Classification
Southern Daly is a distant and problematic relationship. Murrinh-Patha was once thought to be an isolate, due to lexical data: It has, at most, an 11-percent shared vocabulary with any other language against which it has been compared. However, Murrinh-patha and Ngan’gityemerri correspond closely in their verbal inflections. Green (2003) makes a case that the formal correspondences in core morphological sequences of their finite verbs are too similar (in their complexities and their irregularities) to have come about through anything other than a shared genetic legacy from a common parent language.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. Nonetheless, lexically they have almost nothing in common, other than cognates in their words for 'thou' ''(nhinhi'' and ''nyinyi)'' and 'this' ''(kanhi'' and ''kinyi),''Note that Ngan’gityemerri has no ''nh,'' and so one would expect it to have ''ny'' where its relatives have ''nh.'' and it is not clear what could explain this discrepancy.Vocabulary
The following basic vocabulary items 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. :See also
* Daly languagesReferences