Bininj Gun-wok

About the language and its speakers

The language Evans (2003) refers to as "Bininj Gun-wok" has been most widely referred to in the literature as Kunwinjku (Gunwinggu) or Mayali. According to Evans, there are perhaps two thousand fluent speakers of Bininj Gun-wok in the area roughly bounded by the Stuart Highway to the west, the Arafura Sea to the north, the Goyder River to the east and the Roper River to the south. Evans identifies six dialects of Bininj Gun-wok Kunwinjku, Kuninjku, Gun-djeihmi, Manyallaluk Mayali, Gundedjnjenghmi and two varieties of Kune most commonly known as Kune Dulerayek and Kune Narayek." based on the fact that

(a) phonology, grammar and lexicon of these dialects share significant clusterings of properties

(b) these distinctions are recognised, at least by the relevant group and its neighbours, by the use of distinct language names.

Bininj Gun-wok belongs to the Gunwinyguan family of Pama–Nyungan languages.

Phonology

Bininj Gun-wok can be classified as a phonologically typical Australian languages as it

a) Has paired stop and nasal phonemes at each point of articulation (except the glottal)

b) Lacks a fricative

c) Has a relatively rich inventory of liquids (two rhotics and two laterals)

d) Has a strict one-consonant onset for syllables.

It is typical of the languages of central Arnhem Land and contrasts with most other Australian languages, in having a phonemic glottal stop, two stop series (short and long), five vowels without a length contrast, relatively complex consonant clusters in codas and no essential distinction between word and syllable phonotactics.

Phoneme inventory

Consonant inventory

	Peripheral-Bilabial	Peripheral-Velar	Apico-Alveolar	Apico-retroflex	Lamino-palatal	Glottal
Short stop	p	k	t	ʈ	ƫ	ʔ
Long stop	pː	kː	tː	ʈː	ƫː
Nasal	m	ŋ	n	ɳ	ɲ
Lateral			l	ɭ
Rhotics			ɹ	r
Semi vowels	w				y

• Notes on the consonant inventory
• Evans (2003) uses the symbol "r" for the apico-alveolar rhotic and the symbol "ɹ" for the apico-retroflex rhotic. As this is potentially confusing, I have used the standard IPA symbols in the chart above according to the description of place and manner of articulation provided by Evans(2003).
• Moreover, Evans (2003) uses exactly the same symbol for the apico-alveolar short stop and apico-alveolar retroflex stop. To avoid confusion I have used the standard IPA symbol "ʈ" for the apico-retroflex short stop.

Vowel inventory

	Front	Central	Zurück
Hoch	i		u
Mid	e		o
Niedrig		a