| Tasmanian | |
|---|---|
| (geographic) | |
 Fanny Cochrane Smith, last speaker of the Flinders Islands Lingua franca, aTasmanian Aboriginal language.[1] | |
| Geographic distribution | Originally, throughoutTasmania; after theBlack War, around theBass Strait; now, presumably, only, in theFlinders Island and other parts of northeasternTasmania |
| Ethnicity | Aboriginal Tasmanians |
| Extinct | 1905, with the extinction of the Flinders Islands Lingua franca at the death ofFanny Cochrane Smith[1] |
| Linguistic classification | at least three language families: Northeastern Oyster Bay – Southeastern Northern–Western? |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | tasm1247 |
 Approximate ethnic divisions in pre-European Tasmania | |
TheTasmanian languages were the languages indigenous to the island ofTasmania, used byAboriginal Tasmanians. The languages were last used for daily communication in the 1830s, although theterminal speaker,Fanny Cochrane Smith, survived until 1905.
Tasmanian languages are attested by three dozen word lists, the most extensive being those of Joseph Milligan[2] andGeorge Augustus Robinson. From the limited evidence, the sounds of Tasmanian appear to have been fairly typical ofAustralian languages.Plomley (1976) presents all the lexical data available to him in 1976. Crowley and Dixon (1981) summarise what little is known of Tasmanian phonology and grammar. Bowern (2012) organises 35 different word lists and attempts to classify them into language families.
Fanny Cochrane Smith recorded a series ofwax cylinder recordings of Aboriginal songs, the only existing audio recording of a Tasmanian language, though they are of extremely poor quality. In 1972, her granddaughters still remembered some words and a song.Robert M. W. Dixon, who interviewed them as part of his research withTerry Crowley, concluded that "there is virtually no data on the grammar and norunning text so that it is impossible to say very much of linguistic interest about the Tasmanian languages".[3] However, from the scant sources that are available, Tasmanian people are seeking to recover their lost languages and traditions. The largest language revival project to date is thePalawa kani project.[4]
Little is known of the languages and no relationship to other languages is demonstrable. It appears that there were several language families on Tasmania, which would be in keeping with the long period of human habitation on the island. In the 1970sJoseph Greenberg proposed anIndo-Pacific superfamily which includes Tasmanian along withAndamanese andPapuan (but notAustralian). However, this superfamily proposal is rejected by the vast majority of historicallinguists.[5][6]
Based on short wordlists, it appears that there were anywhere from five to sixteen languages on Tasmania,[7] related to one another in perhaps fourlanguage families.[8] There are historical records as well that indicate the languages were not mutually intelligible and that alingua franca was necessary for communication after resettlement on Flinders' Island. J.B. Walker, who visited the island in 1832 and 1834, reported:
Robert Clark, the catechist, states that on his arrival at the Flinders' Settlement in 1834, eight or ten different languages or dialects were spoken amongst the 200 natives then at the establishment, and that the blacks were 'instructing each other to speak their respective tongues'.
— JB Walker (1898:179)[9]
Reports from the subsequent settlement atOyster Cove were similar:
The Aboriginal dialects made it difficult for the members of one family to understand that of another; "now however they all seem to have merged into one"
— Lennox (1984:60)[10]
Schmidt (1952)[11] distinguished five languages in the word lists:
The Eastern languages seem to share a common vocabulary, and use the nominal particlena. The Western languages useleā instead ofna.
