Cockatoo (language)
| Cockatoo | ||
|---|---|---|
| Period | until 2002 | |
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Formerly spoken in |
Australia | |
| Linguistic classification |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -2 |
out |
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| ISO 639-3 | ||
Kakadu or Gaagudju is an Australian language that became extinct in 2002 and was spoken in the Northern Territory ( Australia ). Alternative names are Kakdjuan and Kakdju .
classification
Gaagudju is a member of the Australian language family, but within which it is not closely related to any other language. However, it forms a linguistic alliance with Larrikiya , Limilngan , Umbugarla and Wuna . The members of this language German feature among others a complex noun class system and a tendency , unstressed vowels to reduce and unstressed syllables to (at a slower pace than in speech Australian languages available) pay off .
Phonology
Phoneme inventory
Gaagudju does not have an exceptional phoneme inventory for Australian languages .
The phoneme inventory is as follows:
Consonants
| labial | alveolar | retroflex | palatal | velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosives | b | d | ɖ | ɟ | G |
| Nasals | m | n | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ |
| Lateral | l | ɭ | ʎ | ||
| Taps / flaps | ɾ | ||||
| Approximants | w | ɻ | j |
Vowels
| front | central | back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| high | i | u | |
| central | e | O | |
| deep | a |
Syllable structure
Gaagudju has syllables of the form (C) V (ː) (C) . Vowel initial syllables only appear at the beginning of a word.
Phonotactics and Morphophonology
With regard to phonotactics , Gaagudju is a typical Australian language. In the initial positions, mostly labial and velar consonants can be found. The flap ɾ ( orthographical rr ) occurs with only one word in the lexicon : the place name Rriimil .
Homorganic consonant clusters always contain a nasal and can occur both intra- and intermorphemic. These clusters are also the only ones that are possible word-initial. Clusters with three consonants also always contain a nasal, with one exception: the cluster / ɻgj / does not require a nasal.
General information on the phonology of Gaagudju
In many aspects of phonology Gaagudju is very different from other Australian languages; this mainly affects the length of vowels and the accent patterns . Especially at the word boundaries, unstressed syllables are often reduced or deleted, which means that almost all words have at least two realizations (one reduced and one "complete"). Monosyllabic words are excluded from this.
In plosives , neither length nor voicing is distinctive . Retroflexion is distinctive within a morpheme and (rarely) morphemfinal for both plosives, nasals and laterals . Gaagudju shows a lot of phonological lenizations .
Vowel length and accent are closely correlated , almost all long vowels are stressed and almost all stressed vowels are also long.
Parts of speech
Gaagudju has four noun types :
- Verbs : closed class (that is, it is not possible for new words to be added, e.g. by borrowing them), inflect according to tense , aspect and mode
- Koverben : accept verb meanings must be accompanied by an inflected verb, can not as a predicate used
- Nouns
- Particles
Nominal classes
Gaagudju distinguishes between different paradigms of different numbers of classes: there is a four-fold distinction, for example, with adjectives and demonstratives , while with pronouns and numerals a distinction is only made between the groups human-male or animate and human-female or everything else. The nominal class system shows a high degree of irregularity.
The four-fold subdivision is based on the following criteria:
| class | criteria |
|---|---|
| I. | male, animated |
| II | Female |
| III | plants |
| IV | rest |
The quadruple system referenced often on non-human, while the dual system is used almost exclusively for human speakers.
Verbs
Verbs come in three forms as predicates:
- as a simple verb, which means that the real verb stands alone and inflects according to tense, aspect and mode
- as a compound verb, that is, the real verb is accompanied by one or two koverben, this is the most common form
- the coverb takes over the meaning of the verb and the real verb only has a function as an auxiliary , but no longer contributes to the meaning (see also: Frege principle )
Depending on their transitivity , verbs have different allomorphs of prefixes .
- Categories of tense, aspect and mode
- Past tense (realis perfect , realis imperfect , irrealis )
- Present
- Future tense
- Hortative
- Positive imperative
The tense is expressed using suffixes .
Klitika
Phonologically can clitics of Gaagudju be divided into two categories. The numerical clitics, the subordinator and the clitica for the indirect object belong to the category that does not form a separate phonological word . The second category, each of which constitutes its own phonological word, includes, for example, the durative or the locative . The clitics can also be divided into argument markers and quantifiers according to their function . However, the functional and phonological categories are not identical. Arguments usually clit to the predicate.
morphology
Gaagudju has a complex, partially lexicalized morphology .
Flexion morphemes are both suf fi gating and prefiguring in roughly equal proportions .
For the formation of nominal lexemes , neither composition nor derivation are of great synchronous importance, but seem to have been more important earlier. Composition and derivation are only increasingly used for place names. Some adjectives are formed by completely reduplicating the corresponding nominal stem.
Syntax and word order
Gaagudju does not have a case .
There are only post positions and adjectives follow the noun they modify.
Pronominal subjects are expressed using affixes to the verb.
Others
The last speaker, Big Bill Nayiidji , died on May 23, 2002, but he only partially spoke Gaagudju ( partial speaker ) as he spent most of his childhood with Amurdak- speaking relatives. The last two people who spoke Gaagudju fluently were Little Dolly Yarnmalu († 1988) and Peggy Balmana, who probably died a few years before Big Bill Nayiidji. (The exact date of her death is unknown.)
The language was mainly spoken by the Aboriginal clans of the Bunidj , Djindibi and Mirarr .
Gaagudju probably had little to no dialectal variation. Older works on the subject (Spencer 1914: Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia) refer to a language called Watta or Wetta , which could have been a Western dialect.
Gaagudju has a complex system for denoting kinship relationships.
literature
- Mark Harvey: A Grammar of Gaagudju. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, ISBN 3-11-017248-8 .
- M. Haspelmath, MS Dryer, D. Gil, B. Comrie, H.-J. Bibiko (Ed.): The World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, ISBN 0-19-925591-1 .