Mangarla, also spelt Mangala, is a Pama–Nyungan language of Western Australia. It is spoken by the Mangarla people of the north-western area of the Great Sandy Desert, inland from the coast.
Phonology
Mangarla’s phoneme inventory is typical of Australian languages, and is identical to the inventories of the other Marrngu languages. There are 17 consonant phonemes.[3]
Consonants
| Apical | Laminal | Peripheral | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Bilabial | Velar | |
| Obstruents | t | ʈ | ɟ | p | k |
| Nasals | n | ɳ | ɲ | m | ŋ |
| Laterals | l | ɭ | ʎ | ||
| Approximants | ɻ | w | |||
| Tap/Trill | ɾ~r | ||||
Apical stops in the intervocalic position are sometimes realized as taps.[3]
Vowels
Also typical of Australian languages, there are only three vowel phonemes.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i | u |
| Low | a | |
/i, u, a/ in unstressed syllables may be heard as [ɪ, ʊ, ə]. All three vowels may be realized as [ə] in unstressed syllables.[3]
References
- ^ ABS. “Census 2016, Language spoken at home by Sex (SA2+)”. stat.data.abs.gov.au. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Archived from the original on 26 December 2018. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
- ^ A65 Mangarla at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
- ^ a b c Agnew, Brigitte Louise (2020). The core of Mangarla grammar (phd thesis). University of Melbourne.