Flora–Fauna Loanwords in Arnhem Land and Beyond—An Ethnobiological Approach

Abstract

Borrowing is said to be a pervasive phenomenon among Australian languages, particularly in the domains of flora–fauna and material culture. In-depth studies of borrowing in individual languages or small groups of languages exist, as do quantitative analyses covering selected vocabulary items across a large number of languages. To date, however, there have not been any comprehensive surveys of the flora–fauna inventories of several languages at once with the aim of investigating broad semantic and geographic patterns of borrowing. This study attempts to carry out such an investigation on the languages of Arnhem Land, within the broader context of northern Australian languages. A thorough investigation of the flora–fauna lexica of 21 languages revealed a number of loanword ‘corridors’ within which borrowing frequently occurred; the principal corridors were two coastal corridors along the northern and eastern coasts of Arnhem Land, and an inland–coastal corridor between Non-Pama-Nyungan languages and Yolŋu languages. Several words, mostly bird names, were identified as being repeatedly borrowed (Wanderwörter), and in much larger numbers than previously reported. Finally, several correspondences, presumably long-distance loans, were detected in languages as far away as the Kimberleys, Queensland and north-central Australia.