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Macro-Pama-Nyungan Languages

Macro-Pama-Nyungan
Gunwinyguan-Tangkic-Karrwan (Garrwan)-Pama-Nyungan
(Widely debated)
Geographic distribution	Australia
Ethnicity	Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
Linguistic classification	Macro-Pama-Nyungan Macro-Pama-Nyungan
Proto-language	Proto-Macro-Pama-Nyungan
Subdivisions	Gunwinyguan Tangkic Karrwan (Garrwan) Pama-Nyungan
Language codes
Notes	Legitimacy of Macro-Pama-Nyungan language family classification speculated

Macro-Pama-Nyungan is an umbrella term used to refer to a proposed Indigenous Australian language family. It was coined by the Australian linguist Nicholas Evans in his 1996 book ‘Archaeology and linguistics: Aboriginal Australia in global perspective’, co-authored by Patrick McConvell. The term arose from Evans’ theory suggesting that two of the largest Indigenous Australian language families share a common origin, and should therefore be classified as a singular language family under ‘Macro-Pama-Nyungan’.

The two main families that Evans refers to are the Macro-Gunwinyguanfamily from Northern Australia, and the most widespread Pama–Nyungan family family that spans across mainland and Southern Australia. The different theories regarding Australian linguistic prehistory and Australian language family evolution are widely debated, therefore Macro-Pama-Nyungan is an inconclusive language family classification that is often dissented by linguists in the Aboriginal Australian language community.

As of May 2020, the legitimacy of the Macro-Pama-Nyungan classification and supporting theories remain open to question since language reconstruction of Indigenous Australian language families is in its early stages.

Macro-Pama-Nyungan term and origins

Proto-Macro-Pama-Nyungan language tree diagram showing the connection between language families proposed by Nicholas Evans' (2002) in "Australian Languages Reconsidered: A Review of Dixon".

The term ‘Macro-Pama-Nyungan’, or otherwise interchangeably referred to as ‘Gunwinyguan-Tangkic-Karrwan (Garrwan)-Pama-Nyungan’, was first coined in the 1997 book ‘Archaeology and linguistics: Aboriginal Australia in global perspective’, by the Australian linguist Nicholas Evans (linguist), co-authored by Patrick McConvell. It refers to a proposed classification of a large Indigenous Australian language family sharing a common linguistic origin that geographically spread across the continent from Arnhem Land in Northern Australia to Southwestern Australia.

Evans explores this claim of a higher-level ‘Macro-Pama-Nyungan’ Indigenous Australian language family classification in several of his works. His most notable works are his book published in 1997 named ‘The Cradle of the Pama-Nyungans: Archaeological and Linguistic Speculations”, co-authored by Rhys Jones, and the book “The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent's most linguistically complex region” published in 2003 and edited by Evans. In his works, Evans uses the Macro-Pama-Nyungan term to propose that the majority of Indigenous languages across Australia have a common origin and share an inheritance with a common linguistic ancestor.

According to Evans, the Macro-Pama-Nyungan language family is made up of the Gunwinyguan languages from Arnhem Land in Northern Australia, the Tangkic languages from Mornington Island in the Wellesley Islands of Queensland, the Garrwan (or Karrwan) languages from Queensland and the Northern Territory, and the larger Pama–Nyungan language family that geographically covers approximately 90% of the Australian continent. Broken down, the grouping of the Gunwinyguan, Tangkic and Garrwan language families from northern Australia forms the ‘macro’ extension of Pama-Nyungan language family to form the Macro-Pama-Nyungan term. The larger Pama–Nyungan family includes around 300 Aboriginal languages, mainly located across southern parts of Australia.

Prior to this, the American linguist Kenneth L. Hale establishes the Pama–Nyungan language family classification in the year 1964 in his work “Classification of Northern Paman Languages”. He concludes that the Pama–Nyungan language family is “one relatively closely interrelated family [that] had spread and proliferated over most of the continent, while approximately a dozen other families were concentrated along the North coast”. In the book edited by Evans, “The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent's most linguistically complex region”, Evans refers to Hale's Pama–Nyungan classification, and claims that out of the dozen other families concentrated along Northern Australia, Gunwinyguan, Tangkic and Garrwan are three non-Pama-Nyungan language families that do in fact have a close relation to the Pama–Nyungan language family, and should therefore be classified under one large Macro-Pama Nyungan language family.

Evans uses the Pama–Nyungan offshoot model from the article written by Geoffrey O'Grady, “Preliminaries to a proto Nuclear Pama-Nyungan stem list” to propose that Pama–Nyungan is an offshoot language family sharing immediate ancestry with these three non-Pama-Nyungan groups. Evans identifies the Garrwan language as a close sister of the Pama–Nyungan languages, due to the morphological and phonological elements found in the Garrwan language that link Pama–Nyungan languages to the stages when the Proto-Pama–Nyungan languages split from its predecessors. Evans also refers to O'Grady’s grouping of the Gunwinyguan and Tangkic languages that adjoin them to the Pama–Nyungan language group under the term 'nuclear Pama–Nyungan', in order to make the classification of a higher-level Macro-Pama-Nyungan language family.

Considering that the vast majority of Australian Aboriginal languages have become extinct with no living speakers and that many of the remaining Australian Aboriginal languages are also endangered to some degree, many linguists acknowledge that language family classification is an inconclusive debate that needs further exploration and research since Indigenous Australian language family reconstructions are in their early stages, and the legitimacy of chosen reconstruction methods is widely debated.

Linguistic Expansion Theories

With limited reconstruction work having been done on Pama–Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan language families and their subgroups, further study of the linguistic stratigraphy of loanwords is needed to provide a foundation for hypotheses to be made about the sociocultural and environmental prehistory of Indigenous Australia.

There is considerable debate over which of the linguistic elements found across language groups are attributed to a shared inheritance from a common ancestor, and which elements are attributed to more recent contact between linguistic groups. These two points form two theories surrounding the extent to which Pama–Nyungan languages are proposed to have spread across Australia, leading to the classification and declassification debate over the possibility of a legitimate Macro-Pama-Nyungan language family.

The first theory suggests that the size and spread of the Pama–Nyungan language family is attributed to demic diffusion resulting from climatic changes, causing people to seek refuge in more inhabitable areas. The timing of Pama–Nyungan language family expansion as the largest hunter-gatherer language family in the world has possible origins in the Gulf Plains region, with four possible timings for demic diffusion put forth. The first is upon initial colonisation of Australia, the second as late Pleistocene, the third as early Holocene, and the fourth as after the Last Glacial Maximum.

The second theory suggests that social and technological advantages and the intensification and spread of agricultural techniques facilitated the large-scale replacement of non-Pama-Nyungan languages mid-Holocene originating from the Gulf Plains region. Linguists Bouckaert, Bowern, and Atkinson state that ‘Pama-Nyungan languages were carried as a part of an expanding package of cultural innovations that probably facilitated the absorption and assimilation of existing hunter-gatherer groups’ that has possible association with the introduction of the dingo, new lithic technologies and social institutions.

According to Bouckaert, Bowern and Atkinson, the earliest three subgroups to break off from the Pama–Nyungan language family were the Western branch, the Southern group and the Tangkic branch. These groups collectively expand across South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Victoria, the majority of New South Wales and the Southeast Queensland coast. Bouckaert, Bowern and Atkinson acknowledge the existence of patterns consistent with language group settlement along watercourses that could indicate rivers and coastline areas as possible launching points for group and language fission, however this is not supported by the migration model put forth in “The origin and expansion of Pama-Nyungan languages across Australia.”

Language Family Classification

Due to extinction of many Indigenous Australian languages, the limited access to linguistic evidence has led to the use of geographic, genetic, archaeological and linguistic methods to form language family reconstructions and associations. The legitimacy of these methods is questioned amongst linguists and has formed a widespread debate on the classification and declassification of certain Indigenous Australian language families and their subgroups.

Whether the three non-Pama-Nyungan language families Gunwinyguan, Tangkic and Garrwan can be classified as Macro-Pama-Nyungan as proposed by Evans is questioned due to the legitimacy of their relational strength to the Pama–Nyungan language family. Evans’ classification of the Gunwinyguan family is unclear due to the use of unestablished, non-traditional linguistic reconstruction methods. Linguist Rebecca Green argues that the shared irregularities in verb morphology indicate that Gunwinyguan is in fact part of the Macro-Pama-Nyungan family, and another linguist Harvey refers to Evans’ position on grammatical grounds that ‘these languages have been in and out of Pama-Nyungan throughout the history of classification’, as justification for the Macro-Pama-Nyungan classification.

