Abstract
Bininj Kunwok is a Gunwinyguan language (a non-Pama-Nyungan) spoken in west Arnhem Land and Kakadu National Park, NT, Australia. With around 2500 speakers and children learning it as a first language, Kunwok is one of the strongest Indigenous languages in Australia. Despite its small speech community, it exhibits considerable variation, much of which has been the subject of recent research. One of the primary findings from this study into variation in Kunwok is the rich interspeaker diversity, particularly between different generations of Kunwok speakers. Comparing the speech of young adults and children with that of their elders through a multigenerational corpus has revealed a language change in progress (demonstrated both in real time and apparent time). This paper will discuss three of the key differentiating features of young people’s Kunwok: word-initial engma production, pronominal forms and paradigms and loanwords. We will also examine community members’ perspectives on young people’s Kunwok on the basis that they provide insight into the ideological frameworks that support the linguistic variation and change documented in the community. In conclusion, the paper will summarise the findings, outlining the main features of young people’s Kunwok, and then reflect on the trajectory of Kunwok and the contributions of this study to our understanding of language change in the Australian Aboriginal context.
Highlights
Raquel Fernández FuertesBininj Kunwok is a Gunwinyguan language spoken in westernArnhem Land and Kakadu National Park
The traditional country of Kunwok speakers is around the Arnhem Land plateau, from east of Cooper Creek stretching towards
In the past two decades, there has been a shift in thinking around language contact and language variation and change
Summary
The traditional country of Kunwok speakers is around the Arnhem Land plateau, from east of Cooper Creek stretching towards. The township is on land originally belonging to Mengerrdji speakers (a variety of Giimbiyu), but with the establishment of a cattle station and later a mission, many of the neighbouring peoples have come to stay in the area. The most central variety of Kunwok (geographically), usually referred to as Kunwinjku, was a lingua franca in the area, and the mission chose this language to work with and the other languages began to fade from use. Southern varieties of Kundjeyhmi, Manyalluluk Mayali and Kundedjnjenghmi are referred to collectively by Evans (2003) in his pan-dialectal grammar as Mayali and are rarely spoken, with speakers either having levelled dialectal features or shifted to English or Kriol (an English-based creole). We reflect on the future shape of Kunwok
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