Dalabon is a Gunwinyguan language of

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia, with the term still in use. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territory capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compan ...

, Australia. It is a severely

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inva ...

language, with perhaps as few as three fluent speakers remaining as of 2018. Dalabon is also known as Dangbon (the Kune or

Mayali Mayali or Manyallaluk Mayali is a dialect of Bininj Kunwok, an Australian Aboriginal language. The Aboriginal people who speak Mayali are the Bininj people, who live primarily in western Arnhem Land. Mayali is spoken primarily in south-west Arnh ...

name), Ngalkbun (the Jawoyn name), and Buwan (the

Rembarrnga The Rembarrnga people, also spelt Rembarunga and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory. Language The Rembarrnga language Rembarrnga (Rembarunga) is an Australian Aboriginal language. It is one of the ...

name).

Classification

Dalabon belongs to the

Gunwinyguan languages The Gunwinyguan languages (Gunwinjguan, Gunwingguan), also core Gunwinyguan or Gunwinyguan proper, are a possible branch of a large language family of Australian Aboriginal languages in Arnhem Land, northern Australia. The most populous language ...

branch of the

Australian languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

, its nearest relatives are

Kunwinjku The Kunwinjku (formerly written Gunwinggu) people are an Australian Aboriginal people, one of several groups within the Bininj people, who live around West Arnhem Land to the east of Darwin, Northern Territory. Kunwinjku people generally refer t ...

, Kune,

(varieties often grouped together as Bininj Kunwok) and Kunbarlang. Its next closest relatives are

, and other languages within the Gunwinyguan family, including Jawoyn,

Ngalakgan The Ngalakgan are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory. Language Ngalakgan is generally classified as a member of the Gunwinyguan family. Country Ngalakgan territory covered an estimated , north of the Roper River as far a ...

Ngandi The Ngandi were an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory. The Ngandji are another tribe, and the two are not to be confused. Country The Ngandi's lands, some 1,500 sq-miles in extent, encompassed the area around the upper Wilt ...

Wubuy Nunggubuyu or Wubuy is an Australian Aboriginal languages, Australian Aboriginal language, the traditional language of the Nunggubuyu people. It is the primary traditional language spoken in the community of Numbulwar in the Northern Territory. ...

, and Enindhilyakwa.

Official status

Dalabon has no official status. Local schools spent years to hold sporadic programs teaching Dalabon, but these operations didn't receive enough governmental support. Therefore, the condition of programs is still vulnerable.

Dialect/Varieties

Given the limited number of Dalabon speakers, the study of dialects has become challenging to investigate. Speakers recall a distinction between two different types of speech, dalabon-djurrkdjurrk ("fast", "lively") and dalabon-murduk ("articulate"). However, no significant difference has been found between the two speeches.

Phonology and Orthography

Consonants

There are 22 or 23 phonemic consonants in Dalabon, depending on the phonemic status of /h/. A table containing the

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...

s is given below with their orthographic representation (in angle brackets).

Vowels

There are 6 vowels in Dalabon. A table containing the

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

s is given below with their orthographic representation (in angle brackets).

Phonotactics

Dalabon restricts the trilled and long stops to only occur word-internally. Constraints regarding the edges of a phonological word also limit the glottal stop �from occurring word-initially. The syllable structure of Dalabon is CV(C)(C)(C), or more specifically: CV(L)(N)(h) ''or'' CV(L)(S) where: *L is a liquid consonant ( lateral or rhotic) *N is a

nasal consonant In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majorit ...

*S is a peripheral consonant *h is a

glottal consonant Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants ...

. Such complex codas are not unusual, and all combinations are enumerated as follows (words and translations taken from the dictionary).

Complex coda of two consonants

Complex coda of three consonants

Phonological processes

Dalabon has a pattern of eliding unstressed vowels and unstressed syllables. For example, the word /'cabale/ 'shoulder blade' is often realized as cable

Prosody

The location of phrasal stress in Dalabon appears one or two peaks with an initial rise into the first peak at the left edge of the constituent and a final fall at the right edge of the constituent.

Grammar

Although there is no complete grammatical description of the language, a number of aspects of Dalabon grammar have been described, including its bound pronominal system,

polysynthetic In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to ...

word structure, verb conjugations, the use of

subordination Subordination may refer to *Subordination in a hierarchy (in military, society, etc.) ** Insubordination, disobedience *Subordination (linguistics) * Subordination (finance) * Subordination agreement, a legal document used to deprecate the claim ...

strategies, nominal subclasses, the

demonstrative Demonstratives (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 depending on a particular frame ...

system, and the use of optional ergativity.

Morphology

The structure of Dalabon verbs: SEQ: sequential ‘and then’ CAUS: ‘because’ misc: various adverbial type prefixes BEN: benefactive applicative gin: ‘generic’ incorporated nouns bpin: ‘body part’ incorporated nouns num: ‘number’ prefixes COM: comitative applicative RR: Reflexive/reciprocal TAM: tense/aspect mood The diminutive

enclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a wo ...

''=wurd'' is derived from noun ''wurd'' 'woman's child', its reduplication ''wurdurd'' means 'child'. ''wurd'' can attach to most word classes and functions in 3 ways of meaning: to denote small objects, to add emotional connotations and to serve as pragmatic functions (especially for interactional softening). The examples are shown below.

Syntax

Dalabon is a head-marking language. Dalabon has limited use of subordinate clauses, but it has a distinctive subordination strategy, which is to attach pronominal prefixes to the verb, and marked verbs are used for subordinate clause functionsEvans, N. (2006). subordinate1: the unmarked form of prefixes to show subordinate status, used when the status is overt by other means. subordinate2: used when prefixes are the only way to show subordination. dis: disharmonic, meaning odd-numbered generations. Examples are shown below:

Vocabulary

References

External links

Bibliography of Dalabon people and language resources
at the

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), established as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) in 1964, is an independent Australian Government statutory authority. It is a collecting, ...

Dalabon collection
at the Endangered Languages Archive {{Australian Aboriginal languages Gunwinyguan languages Indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory