Martuthunira is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language, that was the traditional language of the Martuthunira people of

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 ...

. 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. The river flo ...

". 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. Under

Carl Georg von Brandenstein Carl-Georg Christoph Freiherr von Brandenstein (10 October 1909 – 8 January 2005) was a German linguist who took up the study of Australian Aboriginal languages. Life Born in 1909 in Hannover to , Carl-Georg finished high school in Weimar, a ...

'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 is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

R. M. W. Dixon Robert Malcolm Ward "Bob" Dixon (born 25 January 1939, in Gloucester, England) is a Professor of Linguistics in the College of Arts, Society, and Education and The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Queensland. He is also Deputy Director o ...

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 a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

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. 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 loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because 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 linguistics, a tenuis consonant ( or ) is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized. In other words, it has the "plain" phonation of with a voice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), as Spanish ''p, t, ...

. The laterals have prestopped allophones when they occur in a syllable coda. 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 realized as , though it may be realized as near palatal consonants and as near , or . is realized as in morpheme-initial syllables, elsewhere. is usually realized 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 realized 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 have an

accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark 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,' 'us,' and ‘th ...

alignment. That is, the subjects of

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transiti ...

s are treated the same as the subjects of

intransitive verb In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...

s, while the

objects 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 ...

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 of Engl ...

is unmarked (

zero 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by multiplying digits to the left of 0 by the radix, usual ...

). The accusative case, 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 "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...

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

Case stacking

Martuthunira exhibits case stacking, where nouns take multiple case suffixes for

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

. For example: *''Tharnta'' 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 ...

of the verb, and so is in the accusative case. *''Mirtily'' 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. *''Thara'' gets a locative 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