Oceania Linguistic Monographs: Some Linguistic Types in Australia

1» Rionanic Structure

loOo The Garadjori language departs in no detail from the commonly
shared -Australian phonemic pattern, and even at the phonetic level it ha3
no peculiarities of its own. The sound system is shown on the phononic
level in the following Table:

RitatalOO Velar

CONSONANTS

Labial

/ilveolar

Re tr of lex

Fhtat

PLOSIVES

"b

d

d

•

dj

NASALS

m

n

n

nj

ROLLED

r

LATERALS

1

1

io

CONTINUAT

TVES

H

*

3

V0D7ELS

CLOSE

i

OPEN

a

(*)(»)

u

(h) The palatals are indicated by digraphs here (instead of &, A, t) as
elsewhere, purely for orthographic ease*

(m) The brackets indicate lip-rounding, which gives the consonant a double
positioning*

9 5o St ress

The following rules for stress may be given:

a) Pinal stresses are possible only under two conditions: (i) when the voc-
ative suffix -i/~u is added to the utterance: see 1»3«>3.; (ii) that the
word ends in a diphthong, eog«, /qa'v/ai/ ? yes ! . It is on this "basis that
vowel clusters aro interpreted as diphthongs or not, e*g», )gu(w)ij is best
interpreted as /gu-<wi/ rather than /gui/ as was done in the published texts.

b) Stress tends" to fall on the penultimate in words of two syllables:
/'marrju/'man 1 , / ! <3jandu/ 'woman 1 •

c) In words of three syllables the stress is on the first: /'gangara/ f up f ;
/'qanagu/ 'for what?'; /'wanadi/ 'it is ? « Even /'wandi/ is heard for the
last wcrdo

d) A long vowel carries the stress: /oi ! la:wila/ f a sole'o

e) Words of more than three syllables usually carry the main stress on the
penultimate, with subsidiary stress on the fourth or fifth syllable from
the end; /jgaribalga^aqan/' ! we ! ll ccok it 1 ; /^gali'guru/ boomerang 1 ;
/twaqa'la*^./ ? young men'; / t mira- ? r^gu igawa f bula/ *in«the-hand carry-
thorn- two *

The fact that a word is a compound does not necessarily imply that the elements
of it retain their original stresses; in /ja,njari ! bula/ 'they two go 1 , this is
so: but in /'njuribula/ *yaa two* \ njundu, f you f •»• bula f two% bula is unstress-

L

OCEANIA LINGUISTIC MONOGRAPHS

GENERAL EDITOR: Professor A. P. ELKIN
EDITORS: A. CAPELL and S. WURM

No. 7

OCEANIA LINGUISTIC MONOGRAPH NO. 7

SOME LINGUISTIC TYPES IN AUSTRALIA

[Handbook of Australian Languages, Part 2]

UF^APY

JAM 31 1963

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

by

A. Capell

'/v U

PLSoci.

Ut3

SOME LINGUISTIC TYIES IN AUSTRALIA
(Handbook of Australian Languages, Part 2)

A. CAPELL , M.A., Ph.D

Published by the University of Sydney, Australia.

PRICE: One Pound

1962

Published "by the University of Sydney, Australia
1962