Martuthunira is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

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 ...

, that was the traditional language of the Martuthunira people of

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

. The last fluent speaker of Martuthunira, Algy Paterson, died on 6 August 1995. From 1980 he worked with the linguist Alan Dench to preserve Martuthunira in writing, and it is from their work that most of our knowledge of Martuthunira today comes.

Name

The name ''Martuthunira'', pronounced by native speakers, means "those who live around the

Fortescue River The Fortescue River is an ephemeral river in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It is the third longest river in the state. Course The river rises near Deadman Hill in the Ophthalmia Range about 30 km south of Newman, Western Austr ...

". It has many spelling variants, including: Maratunia, Mardadhunira, Mardathon, Mardathoni, Mardathoonera, Mardatuna, Mardatunera, Mardudhoonera, Mardudhunera, Mardudhunira, Mardudjungara, Marduduna, Mardudunera, Marduthunira, Mardutunera, Mardutunira, Marduyunira, Martuthinya, and Martuyhunira.

Classification

Martuthunira is classified as a member of the Ngayarta branch of the

Pama–Nyungan languages The Pama–Nyungan languages () are the most widespread language family, family of Australian Aboriginal languages, containing 306 out of 400 Aboriginal languages in Australia. The name "Pama–Nyungan" is a merism: it is derived from the two e ...

. Under Carl Georg von Brandenstein's 1967 classification, Martuthunira was classed as a Coastal Ngayarda language, but the separation of the Ngayarda languages into Coastal and Inland groups is no longer considered valid.

Phonology

Martuthunira has a fairly standard Australian

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

. R. M. W. Dixon uses it as a prototypical example in his 2002 book ''Australian Languages: Their nature and development''.

Consonants

The laterals—but perhaps uniquely not the nasals—are allophonically prestopped.Jeff Mielke, 2008. ''The emergence of distinctive features'', p 135 The laminal stop has a voiced

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...

between vowels. Between vowels, the dental stop can become , , , , , , or even simply a syllable break. In some words one particular realization is always used, in others there is

free variation In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers. Sociolinguists argue that describing such ...

. The alveolar stop has a voiced allophone after a nasal. It occurs between vowels only in a handful of words, probably all

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

s, where it has a longer period of closure than the other stops . The retroflex stop has a voiced allophone after a nasal, and a flapped allophone between vowels. Besides the voiced allophones mentioned above, stops are usually voiceless and

unaspirated In phonetics, aspiration is a strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with thei ...

. The laterals have prestopped allophones when they occur in a

syllable coda A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

. The alveolar rhotic is a tap between vowels, and a usually voiceless trill finally. The palatal semivowel may be dropped initially before , but the equivalent dropping of before initial is rare.

Vowels

is usually realised as , though it may be realised as near palatal consonants and as near , or . is realised as in morpheme-initial syllables, elsewhere. is usually realised as in stressed syllables, and in unstressed syllables. is fronted to varying degrees when near laminal consonants, being most fronted when preceded by a dental consonant. It has an unrounded allophone when followed by . is usually , but is lowered to when preceded by a dental consonant. is usually when stressed, when unstressed. Following a laminal consonant, more so after dentals than palatals, it is fronted towards . When preceded by and followed by a velar consonant, it is realised as . is usually simply .

Phonotactics

All Martuthunira words begin with one of the following consonants, from most to least frequent: . This consists of only peripheral and laminal stops, nasals, and semivowels. Words may end in a vowel, or one of .

Grammar

Accusative alignment

Unlike most Australian languages, which exhibit ergativity, Martuthunira and the other

Ngayarta languages The Ngayarda (''Ngayarta'' /ŋajaʈa/) languages are a group of closely related languages in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The languages classified as members of the Ngayarda languages group are (following Bowern & Koch 2004): * Ma ...

have an

accusative In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...

alignment. That is, the subjects of

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that entails one or more transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose ...

s are treated the same as the subjects of

intransitive verb In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Add ...

s, while the objects are treated differently. The Martuthunira

nominative case In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants ...

is unmarked (

zero 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. Adding (or subtracting) 0 to any number leaves that number unchanged; in mathematical terminology, 0 is the additive identity of the integers, rational numbers, real numbers, and compl ...

). The

accusative case In grammar, the accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "he ...

, which descends from a suffix that originally marked the

dative case 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 "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this examp ...

, takes the form on proper nominals; on common nominals ending in a nasal (); on common nominals ending in a lateral or a rhotic (); and vowel lengthening for common nominals ending in vowels. The accusative case is identical to the

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...

, except for common nominals ending in vowels, where the genitive suffix is .

Case stacking

Martuthunira exhibits case stacking, where nouns take multiple

case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...

suffixes for

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus (disambiguation), a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of ...

. For example: * is the

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an a ...

of the verb, and so is in the

. * gets a proprietive suffix, which indicates that it is possessed by the euro. However, because it modifies , it additionally gets an accusative suffix to agree with it. * gets a

locative In grammar, the locative case ( ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. In languages using it, the locative case may perform a function which in English would be expressed with such prepositions as "in", "on", "at", and " ...

suffix, which indicates that it is what the joey is in. It also gets a proprietive suffix to agree with , and then an accusative suffix to agree with .

References

External links

Handbook of Western Australian Languages South of the Kimberley Region — Martuthunira
{{Pama–Nyungan languages, West Ngayarda languages Extinct languages of Western Australia Languages extinct in the 1990s