Nhanda language

Juliette Blevins, at the time employed at the University of Western Australia, researched Nhanda in the 1990s and early 2000s in collaboration with the Yamaji Language Centre (now the Irra Wangga Language Centre) and published a grammar of the language. An illustrated topical dictionary, Nhanda Wangganhaa, was published by the Yamaji Language Centre in 1998. Other published works include papers on its phonology and history. Doug Marmion has also been working on the language. ==Phonology==

Nhanda differs somewhat from its neighbouring languages in that it has a phonemic glottal stop, is initial-dropping (i.e. it has lost many initial consonants, leading to vowel-initial words) and the stop consonants show a phonemic length contrast. Vowels • An unstressed can be realised as or . Consonants == Grammar ==

Nhanda is a split-ergative language, meaning the nominals take an ergative-absolutive case system while the pronominals take a nominative-accusative one. Nhanda distinguishes singular (unmarked), dual (-thada), and plural forms (-nu). The dual suffix is a reduced form of wuthada ('two'). If a plural suffix is applied to a root that ends with an u, base-final umlaut is triggered and the u becomes an i. Case and number suffixes have free order. There are no true unbound third person pronouns in Nhanda. Bound pronouns, however, are a different case. Nhanda verbs consist of a root followed by zero or more derivational suffixes. The two major conjugation classes are called NH and Y. There is no dominant word order. == Vocabulary ==

The Nhanda word for 'man, human being' is . It appears that when Norman Tindale collected information on Nhanda (or on the closely related variety thought to have been spoken in Geraldton) he was given this word, which he recorded as 'Amangu' and believed to be the 'tribal name' for this group. Blevins provides a word list at the end of her grammar. ==References==