Kuuk Thaayorre (Thayore) is a Paman language spoken in the settlement Pormpuraaw on the western part of the

Cape York Peninsula The Cape York Peninsula is a peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is the largest wilderness in northern Australia.Mittermeier, R.E. et al. (2002). Wilderness: Earth's last wild places. Mexico City: Agrupación Sierra Madre, ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

by the Thaayorre people. As of 2006, 250 of the 350 ethnic Thaayorre spoke the language. It is in a robust position compared to many indigenous Australian languages, as it is still being acquired by children and used in daily interaction. It is closely related to the Ogh-Undjan and more distantly related to the Uw languages, Uw Olkola. Kuuk Yak is either a dialect or closely related. Speakers of the Kuuk Thaayorre language are able to recall the names of a couple of

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

s, such as ''Kuuk Thaayunth'', ''Kuuk Thayem'' and ''Kuuk Thanon'', but today there is only little dialectal difference and the language has become more uniform as the number of speakers has gone down. The so-called Kuuk Yak language may be a dialect of Kuuk Thaayorre, but may be a closely related language as well. Barry Alpher is currently trying to

document A document is a writing, written, drawing, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of nonfiction, non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ', which denotes ...

the language in order to understand its genetic affiliation.

Names

As with many other

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 ...

, there is a long list of alternative spellings of ''Kuuk Thaayorre''. The name itself, ''Kuuk Thaayorre'', means 'the Thaayorre language' in the language itself, meaning 'language' and ''Thaayorre'' being their

ethnonym An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...

. Other names include ''Kuuk Thaayoore'', ''Kuktayor'', ''Kukudayore'', ''Gugudayor'', ''Koko Daiyuri'', ''Koko Taiyor'', ''Kokkotaijari'', ''Kokotaiyari'', ''Thayorre'', ''Thaayore'', ''Thayore'', ''Tayore'', ''Taior'', ''Taiol'', ''Da:jor'' and ''Behran''.

Phonology

Vowels

Kuuk Thaayorre has five

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s: All of the vowels above have a long counterpart. In addition, one of the rhotics may be syllabic.

Consonants

Kuuk Thaayorre has 16

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s: The maximal syllable structure is CVCCC, and four-consonant clusters are not uncommon. Unusually, sequences of consecutive /r/ and /ɻ/ are valid. Unlike in many Australian languages, monosyllables of all word classes are frequent in Kuuk Thaayorre.

Morphosyntax

A clause in Kuuk Thaayorre can be as small as a single predicate constituent. Any

arguments An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persua ...

that a predicate subcategorises for can be omitted. Predicating constituents include

verbs A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic fo ...

adjectives An adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main parts of speech of the English language, ...

nouns In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an object or subject within a phrase, clause, or sentence.Example n ...

demonstrative pronouns 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 ...

, and locative adverbs. Kuuk Thaayorre is on the whole a nonconfigurational language at the level of the

clause In language, a clause is a Constituent (linguistics), constituent or Phrase (grammar), phrase that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic Predicate (grammar), predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject (grammar), ...

, although for complex clauses there are constraints on the ordering of the main clause and the

dependent clause A dependent clause, also known as a subordinate clause, subclause or embedded clause, is a certain type of clause that juxtaposes an independent clause within a complex sentence. For instance, in the sentence "I know Bette is a dolphin", the claus ...

. Within a clause

noun phrases A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently ...

have intricate structure. The irregular form of the ergative morpheme makes it a clear

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

, rather than an

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 ...

; however, it is borne on the last nominal in the noun phrase. This makes Kuuk Thaayorre an example of a language displaying affixation to phrases. Ergative marking has the pragmatic function of displaying the degree of expectedness of the subject. There are multiple ''inclusory'' constructions, i.e. those referring to a superset while simultaneously focussing on a subset (these are found in many IE languages, e.g. German ''Wit Scilling'' 1.du Sc. "Sc. and I"). One of these is a set of single-word inclusory pronouns encoding both superset and subset.

Lexical semantics

Kuuk Thaayorre is similar to most Australian languages for its thoroughgoing use of absolute

cardinal direction The four cardinal directions or cardinal points are the four main compass directions: north (N), south (S), east (E), and west (W). The corresponding azimuths ( clockwise horizontal angle from north) are 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°. The ...

s instead of words with relative senses (''ahead'', ''left'', etc.) as is familiar in European languages. There are sixteen words for directions in Kuuk Thaayorre. Speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre show a correspondingly greater skill in navigational ability than speakers of languages like English, and always know the exact direction of their facing. When asked to arrange a sequence of pictures in temporal order, speakers consistently arrange them so that time runs east to west, regardless of their own bodily orientation. They are also able to point to cardinal directions with very high accuracy.Boroditsky, ''How does our language shape the way we think?''
Edge magazine, 6.12.09. This has been used to support the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuuk Thaayorre Language Southwestern Paman languages Endangered indigenous Australian languages in Queensland Definitely endangered languages