Paman languages: Umpila, Kuuku Ya’u, Kaanju
| Language | Umpila (ISO639-3:ump), Kuuku Ya’u, Kaanju |
| Depositor | Clair Hill |
| Affiliation | University of Leuven |
| Location | Australia |
| Collection ID | 0059 |
| Grant ID | MDP0133 |
| Funding Body | ELDP |
| Collection Status | Collection online |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/4853b2f9-0921-4ef8-8a6f-cc4cd9be553d |
Summary of the collection
This is a collection of materials documenting the Paman languages Umpila, Kuuku Ya’u, and Kaanju. It is one result of a wider project which aimed to document highly endangered Paman languages of Cape York Peninsula, Australia.
Group represented
Speakers of Umpila, Kuuku Ya’u, and Kaanju.
Language information
The languages spoken in this collection are Umpila, Kuuku Ya’u, and Kaanju.
Special characteristics
The languages chosen for this research are of typological interest within the Australian context. They have unusual phonological systems for Australian languages, with historical dropping of initial consonants (Kuku Thaypan, Umbuygamu, Umpila), development of fricative phonemes (Kuku Thaypan, Umbuygamu), voice contrasts for stops (Kugu Muminh, Umbuygamu), and larger vowel inventories (Kugu Muminh, Kuku Thaypan, Umbuygamu, Wik Ngathan). Morphologically, some of the languages display a tendency towards head-marking of grammatical relations, with the development of cross-referencing pronouns encliticized to the verb, as in Umbuygamu and Wik Ngathan. Syntactically, a number of CYP languages show ‘optional ergative’ marking of nominals, with use of the ergative case marker determined not only by the syntactic role of the NP, but also by principles of information structure, as in Umpila and Umbuygamu.
Other information
In the course of their previous work team members have built up strong ties with the last speakers of the project languages, and with the communities more generally. Both the older generation of speakers and the younger generation of ‘language rememberers’ have been very supportive of the team members’ work, and have consented to, and often even requested, new initiatives for further work like the present application. Accordingly,this project crucially involved input from the communities, at two levels. The first was in the selection of material that was recorded, both in the choice of texts to be recorded, and in decisions on access conditions. The second level of involvement concerned decisions about the type of community-oriented materials that were developed in the project, and in training younger computer-literate community members in handling digital media to ensure future access and distribution in the community.
For more details about other languages in the region use the links below.
Paman languages: Umpithamu, Morrobolam, Mbarrumbathama
Paman languages: Kuuk Thaayorre, Wik Yi’anh, Kugu Muminh, Koko Bera, Wik Mungkan
Paman languages: Wik Ngathan, Wik Mungkan
Paman languages: Kuku Thaypan, Awu Alaya
Acknowledgement and citation
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Hill, Clair. 2012. Paman languages: Umpila, Kuuku Ya’u, Kaanju. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0001-8CF4-F. Accessed on [insert date here].
