Yankuntyatyarya

Yankuntyatyarya is the language of the Vati group of the southwestern branch of the Pama-Nyunga language family. Yankuntyatyarya is one of the 14 dialects of the language of the western desert . It is spoken mainly in northwestern Australia in such Aboriginal communities as: Mimili, Indulkana, Fregon and Ernabella, as well as in some other communities.

According to the Australian census 2006, the number of speakers is 561. They use the language in everyday life, and also learn English as a foreign language to communicate with people who do not know Yankuntyatyar. On the same territory, another dialect of the language of the western desert is sometimes used - Pityantyatiar .

Type of expression of grammatical meanings

Yankuntyatyarya is a synthetic language with a developed suffixal morphology.

[Goddard 1983: 130]

[Goddard 1983: 95]

Character boundary between morphemes

The language is characterized by an agglutinative system. The boundaries of morphemes are unambiguous.

[Goddard 1983: 31]

[Goddard 1983: 98]

Marking Locus

In the possessive naming group

In the possessive name group, dependent marking is observed:

[Goddard 1983: 31]

[Goddard 1983: 31]

In predication

In predication, dependent labeling is also observed, since actants have indicators of case:

[Goddard 1983: 51]

Role Coding Type

In the language of Yankuntyatyar, a three-term type of role coding is represented. There are three distinct indicators of the nuclear actants of the verb: for the agent of the transitional verb , for the patients of the transitional verb and for the only nuclear actant of the intransitive verb .

Agens and transient verb patients are expressed respectively by an ergative and accusative :

[Goddard 1983: 22]

[Goddard 1983: 47]

The actant of the intransitive verb is expressed by the nominative :

[Goddard 1983: 40]

[Goddard 1983: 25]

Basic word order

Unmarked is the SOV order. In language in all cases the verb is at the end of the clause .

[Goddard 1983: 40]

Phonetics and phonology

Consonantism

The phoneme system of consonants is a set of 17 consonants, in which they are divided into peripheral and non-peripheral and are contrasted by the place of articulation : 2 apical, 1 laminar, bilabial and dorsal subgroups.

[Goddard 1983: 25]

As in most Australian languages , there are no fricative phonemes in the Yankuntyatyar language, and each nasal phoneme corresponds to an explosive. There are 3 side phonemes here.

Vocalism

[Goddard 1983: 12]

Iankuntiatyar distinguishes 3 vowels of different quality, each of which can be short and long. Long vowels appear only in the initial syllable.

Basic syllable structure

CV (C) or (C) V (V) (C). Yankuntyatyary differs from other dialects of the Western Desert language in that it allows for the beginning of a syllable to have vowels and smooth consonant phonemes.

Emphasis

In language 2 types of stress :

1) The main stress falls on the first vowel of the word.

2) Secondary stress falls on the first vowel of complex suffixes.

Morphology

Nouns

Seven cases are distinguished: ergative , accusative , nominative , genitive , locative , ablative , allative and perlativ .

[Goddard 1983: 24]

• The older generation of carriers tend to use in the ergative case the indicator -lu and in the locative case -la not only with proper nouns and adjectives, but also with abstract nouns and adjectives containing more than 2 syllables.

Two categories agree with the subject of the nominal group :

1. Active adjectives that describe the behavior, emotional / intentional state or sequence in which the subject performs an action

2. Derived elements, semantically and syntactically resembling active adjectives

Some nouns and static adjectives are also consistent with the subject (i.e., lexemes that may be the top of the noun phrase )

Pronouns

Pronouns have grammatical meanings of a person (1,2,3) and numbers (Sg, Du, Pl).

[Goddard 1983: 26]

The peculiarity of the language of Yankuntyatyar is the presence of a specific name pala , which functions in some contexts as a third person singular pronoun. Usually this element appears after its referent is defined.

[Goddard 1983: 60]

The language also contains 3 groups of clitical pronouns - nominative / ergative, accusative and genetic. Some of them are equivalent to their corresponding pronouns. They play the role of an enclicic , that is, they join the last word of the first phrase element of the clause .

[Goddard 1983: 61]

Verb

In the language of Yankuntiyatyar there are observed inverse verbs, denoting the beginning of action or its formation. They are divided into:

• state verbs

[Goddard 1983: 109]

• verbs of the physiological state

[Goddard 1983: 109]

• verbs of the emotional state

[Goddard 1983: 109]

• behavioral verbs

[Goddard 1983: 110]

• verbs of environmental change

[Goddard 1983: 110]

• verbs of the passage of time

[Goddard 1983: 110]

• In addition to the inoactive verbs stand out

1. Verbs that express sounding actions that have the -ma-n indicator. For example: nguujr-ma-n 'snore' walpal-ma-n 'bark'
2. Delocutory verbs that have the indicator -n , joined by the suffix -ma-n . For example: wiya-n-ma-n 'say' no '
3. Verbs that express the creation of sound, which have the indicator -tjinga-l . For example: takaḻṯakaḻ-tjinga-l 'create a sound knock'

Abl - ablative,
Acc - accusative,
Dat - dative,
Du is a dual number
Erg - ergative case,
Fut - future tense
Gen - genitive,
Imp is the verb of the perfect imperative,
Incho is an indicator of the inverse verb
Loc - local case,
LocName - the locative case of proper names,
Nom - nominative case
Past - past tense
Pl is a plural
Pres is the present
Purp - target case
Serial is a serial verb
Sg is the only number
1, 2, 3 - first, second, third person.

• Goddard, Cliff. 1983. A Semantically-oriented Grammar of the Yankunytjara Dialect of the Western Desert Language
• https://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_ynk
• https://www.ethnologue.com/language/kdd