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Guugu Yimithirr (many other spellings; see below) is an Australian Aboriginal language, the traditional language of the Guugu Yimithirr people of Far North Queensland. Most of the speakers today live at a mission at Hopevale.
Name The word guugu means "speech, language", while yimithirr (or yumuthirr) means yimi-having, yimi being the word for "this". The use of the word yi(mi), rather than some other word for "this", was seen as a distinctive feature of Guugu Yimithirr. The element guugu and the practice of naming based on some distinctive word is found in many other languages. The name has many spelling variants, including Gogo-Yimidjir, Gugu-Yimidhirr, Gugu Yimithirr, Guugu Yimidhirr, Guguyimidjir (used by Ethnologue), Gugu Yimijir, Kukuyimidir, Koko Imudji, Koko Yimidir, Kuku Jimidir, Kuku Yimithirr, and Kuku Yimidhirr. Geographic distribution The original territory of the Guugu Yimithirr tribe extended northwards to the mouth of the Jeannie River, where it was bordered by speakers of Guugu Nyiguudji; southwards to the Annan River, where it was bordered by speakers of Guugu Yalandji; to the west, it was bordered by speakers of a language called Guugu Warra (literally "bad talk") or Lama-Lama. The modern town of Cooktown is located within Guugu Yimithirr territory. Today however, most Guugu Yimithirr speakers live at the mission at Hopevale. Dialects Guugu Yimithirr originally consisted of several dialects, although even the names of most have now been forgotten. Today two main dialects are distinguished: the coastal dialect, called dhalundirr "with the sea", and the inland dialect, called waguurrga "of the outside". Missionaries used the coastal dialect to translate hymns and Bible stories, so some of its words now have religious associations that the inland equivalents lack. History
Vowels Short may be realized as unrounded , and unstressed may be reduced to . Consonants The stops are usually voiceless and unaspirated initially and after short vowels, and voiced after consonants and long vowels. The retroflexes may not be single phonemes, but clusters of . However, there is at least one word which, for older speakers, is pronounced with a word-initial retroflex: "run", which is or . The rhotic is normally a flap , but may be a trill in emphatic speech. Phonotactics All words, with the exception of a couple of interjections, begin with one consonant. The consonant can be a stop, nasal, or semivowel (that is, do not occur initially). Words can end in either a vowel or a consonant. The allowed word-final consonants are . Within words, any consonant can occur, as well as clusters of up to three consonants, which cannot occur initially or finally. Grammar Like many Australian languages, Guugu Yimithirr pronouns have accusative morphology while other nouns have ergative morphology. That is, the subject of an intransitive verb has the same form as the subject of a transitive verb if the subject is a pronoun, but the same form as object of a transitive verb otherwise. Regardless of whether nouns or pronouns are used, the usual sentence order is Subject Object Verb, although other word orders are possible. | ||||||||||
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