Languages: Warumungu
Warumungu speakers live at Tennant Creek, to the north and east at Elliott, Marlinja, Kurnturlpara, Ngurrara, Wogayala, and Alroy Downs, and on several outstations such as Likarrapartta, Jurntu Jungu, Pingala, and to the south at Kurraya, Alekarenge, Karlinjarangi, and Jungkkaji. In most of these communities other languages are spoken.
In the mid 1990s Robert Hoogenraad surveyed the languages of the Barkly area, and estimated that there were then about 700 people who could speak some Warumungu. While older people can speak Warumungu fluently, very few children and teenagers have spoken it regularly since at least the early 1980s.
Warumungu was profiled in FATSIL's newletter "Voice of the Land"
Language work on Warumungu is carried on in Tennant Creek through the Papulu Apparr-kari Language Centre, as well as in the Nyinkkanyunyu Cultural Centre.
2. Typology <up>
Warumungu has been classified as a subgroup on its own within the Western
Desert type of Pama-Nyungan languages by Oates (1975: I, 145). According
to this classification, Warumungu would be more closely related to
Warlpiri and Warlmanpa, than, say, to Arandic. However,in the
classification of O'Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin (1966, p.42), Warumungu
is coordinate with the Wakayic group, the Arandic group and the South-West
group to which Mudbura, Warlpiri and Warlmanpa belong. Its exact genetic
relationship to these languages is still uncertain.
Phonologically, the presence of two stop series sets Warumungu apart from
neighbouring languages.
There are five places of articulation for stops and nasals: bilabial,
apico-alveolar, apico-postalveolar (retroflex), lamino-palatal and velar.
There are three laterals, one tap r and three semivowels (including a
retroflex glide r). There are three vowels. Vowel length is distinctive
in initial syllables. Primary stress occurs word-initially. The most
striking phonological rules are alternations in consonant length and
voicing, and vowel deletion, which deletes the first of two adjacent
vowels across word boundaries.
Warumungu is a suffixing language. Grammatical functions are expressed by Ergative-Absolutive case-marking. Word order is used for information structure purposes. Initial and second position are particularly salient. Pronouns appear in clusters, marking either one pronominal argument (intransitive subject) or two (transitive subject and direct, reflexive or indirect object). They normally appear in initial position, or encliticised to a constituent in initial position. Verb roots are a small closed class. Complex verbs are created by compounding these verb roots with preverbs, which appear to be an open class. There is no evidence for a surface verb phrase, but nouns and their modifiers do appear to form phrases.