Dixon and Crowley (1981) reviewed the data. They evaluate 13 local varieties, and find 6 to 8 languages, with no conclusion on two additional varieties (those of the west coast) due to lack of data. Listed here (clockwise from the northwest) with theirAustralian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) codes,[12] they are:
The two western varieties are South-western (T10*) and Macquarie Harbour (T6) [southern and northern ends of SW region on map]
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One of the difficulties in interpreting Tasmanian data is the fact that some of the 35 word lists mix data from various locations, and even for the rest, in some cases the location is not recorded. Bowern (2012) used a clustering algorithm to identify language admixture, and further techniques to conclude that the 26 unmixed lists with more than 100 words record twelve Tasmanian varieties (at p < 0.15) that may be assumed to be distinct languages.[13] Due to the poor attestation, these varieties have no names apart from the names of the wordlists they are recorded in. They fall into five clusters;Bayesian phylogenetic methods[clarification needed] demonstrate that two of these are clearly related, but that the others cannot be related to each other (that is, they are separate language families) based on existing evidence. Given the length of human habitation on Tasmania, it should not be expected for the languages to be demonstrably related to each other. The families, and the number of attested languages, are:[8]
Bowern identifies several of the wordlists of unknown provenance: The Norman list is northeastern, for example, while the Lhotsky and Blackhouse lists attest to an additional language in the northeastern family; the Fisher list is western, as are the Plomley lists, though with admixture. Two of the lists reported to be from Oyster Bay contain substantial northeastern admixture, which Bowern believes to be responsible for classifications linking the languages of the east coast.[8]
Only 24 words, out of 3,412, are found in all five branches, and most of these are words for recently introduced items, such as guns and cattle, or cultural or mythological terms which could easily be borrowed. Thus there is no good evidence for a Tasmanian language family. There is, however, slight evidence that the northern and western families may be distantly related (the western varieties are especially poorly attested). The only words found in all regions that are not obvious candidates for borrowing and which do not have serious problems with attestation are *pene- 'laugh', *taway 'go', *liya 'water', *wii 'wood', and perhaps *tina 'belly'. However, there are other local words for 'laugh', 'water', and 'belly', and the reflexes of *taway are so similar as to be suspicious. *Wii is therefore the most promising; it is found aswiya, wina, wikina (-na is a common ending) andwii, glossed as wood, tree, brush, or timber. Although there is no evidence that the Tasmanian languages were related to the languages of mainland Australia (and if they were, they would presumably be related to languages which had been lost to the wave ofPama–Nyungan expansion), the fact that there is no established Tasmanian family should be kept in mind when attempting to establish such connections.[8][14]
| Flinders Island lingua franca | |
|---|---|
Fanny Cochrane Smith, last speaker of the Flinders Island lingua franca[1] | |
| Region | Flinders Island,Tasmania |
| Ethnicity | Tasmanian |
| Extinct | 1905, with the death ofFanny Cochrane Smith[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
It is unknown if the Tasmanianlingua franca was akoine,creole,pidgin, ormixed language.[15] However, its vocabulary was evidently predominantly that of the eastern and the northeastern languages because of the dominance of those peoples on the settlements.[1]
The unattestedBass Strait Pidgin of Flinders Island consisted primarily of English vocabulary, but is reported to have had a mixture of words from Tasmanian languages, introduced by the women whom the island's sealers had abducted from Tasmania.[16]
Palawa kani is an in-progress constructed language, built from a composite of surviving words from various Tasmanian Aboriginal languages.[17]
The phonology is uncertain, due to the poor nature of the transcriptions. Schmidt (1952) reconstructed the following for East-central and South-east Tasmanian, as well as parts from Blake; Dixon (1981):
| Labial | Coronal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | palatalized | dental | plain | palatalized | plain | palatalized | |||
| Stop | p/b | pʲ/bʲ | t̪/d̪ | t/d | tʲ/dʲ | k/ɡ | kʲ/ɡʲ | (ʔ) | |
| Fricative | (x/ɣ) | ||||||||
| Nasal | m | mʲ | (n̪) | n | nʲ | ŋ | |||
| Tap /Trill | r | rʲ | |||||||
| Approximant | central | w | ɹ | ɹʲ | j | ||||
| lateral | l | lʲ | |||||||
Plosives were conditionally voiced in the interior of a word.
There is no evidence of a lamino-dental nasal, but for people who do not have this contrast in their native language, this phoneme is difficult to distinguish from an alveolar nasal. However, both Dixon and Crowley (1981) and Schmidt (1952) note a possible [n̪].
There may have been aglottal stop.
There is evidence of two rhotic consonants, like almost all languages from the Australian mainland. One flapped or trilled /r/ and a frictionless continuant /ɹ/. Dixon and Crowley come to the conclusion that where there is alternation in each source for the same word betweenr,w andl this consonant was /ɹ/, where there is alternation betweenr and the sequencesdr orrr this consonant was /r/.[18]
Milligan mentions two velar fricatives, transcribing them asch andgh. These appear to have been uncommon, and were probably allophones of /k/ or [g] occurring mainly before /r/ and also before /l/ or /w/.
There were certainly at least three vowels, /a/, /i/ and /u/. There may have been more, and there may have been variation among the languages. Schmidt (1952) noted five short /a e i o u/, and five long vowels /aː eː iː oː uː/, and nasal vowels such as "[ʌ̃]" in French pronunciations. It is possible that any additional vowels that have been recorded were allophones of the three vowels.
