Pama-Nyungan origin hypothesis

[jal]

Interesting though short article about the relationship and origin of Pama-Nyungan languages.


JAL

[So Haleza Grise]

Cool article. Bit of a shame that their pronunciation guide for "Pama-Nyungan" was wrong though!

[Soap]

I would say thats a valid lay pronunciation, like e.g. the way my high school textbook taught us to say "ung GOH din deep EM" for Ngo Dinh Diem.

[Nortaneous]

how *is* 'ngo dinh diem' pronounced in english

[Sumelic]

I'd say /ˌŋoʊ ˌdɪn ˈdiː.əm/ but I've never actually heard the word pronounced.

[So Haleza Grise]

I would say thats a valid lay pronunciation, like e.g. the way my high school textbook taught us to say "ung GOH din deep EM" for Ngo Dinh Diem.

I just don't think initial <n>+<y> sequences are illegal in English - should be straightforward enough to put one in there without an epenthetic vowel, I would have thought (that in itself represents an anglicised pronunciation of <nyunga>!).

[Sumelic]

I would say thats a valid lay pronunciation, like e.g. the way my high school textbook taught us to say "ung GOH din deep EM" for Ngo Dinh Diem.

I just don't think initial <n>+<y> sequences are illegal in English - should be straightforward enough to put one in there without an epenthetic vowel, I would have thought (that in itself represents an anglicised pronunciation of <nyunga>!).

Even if we consider <Cy> clusters like this to be illegal, I don't think an epenthetic schwa is the normal way of fixing them. I'd expect (and prefer) people to syllabify the glide, like in the trisyllabic pronunciations of "Tokyo" and "Kyoto."

[jal]

Wikipedia calls the language "Noongar (/ˈnʊŋɑː/)", without palatalization (though it acknowledges spelling with Ny-).


JAL

[Travis B.]

What about words like news then? While much of North American English and some varieties of English English forbid initial /nj/, it is typical for most English varieties outside of NAE to allow initial /nj/ clusters, at least before /uː/...

[zompist]

This probably goes into deep philosophical questions, but is it that NAE forbids initial [nj], or that this is a completed sound change? I don't think NAE speakers have any great trouble with nyet, or Nyanza, or Pama-Nyungan.

FWIW Wiktionary thinks it's /ˌpʌməˈnjʊŋən/. It's not unheard-of for language family names to diverge from the language names they were built from. E.g. if we believe Wikipedia, Na-Dené is /nɑːdᵻˈneɪ/ /while Dené is /ˈdɛneɪ/!

[Travis B.]

This probably goes into deep philosophical questions, but is it that NAE forbids initial [nj], or that this is a completed sound change? I don't think NAE speakers have any great trouble with nyet, or Nyanza, or Pama-Nyungan.

Tis true. In my own dialect Cj clusters are more common than they apparently are in GA (e.g. I pronounce Tokyo with [kj]), and I have no problem with nyet or Nyanza or Pama-Nyungan myself.

[linguoboy]

Tis true. In my own dialect Cj clusters are more common than they apparently are in GA (e.g. I pronounce Tokyo with [kj]), and I have no problem with nyet or Nyanza or Pama-Nyungan myself.

Thanks to this, I just realised that I say "Tokyo" without /kj/ but "Kyoto" with, probably because I learned it later (after I'd discovered languages with these sorts of clusters and taught myself to produce them).

[Travis B.]

My thing is I tend to smooth CiV where /i/ is unstressed into CjV; likewise, I smooth CuV where /u/ is instressed into CwV. I do not know how common this is in NAE - I know certain words have smoothing in most NAE varieties, such as California and Pennsylvania, but certain words do not, like the aforementioned Tokyo and Kyoto.

[Zaarin]

Tis true. In my own dialect Cj clusters are more common than they apparently are in GA (e.g. I pronounce Tokyo with [kj]), and I have no problem with nyet or Nyanza or Pama-Nyungan myself.

Thanks to this, I just realised that I say "Tokyo" without /kj/ but "Kyoto" with, probably because I learned it later (after I'd discovered languages with these sorts of clusters and taught myself to produce them).

