Iwaidja language

Iwaidja has the following 20 (or 22){{efn|name=palatals|The palatal laterals are rare, and it is debated whether these are allophonic variants (palatalized versions of the alveolar laterals) or phonemes in their own right.}} consonants. Some of the precise articulatory categories for the consonants are uncertain; the chart below follows Shaw et al (2020)'s conventions.{{Cite journal |last=Shaw |first=Jason A. |last2=Carignan |first2=Christopher |last3=Agostini |first3=Tonya G. |last4=Mailhammer |first4=Robert |last5=Harvey |first5=Mark |last6=Derrick |first6=Donald |date=2020 |title=Phonological contrast and phonetic variation: The case of velars in Iwaidja |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/764692 |journal=Language |volume=96 |issue=3 |pages=578–617 |doi=10.1353/lan.2020.0042 |issn=1535-0665}} Symbols in angle brackets ‹› are the orthographic representations for these sounds.

Iwaidja has three vowels, /a, i, u/. The following table shows the allophones of these vowels as described by Pym and Larrimore.Pym, Noreen, and Bonnie Larrimore. Papers on Iwaidja phonology and grammar. Series A Vol. 2., 1979. iarchive:papersoniwaidjap0002pymn

Iwaidja has extensive morphophonemic alternation. For example, body parts occur with possessive prefixes, and these alter the first consonant in the root:

Both the words arm and to be sick originally started with an /m/, as shown in related languages such as Maung. The pronominal prefix for it, its altered the first consonant of the root. In Iwaidja, this form extended to the masculine and feminine, so that gender distinctions were lost, and the prefix disappeared, leaving only the consonant mutation—a situation perhaps unique in Australia, but not unlike that of the Celtic languages.

The Iwaidja languages are nearly unique among the languages of the world in using verbs for kin terms. Nouns are used for direct address, but transitive verbs in all other cases. In English something similar is done in special cases: he fathered a child; she mothers him too much. But these do not indicate social relationships in English. For example, he fathered a child says nothing about whether he is the man the child calls "father". An Iwaidja speaker, on the other hand, says I nephew her to mean "she is my aunt". Because these are verbs, they can be inflected for tense. In the case of in-laws, this is equivalent to my ex-wife or the bride-to-be in English. However, with blood relations, past can only mean that the person has died, and future only that they are yet to be born.

{{interlinear|lang=ibd|indent=3

|a -pana -maɽjarwu -n

|I-to-him FUT {am father to} {{gcl|NOUN|noun}}

|"my future son" ({{lit}} "I will be his father")}}

{{interlinear|lang=ibd|indent=3

|ɹi -maka -ntuŋ

|he-to-her {is husband to} PAST

|"his ex/late wife" ({{lit}} "he was husband to her")}}

• Yibadjdja (Kunwinjku exonym){{cite web |last1=Garde |first1=Murray |title=Yibadjdja |url=https://www.njamed.com/#Yibadjdja |website=Bininj Kunwok online dictionary |publisher=Bininj Kunwok Regional Language Centre |access-date=4 Jan 2022}}

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• Nicholas Evans, 2000. "Iwaidjan, a very un-Australian language family." In Linguistic Typology 4, 91-142. Mouton de Gruyter.

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• [https://ausil.org.au/Dictionary/Iwaidja/ AuSIL's Iwaidja dictionary (available from Iwaidja to English and English to Iwaidja)]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070914014759/http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES/projects/iwaidja/languages/view?searchterm=Iwaidja DOBES documentation of endangered languages, Iwaidja]
• [http://www.language-archives.org/language/ibd OLAC resources in and about the Iwaidja language]
• [http://www.paradisec.org.au/blog/2012/09/crowd-sourcing-and-language-documentation-september-lip/ Crowd-sourcing and Language documentation: Ma! Iwaidja phrasebook and dictionary iPhone App]

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{{Australian Aboriginal languages}}

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Category:Iwaidjan languages