Wagiman, also spelt Wageman, Wakiman, Wogeman,Carrington, L., & Triffitt, G. (1999: 266) and other variants, is a near-extinct Aboriginal Australian language spoken by only two elderly peopleKrauße, D. (2021: 15), who live in and around Pine Creek, in the Katherine Region of the Northern Territory. The two last speakers, who acquired Wagiman as their first language, are sister and brother in their 70s, named Teresa Muyiwey Bandison and George Jabarlgarri Huddlestone.Krauße, D. (2021: 143).
The Wagiman language is notable within linguistics for its complex system of verbal morphology, which remains under-investigated, its possession of a cross-linguistically rare part of speech called a coverb, its complex predicates and for its ability to derive verbs from coverb roots, which is a unique feature among Australian languages.
As of 1999 Wagiman was expected to become extinct within the next generation, as the youngest generation spoke no Wagiman and understood very little.Wilson, S. (1999) The 2011 Australian census recorded 30 speakers, while the 2016 Australian census recorded 18 speakers. Linguist Daniel Krauße worked on the language from 2019 to 2021 and reported only two remaining speakers.Krauße, D. (2021: 143)Krauße, D. & M. Harvey (2021: 104) Without urgent language revival programs, the language is expected to become extinct very soon.
Language and speakers Relation with other languages
Wagiman is a language isolate within the hypothetical Australian language family.Bowern, C. (2011) It was once assumed to be a member of the adjacent Gunwinyguan family that stretches from Arnhem Land, throughout Kakadu National Park and south to Katherine,Merlan, F.C. (1994: 3-4) but this has since been rejected. Wagiman may still bear a remote relation with its neighbouring languages but this is yet to be demonstrated.
Francesca Merlan believes that Wagiman may be distantly related to the Yangmanic languages, citing that they both use verbal particles in a similar way, to the exclusion of neighbouring languages (such as Jawoyn and Mangarrayi). Stephen Wilson additionally notes some other similarities, such as in the pronominal prefixes and the marking of non-case-marked nominals. However both languages have a very low cognacy rate (shared vocabulary) of about 10%. Wagiman is also superficially similar to the neighbouring Gunwinyguan languages phonologically (both share a fortis/lenis stop contrast and a phonemic glottal stop) and to the Mirndi language Jaminjung-Ngaliwurru in the use of coverbs.Wilson, S. (1999: 5-6) Mark Harvey notes similarities in the verbal inflectional systems between Wagiman and the neighbouring Eastern Daly languages.Harvey, M. (2003) "Verb systems in the Eastern Daly language family." In Nicholas Evans, ed. The Non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia.
Speakers Wagiman is the ancestral language of the Wagiman people, Aboriginal Australians whose traditional land, before colonisation, extended for hundreds of square kilometres from the Stuart Highway, throughout the Mid-Daly Basin, and across the Daly River.Wilson, A. (2006: 5) The land is highly fertile and well-watered, and contains a number of cattle stations, on which many members of the ethnic group used to work. These stations include Claravale, Dorisvale, Jindare, Oolloo and Douglas.Wilson, S. (1999: 5)
The language region borders Waray to the north, Mayali (Kunwinjku) and Jawoyn on the east, Wardaman and Jaminjung on the south, and Murrinh-Patha, Ngan'giwumirri and Malak Malak on the west. Before colonisation, the lands surrounding Pine Creek, extending north to Brock's Creek, were traditionally associated with another language group that is now extinct, believed to have been Wulwulam.Harvey, M. (2003: 295-97)
The dominant language of the region is Mayali, a dialect of Bininj Kunwok traditionally associated with the region surrounding Maningrida, in Western Arnhem Land.Evans, N. (2003: 6-9) As it is a strong language with hundreds of speakers and a high rate of child acquisition, members of the Wagiman ethnic group gradually ceased teaching the Wagiman language to their children. As a result, many Wagiman people speak Mayali, while only a handful of elders continue to speak Wagiman.
In 1987 it was found that adults in the community understood the Wagiman language to a certain extent or knew only a few basic words, but speak Daly River Kriol as their daily language. The youngest generation understood very little Wagiman and spoke none.Cook, A.R. (1987: 17-19) As of 1999 Wagiman was expected to become extinct within the next generation, as the youngest generation spoke no Wagiman and understood very little. In 2005 only 10 speakers were recorded,Gordon, R. G., Jr. (2005) but the 2011 Australian census recorded 30 speakers, with the 2016 Australian census recording 18 speakers.
Apart from Mayali, Kriol, a creole language based on the vocabulary of English, is the lingua franca of the area. The Wagiman people are also partial speakers of a number of other languages, including Jaminjung, Wardaman and Dagoman.
Dialects Wagiman speakers are conscious of a distinction between two dialects of Wagiman, which they refer to as 'light language' and 'heavy language'. The differences are minor and speakers have no difficulty understanding one another.Wilson, S. (2001)
Phonology and orthography The Wagiman phonemic inventory is quite typical for a northern Australian language. It has six places of articulation with a stop and a nasal in each. There are also a number of laterals and approximants, a trill and a phonemic glottal stop (represented in the orthography by 'h'). Wagiman also has a vowel inventory that is standard for the north of Australia, with a system of five vowels.
