Burduna is an Aboriginal language that was traditionally spoken in the region between the Ashburton and Gascyone Rivers in the

Pilbara The Pilbara () is a large, dry, thinly populated region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal peoples; its ancient landscapes; the red earth; and its vast mineral deposits, in particular iron ore. It is also a glo ...

region 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 ...

. It belongs to the Kanyara group of languages, which also includes Binigura/Pinikura (also known as

Thalanyji The Thalanyji, also spelt Thalandji, Dhalandji, and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Country Thalanyji lands, according to Norman Tindale, encompassed approximately , running along ...

). The language is now classified as critically endangered, with no recorded native speakers as of 2004. However, there are some people of Burduna heritage who can still speak and recognise a few words and phrases.

Culture and development

The Burduna people were located around the Nyang and Maroonah regions between the Ashburton and Gascyone rivers in north-western Australia. Their traditional country regions included the regions around the Yannarie and Lyndon rivers. Some of the area in and around the Towera region is also identified as being traditional Burduna land. The Kanyara people traditionally spoke three different languages - Purduna or Burduna, Thalanyji, and Bayungu or Payungu. The three languages share highly similar sentence structure and vocabulary, with 60-70% of words being common across all three of them. The societal structure of the Burduna people consisted of four different subsets. Each subset was further divided into 'totems', and each totem was further divided into ''. Individuals within a were assigned gender-specific titles, and these titles were used to address them in the same manner as personal names are used today. A totemic was inherited in a patrilineal manner, i.e., an offspring born to parents from two different was assigned to the of the father. Marriages within the same totem were not allowed. Often, these totems and interspersed with people from different linguistic backgrounds. For example, the totem 'Snake' included the Burduna-speaking population as well as the Thalanyji-speaking population. As a result of white settlement along the Ashburton and Gascyone river regions, the language ceased to be used, and is believed to have died out sometime during the first half of the twentieth century. There are a few people living in Onslow and Carnarvon who can still speak and recognize a few words and phrases, but the majority of Burduna descendants have intermarried with other language groups. The ''National Language Indigenous 2004 Survey'' estimated that there are no native speakers of the language. It has thus been classified as endangerment level 0.

Lexicon and grammar

There are two major word classes and three minor ones in the Burduna language. The first major word class contains the nominal words, which includes

nouns A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

and

adjectives In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the mai ...

, names,

pronouns In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts o ...

demonstratives Demonstratives (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning ...

, and

cardinal directions The four cardinal directions, or cardinal points, are the four main compass directions: north, east, south, and west, commonly denoted by their initials N, E, S, and W respectively. Relative to north, the directions east, south, and west are a ...

. The second major word group includes the

verbs A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descrip ...

. The three minor word groups include

adverbs An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering que ...

particles In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from su ...

, and

interjections An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...

Evolution

Burduna has been classified as a

double-marking language A double-marking language is one in which the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on both the heads (or nuclei) of the phrase in question, and on the modifiers or dependents. Pervasive d ...

. Although it has been categorised as a Kanyara language, it is significantly different from the other languages in the category as it underwent a number of changes in pronunciation. Over the years, the language lost most of its nasal sounds and tones. Certain words that contains peripheral stops with ''p'' and ''k'' sounds

lenited In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a pa ...

to a ''w'' sound instead. For example, ''papu'' (father) became ', and ''puka'' (bad) became ''.'' However, this lenition did not occur when the previous syllable contained a ''w''. Instead, the consonants ''p'' and ''k'' descended, and were pronounced as ''b'' and ''g'' respectively. Another marked difference included the pronunciation of polysyllabic words such as ' (spouse) and ' (devil). These words lost their middle consonants and were shortened to ''yaan'' and ''puurra.'' The vowels were pronounced with a long, drawn-out sound. Burduna words also contained consonant clusters in words such as ''db'' in ''dagba'' (spider) or ''rdg'' in ' (beard). Furthermore, words that originally contained consonant clusters underwent lenition and were pronounced with softer sounds. For example, ''mb'' was pronounced as ''p'', ''nd'' as ''t'', and ''ngg'' as ''k''. In addition, where other languages have a ''dh'' or a ''j'' in the middle of words, Burduna evolved to contain a ''y.'' For example, the Thalanyji word ' (cousin) had its Burduna complement spelt as '''.''

Notes

References

External links

Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre
— contains information about the Burduna language and many other Pilbara languages, as well as usage examples Kanyara languages Endangered indigenous Australian languages in Western Australia {{IndigenousAustralian-lang-stub