The Lower Burdekin languages were probably three distinct
Australian Aboriginal languages spoken around the mouth of the
Burdekin River
The Burdekin River is a river located in North and Far North Queensland, Australia. The river rises on the northern slopes of Boulder Mountain at Valley of Lagoons, part of the western slope of the Seaview Range, and flows into the Coral Sea a ...
in north
Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, established_ ...
. One short wordlist in each was collected in the 19th century, and published in the second volume of ''
The Australian Race
Edward Micklethwaite Curr (25 December 1820 – 3 August 1889) was an Australian pastoralist, author, advocate of Australian Aboriginal peoples, and squatter.
Biography
Curr was born in Hobart, Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land), the e ...
'' in 1886. These languages have since gone
extinct, with no more having been recorded. Due to the paucity of the available data, almost nothing of their
grammatical structure
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domains ...
is known.
The O'Connor language goes by the name
Yuru, and may have been
Dyirbalic;
others may have been
Maric. However, Breen analyzed two of the lists and concluded that they were different languages, neither Maric.
He presumes that one of them was
Bindal
Bindal is a municipality in the Helgeland region in the extreme southwest part of Nordland county, Norway. The administrative centre is the village of Terråk. Other villages include Bindalseidet, Holm, Vassås, Horsfjord and Åbygda.
The mu ...
.
References
*
*
{{Australian Aboriginal languages
Extinct languages of Queensland
Northeast Pama–Nyungan languages