Martu Wangka, or Wangkatjunga (Wangkajunga), is a variety of the
Western Desert language that emerged during the 20th century in
Western Australia
Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
as several
indigenous communities
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
shifted from their respective territories to form a single community. Traditionally, its speakers live in territory that is part of the
Great Sandy Desert
The Great Sandy Desert is an interim Australian bioregion,[IBRA Version 6.1](_blank)
data and near the Canning Stock Route, as well as Christmas Creek and
Fitzroy Crossing Fitzroy or FitzRoy may refer to:
People As a given name
*Several members of the Somerset family (Dukes of Beaufort) have this as a middle-name:
**FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan (1788–1855)
** Henry Charles FitzRoy Somerset, 8th Duke of Beau ...
. These are areas that are considered deserts but have many water holes that speakers travel between.
There are an estimated 1,080 speakers of Martu Wangka in various communities across the Western Desert region. The largest of these communities is estimated at 100 speakers, while some of the smallest communities have as few as 15 speakers. While older speakers continue to use Martu Wangka as their primary language, younger speakers tend to understand Martu Wangka but use different languages in their daily lives.
For example, many younger speakers primarily use an English-based creole commonly referred to as the Fitzroy Valley Kriol.
The alternative language name Wangkatjunga to identify this variety only appears to have emerged in the 1970s.
This name is said to have been based on the words meaning 'talk' or 'word' and meaning 'correct' or 'straight,' so when put together, the language name essentially means 'the correct language.' It is important to note, however, that there is still some debate on how this name should be spelled, as it has been recorded differently by different linguists studying the language.
A dictionary of over 400 pages was published in 1992.
History
Martu Wangka developed after two tribes, the
Kartudjara
The Kartudjara are an indigenous Australian people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Country
The Kartudjara's traditional lands extended over from ''Madaleri'', north of Kumpupintil Lake around Well 22 down southwest towards ''Pulpur ...
and the
Manjiljarra
The Mandjildjara, also written ''Manyjilyjarra,'' are an indigenous Australian people of Western Australia.
Country
In Norman Tindale's estimation the Mandjildjara's lands extended over some , running along what was later known as the Canning St ...
came in from the Western desert to settle into
Jigalong
Jigalong is a remote Aboriginal community of approximately 333 people located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Location
Jigalong is in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, approximately east of the town of Newman in the Shire ...
during the 1960s. Though tribally distinct, they spoke two mutually intelligible dialects of the
Western Desert language family. Through daily cohabitation, they developed what is technically known as a
''communalect''. In this process, elements of the two languages are selected to fuse into a single shared idiom, thus forming a
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
distinct from the originative dialects of the various groups who settled down to live together.
Phonology
Vowels
Martu Wangka contains three contrastive vowels, which may be either short or long.
Long vowels are less common and usually occur either on the first syllable of a word or as the ending of a monosyllabic word.
The chart below illustrates this:
* /i/ has allophones
in free variation. When following a palatal consonant, or preceding a retroflex continuant /ɻ/, it can be realised as
* /u/ has the allophones
When following or preceding palatal consonants, it may be realised as more fronted to
* /a/ is typically pronounced as
When in unstressed positions as a second syllable of a three syllable word, it can be pronounced as
and word-finally as
When following the glide /w/, or preceding a velar consonant, it can be realised as
When between two laterals, it can be realised as
Consonants
There are 17 consonants in Martu Wangka, dispersed over five different places and six manners of articulation. Speakers of Martu Wangka generally do not make distinctions between voiced and voiceless stops. The
apico-alveolar
An apical consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the tip of the tongue (apex) in conjunction with upper articulators from lips to postalveolar, and possibly prepalatal. It contrasts with laminal conso ...
and apico-retroflex consonants are very similar and can be pronounced differently depending on the speaker, so it is often difficult to normalize the way these sounds are recorded.
* /k/ can have a voiced allophone
when occurring after nasal continuants, or in different intervocalic positions. It may also be heard as a voiced fricative
in intervocalic positions.
* /ɟ/ can have a voiceless fricative allophone
when occurring intervocalically.
* /ʈ/ can also be heard as tap sounds
~ɽin various intervocalic positions.
Syllable structure
In Martu Wangka, most words contain two or more syllables, and most words end in vowels. Although some words may end in an apical nasal or lateral consonant, most words that would end in a consonant are appended with an
epenthetic
In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek language, Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable (''prothesis (linguistics), prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syll ...
syllable -pa''
' to avoid ending the word on a consonant. The most standard syllable template is CV(V)(C). The chart below shows various syllabic templates, along with examples.
Stress
Martu Wangka has stress similar to that of other languages in its family: primary stress usually falls on the first syllable of a word, and secondary stress usually falls on the second syllable after the primary stressed syllable (essentially alternating between stressed and unstressed, marked starting from the left). The final syllable of a word is usually unstressed.
Morphology
Nominals
In Martu Wangka, nominal morphology has
affixation
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
,
reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
,
compounding
In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of a custom formulation of a medication to fit a unique need of a patient that cannot be met with commercially available products. This may be done for me ...
, and
case marking
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomina ...
. The usual formula for constructing a noun is
nominal word = nominal root – (derivation) (derivation) – inflection (inflection)
Derivational suffixes
Nominals in Martu Wangka do not all have derivational suffixes, but when they do, these suffixes attach directly to the nominal root and then are followed by any inflectional suffixes. The usual derivational suffixes function to indicate a nominal having or lacking something, the related timing and spacing, comparison of certain properties, or number. The table below shows examples of some of the common derivational affixes associated with these groupings. The word containing the relevant suffix is bolded in each line of the gloss.
