of CORONALS. Interestingly there is at least one example of a heterorganic NASAL + NASAL sequence in Adnyamathanha with a cognate in Kaurna whose first element has been de-nasalised, thus forming a heterorganic STOP

+ NASAL cluster. Adnyamathanha /anŋi/ ‘white ant’ equates to Kaurna kadnɡi61. This reinforces the idea that pre-stopping is facilitated in the case of long nasals preceded by short vowels. In the west, pre-stopped nasals seem to have been absent in Wirangu – except in the Gawler Ranges dialect, where they were in free variation with their plain counterparts (J.M. Black 1917; Hercus 1999) – and possibly in Nawu, where Schürmann’s (1846:28-9) ten-word vocabulary has tyina for ‘foot’ and kuma for ‘one’.

As for the non-TH-Y neighbours of Adnyamathanha, the pre-stopped sonorants of Arabana-Wangkangurru have only recently been promoted from allophonic to phonemic status. Hercus (1994:43) was of the view that “apart from the few exceptional cases, pre-stopping in Arabana-Wangkangumu is entirely predictable”, although “at the time when Arabana-Wangkangurru became a remembered language the pre-stopped consonants were close to reaching phonemic status.” Harvey et al. (2019:430), who analyse these sequences as hetero-syllabic clusters, affirm that “pre-stopping [in Arabana] is a contrastive phenomenon, but one which shows a high degree of neutralization and of predictability.” Diyari had allophonic pre-stopping of /n, n̪/ only (Austin 2013a:34). In Yardliyawarra, according to Hercus and Austin (2004:211-12) there was “sporadic” pre-stopping of /n/, but the pre-stopping

60 Gason 1886:97 has pinya; Reuther has pinga, but also pinja and pinya in compounds (McEntee 1998). 61 The spelling is from Teichelmann (1857). Interestingly, Teichelmann and Schürmann (1840) have kadnngi (perhaps indicating ‘partial’ denasalisation?).


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is thought to have spread from Adnyamathanha, rather than the other way around. As already mentioned, Innamincka Yandruwandha (Breen 2015a:10) apparently had no pre-stopping of NASALS; so, for example, the cognate of Adnyamathanha /jadni-/ ‘to copulate’ (Northern TH-Y /t̪adni/) is /t̪ani/ in Yandruwandha. The more westerly Nhirrpi dialect, however, has pre-stopping that is “optional to a certain extent” (Bowern 2000). Thus ‘nothing’ in Innamincka Yandruwandha can only be /pani/, but in Nhirrpi it can be [pani] or [padni].

3.6 Comparative aspects of lateral pre-stopping

From Appendix 6 we can see that, as with the NASALS, whilst Adnyamathanha intervocalic PRE-STOPPED LATERALS have many cognates with PRE-STOPPED LATERALS in related languages, Adnyamathanha plain LATERALS have very few. Amongst the rare examples of plain LATERALS with cognates are /ŋali-/ ‘to burn’, which has corresponding forms with plain LATERALS in Kuyani and Barngarla and /ŋaɭa/ ‘big’, with cognates in Kuyani and Kaurna. The word for ‘charcoal’, /viɭa/, also has cognates with plain laterals in Barngarla, Nukunu and Ngadjuri, whereby it is interesting to note that in the latter two cases a long vowel is indicated in the transcription – an environment said to block the process of pre-stopping (Butcher and Loakes 2008). There are also once again several instances of pre-stopping being blocked in compounds:

(15) /waɭivaɻi/62 /walaŋuru/63 wardli-vari wadla -ngurru home -creek grindstone-grass ‘Milky Way’ ‘Button Grass’ (Dactyloctenium radulans)

A more complicated example, involving reduplication, occurs in the Adnyamathanha compound /anaal̪al̪a/ ‘scorpion’:

(16) /anaal̪al̪a/64 /analiɾiliɾi/ adn(u) -adlha~adlha adnu -lidi~lidi Central Bearded Dragon -tail ~tail Central Bearded Dragon-reddish (Pogona vitticeps) (Pogona vitticeps) ‘scorpion (gen.)’65 ‘Orange Darling-pea (Swainsona stipularis)’

Compare this with the Kuyani equivalent kadnu-kadla66. Both words would derive from a proto-form */kanu-kal̪a(-kal̪a)/ but only in Adnyamathanha has the pre-stopping been blocked. The term for Central Bearded Dragon again appears without following pre-stopping in the plant name, /analiɾiliɾi/ ‘Orange Darling-pea’ (Swainsona stipularis). This term has been borrowed into Adnyamathanha from Diyari kadni-liri-liri (lit. ‘lizard-reddish’), referring to ‘a plant

62 Kaurna and Ngadjuri have the same alternation in the equivalent words, although Teichelmann (1857) offers wodliparri as an alternative to the form with a plain lateral. 63 Yandruwandha has the identical form for the grass but has the plain lateral in /ˈwala/ for ‘grindstone’ (Breen 2015b). Recall that Yandruwandha is said to have phonemic pre-stopping in the ALVEOLAR LATERALS /l/ and /dl/. In Diyari, on the other hand, where pre-stopping is said to be optional (Hercus 1972), Reuther recorded the form wadla-nguru (McEntee 1998). 64 Note that BS (2000:17) correctly transcribes the LATERALS as DENTAL, whereas McE (1992:7) mistakenly records them as ALVEOLAR. 65 The meaning of the word arises from the alert posture display of the lizard, often seen strutting along carrying its tail arched over its back in a manner reminiscent of a scorpion (Mark Hutchinson, SA Museum herpetologist, pers. comm.). 66 From Reuther (Austin and Herbert 1991). The second element should no doubt be interpreted as /ˈkad̪l̪a/ (see footnote 64).


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species’ (Reuther in McEntee 1998)67. It is uncertain whether the original derivation is through */kanu/ or */kani/, prior to pre-stopping68. Once again, however, there appears to be no consistent rule exempting reduplicated forms from pre-stopping and it occurs in several more Adnyamathanha words, such as:

(17) /widlawidla/ /aɖɭiaɖɭin̪a/ widla~widla ardli~ardli -nha

waste~waste debark~debark-? ‘drought’ ‘Freeling Heights’(placename)

A potential example of real homonymic clash (sufficient to confuse linguists) occurs in relation to the word for the ceremonial spear used at the malkada or first-stage initiation ceremony. The spear, some two metres in length, is carried when bringing the boys back into the group of women and children, point-end upwards with a white cockatoo feather69 coated in red ochre tied to the point.

(18a) /akuruvaɭu/ (18b)/akuruvaɭu/ Akurru -varlu Akurru -vardlu

mythical.serpent-meat mythical.serpent-feather ‘ceremonial spear’ ‘ceremonial spear’

The name of the ceremonial spear is /akuru-vaɭu/ (18), which has been interpreted as ‘Akurru-meat’ (Tunbridge and Coulthard 1985:11) – Akurru or Akurra being the giant mythical serpent of the Flinders Ranges. This does not make a great deal of sense. However, if we interpret this /-vaɭu/, not as present-day /vaɭu/, but as a historical form of present-day /vaɖɭu/, where the pre-stopping of the /ɭ/ has been impeded by the fact that the word was in a compound, then /akuru-va(ɖ)ɭu/ translates as ‘Akurru-feather’. This does make sense, since the spear has a feather attached and depictions of the rainbow serpent from the north show the mythical creature either wearing a headdress of (white cockatoo) feathers (Taylor 1996:151; Maddock 1978:103) or with feathers attached at the neck (see, for example, Namirrkki 2018) 70.

