The Morrobalama (Umbuygamu) language of Cape York Peninsula, Australia

Abstract

This partial-Masters thesis describes Morrobalama, a highly endangered Australian Aboriginal language belonging to the Pama-Nyungan family. Originally spoken in Princess Charlotte’s Bay on the eastern coast of Cape York, its speakers were forcibly displaced from the region in the early 1960s and made to live with eight other tribes in a region 500 miles further north. Although Morrobalama is a socially marginalized language in Australia, it is important linguistically because it displays atypical features. Most notable is its phonemic inventory which is unusually large and includes sounds which are rare in Australian Aboriginal languages, e.g. fricatives, prestopped nasals, voicing contrasts, and a system of five vowels that contrast in length. Morrobalama’s morphology is not dissimilar from other Pama-Nyungan languages: it displays pronominal cross-referencing and a split-ergative system (nouns operate in an absolutive/ergative paradigm, while pronouns are nominative/accusative). Pronouns have three numbers – singular, dual, and plural – and distinguish inclusive and exclusive in first-person dual and plural. They can occur both independently or bound Show more