Ngan'gi language explained

Ngan'gi
Also Known As:	Ngan'gityemerri, Ngan'gikurunggurr
State:	Northern Territory, Australia
Region:	Mission, Tipperary Station, Flora and Daly rivers junction, Daly River
Ethnicity:	Ngan'gimerri and others
Speakers:	26; up to 200
Date:	2016 census; Nick Reid
Ref:	^[1]
Familycolor:	Australian
Fam1:	Southern Daly?
Dia1:	Ngan'gikurunggurr
Dia2:	Ngan'giwumirri
Dia3:	Ngan'gimerri
Iso3:	nam
Glotto:	nang1259
Glottorefname:	Nangikurrunggurr
Aiatsis:	N157
Aiatsis2:	N8
Aiatsis3:	N17
Aiatsis4:	N160

Ngan'gi, formerly known as Ngan'gityemerri, and also known as Ngan'gikurunggurr, Moil/Moyle, Tyemeri/Tyemerri, Marityemeri, and Nordaniman, is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in the Daly River region of Australiaʼs Northern Territory. There are three mutually intelligible dialects, with the two sister dialects known as Ngen'giwumirri and Ngan'gimerri.

Classification and alternative names and spellings

The first major study of Ngan'gi was Darrell Tryon's 1974 work, a broad discussion of Ngan'gi as one of a dozen or so "Daly Family languages". Tryon viewed Ngan'gikurunggurr and Ngen'giwumirri as two languages of the "Tyemeri subgroup" of the Daly family.^[2] The Daly Family was described as covering the area from the Daly River southwards to the Fitzmaurice River, comprising nine languages and fifteen dialects. Ngen'giwumirri was viewed as a dialect of Ngan'gikurunggurr, with which it shares approximately 84% of cognates, with the two forming the Tyemirri group of languages.

Ngangityemerri was a name used by linguists for the languages consisting of Ngan'gikurunggurr and Ngan'giwumirri now known as Ngan'gi.

Today Ngen'giwumirri and Ngan'gimerri (spoken by the Ngan'gimerri people) are seen as sister dialects, which are 90% cognate but distinct languages socio-linguistically (Reid & McTaggart, 2008).^[3] Ngan’gityemerri used to be used as a cover term for all three varieties, but more recently the term Ngan’gi has been adopted as standard practice. The group of languages is classified with Murrinh-Patha as a Southern Daly family, a position not without problems; see Southern Daly languages for details.^[4]

Other names for the language include Moil, Tyemeri (Tyemerri^[5]), Marityemeri, Nordaniman.^[6] Moil/Moyle is a geographical term referring to the Moyle River.^[7]

The varieties of this language have been spelt differently in different sources, including Ngangikurrunggurr, Ngangikurongor, Ngangikarangurr, Ngangikurrungur, Tyemeri, Marityemeri [Tryon 1974]; Marri Sjemirri' (used by Marrithiyel speakers for Ngan'gikurunggurr, Moiil, Moil, Moyle, Moyl [Reid 1990]; Ngan'gikurunggurr, Ngankikurungkurr, Nangikurungguru, Nangikurungurr, Ngangikurrunggurr, Nangikurunurr,Tyemeri, Nangityemeri [Top End Handbook]; and Ngankikurungkurr [Hoddinott and Kofod 1988].

Sometimes it is referred to by the names it is called by neighbouring languages, such as Marityemeri, Marri Sjemirri and Murrinh Tyemerri.

Speakers

Ngan'gi is spoken by about 150–200 people in the region around the Daly River, most of them living in the communities of Nauiyu (Daly River Mission), Peppimenarti, and Wudigapildhiyerr) and in a number of smaller outstations^[6] on traditional lands (such as Nganambala and Merrepen). Official census data, however, states only 26 at home speakers.^[1]

The Ngen'giwumirri dialect has around 30 speakers,^[8] but Ngan'gimerri is no longer spoken.^[9]

Grammatical features

Ngan'gi is a non-Pama-Nyungan language with strong head-marking properties. It has 31 finite verbs, which combine with a large class of coverbs to form morphologically complex verb words with the type of information requiring a sentence to convey in English (including information about the subject, the object and other participants). Ngan'gi also has a system of 16 noun classes (including bound prefixes and free words), which exhibit agreement properties on modifying words.

Phonology

Ngan'gi has sound features which are unusual by Australian standards, including a three-way obstruent contrast; it has two series of stops, as well as phonemic fricatives.^[10] ^[11] ^[12]

Consonants

Consonant inventory^[13]
	Bilabial	Apical	Laminal	Dorsal
Plosive	pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Fricative	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Nasal	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Lateral		pronounced as /link/
Flap/Trill		pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/
Approximant	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/

Sound	Allophone
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /[ʐ͡ɻ]/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/

Vowels

Vowel inventory
	Front	Back
High	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Low	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/

Sound	Allophone
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /link//	pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/
/pronounced as /aj//	pronounced as /[äɪ]/
/pronounced as /uj//	pronounced as /[oɪ]/
/pronounced as /ej//	pronounced as /[eɪ]/

In Ngan'gityemerri /a/ is a phonological back vowel rather than front or central vowel.

