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| Enindhilyagwa | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Northern Territory, Australia | |
| Total speakers: | >1,000 | |
| Language family: | Language isolate | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | aus | |
| ISO 639-3: | aoi | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Enindhilyagwa (several other names; see below) is an Australian language isolate spoken by the Warnindhilyagwa people on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia. A 2001 Australian government study identified more than one thousand speakers of the language, although there are reports of as many as three thousand. In 2008, it was cited in a study on whether humans had an innate ability to count without having words for numbers - which Enindhilyagwa does not have.[1] [2]
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Spellings of the name include:
It also known as Groote Eylandt, after its location. Another name is Ingura or Yingguru.
Although sometimes grouped with the Gunwinyguan languages, Enindhilyagwa has not been shown to be related to other Australian languages, and recent attempts by Nicholas Evans at reducing the number of language families in Australia have left it as an isolate.
The analysis of Enindhilyagwa's vowels is open to interpretation. Stokes (1981) analyses it as having four phonemic vowels, /i e a u/. Leeding (1989) analyses it as having just two, /ɨ a/.
| Peripheral | Laminal | Apical | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Velar | Palatal | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | ||
| Unrounded | Rounded | ||||||
| Stop | p | k | kʷ | c | t̪ | t | ʈ |
| Nasal | m | ŋ | ŋʷ | ɲ | n̪ | n | ɳ |
| Lateral | ʎ | l̪ | (ɭ) | ||||
| Rhotic | r | ɻ | |||||
| Semivowel | w | j | |||||
All Enindhilyagwa words end in a vowel. Clusters of up to three consonants can occur within words.
Enindhilyagwa has five noun classes, or genders, each marked by a prefix:
For bound pronouns, instead of "human male" and "non-human male" classes there is a single "male" class.
All native nouns carry a class prefix, but some loanwords may lack them.
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