Once again, there is considerable asymmetry in favour of pre-stopped forms, with the origin of most forms with plain LATERALS remaining unclear. The phonemic status of pre-stopped laterals in other TH-Y languages is, if anything, less clear than that of pre-stopped nasals. Kuyani (Hercus n.d.) appears to have some words with plain laterals, but Appendix 6 shows only one sub-minimal pair (/t̪aɭi/, ‘tongue’ and /jaɖɭi/, ‘male’). Plain laterals appear equally sparse in Ngadjuri (Berndt and Vogelsang 1941). Pre-stopped laterals are not phonemic in Nukunu (Hercus 1992:3), where almost all plain laterals occur after long vowels. As we have seen, Clendon’s (2015) account is somewhat contradictory about the situation in Barngarla, stating that, as with the nasals, pre-stopping is optional, yet referring to a table of pre-stopped lateral phonemes. Kaurna is said to have phonemic PRE-STOPPED LATERALS (Amery and Simpson 2013:29), although again the number of plain laterals seems rather small. There is, however, some evidence of variable lateral pre-stopping in Kaurna from Teichelmann and Schürmann (1840:3), who state, “R is changed with l or d; as kurlana, kullana; garla, gadla;

67The plant name derives from the fact that the skin colour surrounding the eye of the Central Bearded Dragon matches perfectly the colour of the petals of the flower of Swainsona stipularis. It is difficult to know where the component /-liɾi-liɾi/ originated, but note that there is a word /ˈtiɻi-tiɻi/, ‘red’ in Warlpiri (Laughren et al. 2005). 68 See footnote 29. 69 As we note in Appendix 4, the Adny word /ˈuɖaki/ refers to the feathers only, rather than, as in other TH-Y languages, the entire bird. 70 It is usually (but not exclusively) the female or hermaphroditic form of the serpent that is shown with feathers. These are are still worn in Arnhem Land by dancers in ceremonies honouring the Rainbow Serpent. They are known as dabberk in Bininj Kunwok.


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murla, mulla.” Wirangu, on the other hand, has very few pre-stopped laterals (Hercus 1999:33-4).

Outside the TH-Y group, Arabana-Wangkangurru clearly has pre-stopping of laterals and, as we have seen with the nasals, there is clear evidence that this has also recently become a phonemic contrast, albeit one of limited extent (Harvey et al. 2019). In Diyari there is optional pre-stopping of ALVEOLAR and DENTAL LATERALS (Austin 2013a:34). Yandruwandha has phonetic pre-stopping of three of its four LATERALS, but only in the ALVEOLAR category does the distinction (/l/ ~ /dl/) appear to be phonemic (Breen 2015a:16). It may be noted, for example, that the terms for ‘butterfly’, in Diyari kali-bili-bili (Reuther in McEntee 1998) and in Yandruwandha /kalipil̪ipil̪i/ (Breen 2015b:21), correspond to the Adnyamathanha form /aɭi vil̪i-vil̪i/, with no pre-stopping. The Adnyamathanha word /kaɭu/, another name for Bivu, is either a fossilised form or a loan word: /kaɭu/ means ‘testicles’ in Wirangu (Hercus 1999:167) and Diyari (Reuther in McEntee 1998)71, while the everyday Adnyamathanha word for ‘testicles’ is /aɖɭu/, which has undergone the normal processes of initial dropping and pre-stopping.

3.7 Pre-stopped sonorants: summary

Examples of contrasts are sufficiently numerous to warrant the conclusion that plain and PRE-STOPPED NASALS and LATERALS are in opposition at all four CORONAL places of articulation in Adnyamathanha, as well as in the BILABIAL place of articulation for NASALS. This opposition exists following stressed syllables, mainly, but not exclusively, in disyllabic words. It is clear from comparison with cognate forms in surrounding languages that the current PRE-STOPPED

NASALS derive historically from allophones of plain NASALS. But, synchronically, is the opposition best analysed as one between singleton and cluster (for example, /n/ vs /d+n/; /l/ vs /d+l/), thus making the phonotactics more complex, or as an opposition between singletons and unitary complex phonemes (for example, /n/ ⁓ /dn/; /l/ ⁓ /dl/ or /n/ ⁓ /dn/; /l/ ⁓ /dl/), thus adding more rows to the consonant table? McE, DT and BS all recognise a phonemic contrast for both NASALS and LATERALS, but opt for the first analysis, treating the pre-stopped NASALS and LATERALS as clusters. The main criteria to be considered are: (1) Does the analysis result in phoneme sequences that are compatible with the already established phonotactic patterns of the language? (2) Does the analysis result in complex phonemes that are compatible with the generally accepted criteria for the establishment of such phonemes? (3) Which solution best fits the pattern of the remainder of the system of contrasts?

Harvey and colleagues have provided extensive discussions of these issues as they relate to Kaytetye and other Arandic languages (Harvey et al. 2015:235-39) and to Arabana (Harvey et al. 2019:444-453). Adnyamathanha, as might be expected, behaves more like the latter. As we have seen (section 1.4), it has rather more restricted phonotactics than the Arandic varieties (no complex onsets, no tri-consonantal sequences). Thus, in this language, the stop+sonorant sequences occur only intervocalically, which means they behave rather more like clusters than like unitary consonant phonemes (a subset of which can appear initially). Moreover, there are differences in distribution between pre-stopped sonorants and plain sonorants. On the other hand, analysing these sequences as clusters would violate the ‘syllable contact law’ (Murray and Vennemann 1983), which states that a sequence of consonants across a syllable boundary is more favoured, the greater the increase in ‘consonantal strength’ from the coda segment to the onset segment. It would also go against the specifically Australian antipathy to OBSTRUENT

71 Interestingly, the word appears in various combinations in Reuther’s list as kalu, karlu and kadlu (McEntee 1998); the word /ˈkaɭu/ also exists further afield in Paakantyi, with the meaning of ‘penis’ (Hercus 2011:32).


44

codas. Furthermore, as we have also seen, these sequences are always homorganic – thus meeting one of the criteria for complex (unitary) segments with temporally ordered components. There are no corresponding heterorganic STOP+SONORANT clusters in the language. Finally, analysing these sequences as clusters would require us either to reinstate /b/ as a phoneme (giving a three-way opposition /p/ ~ /b/ ~ /v/ at only one place of articulation) or treat [b] as an allophone of /v/ before NASALS72. Less awkwardly, we would also have to include /ȡ/ as a phoneme that only occurs before and after NASALS. These caveats, together with the obvious diachronic origin of the stop+sonorant sequences73 and also the synchronic phonetics of these articulations (see above section 3.2), leads us to treat them as PRE-STOPPED

SONORANTS. However, we note that Harvey et al.’s (2019:444-453) discussion leads to the opposite conclusion in the (very similar) case of Arabana.

Table 11. Proposed Adnyamathanha consonant phonemes

PERIPHERAL APICAL LAMINAL

LABIAL VELAR ALVEOLAR RETRO DENTAL ALVEOPAL

VOICELESS

OBSTRUENT p k t ʈ t̪ ȶ

VOICED

OBSTRUENT v ɡ d ɖ d̪ (ȡ)

NASAL m ŋ n ɳ n̪ ȵ

PRE-STOPPED NAS bm dn ɖɳ d̪n̪ ȡȵ

LATERAL l ɭ l̪ ȴ

PRE-STOPPED LAT dl ɖɭ d̪l̪ ȡȴ

RHOTIC r ɻ

GLIDE w j

According to the traditional paradigm, we are now in a position to propose the consonant system for Adnyamathanha given in Table 11.

