Giimbiyu language
language
Giimbiyu is an extinct Aboriginal Australian language isolate once spoken by the Giimbiyu people of northern Australia.
Name
The name Giimbiyu is a Gaagudju word for 'of the stoney country'. It was introduced in Harvey (1992) as a cover term for the named dialects,
Mangerr (Mengerrdji)
Urningangga (Wuningak)
Erri (Arri)
Classification
In 1997 Nicholas Evans proposed an Arnhem Land family that includes the Giimbiyu languages. However, they are not included in Bowern (2011).
Phonology
Consonants
Coarticulation among consonants is also present.
Among consonant-coarticulation, /ɣ/ when preceding sounds /l, ɾ/ may result in being heard as a voiceless palatal [ç].
Vowels
/u/ may also be heard as [o].
Coarticulation among a preceding /ɪ/, may result in the vowel sound becoming more central [ɪ̈] or as a diphthong [ɪə].
Vocabulary
Capell (1942) lists the following basic vocabulary items:
References
McConvell, Patrick and Nicholas Evans. (eds.) 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Giimbiyu language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.