/a/ appears as [o] most frequently next to labial or dorsal consonants, and as [e] most frequently next to laminal or apical consonants. There is also evidence for alternation between /u/ with [o], and between /i/ with [e].
There is evidence of a central vowel [ə] occurring as an allophone of these three vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ in unstressed positions, in some languages.
Open vowels [æ] and [ɑ] are mentioned only in Milligan's vocabulary and they are almost certainly allophones of /a/. Milligan and the records of French maritime explorers are the only observers to record anü. It is likely that thisü was an allophone of /u/ in some conditions.
It is difficult to tell if vowel length was distinctive. One recorder may have used a spelling which implied that there was a long vowel in a certain word, while another recorder for the same word may use a spelling that suggests a short vowel. This is further diluted by some of the recorders using English spelling conventions. Crowley and Dixon (1981) come to the conclusion that vowel length was likely not phonologically significant.[18]
All words began with a consonant. This initial consonant appears to of been any consonant including /ŋ/, /l/ or /r/. There may have been initial consonant clusters such aspr andkr which is similar the language ofGippsland nearest Tasmania,Gunai, that has words beginning with trilledr and the clustersbr andgr.[19] Blench (2008) notes however that some supposed Tasmanian speakers may actually have been indigenous people from South (mainland) Australia.[20]
Word internal clusters were fairly common. Word final consonants were very rare but somewhat less rare in the western languages.
All words were minimally disyllabic and stress appears to have been on the penultimate syllable.
East-Central Tasmanian is used for illustration, unless otherwise indicated.
There is no evidence of plurality or gender. The nominal particle may have marked the end of a noun phrase.
| Eastern Tas. | Western Tas. | |
|---|---|---|
| woman | lowa-na | nowa-leā |
| hand | rī-na | ri-leā |
| kangaroo | tara-na | tara-leā |
Possession was indicated by the possessor (noun) dropping the nominal particle:
Postpositions, or perhaps case endings, includele/li 'behind',ra 'without',to/ta (change in direction):
There is also an adverbial suffix-re inlene-re 'backwards'.
Adjectives follow the noun, and some end in-ne (pāwine 'small') or-ak (mawbak 'black',tunak 'cold').
Only singular personal pronouns are known:mī-na 'I',nī-na 'you',nara 's/he'. (In Northeast Tas, these aremi-na, ni-na, nara.) These form possessive suffixes:loa-mi 'my woman'. Pronouns might be incorporated in the verb:tiena-mia-pe 'give me!'.
Demonstrative pronouns arewa/we 'this' andni/ne 'that':Riena narra wa 'this is my hand'.
marra(wa) 'one',pʲa(wa) 'two'.
The negative particle isnoia
In Southeast Tas., suffixes-gara/-gera and-gana/-gena appear on verbs. Their meaning is unknown:
Some basic words:[21]
The difficulty in analysing the records is apparent in the conflicting recorded forms for the words for "two" ("Fr" means a French transcription):[14]
| Region | Transcription | Possible pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| South- eastern | pooalih | [puwali] |
| bõw.lȳ | [pawuli] | |
| boula (Fr) | [pula] | |
| boulla (Fr) | [pula] | |
| bura | [pura] | |
| bourai (Fr) | [pure] | |
| cal.a.ba.wa | [kalapawa] | |
| North- eastern | calabawa | [kalapawa] |
| kar.te.pew.er | [katapiwa] | |
| kateboueve (Fr) | [katapuwe(?)] | |
| narn.ne.meen.er | [nanamina] | |
| nar.ner.pee | [nanapi] | |
| par.le.the.meen.er | [palatamina] | |
| pay'ãnĕrbĕrwãr | [peyanapawa] | |
| North- western | may | [me] |
| nue.won.ner | [nyuwana] | |
| neu.on.ne | [nyuwana] | |
| py.at.er.lare | [payatale] | |
| pie.nare.re.pare | [paynerape] | |
| by.ar.ty | [payatay] | |
| Oyster Bay | py.wer | [paywa] |
| pye.er.wer | [payawa] | |
| pye.er.wer | [payawa] | |
| pia-wah | [payawa] |
Given the possibility that suffixes are responsible for some of the differences, there are still clearly several distinct words, though it is difficult to say how many or what their forms were.
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