Tasmanian languages

The Tasmanian languages ​​were the languages ​​of the indigenous people of Tasmania. These were systematically exterminated by the English colonizers within 80 years in the 19th century, so were the Tasmanian languages ​​extinct.

The Tasmanian language group and their relationships

It is assumed that at the beginning of the 19th century about 5,000 Tasmanians have spoken about ten different languages. The records of these languages ​​are extremely poor and faulty. Collected, they are present at Plomley 1976, half of the material was created by George Robinson and August 1829-34 was recorded, but only rediscovered in the 1950s. Almost the entire records ( sailors, settlers, material from the concentration camps ) consist of simple short word lists that were recorded without any linguistic competence by ear.

Because of the paucity of the material is not even clear whether the Tasmanian languages ​​were genetically related to each other and one or more language families formed.

The external relations of the Tasmanian languages ​​have not been clarified (and will probably also can not be resolved ). Tasmania was settled by north over the then existing mainland connection to Australia at least 35,000 years ago. The flooding of the Bass Street by rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago isolated the Tasmanians by the inhabitants of the Australian continent, so that cultural and technological innovations could not be replaced. Nevertheless, it is likely that the Tasmanian languages ​​with the Australian languages ​​are distantly related, although hardly common word roots could be identified. Crowley - Dixon it expressed in 1981 this way: " All we can say, is thatthere is no evidence did Tasmanian languages ​​were not related to languages ​​spoken on the mainland " ( " All we can say is that there is no evidence indicates that the Tasmanian languages ​​were not related to the languages ​​spoken on the [ Australian ] mainland languages ​​").

According to Joseph Greenberg Tasmanian languages ​​are not related to the Australian, but with the geographically distant Papuan and the Andamanese languages. These so-called Indo-Pacific hypothesis Greenberg is generally rejected (see the article Indo-pacific ).

Individual languages

In the scantiness of the material identification of individual languages ​​is of course very problematic. Crowley - Dixon 1981 come to at least six, maximum of eight individual languages ​​that are defined by their geographic location. Original names have been preserved in any case.

  • Central Tasmanian † dialects: Oyster Bay, Big River, Little Swanport
  • Southeast Tasmanian †
  • Northeast Tasmanian † dialects: Piper River, Cape Portland, Ben Lomond; north
  • North Midlands Tasmanian †
  • Port Sorell - Tasmanian †
  • Northwest Tasmanian † dialects: North West Coast, Robbins Iceland, Circular Head
  • Southwest Tasmanian † ( uncertain)
  • Macqarie Harbour Tasmanian † ( uncertain)

Linguistic characteristics

In the already mentioned several times paucity of this material, it is extremely difficult to make substantive statements about the properties of the Tasmanian languages. The following remarks are based on Crowley - Dixon 1981.

The phonological system seems to have resembled that of the Australian languages: there were at least four plosive series ( bilabial, apico - alveolar, laminal and dorso- velar ), a lateral, two r- sounds and two semi-vowels. All plosives may be nasalized. Words are usually of two syllables, consonant cluster in the word is inside often, word-initially rare.

The morphology was suffigierend, but it is hardly possible to understand the functions of isolable suffixes. About syntactic functions and their marking ( labeling ) as well as the basic word order in the sentence can hardly make statements. ( The few records that were recorded seem to suggest SVO. ) The adjective follows its noun.

Two pronouns are identifiable. Southeast Tasmanian them loud mina " I " and nina "you", in other languages, the corresponding forms are often very different, the / m / - / n / opposition remains, however.

Attempt to reconstruct Palawa Kani

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