The Southern Daly languages are a family of two distantly related Indigenous Australian languages, Murrinh-patha and Ngan'gityemerri, spoken in the Daly River region of the Northern Territory. Murrinh-patha was long considered a language isolate because it shares only about eleven percent of its vocabulary with Ngan'gityemerri, but the close correspondence of their verbal inflections points to a shared, more distant common ancestor.
Facts
Partially Attested
Proto-Language StatusA common parent language is argued from verb morphology (Green 2003); no reconstruction is described 1 The source argues for a shared common parent language from verbal morphology but describes no reconstructed proto-language, and calls the relationship distant and problematic. Sources
1. Southern Daly languages, Wikipedia
Classification sectionQuote, Classification section
Green (2003) makes a case that the formal correspondences in core morphological sequences of their finite verbs are too similar (in their complexities and their irregularities) to have come about through anything other than a shared genetic legacy from a common parent language.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.