Kunwinku

Kunwinku belongs to the Gunvingguan branch of the Kunwinku indigenous family of Australia . According to the hypothesis of Nicholas Evans, the Kunvinku (or Gunvingguan) languages ​​are related to the languages ​​of the Pam-Nyung family and together with them form the macro-family Pam-Nyung family.

The area of ​​distribution of kunvinku belongs to the Northern Territory and is limited by the Kakadu National Park from the west, the Arafura Sea from the north, the Blyt River from the east and the Katherine region in the south.

The largest settlement in which Kunvinka is spoken is the village of Kunpalanya. The ethnic population in this village is about 900 people (according to the regional council of western Arnhem 1,174 ^[2] ), almost all of them speak kunvinka. According to Evans, native speakers make up about half of the total number of speakers of the language: for the rest, it is the second, as it is used as a lingua franca in communication of native speakers of different indigenous languages ​​(Iwaitya, Maung, Tyavoyn, Ntieppana, Remparring, Talapon). ^[3]

According to various sources, the kunvinka includes from 5 to 6 dialects - 5 in Ethnologue (kumatir, muralitpan, kune, kunteykhmi and mayali) ^[4] and 6 at Evans (kunvinku, kuninka, kunteykhmi, mayal, kunttimenhmi and kune with two subdial ^[3] .

Degree of freedom of expression of grammatical meanings

Like most Kunvinki languages , Kunvinka is polysynthetic . The verb can attach about twelve affixes expressing the lexical and grammatical features of the subject, object and other members of the sentence.

  Aban-yawoith-warrgah-marne-ganj-ginje-ng.
 1 / 3pl-again-wrong-ben-meat-cook-PP
 "I cooked the wrong meat for them again."  [3] 

The nature of the boundary between morphemes

Kunvinku is a predominantly agglutinative language . Moreover, cumulatively expressed in it, for example, indicators of the actants on the verb:

  Ga-rrarrkid, galuk nga-rrarrgid-ma-ng.
 3-Live FUT 1/3-Live-Pick-NP
 "It is alive, I will take it alive."

  Ngudda ngadburrung yi-ngeibu-n balanda raft, ngad ngarri-ngeibu-n binjinj, wularl.
 you brother 2/3-call-NP balft raft we 1a / 3-call-NP aboriginal wularl
 "You, brother, call it 'raft' in balanda (language), we natives call it 'wularl'."  [3] 

Marking Locus

In a possessive noun group

Dependent marking is presented in the possessive noun groups, that is, the affective indicator is attributed to the possessor:

  kunrurrk kunwinjku-kenh
 Kunvinku House-GEN
 "kunvinka house"

  manih manme wurd-kenh
 DE food children-GEN
 "this is the food of children" [5] 

In Prediction

In predication, vertex marking is presented - all grammatical indicators are assigned to the verb:

  A-bid-garrme-ng daluk.
 1/3-hand-touch-PP woman
 "I touched a woman's hand."  [3] 

Role Encoding Type

The roles of verb actants in kunvinka are marked with a vertex, with a verb. Role coding is neat. The indicators of the subject and the object are often expressed cumulatively, the role of the third-party object is expressed by a zero indicator:

  Bandi-marne-ganj-ginje-ng
 3aSUBJ / 3plOBJ-BEN-meat-cook-PP
 "They cooked meat for them."

  Nga-ø-ganj-ginje-ng.
 1SUBJ-3OBJ-meat-cook-PP.
 "I cooked the meat."  [3] 

As can be seen from the examples, the expression of the grammatical role is tied to the face of the actant, and not to the actant himself. In cases where the actants belong to the same person, ambiguities arise, similar to those discussed in the section “Basic Word Order”.

Ergative is optionally used in the Kune and Mayal dialects (the instrumental case index -yih performs its function).

  Wurruyung bi-dulubo-m?
 tortoise 3 / 3hP-pierce-PP
 "Tortoise pierced her (viper)?"

  Wurruyung-yih bi-dulubo-m
 turtle-ERG 3 / 3hP-pierce-PP
 "The turtle pierced her."  [3] 

Basic Word Order

According to Evans, the order of the main grammatical roles in the kunvinka is not fixed: the carriers considered the same sentence equally grammatical both for the translation “Devil bit the crocodile” and for the translation “Crocodile bit the devil”. This is a very rare typological feature. Perhaps the basic word order parameter is not relevant for this language.

  Na-marnde bi-baye-ng ginga.
 I-devil 3 / 3hP-bite-PP crocodile
 "The devil bit the crocodile."  OR "The crocodile bit the devil."  [3] 

Phonological

In the kunvinku phoneme system, there are paired closure and nasal consonant phonemes of all places of formation except glottal, there are no fricatives and a large inventory of smooth (two rotational and two lateral consonants). This system is typical of most of the languages ​​of central Arnhem Land , but is distinguished from most other Australian languages ​​by the presence of a guttural bow, two rows of concave (long and short) and five vowel phonemes that do not differ in longitude. ^[3]

Morphosyntactic

Unlike a large number of North Australian languages, such as Maung and Nunkupuy, verbs do not have a consensual gender. ^[3]

Lexical

Name Classes

There are four name classes in kunvinka with the prefixes na-, ngal-, kun- and man- . The relative pronouns nawu, ngalbu, kunu, and manbu correspond to them (historically, they are all obtained by adding the class name and the bu formant). True, there are carriers that use the nawu pronoun for all classes or use other combinations ( nawu for the first and second classes and / or manbu for the third and fourth). Such variability indicates the destruction of the system of noun classes in the language. ^[3]

Kinship term system

In several kunwinki dialects, a three-place system of kinship terms of the form “one who is my Xth and your Yth, even though I am your Z” is widespread. It is almost unique: similar systems, except for Australia, are recorded only in the Amazon valley. According to Evans, these systems in dialects of kunvinku count hundreds of words. A small part of one of these systems ( kun-derbi ) looks like this:

^[6]

• Oates, Lyn F. 1964. A tentative description of the Gunwinggu language (of western Arnhem Land). Sydney: Oceania Linguistic Monographs.

• Carroll, Peter J. 1976. Kunwinjku: a language of Western Arnhem Land. MA Thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.

• Etherington, S., & Etherington, N. 1996. Kunwinjku Kunwok: a short introduction to Kunwinjku language and society, 2nd ed. Kunwinjku Language Center: Kunwinjku Language Center.

• Evans, Nicholas. 1997. Head classes and agreement classes in the Mayali dialect chain. In Harvey, Mark and Reid, Nicholas (eds.), Nominal classification in Aboriginal Australia, 105-146. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• Evans, Dunstan and Corbett, Greville G. 2002. The Semantics of Gender in Mayali: Partially Parallel Systems and Formal Implementation. Language 78. 111-155.

• Evans, Nicholas. 2003. Bininj Gun-Wok: a pan-dialectal grammar of Mayali, Kunwinjku and Kune: Pacific Linguistics 541, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

• Evans, Nicholas. 2004. Bininj Gun-Wok: A Pan-Dialectal Grammar of Mayali, Kunwinjku and Kune. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies.

“Two Captains” - Linguistic tasks on the Elements.

• a - augmented
• BEN - benefactive applicative
• DE - demonstrative
• ERG - ergative
• FUT - future
• GEN - genitive
• NP - non-past
• OBJ - object
• pl - plural
• PP - past perfective
• SUBJ - subject
• IV - fourth noun class (usually neuter)
• 1, 2, 3 - face indicators
• 1/3, etc. - Subject / Object