Umbugarla language

Umbugarla or Mbukarla is a possible Australian language isolate once spoken by three people in Arnhem Land, northern Australia as of 1981, and is now extinct.

Umbugarla
Mbukarla
Native to	Australia
Region	Northern Territory
Extinct	ca. 2000; with the death of Butcher Knight
Language family	Darwin Umbugarlic Umbugarla
Language codes
ISO 639-3	umr
Glottolog	umbu1235
AIATSIS[1]	N43
ELP	Umbugarla
historic distribution of Umbugarla

Phonology

Consonants

	Peripheral		Laminal	Apical
	Labial	Velar	Palatal	Alveolar	Retroflex
Plosive	b	ɡ	ɟ	d	ɖ
Nasal	m	ŋ	ɲ	n	ɳ
Lateral			ʎ	l	ɭ
Rhotic					ɽ
Approximant	w		j	ɹ

• /ɡ/ can be heard as either stops [k] or [ʔ] when in word-final or word-medial position, and as a fricative [ɣ] when in intervocalic position.
• /ɽ/ can also be heard as an alveolar tap [ɾ] when in intervocalic position.

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i iː	u uː
Mid	ɛ	ɔ
Low	a aː

• Vowels can be lengthened when in open syllables or in word-final position.^[2]

Phoneme	Allophones
/a/	[ä], [äː], [æ], [ɛ], [ə], [ɒ], [o]
/ɛ/	[ɛ], [ɛː]
/i/	[i], [iː], [ɨ], [ʉ], [ə], [eː]
/u/	[u], [uː], [o], [oː], [ʉ], [ə]
/uː/	[uː], [oː]

Classification

Umbugarla was once considered a language isolate (together with Ngurmbur as a dialect), but Mark Harvey has made a case for it being part of a family of Darwin Region languages.^[3]

References

1. N43 Umbugarla at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
2. Davies, Jennifer (1989). Umbugarla: A Sketch Grammar. University of Melbourne.
3. Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, December 23, 2011 (corrected February 6, 2012)

External links

• Umbugarla Swadesh list at the Internet Archive