Wangkajunga
Phonology.
Wangkajunga.
The phoneme inventory of Wangkajunga is typical of an Australian language and of the Western Desert languages. Indeed, it has five places of articulation for stops, each having a corresponding nasal; each pair can be grouped into apicals (2 in total), laminal (1), or peripherals (2). Moreover, Wangkajunga lacks fricatives and sibilants, as well as voicing contrast. Other typical Australian features include the presence of two ‘rhotics’, and a “symmetrical” triangular vowel system with contrastive length (Busby, 1980). In the following paragraphs I will focus on the most interesting features of Wangkajunga’s phonology.
Consonants
As stated in the Fletcher and Butcher’s paper (2014), one of the typical patterns of allophony …show more content…
Furthermore, it adds an epenthetic syllable /pa/ where words otherwise be consonant final. Words can never begin with a vowel (however, semi-vowels are permitted), a feature that distinguishes Wangkajunga from the southern dialects of the Western Desert language, such as Yankunytjatjara (Goddard 1985) and Pitjantjatjara (Eckert and Hudson 1988).
Stress
Stress is one more feature of Wankajunga phonology which is typical of many Australian languages, including the Western Desert languages. The primary stress is unmarked and falls on the initial syllable; while secondary stress falls on the second of the two following unstressed syllables (usually final syllable is unstressed, although there are exceptions).
Intonation
Whereas some usages of intonation in Wangkajunga are common for many languages around the world, e.g. requests and narration, this language’s distinctive and interesting feature is to indicate long distances or significant height with a final vowel lengthening or an increase in tempo, accompanied by repetition. It is quite unusual for a speaker of a European language to learn that Wangkajunga speakers, in case if they need to show a great distance, can take a breath and then continue vowel lengthening if they are short of breath when trying to illustrate the distance. It is also interesting that words
Wangkajunga.
The phoneme inventory of Wangkajunga is typical of an Australian language and of the Western Desert languages. Indeed, it has five places of articulation for stops, each having a corresponding nasal; each pair can be grouped into apicals (2 in total), laminal (1), or peripherals (2). Moreover, Wangkajunga lacks fricatives and sibilants, as well as voicing contrast. Other typical Australian features include the presence of two ‘rhotics’, and a “symmetrical” triangular vowel system with contrastive length (Busby, 1980). In the following paragraphs I will focus on the most interesting features of Wangkajunga’s phonology.
Consonants
As stated in the Fletcher and Butcher’s paper (2014), one of the typical patterns of allophony …show more content…
Furthermore, it adds an epenthetic syllable /pa/ where words otherwise be consonant final. Words can never begin with a vowel (however, semi-vowels are permitted), a feature that distinguishes Wangkajunga from the southern dialects of the Western Desert language, such as Yankunytjatjara (Goddard 1985) and Pitjantjatjara (Eckert and Hudson 1988).
Stress
Stress is one more feature of Wankajunga phonology which is typical of many Australian languages, including the Western Desert languages. The primary stress is unmarked and falls on the initial syllable; while secondary stress falls on the second of the two following unstressed syllables (usually final syllable is unstressed, although there are exceptions).
Intonation
Whereas some usages of intonation in Wangkajunga are common for many languages around the world, e.g. requests and narration, this language’s distinctive and interesting feature is to indicate long distances or significant height with a final vowel lengthening or an increase in tempo, accompanied by repetition. It is quite unusual for a speaker of a European language to learn that Wangkajunga speakers, in case if they need to show a great distance, can take a breath and then continue vowel lengthening if they are short of breath when trying to illustrate the distance. It is also interesting that words