Same here but for different (but similar) reasons. I pronounce "Tokyo" as /ˈtʰoʊ.kʰi.ˌoʊ/ out of habit; I've been familiar with the existence of Tokyo since I was a child. On the other hand, I was older when I learned about "Kyoto" and pronounce it as /ˈkjoʊ.ɾoʊ/--and somehow CjV.C... comes more naturally to me than Ci.V.C..., even though my dialect is standard yod-dropping GenAm. (Actually, I was recently watching a livestream for Civilization VI, and I was actually taken a little off guard when Ed Beach pronounced "Kyoto" as /kʰi.ˈoʊ.tʰoʊ/--I'd never heard that pronunciation before [in fact, I'm not sure I'd ever heard "Kyoto" pronounced before...].)

[Travis B.]

To me CiV pronunciations frequently sound like too much stress is being given to the /i/ - especially since all vowels before another vowel IMD are long - except in certain words like India where I always have /i/ rather than /j/.

[vokzhen]

Tis true. In my own dialect Cj clusters are more common than they apparently are in GA (e.g. I pronounce Tokyo with [kj]), and I have no problem with nyet or Nyanza or Pama-Nyungan myself.

Thanks to this, I just realised that I say "Tokyo" without /kj/ but "Kyoto" with, probably because I learned it later (after I'd discovered languages with these sorts of clusters and taught myself to produce them).

Same here but for different (but similar) reasons. I pronounce "Tokyo" as /ˈtʰoʊ.kʰi.ˌoʊ/ out of habit; I've been familiar with the existence of Tokyo since I was a child. On the other hand, I was older when I learned about "Kyoto" and pronounce it as /ˈkjoʊ.ɾoʊ/--and somehow CjV.C... comes more naturally to me than Ci.V.C..., even though my dialect is standard yod-dropping GenAm. (Actually, I was recently watching a livestream for Civilization VI, and I was actually taken a little off guard when Ed Beach pronounced "Kyoto" as /kʰi.ˈoʊ.tʰoʊ/--I'd never heard that pronunciation before [in fact, I'm not sure I'd ever heard "Kyoto" pronounced before...].)

I wonder if this has to do with reduction of immediately-pretonic syllables, like how <police> is almost one syllable [pʰlis] versus <please> [pl̥i:z].

[Zaarin]

Tis true. In my own dialect Cj clusters are more common than they apparently are in GA (e.g. I pronounce Tokyo with [kj]), and I have no problem with nyet or Nyanza or Pama-Nyungan myself.

Thanks to this, I just realised that I say "Tokyo" without /kj/ but "Kyoto" with, probably because I learned it later (after I'd discovered languages with these sorts of clusters and taught myself to produce them).

Same here but for different (but similar) reasons. I pronounce "Tokyo" as /ˈtʰoʊ.kʰi.ˌoʊ/ out of habit; I've been familiar with the existence of Tokyo since I was a child. On the other hand, I was older when I learned about "Kyoto" and pronounce it as /ˈkjoʊ.ɾoʊ/--and somehow CjV.C... comes more naturally to me than Ci.V.C..., even though my dialect is standard yod-dropping GenAm. (Actually, I was recently watching a livestream for Civilization VI, and I was actually taken a little off guard when Ed Beach pronounced "Kyoto" as /kʰi.ˈoʊ.tʰoʊ/--I'd never heard that pronunciation before [in fact, I'm not sure I'd ever heard "Kyoto" pronounced before...].)

I wonder if this has to do with reduction of immediately-pretonic syllables, like how <police> is almost one syllable [pʰlis] versus <please> [pl̥i:z].

Very possible.

[Soap]

Well, American English has plenty of words with initial /kj/, such as "cute", "cube", "cuneiform", etc. But none with initial /tj/, because yod=dropping only happened after coronals. Granted, that /kj/ in itself only appears before /u/, but Im not sure that matters. I remember hearing a news reporter say "kə'tu.šə" for Katyusha on TV once and being surprised.

[WeepingElf]

To get back to the topic: There appears to have been a genetic influx to Australia from India about 4000 years ago, apparently coinciding with some cultural innovations and the introduction of the dingo. This brought me to the idea that Pama-Nyungan could be related to Dravidian, which has strikingly similar consonant phonologies. I don't know how much sense that makes, though.

[Vijay]

Pama-Nyungan could be related to Dravidian

If I had a nickel for every time people tried to relate some language family to my own beloved heritage language...

[Zaarin]

Pama-Nyungan could be related to Dravidian

If I had a nickel for every time people tried to relate some language family to my own beloved heritage language...

Which do you prefer: Pama-Nyungan, Basque, Elamite, or Dene-Yeniseian? :p

[Soap]

I think a more likely theory is that Pama-Nyungan indeed originated in India, but it was a substrate of Dravidian rather than a relative. I get the impression Dravidian and PN are nothing alike in terms of grammar, though I dont know much about either of them. Also, 4000 years ago really isn't that long of a time span. Even if you assume that Australia was settled only by relatives of Dravidians rather than the Dravidians themselves ... i.e. India was diverse even then, and the ones who settled Australia were not the ones who later became the majority in India ... we should at least see a lot of vocabulary in common between the reconstructed proto-Dravidian and the reconstructed proto-Pama-Nyungan.

I think it is generally agreed that the Dravidians replaced a "paleo-Vedda" population when they settled southern India before being at least partly displaced themselves by the invading Indo-Aryans. This population may have been the ones that settled Australia. But hopefully we can find out more information by looking at more than just languages, since the languages of the paleo-Vedda people are unknown. If dingos came from India, what happened to them? Are there still similar dog breeds today, and if so, do we know what culture is associated with them?

Also, this previous thread on the ZBB has more information: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=39655

[jal]

If dingos came from India, what happened to them? Are there still similar dog breeds today

The article says (emphasis mine) "(...) and the first appearance in the fossil record of the dingo, which most closely resembles Indian dogs."


JAL

[WeepingElf]

I think a more likely theory is that Pama-Nyungan indeed originated in India, but it was a substrate of Dravidian rather than a relative. I get the impression Dravidian and PN are nothing alike in terms of grammar, though I dont know much about either of them.

Indeed, there are hardly any resemblances between PN and Dravidian besides the consonant inventory. Dravidian languages have more vowels and a very different morphosyntax (I can't think of a Dravidian language that is in some way ergative, for instance).

Do the non-Pama-Nyungan Australian languages have similar phonologies, or are they vastly different?

Also, 4000 years ago really isn't that long of a time span. Even if you assume that Australia was settled only by relatives of Dravidians rather than the Dravidians themselves ... i.e. India was diverse even then, and the ones who settled Australia were not the ones who later became the majority in India ... we should at least see a lot of vocabulary in common between the reconstructed proto-Dravidian and the reconstructed proto-Pama-Nyungan.

Yep. If the two families had a common ancestor in India about 4000 or 5000 years ago, the resemblances would be readily apparent and the relationship firmly established by now. It isn't.

I think it is generally agreed that the Dravidians replaced a "paleo-Vedda" population when they settled southern India before being at least partly displaced themselves by the invading Indo-Aryans. This population may have been the ones that settled Australia. But hopefully we can find out more information by looking at more than just languages, since the languages of the paleo-Vedda people are unknown.

That may have been the case. There could have been an areal or substratal relationship between Dravidian and the mysterious Indian ancestor of Pama-Nyungan.

If dingos came from India, what happened to them? Are there still similar dog breeds today, and if so, do we know what culture is associated with them?

Also, this previous thread on the ZBB has more information: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=39655

Yes.

[Salmoneus]

To get back to the topic: There appears to have been a genetic influx to Australia from India about 4000 years ago, apparently coinciding with some cultural innovations and the introduction of the dingo. This brought me to the idea that Pama-Nyungan could be related to Dravidian, which has strikingly similar consonant phonologies. I don't know how much sense that makes, though.

Three things should be noted:
- the Indian genes idea is apparently still controversial. Your link is from years ago. More recent papers like this appear to refute those earlier findings
- the dingo is now believed to have been introduced from east asia, rather than inda - presumably by Austronesians
- at the critical time, there was contact with Austronesians, and a massive climate change event with the end of a millennium-long drought. This could by itself explain technological advances and the expansion of a single group (pioneers from the wet north would in this model expand onto and across the deserts as they became habitable).