| Language name: | MURINHPATHA |
| UPSID number: | 8349 |
| Alternate name(s): | |
| Classification: | Australian, Ungrouped |
| This language has | 25 segments |
| Its Frequency index is | 0.434057650 (average percentage of segments; 0.1: many very rare segments; 0.39: average; 0.7: many common segments) |
| The language has these sounds: | p tD t t. k b dD d d. g m nD n n. N r.[ r l l. j w i E a U |
| Comment: | Murinhpatha is still spoken by a substantial community mainly at Wadeye (Port Keats), Northern Territory, Australia. Street and Mollinjin's articulatory diagrams show that the dental series is interdental before non-front vowels /a,U/ but laminal post-alveolar (with tongue tip behind the lower teeth) before front vowels. This distribution seems to argue for this series being underlying dental, rather than being (lamino-)palatal as they suggest. The palatal variant is thus due to a front vowel position. However, this does not account for palatal variants occurring in syllable-final position. Retroflex consonants do not occur word-initially. /j/ occurs word-finally after vowels other than /i/. Primary stress is normally on the first syllable, with alternating stresses on subsequent syllables. |
| Source(s): | Street, C.S. and G.P. Mollinjin. 1981. "The phonology of Murinbata". Work Papers of SIL-AAB, Series A, No. 5: 183-244. (Summer Institute of Linguistics, Australian Aborigines Branch, Darwin). |