Showing stories: ancestral narratives in the artistic practice of north-central Arnhem Land
| Language | Ndjébbana, Na-kara, Gurr-goni, Rembarrnga |
| Depositor | Jill Vaughan |
| Affiliation | Monash University |
| Location | Australia |
| Collection ID | 0772 |
| Grant ID | MDP0462 |
| Funding Body | ELDP |
| Collection Status | Forthcoming |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/c2302d6e-4d43-42d1-8c4f-d726cc390d36 |
Summary of the collection
This project documents endangered practices relating to traditional and emerging artistic endeavours of the Maningrida region (Arnhem Land, Australia) and will feature several endangered languages of the region Ndjébbana, Gurr-goni, Na-kara and Rembarrnga). The project prioritises community collaboration, capacity building, the creation of community language resources, and provide a significant and urgent record of important local artistic and language knowledge. It is planned to run from 2024-26.
Group represented
The group represented in this deposit are the speakers of four minority languages in Maningrida, a township in north-central Arnhem Land, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Maningrida, and all of the speakers represented in this collection, are highly multilingual, often speaking and signing multiple local languages fluently. Along with the survival of traditional Indigenous multilingual systems, Maningrida’s minority local languages are rich in cultural knowledge unique to those languages. The speaker populations of Gurr-goni, Na-kara, Ndjébbana, and Rembarrnga are small in comparison to some other local languages such as Burarra, which makes them particularly vulnerable to the ever-changing linguistic environment of the region.
Language information
Gurr-goni, Na-kara, Ndjébbana, and Rembarrnga are non-Pama-Nyungan languages of north-central Arnhem Land, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Gurr-goni, Na-kara, and Ndjébbana are part of the Maningridan linguistic group, alongside Burarra. The Maningridan subfamily has had extensive linguistic contact with the neighbouring Pama-Nyungan Yolŋu languages, as is evidenced in their structure. Rembarrnga is a member of the Gunwinyguan subfamily, but shares many features with the other target languages (both are subgroupings of the higher level Arnhem group). All four of these languages are prefixing. The Maningridan languages make use of serial verb constructions to express aspectual and locational information, while Rembarrnga encodes similar information through nominal suffixation. Gurr-goni is highly classifying, with a four-way semantic noun class system. Na-kara and Ndjébbana instead employ a two-way cross-referencing gender system, and Rembarrnga exhibits gender only in some lexical items and pronouns, but is notably polysynthetic as compared to the Maningridan languages. These languages have been recorded as having speaker populations in the range of roughly 40-180 individuals. Ndjébbana is the most widely spoken of the group, and has the most notable intergenerational transfer and integration into community, although all of these languages are highly endangered.
This collection represents data gathered in the town of Maningrida, in north-central Arnhem Land. It is home to roughly 2,500 residents across the township proper and its outstations, who form an incredibly diverse linguistic community, with fifteen spoken and signed—largely endangered–languages in everyday use. Multilingualism is the norm in Maningrida, notable particularly because of the low mutual intelligibility and cognacy between local languages spoken in the township. Community members commonly have mastery over three to six local languages, English, local auxiliary sign language, and other contact varieties. The target languages occupy minority status even in Maningrida, where the diminished uptake of local languages by younger generations threaten their vibrancy. While English and other local languages have large L2 communities among speakers of the target languages, they remain in use by locals particularly to refer to uniquely culturally significant objects and practices.
Special characteristics
This collection is particularly notable for its focus on important cultural objects and practices to speakers of minority languages in Maningrida. The collection focuses on unique cultural elements of the community, in particular the production and history of local art, as well as history and traditional cultural narratives.
Also notable about this collection is its unique incorporation of four target languages, allowing the collection to shed new light upon the uniquely multilingual systems of north-central Arnhem Land, as well as its rapidly changing linguistic environments.
Acknowledgement and citation
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Vaughan, Jill. 2024. Showing stories: ancestral narratives in the artistic practice of north-central Arnhem Land. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/870de3b1-5cc2-4529-98aa-bee128ba826d. Accessed on [insert date here].
