Lardil, also spelled Leerdil or Leertil, is a moribund language spoken by the Lardil people on Mornington Island (Kunhanha), in the Wellesley Islands of Queensland in northern Australia.McKnight 1999, 3 Lardil is unusual among Aboriginal Australian languages in that it features a ceremonial register, called Damin (also Demiin). Damin is regarded by Lardil-speakers as a separate language and has the only phonological system outside Africa to use click consonants.McKnight 1999, 26
Classification Lardil is a member of the Tangkic family of Non-Pama–Nyungan Australian languages, along with Kayardild and Yukulta, which are close enough to be mutually intelligible.McKnight 1999, 3-6 Though Lardil is not mutually intelligible with either of these,McKnight 1999, 4 it is likely that many Lardil speakers were historically bilingual in Yangkaal (a close relative of Kayardild), since the Lardil people have long been in contact with the neighboring Yangkaal tribe and trading, marriage and conflict between them seem to have been common.McKnight 1999, 5 There was also limited contact with mainland tribes including the Yanyuwa, of Borroloola; and the Garawa and Wanyi, which groups ranged as far east as Burketown.McKnight 1999, 3-5 Members of the Kaiadilt tribe (i.e. speakers of Kayardild) also settled on nearby Bentinck Island in 1947.McKnight 1999, 3-4
Usage The number of Lardil speakers has diminished dramatically since Kenneth Hale's study of the language in the late 1960s. Hale worked with a few dozen speakers of Lardil, some of these fluent older speakers, and others younger members of the community who had only a working or passive understanding.Hale 1997, 54 When Norvin Richards, a student of Hale's, returned to Mornington Island to continue work on Lardil in the 1990s, he found Lardil children had no understanding of the language and that only a handful of aging speakers remained; Richards has stated that "Lardil was deliberately destroyed" by assimilation and relocation programs in the years of the "Stolen Generation". A dictionary and grammatical sketch of the language were compiled and published by the Mornington Shire Council in 1997,Leman 1997, 2 and the Mornington Island State School has implemented a government-funded cultural education program incorporating the Lardil language.Mornington Island State School The last fluent speaker of so-called Old Lardil died in 2007, though a few speakers of a grammatically distinct New variety remain.
New Lardil While very few speakers of Lardil in its traditional form remain, Norvin Richards and Kenneth Hale both worked with some speakers of a "New Lardil" in the 1990s which displays significant morphological attrition compared to the Old variety.Hale 1997, 54-56 (appendix) Previously minor sentence forms in which the object of a verb takes nominative case have become generalised, even in instances where the verb is in future tense (objects of future verbs historically inflected for futurity). One of a number of negation patterns has become generalised, and the augmented forms of monosyllabic verb roots reinterpreted as base forms.Hale 1997, 56 (appendix)
Initiate languages Traditionally, the Lardil community held two initiation ceremonies for young men. Luruku, which involved circumcision, was undergone by all men following the appearance of facial hair;McKnight 1999, 22 warama, the second initiation, was purely voluntary and culminated in a subincision ceremony.McKnight 1999, 25
Luruku initiates took a year-long oath of silence and were taught a sign language known as marlda kangka (literally, 'hand language'), which, though limited in its semantic scope, was fairly complex.McKnight 1999, 24 and 157 Anthropologist David McKnight's research in the 1990s suggests that marlda kangka classifies animals somewhat differently from Lardil, having, for example, a class containing all shellfish (which Lardil lacks) and lacking an inclusive sign for 'dugong+turtle' (Lardil dilmirrur).Leman 1997 In addition to its use by luruku initiates, marlda kangka had practical applications in hunting and warfare.McKnight 1999, 158
While marlda kangka was essentially a male language, the non-initiated were not forbidden to speak it. Damin, on the other hand, was (at least nominally) a secret language spoken only by warama initiates and those preparing for second initiation, though many community members seem to have understood it.Round 2011 Damin, like marlda kangka, was phonologically, lexically and semantically distinct from Lardil, though its syntax and morphology seem to be analogous.McKnight 1999, 26 and Round 2011 Research into the language has proved controversial, since the Lardil community regards it as cultural property and no explicit permission was given to make Damin words public.
Phonology
Consonants The consonant inventory is as follows, with the practical orthography in parentheses. Peripheral Laminal Apical Bilabial Velar Palatal Dental Alveolar Retroflex Plosive p (b) k (k) tʲ (j) t̪ (th) t (d) ʈ (rd) Nasal m (m) ŋ (ng) ɲ (ny) n̪ (nh) n (n) ɳ (rn) Trill or flap r (rr) Lateral ʎ (ly) l (l) ɭ (rl) Approximant w (w) j (y) ɻ (r)
Lardil's consonant inventory is fairly typical with respect to Australian phonology; it does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced stops (such as b/p and g/k), and features a full set of stops and nasals at six places of articulation.Klokeid 1976, 16 The distinction between 'apical' and 'laminal' consonants lies in whether the tip (apex) of the tongue or its flattened blade makes contact with the place of articulation. Hale's 1997 practical orthography has 'k' for in order to disambiguate nasal+velar clusters (as in wanka 'arm'Leman 1999) from instances of the velar nasal phoneme (as in wangal ‘boomerang’) and to avoid suggesting -gemination in clusters (as in 'together'). The sounds represented by the digraphs 'nh' and 'ly' are not common in Lardil, but speakers perceive them as distinct, respectively, from and , and they do occur in some words (e.g. 'burnt ground', [title of a social subsection]).Hale 1997, 15, 16
Vowels + Vowel phonemes Front Central Back High i iː (ii) u uː (uu) Low æ æː (e ee) a aː (aa)
Lardil has eight phonemically distinct vowels, differentiated by short and long variants at each of four places of articulation.Hale 1997, 18 Phonemic vowel length is an important feature of many Australian languages; minimal pairs in Lardil with a vowel length distinction include waaka/waka 'crow'/'armpit' and thaldi/thaldii 'come here!’/'to stand up'. Long vowels are roughly twice as long as their short counterparts.
