Djambarrpuyngu

Last Updated: 2019-07-03

Background

Language Family: Australian / Pama-Nyungan / Yuulngu / Dhuwal

• Djambarrpuyngu is spoken in the Northern Territory of Australia.

Phonology

Consonants

• Voicing distinctions are only contrastive intervocalically or between sonorants (Wilkinson 1991, 42).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b	t̪ d̪	t d	ʈ ɖ	c ɟ	k ɡ	ʔ
Nasals	m	n̪	n	ɳ	ɲ	ŋ
Trills			r
Approximants	w		l	ɻ ɭ	j
Note: Phonemes to the right of a cell are either voiced (in the stop row) or lateral (in the approximant row).

Vowels

• Vowel length is contrastive in Djambarrpuyngu (Wilkinson 1991, 44).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
ä	/aː/
b	/b/
d	/d/
ḏ	/ɖ/
e	/iː/
g	/ɡ/
i	/i/
k	/k/
l	/l/
ḻ	/ɭ/
m	/m/
n	/n/
ṉ	/ɳ/
ŋ	/ŋ/
o	/uː/
p	/p/
r	/ɻ/
t	/t/
ṯ	/ʈ/
u	/u/
w	/w/
y	/j/
’	/ʔ/
Digraph
dh	/d̪/
dj	/ɟ/
nh	/n̪/
ny	/ɲ/
rr	/r/
th	/t̪/
tj	/c/

Syllable Structure

• Djambarrpuyngu has a CV(C)(C)(ʔ) syllable structure (Wilkinson 1991, 45).

Lenition Rules

• Intramorphemic labial and velar stops often approximantize to [w], while intramorphemic dental and palatal stops often approximantize to [j] (Wilkinson 1991, 42).
• /ɖ/ usually becomes the flap [ɾ] in the sequences /jɖ/ and /rɖ/ (ibid.).

References

Wilkinson, Melanie. 1991. “Djambarrpyungu: A Yolngu Variety of Northern Australia.” PhD thesis, University of Sydney.