Kuuk Thaayorre (Thayore) is a Paman language spoken in the settlement Pormpuraaw on the western part of the

Cape York Peninsula Cape York Peninsula is a large peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is the largest unspoiled wilderness in northern Australia.Mittermeier, R.E. et al. (2002). Wilderness: Earth’s last wild places. Mexico City: Agrupación ...

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

by the Thaayorre people. As of 2006, 250 of the 350 ethnic Thaayorre speak the language. It is in a robust position compared to many

indigenous Australian 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 ...

s, as it is still being acquired by children and used in daily interaction. It is closely related to the Ogh-Undjan and more distantly related to the Uw languages, Uw Olkola. Kuuk Yak is either a dialect or closely related. Speakers of the Kuuk Thaayorre language are able to recall the names of a couple of

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...

s, such as ''Kuuk Thaayunth'', ''Kuuk Thayem'' and ''Kuuk Thanon'', but today there is only little dialectal difference and the language has become more uniform as the number of speakers has gone down. The so-called

Kuuk Yak language Kuuk Yak, or the snake language, if translated literally, is an extinct Paman language which was spoken on the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland, Australia. Very little is known about the language, but a small number of people in the settlem ...

may be a dialect of Kuuk Thaayorre, but may be a closely related language as well. Barry Alpher is currently trying to

document A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" or ...

the language in order to understand its genetic affiliation.

Names

As with many other

Australian languages 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 ...

, there is a long list of alternative spellings of ''Kuuk Thaayorre''. The name itself, ''Kuuk Thaayorre'', means 'the Thaayorre language' in the language itself, meaning 'language' and ''Thaayorre'' being their

ethnonym An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...

. Other names include ''Kuuk Thaayoore'', ''Kuktayor'', ''Kukudayore'', ''Gugudayor'', ''Koko Daiyuri'', ''Koko Taiyor'', ''Kokkotaijari'', ''Kokotaiyari'', ''Thayorre'', ''Thaayore'', ''Thayore'', ''Tayore'', ''Taior'', ''Taiol'', ''Da:jor'' and ''Behran''.

Phonology

Vowels

Kuuk Thaayorre has five

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

s: All of the vowels above have a long counterpart. In addition, one of the rhotics may be syllabic.

Consonants

Kuuk Thaayorre has 16

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

s: The maximal syllable structure is CVCCC, and four-consonant clusters are not uncommon. Unusually, sequences of consecutive /r/ and /ɻ/ are licit. Unlike in many Australian languages, monosyllables of all word classes are frequent in Kuuk Thaayorre.

Morphosyntax

A clause in Kuuk Thaayorre can be as small as a single

predicate Predicate or predication may refer to: * Predicate (grammar), in linguistics * Predication (philosophy) * several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic: **Predicate (mathematical logic) **Propositional function **Finitary relation, o ...

constituent Constituent or constituency may refer to: Politics * An individual voter within an electoral district, state, community, or organization * Advocacy group or constituency * Constituent assembly * Constituencies of Namibia Other meanings * Const ...

. Any

arguments An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...

that a predicate subcategorises for can be omitted. Predicating constituents include

verbs A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descrip ...

adjectives In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the mai ...

nouns A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

, demonstrative pronouns, and locative adverbs. Kuuk Thaayorre is on the whole a nonconfigurational language at the level of the

clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...

, although for complex clauses there are constraints on the ordering of the main clause and the

dependent clause A subordinate clause, dependent clause, subclause, or embedded clause is a clause that is embedded within a complex sentence. For instance, in the English sentence "I know that Bette is a dolphin", the clause "that Bette is a dolphin" occurs as t ...

. Within a clause

noun phrases In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently occ ...

have intricate structure. The irregular form of the ergative morpheme makes it a clear

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

, rather than an

enclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...

; however, it is borne on the last nominal in the noun phrase. This makes Kuuk Thaayorre an example of a language displaying affixation to phrases. Ergative marking has the pragmatic function of displaying the degree of expectedness of the subject. There are multiple ''inclusory'' constructions, i.e. those referring to a superset while simultaneously focussing on a subset (these are found in many IE languages, e.g. German ''Wit Scilling'' 1.du Sc. "Sc. and I"). One of these is a set of single-word inclusory pronouns encoding both superset and subset.

Lexical semantics

Kuuk Thaayorre is similar to most Australian languages for its thoroughgoing use of absolute

cardinal direction The four cardinal directions, or cardinal points, are the four main compass directions: north, east, south, and west, commonly denoted by their initials N, E, S, and W respectively. Relative to north, the directions east, south, and west are at ...

s instead of words with relative senses (''ahead'', ''left'', etc.) as is familiar in European languages. There are sixteen words for directions in Kuuk Thaayorre. Speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre show a correspondingly greater skill in navigational ability than speakers of languages like English, and always know the exact direction of their facing. When asked to arrange a sequence of pictures in temporal order, speakers consistently arrange them so that time runs east to west, regardless of their own bodily orientation. They are also able to point to cardinal directions with very high accuracy.Boroditsky, ''How does our language shape the way we think?''
Edge magazine, 6.12.09. This has been used to support the

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuuk Thaayorre Language Southwestern Paman languages Endangered indigenous Australian languages in Queensland Definitely endangered languages