Worrorran languages

Worrorran
Geographic
distribution		 northern Australia
Linguistic classification One of the world's primary language families
Subdivisions
Glottolog worr1236[1]
{{{mapalt}}}
Worrorran languages (purple), among other non-Pama-Nyungan languages (grey)

The Worrorran (Wororan) languages are a small family of Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Western Australia.

The Worrorran languages fall into three dialect clusters:

Validity

There has been debate over whether the Worrorran languages are demonstrably related to one another, or constitute a geographical language group.

Dixon (2002) considers them to be language isolates with no demonstrable relationship other than that of a Sprachbund.

However, more recent literature differs from Dixon:

  • Rumsey and McGregor (2009) demonstrate the cohesiveness of the family and its reconstructibility, and;
  • Bowern (2011) accepts the Worroorran languages as a family.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Worrorran". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ↑ Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, December 23, 2011 (corrected February 6, 2012)
  • Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • McGregor and Rumsey (2009). Worrorran Revisited: The Case for Genetic Relations Among Languages of the Northern Kimberley Region of Western Australia. Pacific Linguistics.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.