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Nukunu (or Nugunu or many other names: see below) is a moribund Australian Aboriginal language spoken by Nukunu people on Yorke Peninsula, South Australia. As of 2017, there is a revival and maintenance programme under way for the language.[2]
Names
This language has been known by many names by neighbouring tribes and Australianists, including:
The Nukunu consonantal inventory is typical for a Pama–Nyungan language, with six places of articulation for stops and nasals. There are three rhotics in the language.
A phonemic voicing contrast exists in Nukunu, but it has only been observed in the retroflex stop series. An example demonstrating such a contrast intervocalically is kurdi (phlegm, IPA ['kuɖi]) and kurti (quandong, IPA ['kuʈi]).
History
In contrast with other Thura–Yura languages, Nukunu did not partake in either the initial th- lenition before vowels or the lenition of initial k- before vowels.
^Monaghan, Paul (2017). "1. Structures of Aboriginal life at the time of colonisation in South Australia". In Brock, Peggy; Gara, Tom (eds.). Colonialism and its aftermath: A history of Aboriginal South Australia(PDF). Extract, pp.i-xxiii. Wakefield. p. 17. ISBN 9781743054994.
^Hercus pp. 1; Schmidt called this cluster (a subgroup of Thura–Yura) as "Miru" in 1919. Perhaps these languages are part of the Kadli group as well.
References
Hercus, Luise Anna (1992). "Introduction". A Nukunu Dictionary. Maitland, South Australia: National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry.