Malak-Malak (also spelt Mullukmulluk, Malagmalag), also known as ''Ngolak-Wonga'' (Nguluwongga), 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
Mulluk-Mulluk people. Malakmalak is nearly
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
, with children growing up speaking
Kriol or English instead. The language is spoken in the
Daly River area around Woolianna and
Nauiyu. The Kuwema or Tyaraity (Tyeraty) variety is distinct.
Classification
Malakmalak was formerly classified in a
Northern Daly family along with the "Anson Bay" group of
Wagaydy (Patjtjamalh, Wadjiginy, Kandjerramalh) and the unattested
Giyug. Green concluded that Wagaydy and Malakmalak were two separate language families.
[Green, I. "The Genetic Status of Murrinh-patha" in Evans, N., ed. "The Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent’s most linguistically complex region". ''Studies in Language Change'', 552. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2003.] Some later classifications have linked them such as Bowern (2011). However, the Wagaydy people are recent arrivals in the area, and their language may only similar due to borrowing. ''
AIATSIS
The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), established as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) in 1964, is an independent Australian Government statutory authority. It is a collecting, ...
'' and ''
Glottolog
''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...
'' both treat Wagaydy as an isolate and Giyug as unclassifiable.
In contemporary usage, "Northern Daly" (e.g. Harvey 2003,
[Harvey, M. (2003). "The evolution of verb systems in the Eastern Daly language family." In N. Evans ed. ''The Non-Pama Nyungan languages of Northern Australia.'' Canberra, Pacific Linguistics. pp. 159-184.] Cahir 2006,
[Cahir, P. (2006). "Verb functions and Argument Structure in MalakMalak: a Northern daly Language of the Daly River Region, Northern Territory." Honours Thesis. University of Melbourne.] Nordlinger 2017) most often refers specifically to the group of languages which includes Malakmalak and Tyerraty
(also known as Guwema), a variety with which MalakMalak differs significantly in vocabulary (65% according to Tryon's 200 word list), but is very close to morphologically.
Phonology
Vowels[Hoffmann, Dorothea (in prep), MalakMalak Sketch Grammar]
Consonants
Plosives /p t c k/ may be heard as voiced as
d ɟ ɡwhen intervocalic.
Typological classification
MalakMalak, is an
ergative-absolutive language with constituent order mainly determined by
information structure and
prosody, but syntactically free. Marking of core-cases is optional. The language is mostly
dependent-marking A dependent-marking language has grammatical markers of agreement and case government between the words of phrases that tend to appear more on dependents than on heads. The distinction between head-marking and dependent-marking was first explored by ...
(1), but also has no marking (2) and
head-marking
A language is head-marking if the grammatical marks showing agreement between different words of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads (or nuclei) of phrases, rather than on the modifiers or dependents. Many languages employ both head-marking ...
features (3).
Morphosyntactic properties
MalakMalak's verb phrase uses
complex predicates. These consist of an
inflecting verb that has properties of person, number and
tense. MalakMalak only has six such verbs. In example (4), ''yuyu'' and ''vida'' are inflecting verbs. Additionally, there are
coverbs which have
aspectual properties, but do not inflect for number, tense or person. They occur with inflecting verbs. They are unlimited in number and new verbs are also borrowed into this class. In (4), ''kubuk-karrarr, dat-tyed,'' and ''ka'' are coverbs. They can also form
serial verbs (''kubuk-karrarr, dat-tyed'').
Spatial Language
MalakMalak employs all three "classic" types of spatial
Frames of Reference: intrinsic, relative and absolute. Additionally, the language uses place names and body-part orientation to talk about space.
The intrinsic Frame requires some kind of portioning of the ground object or landmark into named facets from which search domains can be projected.
In English this would be, for example, ''the tree is in front of the man.'' And in MalakMalak it would be (5).
The relative Frame of Reference involves mapping from the observer's own axes (''front, back, left, right'') onto the ground object.
An English example is ''the ball is on the right.'' In MalakMalak it would be (6)
The absolute Frame of Reference requires xed bearings that are instantly available to all members of the community.
An English example is ''the opera is west of here.'' In MalakMalak, three different types of absolute frames can be used. Those based on the course of the sun (''east/west'') (7a), on prevailing winds (''northwesterly/southeasterly'') (7b), and on two sides of the prominent
Daly River (''northeastern/southwestern bank'') (7c).
Vocabulary
The following basic vocabulary items of Northern Daly language varieties are from Tryon (1968).
[Tryon, Darrell T. "The Daly River Languages: A Survey". In Aguas, E.F. and Tryon, D. editors, ''Papers in Australian Linguistics No. 3''. A-14:21-49. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1968. ]
:
References
*
*
*Hoffmann, Dorothea
http://drdorotheahoffmann.wordpress.com*Hoffmann, Dorothea (2015).
Moving through space and (not?) time North Australian dreamtime narratives,” ''Narratives from the South Pacific: Sociocultural explorations'', ed. by F. Gounder. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 15-35
*Hoffmann, Dorothea (2014).
Mapping the Language How a dying language loses its place in the world”, ''Endangered Words, Signs of Revival,'' ed. by
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Ghil'ad Zuckermann ( he, גלעד צוקרמן, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics and Ch ...
, J. Miller, and J. Morley, Adelaide:
Australex, 1-18
External links
MalakMalakat th
Dalylanguages.org website
{{Australian Aboriginal languages
Daly languages
Extinct languages of the Northern Territory
Language isolates of Australia
Severely endangered languages