The Burarra language is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Burarra people of Arnhem Land. It has several dialects.
| Burarra | |
|---|---|
| Region | Northern Territory |
| Ethnicity | Burarra, Gadjalivia |
Native speakers | 1,229 (2021 census)[1] |
Arnhem?
| |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bvr |
| Glottolog | bura1267 |
| AIATSIS[2] | N82 |
| ELP | Burarra |
Other names and spellings include Barera, Bawera, Burada, Bureda, Burera, An-barra (Anbarra), Gidjingaliya, Gu-jingarliya, Gu-jarlabiya, Gun-Guragone (also used for Guragone), Jikai, Tchikai.
The Djangu people have a Burarra clan, which is sometimes confused with this language.[3]
Classification edit
Burarra is a prefixing non-Pama-Nyungan language. Along with Gurr-goni, it makes up the Burarran branch of the Maningrida language family (which also includes Ndjébbana and Na-kara).[4][5][6]
Distribution edit
The Burarra people are from the Blyth and Cadell River regions of Central and North-central Arnhem Land, but many now reside further west in Maningrida township at the mouth of the Liverpool River.[4][7]
Dialects edit
Glasgow (1994) distinguishes three dialects of Burarra: Gun-nartpa (Mu-golarra / Mukarli group from the Cadell River region), Gun-narta (An-barra, western side of the mouth of the Blythe River), and Gun-narda (Martay, eastern side of the Blythe River). These dialect names derive from each dialect's word for the demonstrative "that". She further notes that the two latter dialects (Gun-narta and Gun-narda) are frequently grouped together and referred to by their eastern neighbours as "Burarra", and by themselves as "Gu-jingarliya" ('language'/'with tongue').
Green (1987) distinguishes two dialects: Gun-nartpa and Burarra (Gu-jingarliya), but notes that noticeable dialectal differences exist within the group of Burarra speakers.
Phonology edit
Consonants edit
| Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | fortis | p | t | ʈ | c | k |
| lenis | b | d | ɖ | ɟ | g | |
| Nasal | m | n | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ | |
| Lateral | l | ɭ | ||||
| Rhotic | r | ɻ | ||||
| Glide | w | j | ||||
In most cases, fortis and lenis refers to the voicing in consonants where fortis is voiceless and lenis is voiced.[9] In this case, plosives are distinguished by intra-oral peak pressure and stricture duration. Fortis consonants are usually longer in duration and have a greater intra-oral pressure while lenis consonants can often be pronounced as fricatives or approximants. The Burarra language also allows for the clustering of consonants.[8]
Vowels edit
Burara has a five vowel system.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Open-mid | æ~ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
The vowels can be realized as:
Grammar edit
Burarra is a prefixing, multiple-classifying language. Verbs co-reference their subjects and objects through the use of prefixes, and inflect for tense and status. Serial verbs can be used to express categories like aspect, compound action and causation.[4]
Nouns inflect for case and belong to one of four noun classes (an-, jin-, mun- and gun-).[4][7]
Further reading edit
- Capell, A. 1942. Languages of Arnhem Land, North Australia. Oceania, 12 (4), 364–392.
- Elwell, Vanessa. 1977. Multilingualism and lingua francas among Australian Aborigines: A case study of Maningrida. Honours Thesis, Australian National University.
- Elwell, Vanessa. 1982. Some social factors affecting multilingualism among Aboriginal Australians: a case study of Maningrida. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 36: 83–103.
- Glasgow, Kathleen. 1981. Burarra phonemes. In Work papers of SIL-AAB, series A (Vol. 5). Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
- Glasgow, Kathleen. 1994. Burarra–Gun-nartpa dictionary with English finder list. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
- Green, Rebecca. 1987. A sketch grammar of Burarra. Honours Thesis, Australian National University Canberra.
- Green, R. 2003. Proto Maningrida within Proto Arnhem: evidence from verbal inflectional suffixes. In N. Evans (Ed.), The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of Northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent's most linguistically complex region (pp. 369–421). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- Handelsmann, Robert. 1996. Needs Survey of Community Languages: Central Arnhem Land, Northern Territory (Maningrida and Outstations). Report to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Canberra.
- Trefry, D. (1983). Discerning the back vowels /u/ and /o/ in Burarra, a language of the Australian Northern Territory. Working papers of the Speech and Language Research Centre, 3 (6), pp. 19–51.
References edit
- ^ "SBS Australian Census Explorer". Retrieved 10 January 2023.
- ^ N82 Burarra at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
- ^ N135 Burarra (Djangu) at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
- ^ a b c d e f Green, Rebecca (1987). A sketch grammar of Burarra. Canberra: Honours thesis, Australian National University.
- ^ Elwell, Vanessa (1977). Multilingualism and lingua francas among Australian Aborigines: A case study of Maningrida. Canberra: Honours Thesis, Australian National University.
- ^ O'Grady, G.N.; Voegelin, C.F. (1967). "Languages of the world: Indo-Pacific Fascicle Six". Anthropological Linguistics.
- ^ a b Glasgow, Kathleen (1994). Burarra–Gun-nartpa dictionary with English finder list. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
- ^ a b c d Graetzer, Naomi (2005). "An Acoustic Study of Coarticulation: Consonant-Vowel and Vowel-to-Vowel Coarticulation in Four Australian Languages". MA Thesis. University of Melbourne: 37–39.
- ^ "Fortis and lenis". notendur.hi.is. Archived from the original on 7 June 2021. Retrieved 22 December 2018.
External links edit
- ELAR archive of Gun-nartpa