Nyungar (Nyunga)
- Language Family
- Pama-Nyungan
- Subgroup
- —
- Area
- —
Summary
The order of CV in some forms in the Northern dialect is the reverse of that in the Southern dialect.
Type(s) of metathesis
| Type | Status | Optionality | Position | Location | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a. CV | Diachronic | Obligatory | Adjacent | Root-final |
Case types and qualities
-
- CV
-
- C:
- Voiceless bilabial stop
- C:
- Voiceless alveolar stop
- C:
- Voiceless velar stop
- C:
- Alveolar nasal
- C:
- Palatal glide
- C:
- Rhotic
- V:
- High front unrounded
- V:
- High back rounded
- V:
- Low front unrounded
Examples
Comparing Northern and Southern dialect, CV metathesis is attested.
| Northern | Southern | |
|---|---|---|
| janka | janak | 'devil' |
| nurrku | nurruk | 'egg' |
Conditions
No conditions could be found
Motivations
a. Dench (1990): Nyungar words which look like having undergone a metathesis process are the result of two phonological processes, the general loss of final vowels and an epenthetic insertion resyllabifying a non-permissable syllable coda.
b. Hume (1995): In languages displaying CV metathesis, the avoidance of vowels in weak metrical positions, which can be formalized as the constraint *L (avoid a non-branching rhyme in a weak metrical position), is consistently attested. The crucial and different rankings of *L and No Final Coda account for metathesis alternation in the language. That is, in Northern dialect No Coda dominates *L while the reverse is true in Southern dialect.
b. Hume (1995): In languages displaying CV metathesis, the avoidance of vowels in weak metrical positions, which can be formalized as the constraint *L (avoid a non-branching rhyme in a weak metrical position), is consistently attested. The crucial and different rankings of *L and No Final Coda account for metathesis alternation in the language. That is, in Northern dialect No Coda dominates *L while the reverse is true in Southern dialect.
Symbols
Comments
Bibliography
- Dench, Alan. 1990. An Autosegmental Account of Nyungar Metathesis. ms. UWA.
- Hume, Elizabeth. 1995. Beyond linear order: Prosodic constraints and C/V metathesis. Proceedings of FLSM 6. Indiana Linguistics Club.