72 Or do as BS (n.d.: 45ff) does and analyse all stop+nasal sequences as clusters (/pm, tn, ȶȵ/, etc) and all OBSTRUENTS as having voiced allophones before (and after) NASALS. 73 Not all such sequences arise from a ‘strengthened’ intervocalic sonorant following a short stressed vowel. There are one or two exceptions, such as the STOP+LATERAL cluster in the loanword /ˈwadlupada/ ‘white woman’, which is most likely derived from the English white lubra – cf cognates in Yandruwandha /ˈwadlumpada/ (Breen 2015:109) and Wirangu /ˈwalubara/ (Hercus 1999:182). In contrast, /ˈwadlu/ ‘anterior fontanelle’ is almost certainly derived from an earlier form */walu/ (see Appendix 6).


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4 Vowels

4.1 Distinctive vowel qualities

Adnyamathanha is traditionally described as belonging to the large number of Australian languages that have three major vowel phonemes: a HIGH FRONT unrounded vowel /i/, a HIGH

BACK rounded vowel /u/ and a LOW CENTRAL /a/.

Figure 22. Formant plot of Adnyamathanha vowels

Figure 22 shows a formant plot of the stressed vowels of both our speakers (182 tokens per speaker), compared with the positions of the primary Cardinal Vowels as pronounced by 11 pupils of Daniel Jones (based on data from Ladefoged 1967:88-89). It seems that, in common with most other Australian three-vowel languages (see, for example, Fletcher and Butcher 2014:94-98), the phonetic values of these vowels would more accurately be described as close-to-half-close front unrounded [ɪ], close-to-half-close back rounded [ʊ], and half open central unrounded [ɐ]. Given the close phonetic proximity of the so-called HIGH vowels in Adnyamathanha (and surrounding languages) to the /e/ and (especially) the /o/ of German, it is hardly surprising that 19th century German-speaking linguists have in so many cases transcribed allophones of these vowels as e and o respectively.

It has also been reported that some speakers have a much-fronted variant of the low vowel in certain environments. BS (Schebeck n.d.:32) says “in certain positions it may sound like a in English ‘hat’”. He gives the example of the first vowel in /vapi/ ‘father’, which he transcribes, (correctly, in our view) as [æ], but makes no further suggestion as to what the “certain positions” might be. All indications are, however, that he does not regard the [æ] sound as a separate phoneme. DT, on the other hand, is explicit, though in our view inaccurate, regarding the conditioning environments. She states the rule as (Tunbridge 1988b:282 n10):


46

a → e / # v_

# lamino-dental C_

# y_Ci

Both of our speakers showed evidence of this ‘allophony’ following /#v/, but we could find no evidence of it being conditioned by a preceding DENTAL consonant, for example, in words such as /n̪aku-/ ‘to see’, /n̪aŋaʈan̪a/ ‘what?’ or /n̪aɳɡu/ ‘bed’74, all of which were pronounced with an [ɐ] quality. Fronting of /a/ in the environment of ALVEOPALATALS, on the other hand, both preceding and following the vowel, is a common occurrence and of course, easily motivated in articulatory terms as the result of anticipatory or perseverative tongue advancement extending from the alveopalatal consonant into the adjacent vowel. Examples of words in which this occurs to some extent are /japa/ ‘road’, /aȡȵa/ ‘rock’, /maȵȡa/ ‘Euro (Macropus robustus)’ and /aȡȴu/ ‘Native myrtle (Myoporum montanum)’.

Figure 23. Vowel /a/ in two environments

Less obvious is the phonetic motivation for the fronting of this vowel when preceded by initial /v/ in words such as /vapi/, ‘father’, /van̪d̪a/ ‘tired’ or /vaɻi-/ ‘to lack’. We are not aware of a rule in any other language that fronts low vowels following a LABIAL consonant. Figure 23 shows spectrograms of Adnyamathanha /a/ in two environments as pronounced by our female speaker: (a) first syllable of /japa/ ‘road’ and (b) first syllable of vada/ ‘Dead Finish (Acacia tetragonophylla)’. These illustrate the difference acoustically between the LABIAL ‘allophones’ and the ALVEOPALATAL allophones: in the ALVEOPALATAL environment (Figure 23a) the first two formants are moving throughout the duration of the vowel – from a widely separated configuration (low F1, high F2) indicating a raised and fronted tongue for the initial consonant, to a closer configuration (high F1, mid F2) appropriate to the low vowel target. Low vowels preceding ALVEOPALATAL consonants show the mirror image of this pattern. In the LABIAL environment (Figure 23b), by contrast, the formants are static throughout (high F1, mid-high

74 There were no words beginning with /#t̪a-/ in our audio corpus. McE (1992:48) lists only 10 such words, almost all of which are loanwords.


47

F2), suggesting that the fronted low vowel configuration is a target, rather than simply the involuntary result of a tongue movement away from a high front consonant.

There is no doubt, then, that this variant of /a/ can be heard in some speakers, but is it a distinct fourth vowel phoneme? DT is of the opinion that “e [= æ] is now a phoneme, because it has lost its conditioning environment in some instances” (Tunbridge1988b:282 n.10). DT does not give examples of occurrences of ‘e’ without conditioning environment, but presumably she is referring to forms such as:

(19) /aʈ[æː]pi/ art(u -v)api woman-father ‘father’s sister; mother-in-law’

Interestingly, the first vowel of /api-/ ‘to shut’ is also pronounced by our speaker as [æ], although the missing initial consonant is undoubtedly */k-/ rather than */v-/. On the other hand, there are several examples of /a/ pronounced [ɐ] following /v/, such as /vaɖɭu/ ‘feather’, /vapa/ ‘young’, /vapapa/ ‘maternal grandfather’ and the pluralising suffix /-vapina/. Some speakers would thus have an apparent sub-minimal pair /væpi/ ⁓ /vɐpa/.

Figure 24. Formant plot of Adnyamathanha open vowels

There are 15 /v/-initial words in the audio corpus of our female speaker that are perceived by the authors as being pronounced with a [æ], plus the verb /api(-ku)/. When we plot the formants of these vowels separately from those perceived as being pronounced [ɐ]75, the results are as shown in Figure 24. Almost 50 percent of vowels perceived by us as ‘fronted’ actually lie within the ‘non-fronted’ area (two standard deviations around the mean), showing second formants below 1800 Hz, while other vowels perceived as ‘non-fronted’ have second formant frequencies above 1800 Hz. These data, combined with the fact that there are so few (sub)minimal pairs, make it difficult to conclude that the [æ] sound should be regarded as a separate phoneme. Perhaps most tellingly of all, even speakers who have this variation accept

75 This group contains a similar number of non /v/-initial words, plus /ˈvaɖɭu/.

/a/ in environment of /v‐/

/a/ in all other environments


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the [ɐ] variant as a valid pronunciation in ‘fronting environments’, when attempted by a non-native speaker (for example, the first author) – that is to say, a pronunciation such as [vɐpi] for /vapi/ is never corrected (as all other mispronunciations invariably are).

BS also states that “With some speakers, the vowel /u/ is fronted in certain contexts, especially when following v” (Schebeeck n.d.:32) and gives the example of /vuku/, ‘eyelid’ (which he transcribes with [ü]). In support of this view, he reports that McE has heard this word as /viku/. The first author of the present paper stands by his transcription of the word, meaning ‘eyebrow’, as /viku/ (cognate with Kaurna piko). Unfortunately, this particular word does not occur in our audio-recorded corpus, but we have no evidence of increased second formant frequency in any other words beginning with /#vu-/, all of which (with the understandable exception of /vuȵȡu/) have F2 values well below 1500 Hz. This is not to say that the phenomenon does not occur in other speakers (including BS’s consultant). There are, after all, a few interesting alternations in the language, such as /vulka/ ‘old man’ and /vilkut̪a/ ‘old woman’. It is also worth mentioning that the initial sequence /#ju-/ seems to be in free variation with /#i-/ in some words. For example, /juwaku/, ‘standing’ may also be pronounced /iwaku/ and /juȵuɭa/, ‘babbler’ has also been recorded as /iȵuɭa/.

