Phonology
Consonants
Iwaidja has the following 20 (or 22) consonants. Some of the precise articulatory categories for the consonants are uncertain; the chart below follows Shaw et al (2020)'s conventions. Symbols in angle brackets ‹› are the orthographic representations for these sounds.Vowels
Iwaidja has three vowels, /a, i, u/. The following table shows the allophones of these vowels as described by Pym and Larrimore.Pym, Noreen, and Bonnie Larrimore. Papers on Iwaidja phonology and grammar. Series A Vol. 2., 1979. iarchive:papersoniwaidjap0002pymnMorphophonemics
Iwaidja has extensive morphophonemic alternation. For example, body parts occur with possessive prefixes, and these alter the first consonant in the root: Both the words ''arm'' and ''to be sick'' originally started with an /m/, as shown in related languages such as Maung. The pronominal prefix for ''it, its'' altered the first consonant of the root. In Iwaidja, this form extended to the masculine and feminine, so that gender distinctions were lost, and the prefix disappeared, leaving only the consonant mutation—a situation perhaps unique in Australia, but not unlike that of theSemantics
The Iwaidja languages are nearly unique among the languages of the world in using verbs for kin terms. Nouns are used for direct address, but transitive verbs in all other cases. In English something similar is done in special cases: ''he fathered a child; she mothers him too much.'' But these do not indicate social relationships in English. For example, ''he fathered a child'' says nothing about whether he is the man the child calls "father". An Iwaidja speaker, on the other hand, says ''I nephew her'' to mean "she is my aunt". Because these are verbs, they can be inflected for tense. In the case of in-laws, this is equivalent to ''my ex-wife'' or ''the bride-to-be'' in English. However, with blood relations, past can only mean that the person has died, and future only that they are yet to be born.Alternative names
* ''Yibadjdja'' ( KunwinjkuNotes
References
* Nicholas Evans, 2000. "Iwaidjan, a very un-Australian language family." In ''Linguistic Typology'' 4, 91-142. Mouton de Gruyter.External links