Garawa language

Not to be confused with Jarawa language.

Garawa
Spoken in	Northern Territory and Queensland, Australia
Extinct	Late 20th century.
Language family	Macro-Pama–Nyungan Greater Pama–Nyungan Garawa
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gbc – Macrolanguage Individual codes: wrk – Garrwa wny – Wanyi

Garawa (or Garrwa, Gaarwa, Karawa, Leearrawa) is a recently extinct Australian Aboriginal language of northern Australia.

Classification

Garawa may be related to the Pama–Nyungan languages. A putative dialect, Wanji or Waanyi, is divergent enough to be considered a separate language. Dixon (2002) says that it should be straightforward to reconstruct proto-Garawa–Wanji and demonstrate that it is a valid language family.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Low	a

Consonants

	Peripheral			Laminal	Apical
	Bilabial	Velar	Palato- velar	Palatal	Alveolar	Retroflex
Stop	p	k	k̟	c	t	ʈ
Nasal	m	ŋ	ŋ̟	ɲ	n	ɳ
Lateral				ʎ	l	ɭ
Rhotic					r	ɻ
Semivowel	w			j

References

• Belfrage, H. (1992). Aspects of verb and pronoun morphology, semantics and syntax in Garrwa. BA honours sub-thesis. University of Melbourne. 
• Furby, Christine E. (1972). "The pronominal system of Garawa". Oceanic Linguistics (University of Hawai'i Press) 11 (1): 1–31. doi:10.2307/3622731. JSTOR 3622731. 
• Furby, Edward S.; Furby, Christine E. (1977). A preliminary analysis of Garawa phrases and clauses. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 

External links

• Garawa: Australian Aboriginal Language Data from the UQ Flint Archive
• Ethnologue report for language code:gbc