4.2 Contrastive vowel length

There is a certain lack of agreement regarding the existence of a vowel length contrast in Adnyamathanha. DT has a long vowel /aː/; BS has ‘groups of vowels’ aa, ii, uu, ai, au, ia, iu, ua, ui. It appears that, with the exception of aa, these sequences are not regarded by BS as long vowels and diphthongs and that most of these ‘groups’, including ii and uu, are dieretic. The most detailed and cogent discussion of this issue is BS, who says:

while aa is indeed pronounced as a long vowel when stressed, the groups ii and uu are pronounced as two distinct vowels. A glide may be inserted before the second occurrence of i and u… but we consider them to be automatic insertions and do not write them [emphasis added] (Schebeck n.d.:44 n 115).

We take the view that (in most cases) the glides are phonemic and accordingly we do write them. For example, the word for ‘vegetable food’, which BS writes mai (albeit phonetically [mayi]), we would analyse phonemically as disyllabic /maji/. His ngau [ŋawu] ‘side, flank’, we would analyse as /ŋawu/; mia [miya] ‘sleep’ as /mija/; yua- [yuwa] ‘to stand’ as /juwa-/; nguimi [ŋuyimi] or [ŋuwimi] ‘selfish (??)’ as /ŋujimi-/ or /ŋuwimi-/ (= ‘to be possessive’) and so on. We would analyse most of BS’s ii and uu sequences in this way also. For example, his wii [wiyi] ‘now’ we would write as /wiji/, his nhuu [n̪uwu] ‘companion’ as /n̪uwu/ and so on. Some occurrences of apparent long aa can also be analysed in this way: for example, /ma-ala/ ‘forget it!’ can also be pronounced /majaḻa/ and the English loan word /maaṱa/ ‘master’ is also heard as /majaṱa/. As we have seen above (section 1.4, examples (8-11) in some instances, ‘long’ or ‘double’ vowels at morpheme boundaries can be analysed as a dieresis (i.e. disyllabic V.V sequences); in this case the glide is not phonemic. Thus BS’s ityii- [iȶiyi] ‘to be noisy’ would be trisyllabic /i.ȶi.i/, just as /ŋalaaka/ ‘big’ and /minaaka/ ‘eye’ may be pronounced respectively as /ŋala.aka/ and /mina.aka/ in citation form. Such vowel sequences generally have a duration approaching twice that of a single stressed vowel, having a mean duration of 204 ms in our data.

This still leaves a small number of apparent vowel length distinctions unexplained, however, some of which are mentioned by BS (Schebeck n.d.:44, 58). As he quite rightly points out, there are two possible ways of analysing such distinctions. As long vowels are generally followed by shorter consonants and long (or geminate) consonants are generally preceded by


49

shorter vowels, we can analyse these length contrasts as either VːC versus VC or as VC versus VCC:

(20) /maːɳi/ /maɳi/ /maːnu/ /manu/ /waːɭa/ /waɭa/ maarni marni maanu manu waarla warla

or /maɳi/ /maɳɳi/ /manu/ /mannu/ /waɭa/ /waɭɭa/ marni marnni manu mannu warla warlla

‘husband’ ‘fat (n.)’ ‘confident’ ‘damper’ ‘windbreak’ ‘belly’

There are also a few examples of such a contrast involving the vowel /i/:

(21) /miːna/ /minu/ /miːɭi/ /miɭa/ /viːɭa/ /wiɭa/ miina minu miirli mirla viirla wirla

or /mina/ /minnu/ /miɭi/ /miɭɭa/ /viɭa/ /wiɭɭa/ mina minnu mirli mirlla virla wirlla

‘eye’ ‘strong’ ‘hail’ ‘a short time’ ‘charcoal’ ‘skink’

BS adopts the first (‘vowel length’) solution, treating these sequences of two vowels in the same way as those across morpheme (and syllable) boundaries (as in /ŋalaaka/), ignoring the fact that the latter appear to be consistently syneretic in contemporary Adnyamathanha and are of shorter duration. This in effect says:

There is a vowel length distinction, at least between /a/ and /aː/ and between /i/ and /iː/, but only before LATERALS and CORONAL NASALS.

And the corollary of this is that LONG VOWELS occur in a small minority of words such as /maːɳi/, /waːɭa/, /miːna/, /viːɭa/ and all other vowels are phonemically SHORT76.

If we group our vowel duration data in this way – that is, stressed vowels transcribed as LONG by BS (Schebeck 2000) versus all other stressed vowels preceding LATERALS and NASALS in disyllabic words – the results are as in Figure 25, which shows durational components of stressed VOWEL + SONORANT sequences in Adnyamathanha grouped according to putative phonemic VOWEL length (means of 61 tokens from two speakers). Before NASALS, there is no consistent difference in duration between these two classes (putative LONG vowels are in fact 14 per cent shorter), whereas before LATERALS, vowels classed as LONG are only 21 percent longer. On the other hand, SONORANTS following SHORT VOWELS are phonetically longer than those following LONG VOWELS (80 percent longer in the case of NASALS and a massive 225 percent longer in the case of LATERALS).

76 Theoretically, of course, we could say that the vowels in words such as /maːɳi, waːɭa, miːna, viːɭa/ and all other words (or at least, all other vowels before LATERALS and CORONAL NASALS?) are phonemically LONG and those in a tiny minority of other words, such as /maɳi, waɭa, minu, wiɭa/ are phonemically SHORT. Nobody has ever proposed this and it is not borne out by the phonetic data.


50

Figure 25. Analysis of stressed vowel + sonorant sequences: vowel length solution

McE (McEntee 1976:7-8) adopts the second (‘gemination’) solution. This simply says:

Intervocalic LATERALS and CORONAL NASALS may be geminated following a stressed vowel.

The corollary of this is that there are no tautosyllabic LONG VOWELS – only V+GLIDE+V sequences and VV sequences across morpheme boundaries. There is a tiny minority of words with geminate SONORANTS, such as /maɳɳi/, /waɭɭa/, /minnu/, /wiɭɭa/ and all other SONORANTS are singletons.

If we group our vowel duration data in this way – that is, vowels preceding LATERALS and NASALS transcribed as geminates by McE versus all other stressed vowels preceding LATERALS and NASALS, the results are as in Figure 26, which shows durational components of stressed VOWEL + SONORANT sequences in disyllabic words grouped according to putative singleton versus geminate SONORANTS (means of 61 tokens from two speakers). Geminate SONORANTS are about 50 percent longer than singletons overall (100 percent longer in the case of LATERALS and 30 percent longer in the case of NASALS). There is no difference in vowel duration preceding singleton or geminate NASALS, but vowels before geminate LATERALS are phonetically shorter (by about 30 percent) than those before singletons.


51

Figure 26. Analysis of stressed vowel + sonorant sequences: gemination solution

We suggest that the latter is the more satisfactory of the two solutions and one that may also have a historical basis. It is notable that all of the words with putative geminate NASALS also begin with a NASAL. This is known to be one of the environments that blocks pre-stopping of intervocalic NASALS. It may be that post-tonic or medial ‘strengthening’ (Dixon 2002:589-91; Butcher 2006:200-202; Fletcher and Butcher 2014:118-19) has taken place in these consonants in the form of increased duration (McEntee 1976:8), but further ‘strengthening’ in the form of pre-stopping has been blocked by the presence of the initial NASAL. Hercus (1994:43), for example, states

In languages to the east of the Lake Eyre Basin and particularly in Paakantyi, medial consonants are lengthened after the stress accent. This applies not only to plosives, but also particularly to nasals and laterals… In Arabana-Wangkangurru lengthening takes place in medial nasal and lateral consonants after the main accent whenever there is no pre-stopping according to rules [stated] above.

