Initial apicals in nuclear Pama-Nyungan
Date
1984
Authors
Hendrie, Timothy Ronald
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Abstract
Although the question has been discussed for at least 150 years, the deeper genetic relationships among Australia's two hundred indigenous languages have not been proved Evidence has been proposed in favour of either a Pama-Nyungan Family that covers all but the northern central part of the continent, or an all-inclusive Australian Family. To establish conclusively either grouping of languages as a family, it is necessary to reconstruct for the theoretical protolanguage a substantial amount of grammar, phonology and lexicon. Through comparison of the vocabularies of nine Australian languages this study has produced ninety-six reconstructed word roots, and also shown that the apical consonants *t, *n, *l, and *r contrasted in word-initial position, in Proto-Nuclear-Pama-Nyungan. Reconstruction of the roots involved searching the vocabularies for forms showing plausible phonetic similarity, finding support for the apparent sound correspondences and processes in other cognates or in the literature, and assessing the semantic relationships by reference to parallels in languages from Australia and other continents. In all, 157 proto-forms are presented (some 17 for a shallower level than Proto-Nuclear-Pama-Nyungan), and the reconstruction of each is demonstrated by analysis of each cognate and the regular phonological and semantic processes and correspondences involved in the development of each of the languages in question.