The Garawan languages (Garrwan), or Yanyi, are a small
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in his ...
of
Australian Aboriginal languages currently spoken in northern Australia.
The languages are:
*
Garawa (Garrwa, north)
*
Waanyi † (Wanji, south)
*
Gunindiri † (Kurnindirri, southwest)
Gunindiri is almost entirely unknown.
Garawan may be related to the
Pama–Nyungan languages
The Pama–Nyungan languages are the most widespread family of Australian Aboriginal languages, containing 306 out of 400 Aboriginal languages in Australia. The name "Pama–Nyungan" is a merism: it derived from the two end-points of the rang ...
, though this is not accepted in Bowern 2011. The languages are close: Dixon (2002) says that it should be straightforward to reconstruct proto-Garawa–Wanji.
Vocabulary
Capell (1940) lists the following basic vocabulary items:
[Capell, Arthur. 1940]
The Classification of Languages in North and North-West Australia
''Oceania'' 10(3): 241-272, 404-433.
:
References
Language families
Non-Pama-Nyungan languages
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