A Description of the Yugumbir Dialect of Bandjalang

1 PHONOLOGY

The phonemes are hsted in Table 1 and are described below. For printing conve-
nience digraphs are used for the alveopalatal stop and nasal.

TABLE 1
Phonemes

bilabial

alveolar

alveopalatal

velar

stops
nasals
resonants
semivowels

b
ra

d
n

1 r

dj
nj

y

g

w

vowels
length

i
e

u
a

/b/ [b] voiced lenis bilabial stop. This allophone always occurs following a
nasal, and usually occurs elsewhere.
[h] voiced bilabial fricative. Sometimes occurs intervocalically or follow-
^ ing /I/.
[pip"] voiceless bilabial stop, sometimes aspirated. Occasionally occurs word
initially or in a stressed syllable.

[b/p]inar)

"ear"2

mubar

"black"

rjumbinj

"house"

wul[b/I=«]ani

"hid"

/b/ contrasts with /w/.

bayni "hit"

wainji "you(obj sg)'

/d/ [d] alveolar stop. All

examples are voiced.

dulgal

"dirty"

bandar)

"axe"

74 M. C. CUNNINGHAM

/dj/ [^J voiced alveopalatal affricate identical with English "j".*

[dy] voiced palatalised alveopalatal stop. Occurs in only two exanaples,
both preceding /u:/.

gi[dy/^Ju:m "old man" Ld>7^Ju:m] "fog"

/dj/ contrasts with /d/ and /y/.

djangan "lightning" daqgan "fingernails"

djur)gur| "black snake" durjgunj "fingers"

djagu:l "stranger"^ yagu:l "bandicoot"

dja:na "stand up" ya:na "sit down"

Isl [g] voiced lenis velar stop. Like the allophone [b] this aUophone always
occurs following a nasal, and usually occurs elsewhere.
[g] voiced lenis velar fricative. Sometimes occurs, particularly following a
resonant, or preceding /u/. Word initially preceding /u/ it was some-
times perceived as /w/ or even /i]/ in Culham's speech, though the three
phonemes (/g,w,r)/) are in contrast.^
|kj voiceless velar stoj), occasionally occurring word initially.
[g/k]uru:man "kangaroo"
/g/ contrasts with /w/ and /rj/.

gulanj "scrub tick" wulaq "leaf"

guqga: "in the water" wur)a: "your(sg)"

bugaw "stink" buqaw "bloodwood"

yal[g/g]an "sun" yilrjan "liver"

Nasals are /m/, /n/, /nj/ (alveopalatal), and /r)/. Word finally these sometimes
have a homorganic stop onset, i.e. the nasal passage is opened just after the tongue
(or lips) takes up its (or their) position.

wamgi:[nj/'lnj] "come"

mali "that" guyu:mgan "stars"

nana:r) "sister" djangan "lightning"

njari "name" djunjgun "clouds"

rjali "we" djurjgur] "black snake"

The following illustrate contrast between /n/ and /nj/.
nanarr) "sister" njanay "leech"

djindi:n "a lot" mibinj "man (Aboriginal)"

/I/ [1] alveolar lateral.

/r/ ff ] alveolar trill, occurs mostly syllable finally.
[f] alveolar flap, occurs mostly elsewhere.

[r] retroflexed continuant, often used by Culham in place of the flap or
trill. 8
/I/ and /r/ can be shown to contrast.

bilaq "oak" biraq "tattoo"

wulu "ankle" muru: "nose"

walagan "shoulder" darigan "bone"

yili "where" yirimbam "locust"

magil "water lizard" gabir "hungry"

Semivowels /w/ and /y/ are as in English and are illustrated by the examples
below.

wamgi:nj "come" ya:na "sit down"

djiwa: "goanna" baya:r "centipede"

bugaw "stink" dagay "white man"

/i/ [i] high front vocoid. Occurs between two alveopalatal consonants (viz
/dj, nj, y/).
fi'^'] slightly lowered from fi]. Occurs elsewhere.

