Arrernte language


Arrernte or Aranda or sometimes referred to as Upper Arrernte, is a dialect cluster in the Arandic language group spoken in parts of the Northern Territory, Australia, by the Arrernte people. Other spelling variations are Arunta or Arrarnta, and all of the dialects have multiple other names.
There are about 1,800 speakers of Eastern/Central Arrernte, making this dialect one of the widest spoken of any Indigenous language in Australia, the one usually referred to as Arrernte and the one described in detail below. It is spoken in the Alice Springs area and taught in schools and universities, heard on media and used in local government.
The second biggest dialect in the group is Alyawarre. Some of the other dialects are spoken by very few people, leading to efforts to revive their usage; others are now completely extinct.

Arrernte/Aranda dialects

"Aranda" is a simplified, Australian English approximation of the traditional pronunciation of the name of Arrernte.
Glottolog defines the Arandic group of languages/dialects as comprising 5 Aranda dialects, plus two distinct languages, Kaytetye and Lower Southern Aranda, an extinct language. Ethnologue defines 8 Arandic languages and classifies them slightly differently.
Two dialects are more widely spoken than any of the others:
All of the other dialects are either threatened or extinct:
Argadargada in the NT. It is now extinct. Breen says that the language was regarded as the same or similar to Andegerebinha/Antekerrepenhe by some speakers, and Glottolog regards it as a dialect of it.
was a Western Arrernte man.
The Arrernte also have a highly developed sign language, also known as Iltyeme-iltyeme.

Current usage and tuition

The Northern Territory Department of Education has a program for teaching Indigenous culture and languages, underpinned by a plan entitled Keeping Indigenous Languages and Cultures Strong – A Plan for Teaching and Learning of Indigenous Languages and Cultures in the Northern Territory with the second stage of the plan running from 2018 to 2020).
The Alice Springs Language Centre delivers language teaching at primary, middle and senior schools, offering Arrernte, Indonesian, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese.
There are two courses teaching Arrernte at tertiary level: at the Batchelor Institute and at Charles Darwin University.
There are books available in Arandic languages in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages.
Projects are being run to revive dying dialects of the language, such as Southern Arrernte/Pertame.

Eastern/Central Arrernte

Phonology

This description relates to Central or Eastern Arrernte.

Consonants

is described as velar by, and as uvular by.
Stops are unaspirated. Prenasalized stops are voiced throughout; prestopped nasals are voiceless during the stop. These sounds arose as normal consonant clusters; Ladefoged states that they now occur initially, where consonant clusters are otherwise forbidden, due to historical loss of initial vowels; however, it has also been argued that such words start with a phonemic schwa, which may not be pronounced.

Vowels

FrontCentralBack
High
Mid
Low

All dialects have at least.
The vowel system of Eastern/Central Arrernte is unusual in that there are only two contrastive vowel phonemes, and. Two-vowel systems are very rare worldwide, but are also found in some Northwest Caucasian languages. It seems that the vowel system derives from an earlier one with more phonemes, but after the development of labialised consonants in the vicinity of round vowels, the vowels lost their roundedness/backness distinction, merging into just two phonemes. There is no allophonic variation in different consonantal contexts for the vowels. Instead, the phonemes can be realised by various different articulations in free variation. For example, the phoneme can be pronounced in any context.

Phonotactics

The underlying syllable structure of Eastern/Central Arrernte is argued to be VC, with obligatory codas and no onsets. Underlying phrase-initial is realised as zero, except before a rounded consonant where, by a rounding process of general applicability, it is realised as. It is also common for phrases to carry a final corresponding to no underlying segment.
Among the evidence for this analysis is that some suffixes have suppletive variants for monosyllabic and bisyllabic bases. Stems that appear monosyllabic and begin with a consonant in fact select the bisyllabic variant. Stress falls on the first nucleus preceded by a consonant, which by this analysis can be stated more uniformly as the second underlying syllable.
And the frequentative is formed by reduplicating the final VC syllable of the verb stem; it does not include the final.

Orthography

Central/Eastern Arrernte orthography does not write word-initial, and adds an e to the end of every word.

Grammar

Eastern and Central Arrernte has fairly free word order but tends towards SOV. It is generally ergative, but is accusative in its pronouns. Pronouns may be marked for duality and skin group.
suffixgloss
+ayeemphasis
+ewestronger emphasis
+eyewereally strong emphasis
+kefor
+leactor in a sentence
+leinstrument
+lelocation
+le-arlengetogether, with
+ngefrom
-akertehaving
-arenyefrom, association
-artekesimilarity
-atheketowards
-iperre, -ipenheafter, from
-kenhebelongs to
-ketyebecause
-kwenyenot having, without
-mpeleby way of, via
-ntyelefrom
-werneto
+kepast
+lhereflexive
+mepresent tense
+rre/+irrereciprocal
+tyalenegative imperative
+tye-akenhenegative
+tyekepurpose or intent
+tyenhefuture
imperative

Pronouns

Pronouns decline with a nominative rather than ergative alignment:
personnumbersubjectobjectdativepossessive
1singularayenge/theayenge/ayenheatyengeatyenhe/atyinhe
1dualilerneilernenheilernekeilernekenhe
1pluralanwerneanwernenheanwernekeanwernekenhe
2singularuntengenhengkwengengkwinhe
2dualmpwelempwelenhempwelekempwelekenhe
2pluralarrantherrearrenhantherrearrekantherrearrekantherrenhe
3singularrerenheikwereikwerenhe
3dualre-atherrerenhe-atherre
renhe-atherrenhe
ikwere-atherreikwere-atherrenhe
3pluralitneitnenheitnekeitnekenhe

Body parts normally require non-possessive pronouns, though younger speakers may use possessives in this case too.

Examples

Cultural references