"Some Aboriginal people distinguish between
usership and
ownership. There are even those who claim that they own a language although they only know one single word of it: its name." Whether it is due to genetic unity or some other factor such as occasional contact, typologically the Australian languages form a language area or
Sprachbund, sharing much of their vocabulary and many distinctive
phonological features across the entire continent. A common feature of many Australian languages is that they display so-called
avoidance speech, special speech registers used only in the presence of certain close relatives. These registers share the phonology and
grammar of the standard language, but the
lexicon is different and usually very restricted. There are also commonly speech
taboos during extended periods of mourning or initiation that have led to numerous
Aboriginal sign languages. For
morphosyntactic alignment, many Australian languages have
ergative–
absolutive case systems. These are typically
split systems; a widespread pattern is for
pronouns (or
first and second persons) to have
nominative–
accusative case marking and for
third person to be
ergative–absolutive, though splits between
animate and inanimate are also found. In some languages the persons in between the accusative and ergative inflections (such as second person, or third-person human) may be
tripartite: that is, marked overtly as either ergative or accusative in
transitive clauses, but not marked as either in
intransitive clauses. There are also a few languages which employ only
nominative–accusative case marking.
Phonetics and phonology The following represents a canonical 6-place Australian Aboriginal consonant system. It does not represent any single language, but is instead a simplified form of the consonant inventory of what would be found in many Australian languages, including most
Arandic and
Yolŋu languages.
Segmental inventory A typical Australian phonological inventory includes just three vowels, usually , which may occur in both long and short variants. In a few cases the has been
unrounded to give . There is almost never a
voicing contrast; that is, a consonant may sound like a at the beginning of a word, but like a between vowels, and either letter could be (and often is) chosen to represent it. Australia also stands out as being almost entirely free of
fricative consonants, even of the otherwise universal . In the few cases where fricatives do occur, they developed recently through the
lenition (weakening) of stops, and are therefore non-sibilants like rather than the
sibilants like that are common elsewhere in the world. Some languages also have three
rhotics, typically a
flap, a
trill, and an
approximant (that is, like the combined rhotics of English and Spanish) and many have four laterals. Besides the lack of fricatives, the most striking feature of Australian speech sounds is the large number of
places of articulation. Some 10-15% of Australian languages have four places of articulation, with two
coronal places of articulation, 40-50% have five places, and 40-45% have six places of articulation, including four coronals. The four-way distinction in the coronal region is commonly accomplished through two variables: the position of the tongue (front, alveolar or dental, or
retroflex), and its shape (
apical or
laminal). There are also
bilabial,
velar and often
palatal consonants, but a complete absence of
uvular consonants and only a few languages with a
glottal stop. Both
stops and
nasals occur at all six places, and in many languages
laterals occur at all four coronal places. A language which displays the full range of stops, nasals and laterals is
Kalkatungu, which has labial
p, m; "dental"
th, nh, lh; "alveolar"
t, n, l; "retroflex"
rt, rn, rl; "palatal"
ty, ny, ly; and velar
k, ng.
Wangganguru has all this, as well as three rhotics.
Yanyuwa has even more contrasts, with an additional true dorso-palatal series, plus
prenasalised consonants at all
seven places of articulation, in addition to all four laterals. A notable exception to the above generalisations is
Kalaw Lagaw Ya, spoken in the
Torres Strait Islands, which has an inventory more like its
Papuan neighbours than the languages of the Australian mainland, including full voice contrasts: , dental , alveolar , the sibilants (which have allophonic variation with and respectively) and velar , as well as only one rhotic, one lateral and three nasals (labial, dental and velar) in contrast to the 5 places of articulation of stops/sibilants. Where vowels are concerned, it has 8 vowels with some morpho-syntactic as well as phonemic length contrasts (, , , , , , , ), and glides that distinguish between those that are in origin vowels, and those that in origin are consonants.
Kunjen and other neighbouring languages have also developed contrasting
aspirated consonants (, , , , ) not found further south.