Whether this explanation would apply also to the LATERALS is unclear. Examples of words with geminate LATERALS all seem to start with either a NASAL or the GLIDE /w/. It has not hitherto been suggested that either of these environments blocks the pre-stopping of LATERALS. Another possibility is that gemination has come about as the result of the elision of an intervening vowel. There are certainly examples of this haplology occurring synchronically with the elision of an unstressed vowel between identical consonants in connected speech: for example, a word such as /vapapa/ ‘maternal grandfather’ is usually pronounced as [vappa] and BS (Schebeck n.d.:66) gives the example of /vaɭpakaku/ ‘was ashamed’ pronounced as [vaɭpakku]. Even non-identical consonants may become assimilated in this elision process, for example /ŋaɳanaȵi/ ‘roof of the mouth’ may become [ŋaɳɳaȵi] (McEntee and McKenzie 1992:37).


52

4.3 Vowel length and word stress

The emergence of long vowels following the elision of initial consonants is a feature shared by some other languages of the area. Hercus, (1994:33-5), for instance, describes a similar, though more restricted phenomenon in Arabana (i.e. only involving the elision of suffix-initial /k/, resulting in a long /aː/). She does not, however, suggest that there is a shift in stress to the long vowel (Hercus 1994:47-8). J. M. Black (1920:80), on the other hand, noted stress on the second syllable in the Kaurna placename tandanya ‘Adelaide area’, indicating that the form could well be /taɳɖaaȵa/, from */taɳɖa/ ‘male red kangaroo’ + */(k)aȵa/ ‘rock’.

The question as to whether or not the stress in these words is really shifted from the initial, ‘light’, syllable to the ‘heavy’ VV sequence is not easy to answer. As Goedemans (1998:172) quite rightly points out,

Phonetic determination of where the stress in a word is actually located, is not a straightforward enterprise… there is no unique phonetic cue for stress and the relative importance of the cues may vary across languages.

The specific problem in our case is that, as well as being a cue for stress (possibly the most important cue across the languages of the world, according to Gordon and Roettger 2017), duration is obviously also the cue for phonemic differences in vowel length. In some languages, such as Czech and Finnish, these functions are separated: long vowels are not necessarily stressed and stressed vowels are not necessarily long. In others, such as Scottish Gaelic and French, short vowels may be either stressed or unstressed, but long vowels are always stressed. So is Adnyamathanha a language where placement of stress is sensitive to syllable weight? There are a number of languages in Australia where this is said to be the case, including Yidiny (Dixon 1977a,b), Martuthunira (Dench 1995) and Wambaya (Nordlinger 1998), although none of these are geographically or genetically close to Adnyamathanha.

The words of our corpus were pronounced individually in list fashion by both speakers. Thus the word is coterminous with the tone unit and the pitch accent would be expected to be located on the stressed syllable in each case. If the stress really shifts to the double vowel in the case of syneresis, then we should expect the pitch accent to move with it. In order to ascertain if this was the case, we measured the overall duration and peak fundamental frequency (F0) of 20 three-syllable complex words with a heavy (VV) second syllable and compared them with 50 three-syllable words with a light (V) second syllable.


53

Figure 27. Single and double vowel sequences

Figure 27 shows waveforms, spectrograms and fundamental frequency curves illustrating typical examples of such words from our female speaker: (a) /wad̪n̪idi/, ‘nitre bush’ (Nitraria billardierei) and (b) /viɖɳaapa/ ‘little’. The arrows indicate F0 measurement points. Note that in each case there is a fall in pitch on the first syllable and a fairly flat level pitch on the second. Both speakers produced similar contours for all repetitions (that is to say there was no evidence of non-final versus final contours across repetitions).


54

Table 12. Duration and fundamental frequency of vowels in light and heavy syllables

Female Male dur (ms) F0 (Hz) n= dur (ms) F0 (Hz) n=

2nd syll = V V1 84 154

3494 142

16 V2 90 137 89 134

2nd syll = VV V1 93 153

1279 142

8 V2 161 136 211 132

Figure 28. Duration and fundamental frequency of vowels in light and heavy syllables

Table 12 shows the mean duration and peak fundamental frequency of vowels in polysyllabic words with light and heavy second syllables for each word type for each speaker, comprising 70 tokens in all. Figure 28 shows the combined results for both speakers in graphic form. Note that the position of the horizontal lines on the vertical axis indicates the mean peak F0 for that vowel type and the length of the lines indicates the mean duration of that vowel – that is to say the lines do not indicate the shape of the F0 contour. The values are remarkably consistent, considering the small number of tokens and the differing genders of the speakers.

Vowels in initial syllables are of similar duration (80-95 ms) in both word types, while vowels in second syllables are 30-60 percent longer in heavy syllables (160-210 ms) than in light syllables (130-135 ms). Pitch contours are strikingly consistent across word types, with a mean peak of around 150 Hz on the first vowel, falling to around 135 Hz on the second, regardless

120

125

130

135

140

145

150

155

160

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400

Fundam

ental frequen

cy (Hz)

duration (ms)

2nd syll = V

2nd syll = VV


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of duration. If we assume that in citation forms the pitch accent is located on the stressed syllable, we find no evidence that the accent (and therefore the stress) is shifted to the second syllable when the latter is heavy. Nor do we see initial syllables becoming shorter (in other words, ‘losing’ the stress) when the second syllable is heavy. Note also that long vowels can be deleted in connected speech (see above, for example, (3) /wiltu/), which may be another indication that they are not bearing stress. We conclude from this that syneretic syllables in Adnyamathanha do not actually attract stress away from the initial syllable, although the increase in duration of the vowel may give this impression to English ears. It is possible that an approach which distinguished between WORD-level and ROOT-level morphology (Baker & Harvey 2003) would prove more useful in clarifying how word prosody works in Adnyamathanha, but such an analysis is beyond the scope of the present paper.

5. Conclusions

Adnyamathanha has a fairly complex consonant system, even by Australian standards. Through a comparison of a fairly extensive corpus with forms in other TH-Y languages, combined with some phonetic measurements, we have attempted to throw some light on some aspects of this complexity: As regards the OBSTRUENT system, we have established that there is a contrast between two series of OBSTRUENTS in intervocalic position. The main phonetic correlate of the contrast is presence versus absence of glottal pulsing during the closure, but VOICED

OBSTRUENTS also differ phonetically from their VOICELESS counterparts in a variety of other ways. Thus, we have analysed the voiced labial fricative as the VOICED equivalent of the VOICELESS (BI)LABIAL OBSTRUENT and we analyse the alveolar tap and the retroflex flap as VOICED cognates of the VOICELESS ALVEOLAR and RETROFLEX OBSTRUENTS respectively. Therefore, although we recognise the existence of four phonetically distinct rhotic sounds, we have assigned only the ALVEOLAR trill and the RETROFLEX approximant to the phonological category of RHOTICS. We have further shown that there is a series of contrastive PRE-STOPPED

NASALS and a full series of contrastive PRE-STOPPED LATERALS and we have given reasons for preferring this analysis over one of OBSTRUENT + SONORANT clusters.

