Alawa language

Alawa
Native to Australia
Region Northern Territory; Arnhem Land, Roper River.
Ethnicity Alawa
Native speakers
 4 (2016 census)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 alh
Glottolog alaw1244[2]
AIATSIS[3] N92

Alawa (Galawa) is a moribund Indigenous Australian language spoken by the Alawa people of the Northern Territory. In 1991, it had 18 remaining speakers and 4 semi-speakers.[4]

Phonology

Consonants

Alawa has a typical consonant inventory for an Indigenous Australian language, with five contrastive places of articulation, multiple lateral consonants, and no voicing contrast among the stops.[5]

Alveolar Palatal Peripheral
Alveolar Retroflex Alveo-palatal Velar Bilabial
Prenasalised Stop ⁿd ⁿɖ ⁿɟ ⁿɡ ⁿb
Devoiced Stop t ʈ c k p
Nasals n ɳ ɲ ŋ m
Laterals l ɭ l
Vibrants r
Glide ɹ j w

Note: there are no standardised IPA symbols for alveopalatal stops.

Vowels

The vowel system of Alawa is made up of four vowel phonemes: the high front vowel /i/, the high back vowel /u/, the mid front vowel /e/, and the low central vowel /a/.[6]

FrontCentralBack
Highiu
Mide
Lowa

There are no rounding contrasts or length contrasts in this language.[7]

References

  1. ↑ "Census 2016, Language spoken at home by Sex (SA2+)". stat.data.abs.gov.au. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 2017-10-29.
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Alawa". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Alawa at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  4. ↑ "Ethnologue: Alawa". Ethnologue.
  5. ↑ Sharpe, Margaret C. 1972
  6. ↑ Sharpe, Margaret C (1972). Alawa Phonology and Grammar. Canberra: Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies.
  7. ↑ Sharpe, Margaret C. 1972


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