Pitjantjatjara dialect

Pitjantjatjara
Native to Australia
Region Northwest South Australia, Pitjantjatjara freehold lands, Yalata; southwest corner, Northern Territory; also in Western Australia.
Native speakers
 2,700 (2006 census)[1]
80% monolingual (no date)[2]
L2 speakers: 500 (1995)[2]
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3 pjt
Glottolog pitj1243[3]
AIATSIS[1] C6

Pitjantjatjara (English /pɪtʃəntʃəˈtʃɑːrə/,[4] Aboriginal pronunciation: [ˈpɪɟanɟaɟaɾa] or [ˈpɪɟanɟaɾa][5]) is a dialect of the Western Desert language traditionally spoken by the Pitjantjatjara people of Central Australia. It is mutually intelligible with other varieties of the Western Desert language, and is particularly closely related to the Yankunytjatjara dialect. The names for the two groups are based on their respective words for 'come/go.'[6]

Pitjantjatjara is a relatively healthy Aboriginal language, with children learning it. It is taught in some Aboriginal schools. The literacy rate for first language speakers is 50–70%; and is 10–15% for second-language learners. There is a Pitjantjatjara dictionary and translated portions of the New Testament of the Bible, from 2002.Pitjantjatjara at Ethnologue (13th ed., 1996).

Phonology and orthography

There are slightly different standardised spellings used in the Northern Territory and Western Australia compared to South Australia, for example with the first two writing ⟨w⟩ between ⟨a⟩ and ⟨u⟩ combinations and a ⟨y⟩ between ⟨a⟩ and ⟨i⟩, which SA does not use.

Pitjantjatjara has the following consonant inventory, written as shown in bold:[7]

Bilabial Alveolar Retroflex (Alveo-)
Palatal		 Velar
Plosive p [p]~[b] t [t]~[d] ṯ [ʈ]~[ɖ] tj [c]~[ɟ] k [k]~[ɡ]
Nasal m [m] n [n] ṉ [ɳ] ny [ɲ] ng [ŋ]
Lateral l [l] ḻ [m] ly [ʎ]
Rhotic r[ɲ]~[ɾ] ṟ[8] [ɻ]
Approximant y [j] w [w]

Pitjantjatjara has three vowels:[9]

Front Central Back
Close i [j], ii [ɪː] u [ʊ], uu [ʊː]
Open a [ɐ], aa [ɐː]

Pitjantjatjara vowels have a length contrast, indicated by writing them doubled. A colon ⟨:⟩ used to be sometimes used to indicate long vowels: ⟨a:⟩, ⟨i:⟩, ⟨u:⟩.

Pitjantjatjara requires the following underlined letters, which can be either ordinary letters with underline formatting, or Unicode characters which include a line below:

Grammar

Some features distinctive to Pitjantjatjara include -pa endings on words that would otherwise end with consonants and a reluctance to y at the beginn of words.

Nouns and noun phrases

Pitjantjatjara uses case marking to show the role of nouns within the clause as subject, object, location, etc. Pitjantjatjara is a language with split ergativity since its nouns and pronouns show different case marking patterns.[10]

Consider the following example, where the subject of a transitive verb is marked with the ergative case and the object with the absolutive case:[11]

Minyma-ngku tjitji nya-ngu.
woman-ergativechild(absolutive)see-past
'The woman saw the child.'

It can be contrasted with the following sentence with an intransitive verb, where the subject takes the absolutive case:

Tjitji a-nu.
child(absolutive)go-past
'The child went.'

In contrast to the ergative-absolutive pattern that applies to nouns, pronouns show a nominative-accusative pattern. Consider the following examples, with pronoun subjects:[12]

Ngayu-lu tjitji nya-ngu.
I-nomchild(absolutive)see-past
'I saw the child.'
Ngayu-lu a-nu.
I-nomgo-past
'I went.'

Verbs and verb phrases

Pitjantjatjara verbs inflect for tense. Pitjantjatjara has four different classes of verbs, each of which takes slightly different endings (the classes are named according to their imperative suffixes): ∅-class verbs, la-class verbs, wa-class verbs, and ra-class verbs.

Derivational morphology

It also has systematic ways of changing words from one part of speech to another: making nouns from verbs, and vice versa. However, words formed may have slightly different meanings that cannot be guessed from the pattern alone.

Pitjantjatjara dialect test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
Pitjantjatjara dialect test of Wiktionary at Wikimedia Incubator

Notes

  1. 1 2 Pitjantjatjara at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  2. 1 2 Pitjantjatjara at Ethnologue (13th ed., 1996).
  3. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Pitjantjatjara". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. ↑ Bauer (2007), p. ?.
  5. ↑ Through a process of haplology, the name Pitjantjatjara is usually pronounced (in normal, fast speech) with one of the repeated syllables -tja- deleted, thus: pitjantjara. In slow, careful speech all syllables will be pronounced (Goddard 1985:?).
  6. ↑ Goddard (1996), p. ?.
  7. ↑ Tabain & Butcher (2014), pp. 190-191.
  8. ↑ Note that ⟨ṟ⟩ is written as ⟨r⟩ at the start of words since words may not begin with /r/. In some versions of the orthography, /r/ is written ⟨rr⟩, and /ɻ/ is written ⟨r⟩.
  9. ↑ Tabain & Butcher (2014), pp. 194-195.
  10. ↑ Bowe (1990), pp. 9–12.
  11. ↑ Bowe (1990), pp. 10.
  12. ↑ Bowe (1990), p. 11.

References

Further reading


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