Finally, we have measured the formant frequencies and duration of the stressed vowels and analysed their distribution. We conclude that there are only three vowel phonemes, alternative fronted pronunciations of the low vowel in a few words by some speakers not being regarded as obligatory by those same speakers. We suggest that apparent distinctions between short and long vowels must be analysed in at least three different ways: (1) in monomorphemic words as disyllables consisting of V+GLIDE+V; (2) as V+V sequences (underlyingly dieretic) straddling morpheme boundaries and (3) in a few cases, as geminate versus singleton SONORANTS following the vowel in question. We suggest that phonetically syneretic ‘heavy’ vowels arising from (2) do not actually attract stress away from the initial syllable.

However, there must remain some doubt as to the status of some of these contrasts. Based on such criteria as distribution, functional load and lexical frequency, we can distinguish different degrees of contrastivity between different oppositions, in a similar way to that suggested by Austin (1988:6-7) in the case of the voicing contrast in Murrinypatha. The /p/~/v/ contrast, for example, could be considered to be very robust, as it operates across the widest range of contexts in a large number of words. Contrasts at the ALVEOLAR, DENTAL and RETROFLEX places of articulation are less robust, as they only operate intervocalically and in a smaller number of words. Even less robust is /b/, which appears in a few fossilised forms, /ɡ/ which appears in only one word and /ȡ/, which only appears in a few words after NASALS. As for the PRE-STOPPED SONORANTS, if they exist as unitary phonemes, they are also rather


56

restricted in their distribution and most linguists have analysed these sequences as clusters. Only about two dozen (sub)minimal pairs are attested for the NASALS and some three dozen for the LATERALS. In other words, some contrasts in the Adnyamathanha consonant system seem to be ‘more contrastive’ than others. There is what Goldsmith (1995:12) calls a ‘cline of contrast’. In between the clear phonemic oppositions at one end of the cline and the clear examples of allophony at the other, there are examples of what Hall (2013:216) has termed ‘intermediate phonological relationships’.

Table 13. Adnyamathanha phoneme system, recognising a ‘cline of contrast’

PERIPHERAL APICAL LAMINAL VOWELS

LABIAL VELAR ALVEOL RETRO DENTAL ALV-PAL

Robust, ‘proto-typical contrast’

p k t ʈ t̪ ȶ

v

m ŋ n ɳ n̪ ȵ

l ɭ l̪ ȴ

w r ɻ j a

Less robust, ‘modest asymmetry’

d ɖ d̪ i

bm d

n ɖɳ

d̪n̪

ȡȵ u

dl

ɖɭ

d̪l̪

ȡȴ

Marginal, ‘just barely contrastive’

b ɡ ȡ æ

Complementary distribution, ‘one-off’ sounds

ɾ ɽ ʂ ð

Table 13 presents a rough categorisation of these relationships in Adnyamathanha. It may be that an approach such as this yields a more satisfactory analysis of the outcomes of the over-enthusiastic rock-licking exercise.

Anha-adityi-ikandawa77

77 /an̪aaɾiȶiikandawa/ a -nha -(th)adi -tyi -(th)ika-nda-wa that -? -towards -EMPH -sit/be -PRS-3.S.SBJ ‘That’s the way it is’.


57

Appendix 1. Adnyamathanha /v/-initial words with cognates in six related languages

Adnya English Kuyani Nukunu Wirangu Barngarla Kaurna Ngadjuri

/vaɻi/ creek, river /paɻi/ /paɻi/ /paɻi/ parri parri bari

/vaɭkaɻa/ white /palka-/ /paɭka/ palkarra

/vaɖɳa/ Goulds Sand /paɖɳa/ /paʈɳa/ Goanna (Varanus gouldii)

/paɳa/ paɖɳa budna

/vaɖɳa-apa/ 1st stage initiate /paɖɳapa/ /paʈɳapa/ /paɖɳapa/ paɖɳapa vadnapa

/vaȶa/ anger/angry /paȶa/ patya paitya (=dangerous animal)

/vapi/ father /papi/ papi vapi

/vaɭu/ meat /paɭu/ /paaɭu/ /paɻu/ paru paru

/vaɭku/ noise /palku/ paltu parku

/viɻa/ moon /piɻa/ /piɻa/ /piɻa/ pira bera

/viɭa/ charcoal /piiɭa/ pila be:la

/virka/ light(ning) /pirka/ /pirka/ pirka perkanna

/viɭɖa/ Brush-tailed /pilta/ /piɭʈa/ Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula)

/piɭʈa/ pilla pilta bilda

/viɳɡ-aɭpu/ hip /piɳka/ pinka biŋka

/viɖi-an̪a/ 1st boy’s name

/piɖija/ /piʈija/ /piʈija/ piri

/viri/ nail, claw /piri/ /piriȵa/ /piri/ pirri pirri beriŋi

/vipi/ egg /pipi/ /pipi/ pipi

/vuɻa/ knee /puɻa/ /puɻa/ pura purilya bura

/vuɭka/ old (man) /puɭkaɻi/ /puɭka/ pulka burka

/vuɭpa/ dust, powder /puɭpa/ /pulpa/ pulba bulpa (=seeds, ground)

/vuru/ whole, alive /puru/ puru purru-na

/vuɖɭi/ star /puɖɭi/ /puʈɭi/ purdli purle budli


58

Appendix 2. Medial obstruents in Adnyamathanha compared with cognates in five related languages

Adnja English Kuyani Nukunu Barngarla Kaurna Ngadjuri

/apa/ bone marrow kappa

/ava/ rugged

/vapa/ small, young, child /papa/ /paapa/ pappa papa (init-

iated youth) vapa

/vava-/ to harp on about

/japa/ hole /japa/ yapa yappa japa

/japa-/ to drink, suck /t̪apa-/ /t̪apa-/ yappa- taba- (= to kiss)

/java-java- to radiate (heat)

/wapa-/ to pluck, pick /wapa-/ (= to look for)

/wava/ type of club

/ŋapaȴa/ saliva /ŋapaȴa/ ngappalya

/ŋavaȴa/ ‘relief cloud’78

/ŋalpa-/ to enter /ŋalpa-/ ngalba- ngatpa-

/ŋalva-i-/ to tuck in (bed)

/waȴpa-/ to swing around wailba-

/waȴva-/ to swing around

/warpa-/ to run, gallop /warpa-/ warpa- (= to jump)

watpa-

/warvi/ crosswise

/api-/ to shut /kapi-/

/avi-/ to vomit kauwi-ti kappe-

/ipi/ alive /t̪ipi/ ipi

/ivi/ sheep /ipi-ipi/

/wiȴpa/ floodwater /wiȴpa

/wiȴva-ɻi-/ to leave a trail (of blood, oil, wool, etc)

/irpa-/ make fun, joke /irpa-/ irpa-rri-

/irva-irva-/ to be cruel to

/urpu/ scent, smell kurbo

78 A local expression usually denoting a single small mid-level alto-cumulus cloud that briefly interrupts the sun’s rays on a very hot day, thus providing some slight and temporary relief from the heat.


59


/urva-/ to expect

/upa/ white /kupa/ /kupa/ (= corpse)

kupa (= dead)

/uva-/ (of rain) to pelt down

/japu/ blackfly /t̪apu/ tappo

/javu/ quick

/upi/ blood /kupi/

/uvi-iku-/ to already be there

/ika/ heap, mob irka

/iɡa/ Native Orange (Capparis mitchellii)

/irki/ type of insect

/irɡi/ hot drips of fat

/urku/ Boobook owl /kurku/ lit. ‘staring’ (Ninox novaeseelandiae)

kurku

/urɡa/ Ghost Moth (Xyleutes boisduvali)

/vurku-/ to sprinkle /purka-/ purrka-ta

/vurɡu/ dew purku burko

/ata-/ to be cold /kata-/

/ada/ numbness

/iti/ down feathers

/idi-/ to move away /iɾi-/ iri-ti

/uta/ kangaroo tick (Ornithodorus gurneyi)

/udu/ mind

/aʈa/ Grass Tree (Xanthorrhoea quadrangulata)

/aɖa-/ to limp

/iʈa/ bird (gen.) /t̪iʈa/ /jiʈa/ irta

/iɖa/ kangaroo louse (Boopidae sp.)