Stress Primary word stress in Lardil falls on the initial syllable, and primary phrase stress on the final word in the phrase.Klokeid 1976, 29 These stress rules have some exceptions, notably compounds containing tangka 'man' as a head noun modified by a demonstrative or another nominal; these expressions, and other compound phrases, have phrase-initial stress.Klokeid 1976, 29-30
Phonotactics
Common alternations (consonants) /r ~ d/, _# The distinction between /r/ and /d/ is lost word-finally, as in 'bird/snake', which may be realised as [jaɻpur] or [jaɻpud], depending on the instance.Hale 1997, 17 /d ~ n, j ~ ɲ/, _N /d/ and /j/ may assimilate to a following nasal, as in bidngen > binngen 'woman', or yuujmen > yuunymen 'oldtime'. /r ~ l/, #_ Word-initial /r/ is often expressed as /l/; as with /r ~ d/, either (e.g.) [læman] or [ræman] may be heard for 'mouth'.
Word-final phonology In addition to the common phonological alterations noted above, Lardil features some complex word-final phonology which is affected by both morphological and lexical factors.Round forthc. 2011
Augmentation acts on many monomoraic forms, producing, for example, /ʈæra/ 'thigh' from underlying *ter.
High vowels tend to undergo lowering at the end of bimoraic forms, as in *penki > penke 'lagoon'. In several historical locative/ergatives, lowering does not occur. It does occur in at least one long, u-final stem, and it coexists with the raising of certain stem-final /a/s.
In some trimoraic (or longer) forms, final, underlying short vowels undergo apocope (deletion), as in *jalulu > jalul 'fire'. Front-vowel apocope fails to occur in locatives, verbal negatives, many historical locative/ergatives, and a number of i-final stems such as 'a species of fish'. Back-vowel apocope also has lexically-governed exceptions.
Cluster reduction simplifies underlying word-final consonant clusters, as in *makark > makar 'anthill'. This process is "fed" in a sense by apocope, since some forms that would otherwise end in a short vowel arise as cluster-final after apocope (e.g. *jukarpa > *jukarp > jukar 'husband').
Non-apical truncation results in forms like ŋalu from underlying *ŋaluk, in which the underlying form would end in a non-apical consonant (i.e. one not produced with the tip of the tongue). This process is also fed by apocope, and seems to be lexically governed to an extent, since Lardil words can end in a laminal; compare kakawuɲ 'a species of bird', kulkic 'a species of shark'.
In addition to the dropping of non-apicals, a process of apicalization is at work, giving forms such as ŋawit from underlying laminal-final *ŋawic. It has been proposed that the process responsible for some of these forms is better described as laminalization (i.e. nawit is underlying and nawic occurs in inflected forms), but apicalization explains the variation between alveolar /t/ and dental /t̪/ (contrastive but both apical) in surface forms with an underlying non-apical, and does not predict/generate as many invalid forms as does the laminalization model.
Grammar
Parts of speech
Verbs The first major lexical class in Lardil is its verbs, which may be subclassified as intransitive, transitive, and intransitive- and transitive complemented.Hale 1997, 51 Verbs are both semantically and (as discussed below), morphologically distinct from nominals.Hale 1997
Nominals Nominals are a semantically and functionally diverse group of inflected items in Lardil. Some of them are 'canonical nouns' which refer to items, people or concepts; but many, the stative or attributive nominals, are semantically more like adjectives or other predicates. 'dry', 'weak', and other lexical items with adjectival meanings inflect exactly like other nominals. Determiners (e.g. 'that', 'that (distant) west'), are also morphological nominals, as are inherently temporal and spatial adverbs (e.g. 'long ago', 'in the west').
Pronouns Lardil has a rich pronominal system featuring an inclusive-exclusive plurality distinction, a dual number and generational harmony.Hale 1997, 53 and Klokeid 1976 108-110
A 'harmonic' relationship exists between individuals of alternate generations (e.g. grandparent/grandchild); a 'disharmonic' relation is between individuals of consecutive or odd-numbered generations (e.g. parent/child, great-grandparent/great-grandchild).McKnight 1999, 41-43
+Lardil pronouns (nominative)Hale 1997 and Klokeid 1976 Singular Dual Plural 1st person 2nd person 3st person
Uninflected elements Uninflected elements in Lardil include: Particles, such as 'completely gone' or 'thus, therefore'.Hale 1997, 52 Exclamations, such as (a guilty plea, roughly) and 'Gotcha!’ (said when something is offered and then snatched away). Preverbs, such as bilaa- 'tomorrow', and other coverbs. Enclitics, such as -kili, an optative suffix, as in Manme-kili barnjibarn 'dry+OPT hat' = "Let (your hat dry)".
Morphology
Verbal morphology Nine basic inflectional endings appear on verbs in Lardil:
The future marker (-thur) indicates anticipation/expectation of an event, or, when combined with the particle mara, either the proposed outcome of a hypothetical (If you had done X, I would have Y’ed) or an unachieved intention; it also marks embedded verbs in jussive clauses.Hale 1997, 24