Consonants Stops that are fortis (or 'strong') are differentiated from those that are lenis (or 'weak') on the basis of length of closure, as opposed to the voice onset time (VOT), the period after the release of the stop before the commencement of vocal fold activity (or voice) which normally differentiates fortis and lenis stops in English and most other languages.
Lenis stops in Wagiman sound like English voiced stops and are therefore written using the Roman alphabet letters b, d and g. Fortis stops, however, sound more like voiceless stops in English, but are slightly longer than lenis stops. They are written with two voiceless letters, pp, tt and kk when they occur between two vowels.
Since the length of closure is defined in terms of time between the closure of the vocal tract after the preceding vowel, and the release before the following vowel, stops at the beginning or end of a word do not have a fortis-lenis contrast. Orthographically in Wagiman, word-initial stops are written using the voiced Roman letters (b, d and g), but at the end of a word, voiceless letters (p, t and k) are used instead.
Peripheral Laminal Apical Glottal Bilabial Velar Palatal Alveolar Retroflex Plosive Lenisp~b k~g tj~j t~d rt~rd h Fortispp kk ttj tt rtt Nasalm ng ny n rn Trillrr Laterall rl Approximantw y r
Vowels As with many languages of the top-end, Wagiman has a standard five-vowel system. However, a system of vowel harmony indicates that two sets of vowels are closely associated with each other. aligns closely with and similarly, merges with .
In this respect, it is possible to analyse Wagiman's vowel inventory as historically deriving from a three-vowel system common among the languages from further south, but with the phonetic influence of a typically northern five-vowel system.
frontcentralbackclosei u mide o opena
Phonotactics Each syllable of Wagiman contains an onset, a nucleus and an optional coda. This may be generalised to the syllable template CV(C). The coda may consist of any single consonant, a continuant and a glottal stop, or an approximant and any stop.
At the word level, Wagiman has a bimoraic minimum, meaning that if a word consists of a single syllable, it must have either a long vowel or a coda. Examples of monosyllabic words in Wagiman include 'yes', or 'eat.'.
The retroflex approximant 'r' is not permitted word-initially and instead becomes a lateral 'l'. This only affects verb roots, as they are the only part of speech that takes prefixes and are therefore the only possible part of speech for which word-initial and word-medial environmental effects can be observed.
The verb 'throw', for instance, surfaces as when inflected for third-person singular subjects (he/she/it), which are realised by invisible, or null morphemes. but as when inflected for a first-person singular subject (I). When preceded by a syllable with a coda, the 'r' similarly moves to 'l', as in ngan-la-ndi 'he/she/it threw you'. In short, the retroflex approximant 'r' is only realised as 'r' when it occurs between two vowels. Elsewhere, it becomes a lateral approximant 'l'.
Heterorganic clusters Consonant clusters across syllable boundaries do not assimilate for place in Wagiman as they do in many other languages. This means that a nasal in a syllable coda will not move to the position of the following syllable onset for ease of enunciation. In English and most other Indo-European languages with the exception of Russian, this movement occurs regularly, such that the prefix in-, for example, changes to im- when it precedes either a p, a b or an m. in + possible → impossible in + balance → imbalance in + material → immaterial Wagiman does not do this. A nasal in a coda retains its position regardless of the following consonant: 'tongue' 'bream' (fish spec.) 's/he hit me' If Wagiman constrained against heterorganic clusters and assimilated them for place, as English does, these words would surface as , , and .
Vowel harmony High vowels assimilate in height to following mid vowels across syllable boundaries. That is, will become , and will become , when the following syllable contains a mid vowel; either or .
Wagiman vowel harmony and other aspects of Wagiman phonotactics require further investigation. It is not known, for instance, whether vowel harmony equally affects unstressed syllables.
Grammar All grammatical information from Wilson, S. (1999) unless otherwise noted.
Parts of speech The three most important parts of speech in Wagiman are verbs, coverbs and nominals. Apart from these, there are a multitude of verbal and nominal affixes, interjections and other particles. Pronouns class with nominals.
Nominals Like many Australian languages, Wagiman does not categorically distinguish nouns from adjectives. These form one word class that is called nominals. Wagiman nominals take case suffixes (see below) that denote their grammatical or semantic role in the sentence. The grammatical cases are ergative and absolutive, and the semantic cases include instrumental (using), allative (towards), ablative (from), locative (at), comitative (with, having), privative (without, lacking), temporal (at the time of) and semblative (resembling). The dative case can be either grammatical or semantic, depending on the syntactic requirements of the verb.
Demonstratives are similarly considered nominals in Wagiman, and take the same case suffixes depending on their semantic and syntactic roles; their function within the sentence. That is, the demonstrative 'this', or 'here' (root: ), may take case just like any other nominal. this- 'this one (did it)' this- 'to here'
Examples of nominals 'fire', 'wood' 'tree', 'stick' 'man' 'head' 'tail' 'tongue'
Pronouns Pronouns are typologically nominals also, yet their morphosyntactic alignment is nominative–accusative rather than ergative–absolutive.
NominativeAccusativeGenitive 1st person singular dual plural 2nd person singular plural 3rd person singular (rare) plural (rare)