The Marrku–Wurrugu languages are a possible language family of

Australian Aboriginal 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 ...

spoken in the Cobourg Peninsula region of Western

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 ...

. They are the recently extinct Marrgu, and the extinct Wurrugu.Evans, N. (1996). "First and last notes on Wurrugu." University of Melbourne Working Papers in Linguistics, 16, 91–97 They were once classified as distant relatives of the other Iwaidjan languages, until Nicholas Evans found the evidence for Marrgu's membership insufficient, concluding that similarities were due to borrowing (including of verbal paradigms). The genetic grouping of Marrgu and Wurrugu is supported by the following observations: * Despite being geographically separated by the Garig-Ilgar languages, the two languages share a relatively high cognacy rate (15 out of 43 words = ~35%). * Both languages contain an interdental phoneme h which is absent in the surrounding Iwaidjan languages.

Vocabulary

Capell (1942) lists the following basic vocabulary items:Capell, Arthur. 1941-1942, 1942-1943
Languages of Arnhem Land, North Australia
''Oceania'' 12: 364-392, 13: 24-51. :

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marrku-Wurrugu languages Language families Non-Pama-Nyungan languages Indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory