Daly languages

Daly
Daly
(geographic)
Geographic; distribution	Daly River region, northern Australia
Linguistic classification	Geographic group of Australian language families.
Subdivisions	Malak-Malak; Wagaydyic; Eastern Daly; Western Daly; Southern Daly;
Glottolog	None
	The Daly languages (color), among the other non-Pama-Nyungan languages (grey)
North Daly West Daly	East Daly South Daly

The Daly languages are an areal group of four to five language families of Indigenous Australian languages (McConvell & Evans 1997). They are spoken within the vicinity of the Daly River in the Northern Territory.

Classification

In the lexicostatistic classification of O'Grady, Voegelin and Vogelin (1966), the Daly languages were put in four distinct families. Darrell Tryon (1968, 1974) combined these into a single family, with the exception of Murrinh-patha.

However, such methodologies do not account for loan words. Ian Green found that the languages could not be shown to be related by the comparative method, and so should be considered five independent families and language isolates.^[1] The features they do share also tend to be shared with neighboring languages outside the Daly group.

The established families are:

Malak-Malak
Wagaydyic
Western Daly (Maranunggu, Marrithiyel, Marri Ngarr)
Eastern Daly (Matngele and Kamu)
Murrinh-patha
Ngan’gityemerri

Murrinh-patha and Ngan’gityemerri are generally accepted as being related in a Southern Daly family. Malak-Malak and Wagaydyic have received less acceptance as Northern Daly.

References

^ Green, I. "The Genetic Status of Murrinh-patha" in Evans, N., ed. "The Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent’s most linguistically complex region". Studies in Language Change, 552. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2003.

McConvell, Patrick and Nicholas Evans. (eds.) 1997. Archaeology and Linguistics: Global Perspectives on Ancient Australia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press
Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
O'Grady, G. N.; Voegelin, C. F.; Voegelin, F. M. (1966). "Languages of the world: Indo-Pacific Fascicle 6". Anthropological Linguistics. 8 (2).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Tryon, D. T. (1968). "The Daly River languages: a survey". Papers in Australian Linguistics. 3: 21–36.
Tryon, D. T. (1974). Daly family languages, Australia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

[Green_2003-1] Green, I. "The Genetic Status of Murrinh-patha" in Evans, N., ed. "The Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent’s most linguistically complex region". Studies in Language Change, 552. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2003.

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