THE YUGUMBIR DIALECT OF BANDJALANG 75

/e/ [f] mid front vocoid. With rare exceptions this vowel only occurs with the

length phoneme /:/.'
/a/ la] low central vocoid. Occurs in all environments in free variation with
other listed allophones.
[a' J usually occurs preceding /nj/.
[ae^J may occur preceding /y/.
[ae/e] low to mid front vocoid. Usually occurs following an alveopalatal con-
sonant, also preceding /ya/ and following /ay/.
[afo] low to lf)w-mid back vocoid. May occur following a velar consonant
(viz. /g,r),w/).
[o] mid back vocoid. May occur preceding /w/.
/u/ [u^] high-mid back vocoid. Occurs in all environments,
[o] mid back vocoid. May occur following /aw/.
Because of the rarity of /e/ without length, contrast of vowels is shown with lengthened
vowels also.

girinj "tired" bare:nj "chips" djuninj "eel"

mi: I] bar "thundering" mu:r) "belly"

dire:r) "stormbird" bira:r] "wide"

mure:r "spotted gum" gura:r "long"

giU "this(close)" gali "this"

mali "that" muh "hill"

/:/ length may occur with vowels. Impressionistically it doubles the length of the
syllable nucleus, though sometimes the effect is less marked,
birar) "tattoo" bira:r) "wide"

gui] "water" mu:r] "belly"

wulu "ankle" muru: "nose"

djah "tree" manaldja:li "Beaude.sert"

mibinj "man" dji:binj "stinging tree"

Alternate analyses of the vowels and length are possible if occurrences of [e] without
length are regarded as allophones of /i/ and /a/ or are omitted from the data.**

Distribution of phonemes

A syllable contains as nucleus a vowel with or without length. Stress occurs on
the first syllable of the word, or on the first long syllable if such is present. Syllable
patterns are of the form CV(:)(C), and words contain from one to five syllables. No
one syllable words of the form CV were obtained, and no uninflected word or root
had more than four syllables.

The resonants /I/ and /r/ do not occur word initially.

Stops do not occur syllable finally.' The phoneme /d/ does not occur inter-
vcKaUcally.*" The least frequent consonant phonemes are /d/ and /w/.

The combinations /e:/ and /a:/ occur very commonly in verbs; /e:/ is rather rare
elsewhere. The occurrences of /e/ (without length) are restricted to a few words ending
in /le/,' and to verbs where a hypothetical /e:/ resulting from affixation is realised
as a short vowel due to co-occurrence restrictions on long syllables.

yange :n = yana + past tense
"went" "go"

ya:ngen = ya:na -f past tense
"sat" "sit"

Frequency counts were made of vowels with and without length. One count was
of 487 words in dictionary form, another was of a sample of 376 words in sentences
(many of which were inflected for case, tense, etc.). The percentages of occurrences
of each vowel with and without length are listed in Table 2. Of all possible CV(:)
sequences, only /ne:/, /i^e;/ and /wi:/ were not obtained.

76

M. C. CUNNINGHAM

Consonant clusters (CC only) can occur word medially. Combinations are re-
stricted by the distribution of consonants in syllables noted above. Geminate conso-
nant clusters do not occur. Most nasal stop clusters occur, homorganic clusters being
far more common than heterorganic. Clusters of different nasals occur. The only
clusters with semivowels were /yb/ (fairly common), /ym/, /ly/, smd /Iw/ (rare). The
frequency of clusters of resonant followed by /b/ or /g/ rivalled that of the homorganic
nasal stop clusters. ^^ One example of the cluster /Idj/ occurred, but there were no
other clusters of resonant followed by /d/ or /dj/.

TABLE 2
Frequency of vowel phonemes

Dictionary

Sentences

No. of words

487

376

No. of syllables

1053

956

a

42%

44%

u

26

18

i

16

14

a:

6

13

u:

.'■)

5

e:

2

5

i:

3

1

A Description of the Yugumbir
Dialect of Bandjalang

by
M. C. CUNNINGHAM

Price: $1.60

University of Queensland Papers

Faculty of Arts

Volume I Number 8

UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND PRESS

St. Lucia

14 February 1969