Last Updated: 2019-08-07
Background
Language Family: Australian / Gunwinyguan / Nunggubuyu
- Nunggubuyu is spoken in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Phonology
Consonants
- /n̪/ appears only rarely, in a handful of animal-related nouns (Heath 1984, 12).
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Place of Articulation
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Manner of Articulation
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Labial
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Dental
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Alveolar
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Retroflex
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Palatal
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Velar
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Stops
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b
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d̪
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d
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ɖ
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ɟ
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ɡ
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Nasals
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m
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n̪
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n
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ɳ
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ɲ
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ŋ
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Taps
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ɾ
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Approximants
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w
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ɻ
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j
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Lateral approximants
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l̪
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l
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ɭ
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Vowels
- Vowel lengthening is present in Nunggubuyu, but only /aː/ has minimal pairs with its short counterpart (Heath 1984, 9).
- Tone does not appear to be contrastive (Heath 1984, 32).
- Hughes, Earl J. and Leeding, Velma J. (1971) list /æ/ as part of the vowel inventory, albeit only marginally (p. 72). Other authors do not share this view, so I have opted not to include it below.
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Front
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Central
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Back
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High
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i
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u
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Low
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a aː
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Note: Where phonemes share a cell, the phoneme on the left is short and the one on the right is long.
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Alphabet
- Note: /n̪/ is not represented in the Crúbadán corpus.
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Grapheme
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Phoneme
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a
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/a/
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b
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/b/
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d
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/d/
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ḏ
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/ɖ/
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g
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/ɡ/
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i
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/i/
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j
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/ɟ/
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l
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/l/
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ḻ
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/ɭ/
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m
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/m/
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n
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/n/
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ṉ
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/ɳ/
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r
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/ɻ/
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u
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/u/
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w
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/w/
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y
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/j/
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Digraph
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aa
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/aː/
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dh
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/d̪/
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lh
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/l̪/
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nh
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/n̪/
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ny
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/ɲ/
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ng
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/ŋ/
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rr
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/ɾ/
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Syllable Structure
- Nunggubuyu has a (C)V(C)(C) syllable structure (Hughes, Earl J. and Leeding, Velma J. 1971, 75–76).
Lenition Rules
- /ɟ/ undergoes an affricate release when non-syllable-final (Heath 1984, 13).
- Word-final /ɡ/ is weakly realized when preceded by a liquid or vowel (ibid.).
Misc. Rules
- /au/ sequences are sometimes realized as [oː] [Heath (1984), p. 33].
- /ɾ/ trills to [r] in preconsonantal and word-final positions (Hughes, Earl J. and Leeding, Velma J. 1971, 75).
References
Heath, Jeffrey. 1984. Functional Grammar of Nunggubuyu. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Hughes, Earl J., and Leeding, Velma J. 1971. “The Phonemes of Nunggubuyu.” In Papers on the Languages of Australian Aboriginals, 72–76. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.