Gunbarlang, or Kunbarlang, is an

Australian Aboriginal Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Isl ...

language in northern Australia with multiple dialects. Other names are ''Gungalang'' and ''Warlang''. Speakers are multilingual in

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 ...

and Mawng. Most of the Gunbarlang people now speak

. The language is part of a

language revival Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community groups, o ...

project, as a critically endangered language.

Classification

Gunbarlang has been proposed to be included into the ''marne'' group of Gunwinyguan family, making its closest relatives the Central Gunwinyguan languages

Bininj Kunwok Bininj Kunwok is an Australian Aboriginal language which includes six dialects: Kunwinjku (formerly Gunwinggu), Kuninjku, Kundjeyhmi (formerly Gundjeihmi), Manyallaluk Mayali (Mayali), Kundedjnjenghmi, and two varieties of Kune (Kune Dulerayek a ...

and Dalabon. The label ''marne'' refers to the phonological shape of the

benefactive The benefactive case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used where English would use "for", "for the benefit of", or "intended for", e.g. "She opened the door ''for Tom''" or "This book is ''for Bob'' ...

applicative affix common to all three languages (as opposed to the ''bak'' languages to the east, e.g.

Rembarrnga The Rembarrnga people, also spelt Rembarunga and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory. Language The Rembarrnga language is a non-Pama-Nyungan language belonging to the Gunwinyguan language family. Coun ...

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 Wil ...

and Wubuy/Nunggubuyu).Alpher, B., Evans, N. & Harvey, M. 2003. "Proto Gunwinyguan verb suffixes." In Nicholas Evans (ed.), ''The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia: Comparative Studies of the continent's most linguistically complex region'', 305-352. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

Geographic distribution

Some Gunbarlang speakers live in Warruwi on South Goulburn Island and

Maningrida Maningrida, also known as Manayingkarírra and Manawukan, is an Aboriginal community in the heart of the Arnhem Land region of Australia's Northern Territory. Maningrida is east of Darwin, and north east of Jabiru. It is on the North Central A ...

. Historically, it was also spoken in Gunbalanya.

Grammar

Gunbarlang is a

polysynthetic language 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 ...

with complex verb morphology. It includes polypersonal agreement,

incorporation Incorporation may refer to: * Incorporation (business), the creation of a corporation * Incorporation of a place, creation of municipal corporation such as a city or county * Incorporation (academic), awarding a degree based on the student having ...

, and a number of derivational affixes. Word order in a (transitive) clause is SVO or SOV.

Morphosyntax

Morphology is primarily

agglutinating An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to remai ...

. Verbal morphology (rather than case marking or syntax) encodes a significant part of grammatical relations.

Verbal

The verb includes obligatory agreement with its core arguments in the form of bound pronouns. The subject/agent prefix precedes the object prefix. Subject prefixes form four mood series: positive indicative, "non-performative", future/intentional, and potential. The verb features derivational affixes, such as benefactive, directional, and TAM.

Nominal

Case in not marked on nouns and free pronouns, but bound pronouns follow nominative-accusative alignment. Gunbarlang distinguishes five noun classes on demonstratives (M, F, plants, body-parts, and inanimate), but only four on other constituents (collapsing the latter two).

Language revival

, Kunbarlang is one of 20 languages prioritised as part of the Priority Languages Support Project, being undertaken by First Languages Australia and funded by the

Department of Communications and the Arts The Australian Department of Communications and the Arts was a department of the Government of Australia charged with responsibility for communications policy and programs and cultural affairs. In December 2019, prime minister Scott Morriso ...

. The project aims to "identify and document critically-endangered languages — those languages for which little or no documentation exists, where no recordings have previously been made, but where there are living speakers".

Notes

References

* * * * {{Australian Aboriginal languages Gunwinyguan languages Arnhem Land Indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory Extinct languages of the Northern Territory