Verbs
Martu Wangka contains around 70 basic verbs that can serve as verbal roots and then an indefinite amount of complex verbs formed through various morphological processes. These verbs contain a wide variety of meanings including but not limited to actions, motions, physical positions, sensations, and utterances. The usual formula for constructing a verb is
verbal word = (direction) (preverb) verbal root (derivation) (derivation) inflection (directional affixes)
Derivational affixes
Derivational verb morphology in Martu Wangka consists of various
causative
In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
s,
inchoatives, and directional affixes. Causitives include suffixes like -ma''
', which creates a transitive verb from a nominal, and '
''-ju''
', which indicates that something has been put on, over, into, etc. Inchoatives serve as change-of-state verbs and modify nominals that describe various states of existence like being alive or cold. Directional affixes are used to modify existing verbs and indicate the type or direction of action.
Inflectional affixes
Inflectional affixes on verbs are used to indicate tense and how the speaker feels about the action that the verbal root describes. Tense affixes include indicators of present, past, future,
perfective
The perfective aspect (abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imp ...
, and
imperfective
The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a gen ...
tenses. Feeling affixes can be used to inflect when a speaker wants something to happen, is trying to make something happen, believes that something should happen, and to discuss hypothetical scenarios.
There are four different conjugation classes that determine how verbs realize various inflectional morphemes: the ''ø'' class, ''wa'' class, ''rra'' class, and ''la'' class. These classes are organized by shared characteristics of the imperative form of the verb.
Reduplication
There is both nominal and verbal reduplication in Martu Wangka, which is usually used to generate a new word with related meaning, but can also be used to emphasize certain actions or traits. Nominal reduplication has two types: reduplication and frozen reduplication. With reduplication, the nominal is repeated, which creates a new reduplicated nominal. With frozen reduplication, only the reduplicated form of the nominal is in the language and the non-reduplicated form does not exist.
Verbal reduplication can be both partial, full, and frozen reduplication. To form a reduplicated verb, usually the verb root or the preverb of a compound verb is reduplicated. It is typically used when creating a word for an action that repeats itself, such as going around in circles.
Compounding
Compound nominals are formed in two ways: either two independent roots are put together to form a new word with a separate meaning, or one independent root is put together with another root that does not contain independent meaning. The majority of compound nominals are words for various plants and animals, but they are also formed to describe words originally not in Martu Wangka.
Compound verbs consist of a
preverb
Although not widely accepted in linguistics, the term preverb is used in Caucasian (including all three families: Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian and Kartvelian), Caddoan, Athabaskan, and Algonquian linguistics to describe certain eleme ...
, which can be either a nominal or an independent class, and a verbal root. Verbal roots are simple verbs that contain the core meaning of the compound verb. Some examples of compounding on verbals roots are illustrated below.
Case and agreement
Grammatical case marking
The system of case and agreement in Martu Wangka is
Ergative-Absolutive. The suffix associated with the absolutive case is ''-ø'', which indicates lack of a suffix, and the suffixes associated with the ergative case are ''-lu'' when preceded by a vowel and ''-ju'' or ''-tu'' when preceded by a consonant. Martu Wangka also contains a third grammatical case known as the
dative
In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...
case, which serves to mark the purpose of an action and is suffixed with -''ku''. The examples below show these three types of grammatical case marking.
These grammatical cases are particularly important in a language like Martu Wangka because it has very free word order, so these case markings serve to indicate the functions of and relationships between nominals in a sentence. For example, these cases can indicate subject and object, agent and experiencer (of an action), force of an action (such as when an object causes something to happen instead of a human), purpose of an action, and even beneficiary of an action.
Semantic case marking
While the ergative and absolutive markings serve primarily grammatical functions, Martu Wangka also contains case markings that can be loosely categorized as semantic markings. Semantic case markings are considered an extension of the argument and are used primarily to relate the argument to a location. For example, the
locative case
In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
indicates the location of an argument, the
perlative case In grammar, the perlative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which expresses that something moved "through", "across", or "along" the referent of the noun that is marked. The case is found in a number of Australian Aboriginal languages such ...
describes an object moving along a path within a location, the
allative case
In grammar, the allative case (; abbreviated ; from Latin ''allāt-'', ''afferre'' "to bring to") is a type of locative grammatical case. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages that do not make fine ...
describes an object moving to a location, and the ablative case describes an object moving away from a location.
Syntax
Word order
Martu Wangka has free word order, meaning that there is no grammatical basic word order. Instead, words are ordered semantically and the most important parts of the sentence come the earliest in the sentence. For example, new information introduced into a conversation tends to come before information that has already been discussed. In a narrative about a journey, information about direction and distance comes first because those are the most important things for travelers to know. Some examples are shown below.
Questions
Martu Wangka has
tag questions, in which certain questions are followed by a tag that indicates the type of question. The tag always comes at the end of the question. For example, the tag comes at the end of a yes/no question and the 'you know' tag, which is borrowed from English, is common at the end of rhetorical questions as an afterthought.
Martu Wangka also has
interrogative pronouns
An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
, , , and , which translate to the English words 'what,' 'where', 'where', and 'when', respectively. These interrogative nominals always come at the start of a clause.
See also
*
Ngurrara
The Ngurrara and Ngururrpa are overlapping groupings of Aboriginal Australian peoples of the Great Sandy Desert, in the central Pilbara and southern Kimberley regions of Western Australia. Both groups are represented by various Aboriginal corp ...
, a grouping of peoples of language groups including Martu Wangka
References
Sources
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{{Authority control
Western Desert language