Yugambeh language

Yugambeh has a vowel system of 4 vowels that also contrast in length, resulting in 8 phonemic vowels in total. The letter "h" is used after the vowel to indicate a long vowel.

The low central vowel /a/ is fronted and raised between palatal consonants and a lateral/rhotic consonant.

Compared to other Pama-Nyungan languages, Yugambeh has a smaller inventory of consonants. There are four places of articulation, with the consonants consisting of 4 obstruents, 4 nasals, 2 liquids, and 2 semivowels.

Obstruents

Obstruents do not have a voicing contrast, and can appear as fricative allophones. Obstruents are phonetically voiceless, except when following a homorganic consonant.[14]

Syntax in the Yugambeh language is fairly free ordered, with a tendency towards SOV (Subject Object Verb) structures. Adjectives and demonstratives part of noun phrases e.g. that man, a red car, stay adjacent to the noun they qualify.[15]

Nouns take a number of suffixes to decline for grammatical case.

Noun suffixes are placed into 10 orders, a noun may not take more than one suffix from any order, and if more than one suffix is attached they must always be in the set order of the suffix orders, e.g. an order 7 suffix must always come after an order 5 suffix.

'X' stands for a homorganic obstruent.

'N' stands for a homorganic nasals.

#The comitative, purposive, desiderative, ablative and aversive suffixes are preceded by -bah on animate nouns.[16]

1st order suffixes

-gali (typified by) – Used to indicate an association or link

Examples:

Jinanggali 'Shoe' lit. Typified by foot

Dubaygali 'Womaniser' lit. Typified by women

2nd order suffixes

-gan (feminine) – Used to form feminine nouns and some astrological terms

Examples:

Yarabilngingan 'Female Singer'

3rd order suffixes

-bur (diminutive) – Used to form the diminutive of a noun, referring to a smaller version

Examples:

Baraganbur 'Toy Boomerang'

4th order suffixes

-Nah (possessive) – Indicates current possession

Examples:

Ngalingah 'Our'

Gibamah 'of the moon/moon's'

-Nahjil (past possessive) – Indicates past possession

Examples:

Bilinahjil 'was of the parrot' (Billinudgel)

Verbs are conjugated with the use of suffixes, it is an aspect dominant language, as opposed to tense dominant like most Western languages. Yugambeh suffixes mostly conjugate for aspect and mood

Verb suffixes are placed in 6 orders, a verb may not take more than one suffix from an order, and similar to nouns, suffixes are attached in a set order. Combinations of these suffixes express all possible conjugations of Yugambeh verbs, with only a small number of combinations possible, Yugambeh verb stems are commonly 2 syllables in length and always in a vowel.[17]

Adjectives can be marked with a suffix to indicate the gender of the noun they qualify.[16]

*N stands for a homorganic nasal.

Yugambeh possesses a complicated set of demonstratives that make a three-way distinction, with proximal, medial, and distal sets, there is a further distinguishing of demonstrative adjectives and location demonstratives. The adjective set can be additionally suffixed to create demonstrative pronouns', the adjective set has three forms for "things in sight", "things hidden or not in sight" and "things not there anymore", while the location set has forms to indicate the general area and definite area, whether in sight or not in sight, and past and present forms.[18]

The above set can be suffixed with order 7 noun suffixes to form demonstrative pronouns that function like ordinary independent nouns. e.g. Yanindeh galini wungahbaia! 'Take this with you!'

The 'not in sight' and 'not here anymore' forms can take the order 2 noun suffix -gan to form time words. E.g. gunahgan 'recently'.