Umbugarla language

Umbugarla
Umbugarla
Mbukarla
Native to	Australia
Region	Northern Territory
Extinct	c. 1990s, with the death of Butcher Knight
Language family	Darwin Umbugarlic Umbugarla; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	umr
Glottolog	umbu1235
AIATSIS	N43
ELP	Umbugarla
	historic distribution of Umbugarla

Umbugarla or Mbukarla is a possible Australian language isolate once spoken by three people in Arnhem Land, northern Australia as of 1981, and is now extinct.

Classification

Umbugarla was once considered a language isolate (together with Ngurmbur as a dialect), but Mark Harvey has made a case for it being part of a family of Darwin Region languages.^[2]

Phonology

Consonants

	Peripheral		Laminal	Apical
	Labial	Velar	Palatal	Alveolar	Retroflex
Plosive	b	ɡ	ɟ	d	ɖ
Nasal	m	ŋ	ɲ	n	ɳ
Lateral			ʎ	l	ɭ
Rhotic					ɽ
Approximant	w		j	ɹ

/ɡ/ can be heard as either stops [k] or [ʔ] when in word-final or word-medial position, and as a fricative [ɣ] when in intervocalic position.
/ɽ/ can also be heard as an alveolar tap [ɾ] when in intervocalic position.

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i iː	u uː
Mid	ɛ	ɔ
Low	a aː

Vowels can be lengthened when in open syllables or in word-final position.^[3]

Phoneme	Allophones
/a/	[ä], [äː], [æ], [ɛ], [ə], [ɒ], [o]
/ɛ/	[ɛ], [ɛː]
/i/	[i], [iː], [ɨ], [ʉ], [ə], [eː]
/u/	[u], [uː], [o], [oː], [ʉ], [ə]
/uː/	[uː], [oː]

References

^ N43 Umbugarla at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
^ Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, December 23, 2011 (corrected February 6, 2012)
^ Davies, Jennifer (1989). Umbugarla: A Sketch Grammar. University of Melbourne.

External links

Umbugarla Swadesh list at the Internet Archive

[AIATSIS-1] N43 Umbugarla at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

[2] Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, December 23, 2011 (corrected February 6, 2012)

[3] Davies, Jennifer (1989). Umbugarla: A Sketch Grammar. University of Melbourne.

[1]

[2]

[3]