/uʈu/ hole, pit kurtu

/uɖu/ crown of head kurru-alla kurru

/it̪i/ twig /it̪i//t̪iti/

/id̪i/ Chestnut-eared Finch (Taeniopygia guttata castanotis)

/mit̪i-mit̪i/ micaceous iron ore


60


/mid̪i/ Twin Leaf (Zygophyllum spp.)

/wit̪i-/ to poke, spear witti-

/wid̪i/ to laugh /witi-/ wiiti-

/wat̪a-/ to peep at /wat̪a-/

/wad̪a/ sp. of animal

/vut̪a/ dust haze /puthuru/ (= dust)

/vud̪a-vud̪a-/ to be hazy

/mad̪u-/ to fiddle, meddle mado-/matho- (= to stroke)

/jad̪i/ hide (n.)

/vid̪a/ lungs pitha birra/bitha

/ŋad̪a/ in love

/ad̪i/ exhaustion kadi/kathi


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Appendix 3. Minimal quadruplets of rhotics in Adnyamathanha

tap trill flap approximant /aɾa/ numbness /ara/ high up,

above /aɽa-/ to limp /aɻa/ Nardoo

Marsilea drumondii

/maɾa/ spear point /mara/ new, fresh /maɽa/ for nothing /maɻa/ hand (old form)

/vaɾi-/ to lack /vari/ tough /vaɽi/79 rice /vaɻi/ creek

/uɾa/ short-sighted; hoarse

/ura/ magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen)

/uɽa/ Melaleuca sp. (old form)

/uɻa/ behind, following

/vuɾi-/ to go down /vuri/ hill /vuɽi- vuɽi-/

to walk too fast

/vuɻi/ cotton ball, stone dag80

/viɾi-/ to carry /viri/ fingernail /viɽi/ 1st born boy’s name

/viɻi/ Boxthorn Lycium australe

/viɾa-i-/ to be itchy /vira/ pointed throwing stick

/viɽa-/ to pluck, shave

/viɻa/ moon

/waɾa-/ to wait /wara-/ to shake /waɽa/ Lesser Bilby (Macrotis leucura)81

/waɻa/ low

/waɾi/ wind (old form)

/wari/ neck /waɽi-/ to pick up /waɻi/ penis

/waɾu/ once, a long time ago

/waru/ red clay /waɽu/ (place name) /waɻu/ forwards

/uɾu/ mind /uru/ all /uɽu/ crown of head


/vuɾu- vuɾu-/

to be freezing cold

/vuru/ full /vuɽu/ thick set (of person)

/vuɻu-/ to gain upon, catch up with

79 While it is tempting to identify this form as deriving from Malay pādī, (perhaps via English paddy), Robert Amery (pers. comm.) points out that it is probably simply the word for ‘maggot’ – cf Kaurna pardi ‘maggot’, usually found in the expression pinti pardi ‘rice’(lit. ‘European maggot’). See also McE (1992:56). 80 Found in horses’ stomachs and on sheep’s hindquarters respectively 81 Tunbridge (1991:51-2)


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Appendix 4. Adnyamathanha medial rhotics compared with cognates in five related languages

Adnya English Kuyani Nukunu Barngarla Kaurna Ngadjuri

/vaɻi/ creek /paɻi/ /paɻi/ parri parri bari

/maɻa/ hand /maɻa/ /maɻa/ marra marra mura

/viɻa/ moon /piɻa/ /piɻa/ pirra bera

/juɻa/ man, person

/t̪uɻa/ /t̪uɻa/ yura jura

/vuɻa/ knee /puɾa/ purra purilya bura

/akuru/ serpent /kakaru/ akaru

/viri/ fingernail /piri/ /piriȵa/ pirri pirri beriŋi

/vukara/ north wind /pukuʈa/ bukarra bukkarra bakara

/waraȶi/ emu /waraȶi/ warratya waridji

/wiri/ club /wiri/ wirri wirri wiri

/apada/ lizard sp. apara

/udi/ dance /kuɾi/ kuri kuri kuri

/ada-mbaɻa/ spider arambura

/ida/ tooth/teeth /iɾa/ /jiiɾa/ ira tia era

/mudu/ ashes, embers

/muɾu/ /muɾu/ murru murro

/uɖaki/ white cockatoo feather

/kuɾaki/82 (w.cockatoo)

woolaki (w.cockatoo)

kurraki (w.cockatoo)

gudaki (w.cockatoo)

/uɖa/ black ti-tree guda

/viɖi/ 1st born boy’s name /piɖija/ /piʈija/ piri

/viɖa-/ to pluck, shave, scrape

/piɖa-/ pirra- pirra-

/uɖu/ crown of head

kurro (-alla)

kurro

82 Hercus (1992:21) has the spelling kuraki (where r = ALVEOLAR TAP), but the pronunciation of the word by Fred Graham in Hercus (1965) seems, on the basis of both auditory and spectrographic evidence, to be [kuɽaki] (= /ˈkuɖaki/) with a RETROFLEX FLAP.


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Appendix 5. Adnyamathanha medial nasals compared with cognates in five related languages


/ima-/ to pick up, get

/ibma/ raw /t̪ibma/ /t̪ibma/ ibma timanna

/uma/ news

/ubma(-waʈa)/ one /kubma-n̪a /kubmana/ kuma kuma

/wami/ bend in creek

/wabma/ snake (gen.) /wabma/ /wabma/ wabma (Carpet Snake)

83

/vamaɭɖi-amaɭɖi-/ to rise up (e.g. dust)

/vabma-vabma-/ to emerge pabma-pabma (= to sneeze)

/jana-/ to come

/jadna/ they /t̪adna/ yardna

/ina-/ to count, sort ina-

/idna/ foot /t̪idna/ /t̪idna/ idna tidna (t)idna

/vuna-/ to dismantle puna-84(= to pull up or down)

/vudna-/ to meet budna- (= to come)

budna- (= to come)

/una-ŋawa/ mourning song

/udna/ excrement /kudna/ /kudna/ kudna kudna gudna

/wana/ dried flood debris

/wadna/ boomerang /wadna/ wadna wadna wadna (= climbing stick)

/wanamada/ Case Moth caterpillar (Psychidae sp.)

