Yugambeh language


Yugambeh, also known as Tweed-Albert Bandjalang, is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Yugambeh living in South-East Queensland between and within the Logan River basin and the Tweed River basin, bounded to the east by the Pacific Ocean and in the west by the Teviot Ranges and Teviot Brook basin.
Yugambeh is dialect cluster of four dialects, one of four such clusters of the Bandjalangic branch of the Pama–Nyungan language family. A poorly attested variety called Ngarahgwal may belong to Yugambeh or to one of the other Bandjalang clusters.

Nomenclature

In the Yugambeh language, the word Yugambeh means an emphatic "no", "never" i.e. "very much no" and is a common exonym for the people and their language. Language speakers use the word Miban which means "Man", "Human", "Wedge-Tailed Eagle" and is the preferred endonym for the people; they call their langauage Mibanah meaning "of man", "of human", "of eagle".
Yugambeh may also be referred to as:
Yugambeh is spoken within the Logan, Albert, Coomera, Nerang, and Tweed River basins.

Phonology

Vowels

Yugambeh has a vowel system of 4 vowels that also contrast in length, resulting in 8 phonemic vowels in total. The letter "h" is used after the vowel to indicate a long vowel.

Allophones

The low central vowel is fronted and raised between palatal consonants and a lateral/rhotic consonant.

Consonants

Compared to other Pama-Nyungan languages, Yugambeh has a smaller inventory of consonants. There are four places of articulation, with the consonants consisting of 4 obstruents, 4 nasals, 2 liquids, and 2 semivowels.
Obstruents
Obstruents do not have a voicing contrast, and can appear as fricative allophones. Obstruents are phonetically voiceless, except when following a homorganic consonant.

Grammar

The grammar of the Yugambeh language is highly agglutinative, making use of over 50 suffixes on nouns, verbs, adjectives and demonstratives.

Syntax

Syntax in the Yugambeh language is fairly free ordered, with a tendency towards SOV structures. Adjectives and demonstratives part of noun phrases e.g. that man, a red car, stay adjacent to the noun they qualify.

Noun morphology

Nouns take a number of suffixes to decline for grammatical case.

Suffixes

Noun suffixes are placed into 10 orders, a noun may not take more than one suffix from any order, and if more than one suffix is attached they must always be in the set order of the suffix orders, e.g. an order 7 suffix must always come after an order 5 suffix.
'X' stands for a homorganic obstruent.
'N' stands for a homorganic nasals.
#The comitative, purposive, desiderative, ablative and aversive suffixes are preceded by -bah on animate nouns.
1st order suffixes
-gali – Used to indicate an association or link
Examples:
Jinanggali 'Shoe' lit. Typified by foot
Dubaygali 'Womaniser' lit. Typified by women
2nd order suffixes
-gan – Used to form feminine nouns and some astrological terms
Examples:
Yarabilngingan 'Female Singer'
3rd order suffixes
-bur – Used to form the diminutive of a noun, referring to a smaller version
Examples:
Baraganbur 'Toy Boomerang'
4th order suffixes
-Nah – Indicates current possession
Examples:
Ngalingah 'Our'
Gibamah 'of the moon/moon's'
-Nahjil – Indicates past possession
Examples:
Bilinahjil 'was of the parrot'

Verb morphology

Verbs are conjugated with the use of suffixes, it is an aspect dominant language, as opposed to tense dominant like most Western languages. Yugambeh suffixes mostly conjugate for aspect and mood

Suffixes

Verb suffixes are placed in 6 orders, a verb may not take more than one suffix from an order, and similar to nouns, suffixes are attached in a set order. Combinations of these suffixes express all possible conjugations of Yugambeh verbs, with only a small number of combinations possible, Yugambeh verb stems are commonly 2 syllables in length and always in a vowel.
123456
-ba
'Causative'		-ndi
'Carry whilst...'		-li 'reflexive/passive'-ja
'Past tense'		-hn 'imperfective aspect'-du 'habitual mood'
-wa
'Repetitive'		-hny 'potential mood'-i 'preconditional'
-ma
'Causative'		-h 'imperative'-de 'preconditional'
-hla 'continuous aspect'
-nah 'antechronous aspect'
-nyun 'synchronous aspect'
-luru 'historical past'
-yan
-yah 'purposive'
-jin 'synchronous aspect'
-n 'permissive'
-ni 'perfective'

Adjective morphology

Adjectives can be marked with a suffix to indicate the gender of the noun they qualify.

Suffixes

*N stands for a homorganic nasal.

Demonstratives

Yugambeh possesses a complicated set of demonstratives that make a three-way distinction, with proximal, medial, and distal sets, there is a further distinguishing of demonstrative adjectives and location demonstratives. The adjective set can be additionally suffixed to create demonstrative pronouns', the adjective set has three forms for "things in sight", "things hidden or not in sight" and "things not there anymore", while the location set has forms to indicate the general area and definite area, whether in sight or not in sight, and past and present forms.

Adjective set

The above set can be suffixed with order 7 noun suffixes to form demonstrative pronouns that function like ordinary independent nouns. e.g. Yanindeh galini wungahbaia! 'Take this with you!'
The 'not in sight' and 'not here anymore' forms can take the order 2 noun suffix -gan to form time words. E.g. gunahgan 'recently'.

Location set

App

The Yugambeh Museum in Beenleigh currently maintains a free dictionary app for the Yugambeh language, available on Android, iOS and a desktop version.

Place names

Modern place names with roots in the Yugambeh language include: