Pitjantjatjara dialect

Pitjantjatjara (/pɪtʃəntʃəˈtʃɑːrə/;[3] Pitjantjatjara: [ˈpɪɟanɟaɟaɾa] or [ˈpɪɟanɟaɾa])[4] is a dialect of the Western Desert language traditionally spoken by the Pitjantjatjara people of Central Australia. It is mutually intelligible with other varieties of the Western Desert language, and is particularly closely related to the Yankunytjatjara dialect. The names for the two groups are based on their respective words for 'come/go.'[5]

Pitjantjatjara
Native toAustralia
RegionNorthwest South Australia, Pitjantjatjara freehold lands, Yalata; southwest corner, Northern Territory; also in Western Australia
EthnicityPitjantjatjara
Native speakers
3,458 (2021 census)[1]
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3pjt
Glottologpitj1243
AIATSIS[2]C6
ELPPitjantjatjara
"No camping" sign in English and Pitjantjatjara, Adelaide

Pitjantjatjara is a relatively healthy Aboriginal language, with children learning it. It is taught in some Aboriginal schools. The literacy rate for first language speakers is 50–70%; and is 10–15% for second-language learners. There is a Pitjantjatjara dictionary, and the New Testament of the Bible has been translated into the language, a project started at the Ernabella Mission in the early 1940s and completed in 2002. Work continues on the Old Testament.

Phonology and orthography

There are slightly different standardised spellings used in the Northern Territory and Western Australia compared to South Australia, for example with the first two writing ⟨w⟩ between ⟨a⟩ and ⟨u⟩ combinations and a ⟨y⟩ between ⟨a⟩ and ⟨i⟩, which SA does not use.

Pitjantjatjara has the following consonant inventory, orthography shown in brackets:[6]

Bilabial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar
Plosive p~b ⟨p⟩ t~d ⟨t⟩ ʈ~ɖ ⟨ṯ⟩ c~ɟ ⟨tj⟩ k~ɡ ⟨k⟩
Nasal m ⟨m⟩ n ⟨n⟩ ɳ ⟨ṉ⟩ ɲ ⟨ny⟩ ŋ ⟨ng⟩
Lateral l ⟨l⟩ ɭ ⟨ḻ⟩ ʎ ⟨ly⟩
Rhotic r~ɾ ⟨r⟩ ɻ ⟨ṟ⟩[7]
Approximant j ⟨y⟩ w ⟨w⟩

Pitjantjatjara has three vowels:[8]

Front Central Back
Close ɪ ⟨i⟩   ɪː ⟨ii⟩ ʊ ⟨u⟩   ʊː ⟨uu⟩
Open ɐ ⟨a⟩   ɐː ⟨aa⟩

Pitjantjatjara vowels have a length contrast, indicated by writing them doubled. A colon ⟨:⟩ used to be sometimes used to indicate long vowels: ⟨a:⟩, ⟨i:⟩, ⟨u:⟩.

Pitjantjatjara orthography includes the following underlined letters, which can be either ordinary letters with underline formatting, or Unicode characters which include a line below:

Uppercase Lowercase
U+1E3A Ḻ U+1E3B ḻ
U+1E48 Ṉ U+1E49 ṉ
U+1E5E Ṟ U+1E5F ṟ
U+1E6E Ṯ U+1E6F ṯ

The underline represents that the consonant in question is retroflex, rather than alveolar.

The only word in Pitjantjatjara that uses at least one letter absent from the Pitjantjatjara alphabet is the word Jesu ("Jesus"),[9] which uses the letter "s" which is not present in the Pitjantjatjara alphabet. Furthermore, the letter "j" is only present in the digraph "tj".

Grammar

Some features distinctive to the Pitjantjatjara dialect, as opposed to other Western Desert Language dialects, include -pa endings to words that simply end in a consonant in other dialects (this is reflective of a general aversion in Pitjantjatjara to words ending with a consonant), and a reluctance to have y at the beginning of words.

Nouns and noun phrases

Pitjantjatjara uses case marking to show the role of nouns within the clause as subject, object, location, etc. Pitjantjatjara is a language with split ergativity, since its nouns and pronouns show different case marking patterns.[10]

Consider the following example, where the subject of a transitive verb is marked with the ergative case and the object with the absolutive case:[11]

Minyma-ngku

woman.ERG

tjitji

child.ABS

nya-ngu.

see.PAST

Minyma-ngku tjitji nya-ngu.

woman.ERG child.ABS see.PAST

'The woman saw the child.'

It can be contrasted with the following sentence with an intransitive verb, where the subject takes the absolutive case:

Tjitji

child.ABS

a-nu.

go.PAST

Tjitji a-nu.

child.ABS go.PAST

'The child went.'

In contrast to the ergative-absolutive pattern that applies to nouns, pronouns show a nominative-accusative pattern. Consider the following examples, with pronoun subjects:[12]

Ngayu-lu

I.NOM

tjitji

child.ABS

nya-ngu.

see.PAST

Ngayu-lu tjitji nya-ngu.

I.NOM child.ABS see.PAST

'I saw the child.'

Ngayu-lu

I.NOM

a-nu.

go.PAST

Ngayu-lu a-nu.

I.NOM go.PAST

'I went.'

Verbs and verb phrases

Pitjantjatjara verbs inflect for tense. Pitjantjatjara has four different classes of verbs, each of which takes slightly different endings (the classes are named according to their imperative suffixes): ∅-class verbs, la-class verbs, wa-class verbs, and ra-class verbs. See page on grammatical conjugation for examples.

Derivational morphology

It also has systematic ways of changing words from one part of speech to another: making nouns from verbs, and vice versa. However, words formed may have slightly different meanings that cannot be guessed from the pattern alone.

History since European settlement

The Ernabella Mission was established by Charles Duguid and the Presbyterian Church of Australia in 1937 at the location now known as Pukatja, supported by the South Australian government. The Mission aimed to keep the language and culture alive, with the missionaries learning the language themselves and teaching it in the school as well as delivering sermons in it. This meant that the language became a written language for the first time, and the people became literate in their own language before English.[13][14]

Bible translations

The first draft of the New Testament's Gospel of Mark, Tjukurpa Palja Markaku, was completed in 1945 by Reverend Bob Love and Ronald Trudinger at the Mission, and was published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1949.[15] Work continued over the next 20 years, with publication of a shorter New Testament in 1969 by the Bible Society Australia. Pitjantjatjara Bible Translation Project, incorporated in 1981, completed a new translation of the New Testament and about 15% of the Old Testament, first published in 2002. In 2011 a new project to translate the rest of the OT was initiated, as of 2019 working on various OT books.[16] 21st-century Bible Society missionary and local teacher since 1973, Paul Eckert, has worked with elders on the project for many years.[15] The Book of Daniel was published in 2015, and the Pitjantjatjara version of the New Testament is available online.[16]

In 2017 members of the Pitjantjatjara Bible Translation Project and partners began a multi-voice recording of the Pitjantjatjara New Testament, with 50% completed by 2017.[16]

Government policies

APY lands schools taught a bilingual curriculum until the late 1980s, when the programs were defunded, and teaching reverted to English only. In December 2018 it was announced that the South Australian Government would commit to teaching in the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara languages, with English as an additional language, by 2029.[17]

Loan words

Pitjantjatjara includes several loan words from English.[18]

Word of the Year 2019 short-listing

The Pitjantjatjara word ngangkari, added to the Macquarie Dictionary in 2019 and defined as an Indigenous practitioner of bush medicine, was short-listed for the 2019 Word of the Year.[19]

Technical support

LibreOffice provides locale data and a spellchecker for Pitjantjatjara.[20]

Notes
  1. "SBS Australian Census Explorer". Retrieved 9 January 2023.
  2. C6 Pitjantjatjara at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  3. Bauer (2007).
  4. Through a process of haplology, the name Pitjantjatjara is usually pronounced (in normal, fast speech) with one of the repeated syllables -tja- deleted, thus: pitjantjara. In slow, careful speech all syllables will be pronounced (Goddard 1985:?).
  5. Goddard (1996), p. ?.
  6. Tabain & Butcher (2014), pp. 190–191.
  7. Note that ⟨ṟ⟩ is written as ⟨r⟩ at the start of words since words may not begin with /r/. In some versions of the orthography, /r/ is written ⟨rr⟩, and /ɻ/ is written ⟨r⟩.
  8. Tabain & Butcher (2014), pp. 194–195.
  9. Tjukurpa Palya (Pitjantjatjara Bible)
  10. Bowe (1990), pp. 9–12.
  11. Bowe (1990), pp. 10.
  12. Bowe (1990), p. 11.
  13. Pybus, Carol (2015). ""We Grew up this Place": Ernabella Mission 1937-1974" (PDF). The Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia. 6 (1). Retrieved 11 July 2019.
  14. Edwards, W. H. Duguid, Charles (1884 - 1986). Retrieved 2 July 2019. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  15. Guilliatt, Richard (7 September 2013). "How a Bible translation is preserving the Pitjantjatjara language". The Australian. Retrieved 12 July 2019.
  16. Tjukurpa Palya (PITJ). Retrieved 12 July 2019. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  17. Richards, Stephanie (11 December 2018). "State Govt commits to bilingual education in APY Lands". InDaily. Retrieved 12 July 2019.
  18. https://dlb.sa.edu.au/tlsmoodle/pluginfile.php/33489/mod_resource/content/9/Aboriginal%20Education%20Conference%202019%20%281%29.pdf
  19. Petelin, Roslyn (2 December 2019). "Cancel culture, cleanskin, hedonometer … I'm not sure I like any of Macquarie Dictionary's words of the year". Retrieved 3 December 2019.
  20. "Software-update: LibreOffice 3.6.0 bèta 1". Tweakers.net. Retrieved 17 August 2022.

References
  • Bauer, Laurie (2007), The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 978-0748631605
  • Bowe, Heather (1990), Categories, Constituents, and Constituent Order in Pitjantjatjara, An Aboriginal Language of Australia, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-05694-2
  • Goddard, Cliff (1985), A Grammar of Yankunytjatjara, Institute for Aboriginal Development Press, ISBN 0-949659-32-0
  • Goddard, Cliff (1996), Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara to English Dictionary, Alice Springs: IAD Press, ISBN 0-949659-91-6
  • Issacs, Jennifer (1980), Australian Dreaming: 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History, Sydney: Lansdowne Press, ISBN 0-7018-1330-X, OCLC 6578832
  • Rose, David (2001), The Western Desert Code: an Australian cryptogrammar, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, ISBN 085883-437-5
  • Tabain, Marija; Butcher, Andrew (2014), "Pitjantjatjara", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 44 (2): 189–200, doi:10.1017/s0025100314000073

Further reading
Pitjantjatjara dialect test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
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