Evans proposes that Gunwinyguan could be a sister to the Macro-Pama-Nyungan family containing Tangkic, Garrwan and core Pama–Nyungan. Of these three subgroups, Tangkic is considered one of the earliest branches of the Greater-Pama-Nyungan language family, and Bowern acknowledges that some linguists suggest Tangkic has close relations to the Pama–Nyungan Yolŋu languages. McConvell and Bowern address that Evans uses the linguistic geography hypothesis put forward by Hale that the Pama–Nyungan family originates from the base of the Gulf of Carpentaria, placing it in close proximity to the Garrwan and Tangkic families.

Macro-Pama-Nyungan Dissent

The Macro-Pama-Nyungan claim is an inconclusive language family classification, yet Aboriginal Australian linguists acknowledge the possible legitimacy of the claim. Due to the lack of evidence and questionable methods used to make linguistic reconstruction and associations between language families and their subgroups, the Macro-Pama-Nyungan claim is widely dissented among linguists in the Aboriginal Australian language community.

In “Historical linguistics in Australia: trees, networks and their implications" Bowern states that the Macro-Pama-Nyungan language tree model used by Evans ‘is based on very little evidence’ due to the fact that ‘a single shared innovation defines each of these nodes’. Bouckaert, Bowern and Atkinson state that there are several non-Pama-Nyungan groups that separate and disprove the proposed relationship between the non-Pama-Nyungan Garrwan family and the Pama–Nyungan Yolŋu family that has been put forth in the Aboriginal Australian language community.

Bowern argues that Gunwinyguan family contains a number of Arnhem Land languages that are not considered close to be related to the Pama–Nyungan language family, disputing Gunwinyguan, Tangkic and Garrwan as classifiable under the Macro-Pama-Nyungan family. In regard to Evans’ claims that Gunwinyguan could possibly be a sister to the Macro-Pama-Nyungan family, McConvell and Bowern both note that Gunwinyguan, cannot simultaneously be classed as both a sister to the Macro-Pama-Nyungan family and as a part of the Arnhem family subgroup.

References

• Bouckaert, Remco, Bowern, Claire and Atkinson, Quentin. "The origin and expansion of Pama–Nyungan languages across Australia" (PDF). Nature Ecology & Evolution. 2(4): 741–749. (2018).

• Bowern, Claire. "Historical linguistics in Australia: trees, networks and their implications". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 365(1559): 3845–3854. (2010)

• Evans, Nicholas. "Australian Languages Reconsidered: A Review of Dixon (2002)". Oceanic Linguistics. 44(1): 242–286. (2005).

• Evans, Nicholas. “The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent's most linguistically complex region”. Canberra, Australia: Pacific Linguistics, 2003. ISBN 0 85883 538 X.

• Evans, Nicholas & Jones, Rhys. 'The cradle of the Pama-Nyungans: archaeological and linguistic speculations”. Archaeology and Linguistics: Aboriginal Australia in Global Perspective. 385-417, 423-453. (1997)

• Evans, Nicholas & McConvell, Patrick. “Archaeology and linguistics: Aboriginal Australia in global perspective”. Melbourne; New York: Oxford University Press Australia, 1996. 385–417. ISBN 0 19 553728 9.

• Frawley, William. “International encyclopedia of linguistics” Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

• Gaby, Alice. "Teaching & Learning Guide for: Rebuilding Australia's Linguistic Profile – Recent Developments in Research on Australian Aboriginal Languages". Wiley Online Library. Last modified September 10, 2009. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00162.x
• Green, Rebecca. “Proto Maningrida within Proto Arnhem: evidence from verbal inflectional suffixes. In the Non-Pama-Nyungan languages of Northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent’s most linguistically complex region”.

• Hale, Kenneth L. "Classification of Northern Paman Languages, Cape York Peninsula, Australia; A Research Report". Oceanic Linguistics. 3: 2, 248–264. (1964).
• Harvey, Mark. "Proto Mirndi". Pacific Linguistics. Canberra, 2008.

• McConvell, Patrick. (1990). "The Linguistic Prehistory Of Australia: Opportunities For Dialogue With Archaeology". Australian Archaeology. 31(1): 3–27. (1990).

• McConvell, Patrick. and Bowern Claire. "The Prehistory of Internal Relationships of Australian Languages". Language and Linguistics Compass. 5(1): 19–32. (2011).

• O'Grady, Geoffrey. "Preliminaries to a Proto Nuclear Pama-Nyungan stem list". In: Stephen A. Wurm (ed.), Australian Linguistic Studies (Pacific Linguistic C-54), Canberra, Australian National University, 1979.

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