Sources

Alpher, Barry and Courtenay, Karen. Unpublished field notes: Alpher and Courtenay collected Ngan'gikurunggurr data whilst working at the School of Australian Linguistics (now part of the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education) during the late 1970s. A word list (with some analysis of verbal morphology) is held in the institute's library.
Callan, William. nd. A grammar of Ngankikurunguru. ms. AIATSIS, Canberra (44 pp): This manuscript quotes Tryon, which dates it to the early 1970s; includes some vocabulary and partial finite verb paradigm tables.
Ellis, S.J. 1988. Sociolinguistic survey report: Daly region languages. In Ray, M.J. ed Aboriginal Language use in the Northern Territory: 5 reports. Work Papers of SIL-AAIB, B13. Darwin: SIL.
Laves, Gerhardt. 1931. ms 2189. Unpublished fieldnotes on Ngan'gimerri. AIATSIS Library, Canberra. Laves was the first linguist to work on Ngan'gityemerri. In 1931 he collected some 200 pages of vocabulary, grammatical notes and (largely untranscribed) texts, in Ngan'gimerri, the speech variety of the now extinct rak-Merren patri-line. Laves returned to the USA later that year, and appears not to have published anything from his Australian data. His works, including detailed studies of Matngela, Karriyarri, Kumbaingir and Nyungar, were acquired by AIATSIS in 1986. Laves work is particularly interesting, both for the quality of the analysis, and the diachronic evidence it provides for changes within the Ngan'gi verb structure.^[14]
Reid, N.J. "Class and Classifier in Ngan'gityemerri" in Harvey, M. and Reid, N. (eds), Nominal Classification in Aboriginal Australia. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1997.
Reid, N.J. "Sit right down the back: serialized posture verbs in Ngan'gityemerri and other Northern Australian languages" in Newman, J. ed. Sitting, Lying and Standing: Posture verbs in typological perspective. John Benjamins: Amsterdam, 2002(a).
Reid, N.J. "'Ken Hale would just love this': finding the 31st Ngan'gityemerri finite verb" in Simpson, J. Nash, D. Laughren, M. Austin, A. and Alpher, B. eds. Forty Years On: Ken Hale and Australian Languages. Pacific Linguistics: Canberra, 2002(b).
Reid, N.J. "Languages of the World: Ngan'gityemerri". The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics II. Oxford: Elsevier, 2005.
Tryon, Darrell. The Daly River Languages: a survey. Series A, 14. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 1968.
Tryon, Darrell. "Noun Classification and Concord in the Daly River Languages". Mankind, Vol 7, 3 pp 218–222 (1970).

External links

Ngangi-reid-0361 (Endangered Languages Archive)
Web site: Home. Ngan'gi Language . Nick. Reid. Includes a Ngan'gi grammar, dictionary, and many Ngan'gi stories.

Notes and References

Web site: Census 2016, Language spoken at home by Sex (SA2+). ABS. Australian Bureau of Statistics. en-au. 2017-10-30.
Tryon, Darrell. The Daly Family Languages, Australia. Series C, no. 32. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 1974.
Reid, N.J. and P. McTaggart, Ngan'gi Dictionary. Armidale: Australian Linguistics Press, 2008.
Green, I. "The Genetic Status of Murrinh-patha" in Evans, N., ed. "The Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent's most linguistically complex region". Studies in Language Change, 552. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2003.
Web site: Peppimenarti . West Daly Regional Council . 10 September 2014 . 22 October 2021.
Web site: Ngan'gikurunggurr. Nick. Reid . The Daly Languages . 23 October 2021.
Book: The Ng'kurungkurr Language (Daly River Area, Northern Territory). Pacific Linguistics. W.G. . Hoddinott . F.M.. Kofod . Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. 1988. 0078-7558 . 0-85883-351-4 . 1–2. 23 October 2021.
Web site: Ngen'giwumirri. Nick. Reid . The Daly Languages . 23 October 2021.
Web site: Ngan'gimerri. Nick. Reid . The Daly Languages . 23 October 2021.
Hoddinott, W. and F. Kofod, The Ngankikurungkurr Language (Daly River Area, Northern Territory). Series D, No. 77. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 1988 (the largest published description of Ngan'gi).
[Darrell Tryon|Tryon, Darrell]
Reid, N.J. "Complex verb collocations in Ngan'gityemerri: a non-derivational mechanism for manipulating valency alternations" in Dixon. R.M.W. and A. Aikenvald (eds), Changing Valency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Reid . N.J. . Ngan'gityemerri: A Language of the Daly River Region, Northern territory of Australia. Australian National University, 1990 .
Reid, N.J. "Phrasal verb to synthetic verb: recorded morphosyntactic change in Ngan'gityemerri" in Evans, N. (ed.) Studies in Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages: comparative studies of the continent's most linguistically complex region. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2003.