/wadna-wadna/ bent

/juna-/ to rear (a child)

/judna-judna/ crumpled up

/wina-li-/ to trickle /wina-/

/widna/ reeds /widna/ kala-widna

/aɳa-ɻi/ to lean on to

83 Note that Provis (1879:98;1886:6) also has wobma for ‘snake’ in Wirangu, a language that it is generally agreed had only ‘sporadic’ (noncontrastive) pre-stopping (Hercus 1999:29). 84 Note also puna-puna-rriti ‘to crumble to pieces’


64


/aɖɳa-i-/ to lean/bend back kardna-rri-

/vaɳa/ Silver Needlewood (Hakea leucoptera)

/vaɖɳa/ goanna sp. /paɖɳa/ Varanus gouldii

/paʈɳa/ pardna budna

/jaɳa (waɳbani)/ hairless

/jaɖɳa/ back(side) /t̪aɖɳa/ /jaɖɳa/ yardna tarna jadna

/jun̪u/ straight ahead

/jud̪n̪u-/ to lean back

/an̪a/ that /jan̪a/

/jad̪n̪a/ Processionary Caterpillar (Ochrogaster contraria)

/vaȵa/ ashes (from manyi85 fire)

/aȡȵa/ rock /kaȡȵa/ /kaȡȵa/ kanya /kanya/86

/viȵa/ revenge party /piȵa/

/iȡȵa/ Western Quoll (Dasyurus geoffroii) /t̪iȡȵa/ idnya

/juȵuɭa/ Babbler spp. (Pomatostomidae)

/uȡȵu/ corpse /kuȡȵu/ /kuȡȵu/ (=ghost)

kunyu (=dead)

kuinyo

/uȵa-uȵa/ inquest

/juȡȵu-juȡȵu/ crumpled up lying on the ground

85 Manyi is a regosol – a weakly developed mineral soil consisting of small unconsolidated particles still retaining the characteristics of the matrix rock. Manyi derives from the Bunyeroo formation, a part of the Adelaide Geosyncline, consisting of red brown shale and siltstone with minor fine sandy layers (Preiss 1987). Adnyamathanha people customarily light camp fires on manyi ground as it acts as a ‘nonstick’ cooking surface and the particles are harmless if ingested. The heat turns the brownish manyi particles a deep red colour. 86 “Whilst kanya itself does not appear in T[eichelmann] and S[chürmann (1840)] or T[eichelman (1857)], it does appear in the words kanyapa, kanyanthi, Tarntanya and thus may be inferred as a Kaurna word” (Morley and Amery 2014:20).


65

Appendix 6. Adnyamathanha medial laterals compared with cognates in five related languages


/ala wata-/ to shade the eyes

/adla/ half /kadla/ (= small piece)

/wala-wala-i-/ to be ready to leave

/wadla-/ to bid farewell

/wadla-/

/ila-i-/ to get used to, familiarise

/idla/ stylistic particle87

/wila/ Native Pear (Cynanchum floribundum)

/widla-widla/ drought

/wila-/ to lick

/widla-/ to spoil, waste

/mila-/ to hurt

/midla/ woomera /mitla/ midla midla midla

/ŋali-/ to burn /ŋaɖɭi-/ŋaɭi- ngalliti ngadle-

/ŋadli/ two mates ngadli (= we two)

ngadli (= we two)

ŋadlu (= we two)

/ulu/ gum leaves /kuulu/ kulu (= a bunch of green leaves tied over the knee)

/udlu/ louse /kudlu/ /kutlu/ kudlu kudlo gudlu

/n̪ulu-n̪ulu-/ to stoke the fire

/n̪udlu-/ to push into; drown

/n̪udlu-/ (=to pull towards)

nudlu (= to put in)

/valu-/ to include

/vadlu-/ to be almost dead

/padlu-/ (= to die)

/paɭu-nta/ (= to die)

padlu-tu (= to die)

padlo-ndi (= to die)

/walu/ dull

/wadlu/ anterior fontanelle

/vula-vula/ everywhere; complicated; improperly done

87 BS (n.d.:141): “[T]he recordings show itla now to be frozen into a particle, with various uses, some of which may vaguely be labeled as expressing some emphasis. In the interlinear translations this form remains untranslated.”


66


/vudla-/ to wake, disturb

/pudla-/

/aɭa/ onion sp.

/aɖɭa/ fire /kaɖɭa/ /kaʈɭa/ kadla gadla/garla gadla

/ŋaɭa/ big /ŋaɭa/ ngalla88

/ŋaɖɭa/ limb (of tree)

/aɭi/ cockatoo feather

/aɖɭi-/ to peel kadli-ti

/aɭi-aɭi-/ to erase

/aɖɭi-aɖɭi-n̪a/ place name (Freeling Heights)

/waɭi-waɭi- to wriggle

/waɖɭi/ house /waɖɭi/ /waʈɭi/ wodli/worli wadli (=camp)

/waɭi-vaɻi/ Milky Way waaɭi-paɻi worli-parri/ wodliparri

wali-bari

/jaɭi/ tongue /t̪aɭi/ /jaaɭi/ yarli jali

/jaɖɭi/ male /jaɖɭi/ /jaʈɭi/ yardli

(= husband)

yärli

/vaɭu/ meat /paɭu/ /paaɭu/ paru paru

/vaɖɭu/ feather(s) padlo

/aɭu-/ to feint a blow

/aɖɭu/ testes /kaɭu/ kadlu kadlo-muka gadlu

/waɭu-ŋa-/ to speak /waɭu-waɭu-tiɾa/

(= to make a loud noise)

/waɖɭu/ beaten track

/uɭa/ whitish

/uɖɭa-viɻu/ thunder cloud

/viɭa/ charcoal /piiɭa/ pila be:la

/viɖɭa-vaka/89 Common Purslane (Portulaca oleracea)

/vuɭi/ Cinnamon Quail-thrush (Cinclosoma cinnamomeum)

88 The Kaurna word ngallawirri means ‘a long heavy club resembling in form a sword’ (Teichelmann , and Schürmann 1840); since wirri is widely attested as meaning ‘club’, it is reasonable to assume that ngalla corresponds to Adny /ˈŋaɭa/ ‘big’ (Robert Amery, pers. comm.). 89 Probably a Diyari loan.


67


/vuɖɭi/ star /puɖɭi/ /puʈɭi/ purdli purle budli

/miɭa-n̪a/ type, clan /miɭa/

/miɖɭa/ elopement

/muɭu / animal territory marks

/muɖɭu/ Carpet Snake (Morelia spilota variegata)

/muʈɭu/ mudlannu mudlu

/juɭu/ Kingfisher julu

/juɖɭu/ self yurlo

/wal̪i/ peacemaker

/wad̪l̪i-i-/ to tread on mess unintentionally

/il̪a/ Thorny Saltbush (Rhagodia spinescens)

/mid̪l̪a/90 light sleep

/ul̪a/ a bit

/ud̪l̪a/ alone kudla

/mul̪a-ŋaɻi/ hole through nasal septum mudlaialla (nasal septum)

/mud̪l̪a/ nose /mud̪l̪a/ /mut̪l̪a/ mudla mudla mudla

/aȴa/ loose, slack ilya

/aȡȴa/ hand wave, signal kalya-utu

/aȡȴu/ Native Myrtle (Myporum montanum)

kalyo91

/miȴaɻu/ wind; walking stick

/miȡȴi/ very soft /miȴȡa-miȴȡa/

90 BS (2000:79) 91 Wyatt (1879:170)


68

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About the Authors

John McEntee first developed an interest in linguistics at Pulteney Grammar School, Adelaide. Over the years, this interest was further enhanced through his study of Asian languages, particularly Sanskrit. For over 40 years, while running the family sheep station on the eastern edge of the Flinders Ranges, he carried out extensive linguistic survey work among the elders of the Adnyamathanha people. With their collaboration he published a number of booklets on flora and fauna names and an Adnyamathanha-English dictionary, developing a special orthography for this work based on Sanskrit. He also published papers on local Aboriginal culture and mythology as well as the history, archaeology and palaeontology of the region. John passed away in March 2021.

Andy Butcher is Emeritus Professor of Communication Disorders at Flinders University, Adelaide. He has degrees in linguistics and phonetics from the Universities of Edinburgh and London and a PhD in phonetics from the University of Kiel, Germany. For the last 30 years he has been studying the phonetics of Australian Aboriginal languages. In addition to acoustic recordings, from over 100 speakers, representing over 30 different languages, he has recorded static palatographic, electropalatographic and aerodynamic data from a subset of these speakers. Andy is still in the process of writing up the results of this work, but has published a number of conference papers and journal articles in the area. His most recent ARC project before retiring investigated the relationship between speech production, speech perception and hearing impairment in Aboriginal people.

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