Coronal consonants Descriptions of the coronal articulations can be inconsistent. The alveolar series
t, n, l (or
d, n, l) is straightforward: across the continent, these sounds are
alveolar (that is, pronounced by touching the tongue to the ridge just behind the gum line of the upper teeth) and
apical (that is, touching that ridge with the tip of the tongue). This is very similar to English
t, d, n, l, though the Australian
t is not aspirated, even in Kalaw Lagaw Ya, despite its other stops being aspirated. The other apical series is the retroflex,
rt, rn, rl (or
rd, rn, rl). Here the place is further back in the mouth, in the
postalveolar or
prepalatal region. The articulation is actually most commonly
subapical; that is, the tongue curls back so that the
underside of the tip makes contact. That is, they are true
retroflex consonants. It has been suggested that subapical pronunciation is characteristic of more careful speech, while these sounds tend to be apical in rapid speech. Kalaw Lagaw Ya and many other languages in North Queensland differ from most other Australian languages in not having a retroflexive series. The dental series
th, nh, lh are always
laminal (that is, pronounced by touching with the surface of the tongue just above the tip, called the
blade of the tongue), but may be formed in one of three different ways, depending on the language, on the speaker, and on how carefully the speaker pronounces the sound. These are
interdental with the tip of the tongue visible between the teeth, as in
th in English; dental with the tip of the tongue down behind the lower teeth, so that the blade is visible between the teeth; and
denti-alveolar, that is, with both the tip and the blade making contact with the back of the upper teeth and alveolar ridge, as in French
t, d, n, l. The first tends to be used in careful enunciation, and the last in more rapid speech, while the tongue-down articulation is less common. Finally, the palatal series
ty, ny, ly. (The stop is often spelled
dj,
tj, or
j.) Here the contact is also laminal, but further back, spanning the alveolar to postalveolar, or the postalveolar to prepalatal regions. The tip of the tongue is typically down behind the lower teeth. This is similar to the "closed" articulation of
Circassian fricatives (see
Postalveolar consonant). The body of the tongue is raised towards the
palate. This is similar to the "domed" English postalveolar fricative
sh. Because the tongue is "peeled" from the roof of the mouth from back to front during the release of these stops, there is a fair amount of frication, giving the
ty something of the impression of the English
palato-alveolar affricate ch or the
Polish alveolo-palatal affricate
ć. That is, these consonants are not
palatal in the IPA sense of the term, and indeed they contrast with true palatals in
Yanyuwa. In Kalaw Lagaw Ya, the palatal consonants are sub-phonemes of the alveolar sibilants and . These descriptions do not apply exactly to all Australian languages, as the notes regarding Kalaw Lagaw Ya demonstrate. However, they do describe most of them, and are the expected norm against which languages are compared.
Phonotactics Some have suggested that the most appropriate unit to describe the phonotactics of Australian languages is the phonological word. The most common word length is two
syllables, and a typical phonological word would have the form: (C)VC(C)V(C) with the first syllable being stressed. The optionality of C is cross-linguistically normal, since coda consonants are weak or nonexistent in many languages, as well as in the early stages of language acquisition. The weakening of C, on the other hand, is very unusual. No Australian language has
consonant clusters in this position, and those languages with
fortis and lenis distinctions do not make such distinctions in this position. Place of articulation distinctions are also less common in this position, and
lenitions and
deletions are historically common here. While in most languages the word-initial position is prominent, maintaining all a language's contrasts, that is not the case in Australia. Here the prominent position is C(C), in the middle of the word. C is typically the only position allowing all of a language's place of articulation contrasts. Fortis/lenis contrasts can only occur at C, or at C when C is a sonorant. Consonant clusters are often restricted to the C(C) position, and are most commonly
sonorant +
obstruent sequences. In languages with pre-stopped nasals or laterals, those sounds only occur at C. Australian languages typically resist certain connected speech processes which might blur the place of articulation of consonants at C(C), such as anticipatory
assimilation of place of articulation, which is common around the world. In Australia, this type of assimilation seems only to have affected consonants within the apical and laminal categories. There's little evidence of assimilation between the labial, apical, laminal, and dorsal categories. Many
proto-Pama–Nyungan and clusters have been preserved across Australia. Heterorganic nasal + stop sequences remain stable even in modern connected speech, which is highly unusual. The anticipatory assimilation of nasality is quite common in various languages around the world. Typically, a vowel will become
nasalized before a following nasal consonant. However, this process is resisted in Australian languages. There was a historical process in many languages where nasal + stop CC clusters lost the nasal element if C was a nasal. Also, many languages have morphophonemic alterations whereby initial nasals in suffixes are denasalized if the preceding stem contains a nasal consonant. While the existence of phonemic
pre-stopped nasals and laterals, contrasting with plain nasals and laterals, has been documented in some Australian languages, nasals and laterals are pre-stopped on a phonetic level in most languages of the continent. These phenomena are the result of a general resistance to the anticipatory assimilation of nasality and laterality. The lack of assimilation makes coda nasals and laterals more acoustically distinct. Most speakers of Australian languages speak with a 'pressed'
voice quality, with the glottal opening narrower than in modal voice, a relatively high frequency of
creaky voice, and low airflow. This may be due to an avoidance of
breathy voice. This pressed quality could therefore serve to enhance the clarity of speech and ensure the perception of place of articulation distinctions. ==Orthography==