The Burarra language is an

Australian Aboriginal language The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

spoken by the

Burarra people The Burarra people, also referred to as the Gidjingali, are an Aboriginal Australian people in and around Maningrida, in the heart of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Opinions have differed as to whether the two names represent different tr ...

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia, with the term still in use. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territory capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compan ...

. It has several dialects. Other names and spellings include Barera, Bawera, Burada, Bureda, Burera, An-barra (Anbarra), Gidjingaliya, Gu-jingarliya, Gu-jarlabiya, Gun-Guragone (also used for Guragone), Jikai, Tchikai. The Djangu people have a Burarra clan, which is sometimes confused with this language.

Classification

Burarra is a prefixing non-Pama-Nyungan language. Along with Gurr-goni, it makes up the Burarran branch of the Maningrida language family (which also includes Ndjébbana and Na-kara).

Distribution

The

are from the Blyth and Cadell River regions of Central and North-central Arnhem Land, but many now reside further west in

Maningrida Maningrida, also known as Manayingkarírra and Manawukan, is an Aboriginal community in the heart of the Arnhem Land region of Australia's Northern Territory. Maningrida is east of Darwin, and north east of Jabiru. It is on the North Central ...

township at the mouth of the Liverpool River.

Dialects

Glasgow (1994) distinguishes three dialects of Burarra: Gun-nartpa (Mu-golarra/Mukarli group from the Cadell River region), Gun-narta (An-barra, western side of the mouth of the Blythe River), and Gun-narda (Martay, eastern side of the Blythe River). These dialect names derive from each dialect's word for the demonstrative "that". She further notes that the two latter dialects (Gun-narta and Gun-narda) are frequently grouped together and referred to by their eastern neighbours as "Burarra", and by themselves as "Gu-jingarliya" ('language'/'with tongue'). Green (1987) distinguishes two dialects: Gun-nartpa and Burarra (Gu-jingarliya), but notes that noticeable dialectal differences exist within the group of Burarra speakers.

Phonology

Consonants

In most cases, fortis and lenis refers to the voicing in consonants where ''fortis'' is voiceless and ''lenis'' is voiced. In this case, plosives are distinguished by intra-oral peak pressure and stricture duration. Fortis consonants are usually longer in duration and have a greater intra-oral pressure while lenis consonants can often be pronounced as fricatives or approximants. The Burarra language also allows for the clustering of consonants.

Vowels

Burara has a five vowel system. The vowels can be realized as: /i/: close-mid front vowel, or � /a/: low central vowel or schwa /ɛ/: �or /o/: or � /u/: schwa, a lowered open-mid back rounded vowel, a lowered � or �ref name=":02" />

Grammar

Burarra is a prefixing, multiple-classifying language. Verbs co-reference their subjects and objects through the use of prefixes, and inflect for tense and status. Serial verbs can be used to express categories like aspect, compound action and causation. Nouns inflect for case and belong to one of four noun classes (''an-, jin-, mun-'' and ''gun-'').

Capell, A. 1942. Languages of Arnhem Land, North Australia. ''Oceania'','' 12'' (4), 364–392. Elwell, Vanessa. 1977. Multilingualism and lingua francas among Australian Aborigines: A case study of Maningrida. Honours Thesis, Australian National University. Elwell, Vanessa. 1982. Some social factors affecting multilingualism among Aboriginal Australians: a case study of Maningrida. ''International Journal of the Sociology of Language'' 36: 83–103. Glasgow, Kathleen. 1981. Burarra phonemes. In ''Work papers of SIL-AAB, series A'' (Vol. 5). Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Glasgow, Kathleen. 1994. Burarra–Gun-nartpa dictionary with English finder list. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Green, Rebecca. 1987. A sketch grammar of Burarra. Honours Thesis, Australian National University Canberra. Green, R. 2003. Proto Maningrida within Proto Arnhem: evidence from verbal inflectional suffixes. In N. Evans (Ed.), ''The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of Northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent's most linguistically complex region ''(pp. 369–421). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Handelsmann, Robert. 1996. Needs Survey of Community Languages: Central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory (Maningrida and Outstations). Report to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Canberra. Trefry, D. (1983). Discerning the back vowels /u/ and /o/ in Burarra, a language of the Australian Northern Territory. ''Working papers of the Speech and Language Research Centre'','' 3'' (6), pp. 19–51.

References

External links

* ELAR archive o
Gun-nartpa
{{Australian Aboriginal languages Maningrida languages