Proto-Pama–Nyungan is a hypothetical ancestral language from which all Pama–Nyungan languages are supposed to have derived. It may have been spoken as recently as about 5,000 years ago, much more recently than Aboriginal Australian peoples are believed to have been inhabiting various parts of Australia.
Evolution
How the Pama–Nyungan languages spread over most of the continent and displaced any pre-Pama–Nyungan languages is unknown; one possibility is that language could have been transferred from one group to another alongside culture and ritual.[1][2] Given the relationship of cognates between groups, it seems that Pama-Nyungan has many of the characteristics of a sprachbund, indicating the antiquity of multiple waves of culture contact between groups.[3] Dixon in particular has argued that the genealogical trees found with many language families do not fit in the Pama-Nyungan family.[4]
Proto-Pama–Nyungan's phonological inventory, as reconstructed by Barry Alpher (2004), is quite similar to those of most present-day Australian languages.[6]
Proto-Pama–Nyungan seems to have had only one set of laminal consonants; the two contrasting sets (lamino-dental and lamino-alveopalatal or "palatal") found in some present-day languages can largely be explained as innovations resulting from conditioned sound changes.
Nevertheless, there are a small number of words in which an alveolo-palatal stop is found where a dental would be expected, and these are written *cʲ. There is no convincing evidence, however, of an equivalent nasal*ɲʲ or lateral*ʎʲ.
Pronouns
Reconstructed Proto-Pama–Nyungan pronouns from Alpher (2004):[6]
gloss
Proto-Pama-Nyungan
1 Sg Dir. Object
*ngañi, *ngaña
1 Sg Oblique
*ngacu(+)
1 Sg Oblique
*ngaca+
2 Sg
*ñuntu
you SG OBL
*ñuna
we EXnonSg
*ngana
we INDU
*ngali
you PL
*ñurra
they DU
*pula
they PL
*cana
Vocabulary
Reconstructed Proto-Pama–Nyungan vocabulary and morphemes from Alpher (2004):[6]
In addition to Hale's 1982 list of words unique to Pama–Nyungan, and in addition to pronouns and case endings they reconstruct for the proto-language, Evans and McConvell report that while some of their roots are implausible, O'Grady and Tryon, nevertheless provide "hundreds of clear cognate sets with attestations throughout the Pama–Nyungan area and absent outside."[7]
^ abcAlpher, Barry. 2004. Pama-Nyungan: Phonological Reconstruction and Status as a Phylo-Genetic Group. In Claire Bowern and Harold Koch (eds.), Australian Languages: Classification and the Comparative Method, 93-126, 387-574. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
^Nick Evans and Patrick McConvell, "The Enigma of Pama–Nyungan Expansion in Australia" Archaeology and language, Volume 29, Roger Blench, Matthew Spriggs, eds., Routledge, 1999, p176
