Talk:Damin

Non ASCII and the Yankaal

Hello

First thanks for the recover of the non-ascii symbols, could you tell me what I have to do in order not to destroy them. How did you generate them?

Now a question: your wrote

  The Yangkaal of Denham and Forsyth Islands, who spoke the Tangkic
  language Nyangga, also used Demiin, which had the same root words
  as Lardil Demiin but used Nyangga grammar.

where did you find that information? Could you please add a reference. Do you know whether there exist any research articles, grammars or the alike of that language?

UB

PS Are you sure about the name Nyangga??, I just checked. According to my information, the article of Hale and McKnights book, the Tangkic group is formed by Lardil,Yangkaal, Kangkalitha and Kaidadil. Morever Lardil is the odd one there, since they others are mutually comprehensible while Lardil is not. Another important point is that bi or multilinguism was widely distributed, so that's why I thought that the Yangkaal would use Damin vocabulary and Lardil grammar!? Are you really sure of what you corrected, please give a reference

Re:Non ASCII and the Yankaal

Sorry, no, I should have discussed it here before jumping to conclusions. Nyangga and Yangkaal are (close to?) synonymous, so let's go with Yangkaal. As for which grammar was used, if we don't have any actual information, we shouldn't have either my "correction" or the original statement that it was the same as Lardil Damin. Do you know that Lardil grammar was used, or did people perhaps say that they spoke Damin because they used its lexical vocabulary? It's pretty common for a language to be identified by its nouns, and for its grammar to be ignored in speaker conception.

Re: Re

Ok, I have my information form the book of McKnight, which I have quoted at the end of the article. He explictly states that Damin used by the Lardil was/is the same as Yangkaal Damin. Both Hale and McKnight state also that the Lerdil grammar was used, however all irregular verb endings were not used. McKnight is an British anthropologist who has worked for 40 years with the Lardil. He is however not a linguist. In any case I propose to turn back to my formulation for the moment being, but since this is an interesting question, I try to find out more about it (I already see that you changed). Another point, as you may be know, the Lerdil don't want to have to much information about Damin spread out to no Lardil people, that is why I hesitate to add more about grammar and the lexical items. Your statement about Damin is not longer known, is not entirely correct, but I think is in the spirit of the Lardil. UB Oct 30, 2005 14:27

Symbols

As for the symbols, I just type or paste them in. If you're using Internet Explorer, that might be the problem, because it doesn't support fonts very well. I've heard that there are wiki discussion boards that deal with certain browsers turning text to gibberish when you edit, but I haven't run into that problem myself. kwami 20:17, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

This site works like a charm for adding special symbols. — mark ✎ 20:27, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Re: Symbols

thanks for pointing out. I also have to apologise for sometimes destroy certain formating structures. I try to work with an external editor (Xemacs), which is convient for me. However also there is support for wiki language, some things missing, like to get added the signature UB Oct 30, 2005 14:27

The symbols were already there; they seem to have been deleted when UB edited. kwami 20:39, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

This is correct. I most of the time use an external editor I don't know why sometimes these symbols get deleted. Sorry. UB UB Oct 30, 2005 14:27

Extinction of Damin

Hello

I just want to point out that the exact date, when the last Damin speaker died is unclear. Hale states in 2000 that the last warama ceremony was held half a century ago. McKnight in his book states (in 1965) that the last ceremony has been hold some 10 years ago. The warama was usually done with men in their 20. It is difficult to figure out when the last Demiinkurlda died, I think around mid 70 but I am not sure. Oub 18:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC):

Re:Extinction of Damin

I have to admit that I was rather hesitant with adding an extinction date at all. Problem is: Damin was quite an unusual language in the sense that it wasn't anybody's native language. "Extinct" means that the last native speaker has died (that's at least the definition used by SIL), which explicitly does not mean that there aren't any people around who know it as a second language. Well, given the role of Damin as a ceremonial language, I thought it not unreasonable to use the year of the last ceremony as its extinction date. Of course, it remains a matter of taste. But if you insist on the 1970s, then in your place I would rather write "1970s" instead of "1975", which is far too precise. --IJzeren Jan _{In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij} 19:22, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: Extinction of Damin

Right, I agree that in that circumstances such a date I problematic, the situation is not very clear to me. First of all the studies performed by Hale about Damin was done in the mid 60 when at least some 10 Demiinkurlda were living. McKnight, the author about an anthropological study of the Lardil himself speaks the language or at least has quite detailed knowledge of it, for he thought some Lardil his knowledge. But as a matter of fact, no warama ceremony has been hold in the last years also McKnight has expressed his hopes that it might be the case in the future. So in a way the language is sleeping . May be it is best to delete that date and not to specify any. Oub 21:15, 10 December 2005 (UTC):

Re:

Yes, I agree that would be best. Since we all agree that the language �s extinct, I think we should keep the extinction box, but without a year. How does it look now? --IJzeren Jan _{In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij} 09:06, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

External Link

Hello

I must say that I am not to happy about the external link: this is basically copied from the book of Dixon (the name of the mystical person is not correct!) And it does not provide more information as the article, well Catford is mentioned fine, but that is all. So I propose to delete that link. Oub 21:25, 10 December 2005 (UTC):

rhotics

Which are the two rhotics in Lardil that are spelled r and rr, approximant and flap? We should correct the consonant table. kwami 09:56, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Oub 14:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC): Hi according to the Lardil Dictionary, the Lardil consonants are the following:

	bilabials	lamino-dental	apico-alveolar	Apico-domal	lamino-alveolar	Dorso-velar
stops	b	th	d	rd	j	k
nasals	m	nh	n	rn	ny	ng
laterals			l	rl	(ly)
flap			rr
glides	w			r	y

Oub 14:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC):

RE: rhotics

I hope to obtain soon an article about Damin phonology and therefore be able to answer that question. Oub 11:43, 2 January 2006 (UTC):

External Link, removed

Hello

As I said in an earlier mail, the link does not contain any new information and even contain an error concerning the mystical founder of Damin, hence I removed that link. Any objections? Oub 11:43, 2 January 2006 (UTC):

Lateral (voiceless) fricative IPA correct?

Hello,

Are you sure about the IPA symbol for the lateral voiceless fricative? That sound has been described my Hale in his article as /L/ and moreover he adds that

The most spectacular, though by no means most interesting aspect of Damin is its phonology. In addition to an inventory of consonants and vowels rather typical of Australia, it has a number of consonantal segments which are totally lacking elsewhere in Australia. Among these are nasalized clicks (bilabial /ml/, dental /nh!/. apico-alveolar /In!/, apicodomal /n!/), an ingressive lateral fricative (/L/), a glottalized, or ejective. Velar stop (/k'/), and an ejective bilabial stop (/p'/). ...; but I know of no languages which possess (he sounds I have symbolized /L/ and /p'/ (departing from the conventional values for these symbols).

Given that I searched the wiki and the net for the IPA symbol, which is used in our Wikipedia article and I found a sound. However the word in which this sounds appears sounds to me like an example of the Khoisan family. (I have only small examples of Lardil and none of Damin), I very much doubt that there exists a sound example of Damin on the Internet, for the Lardil do not want those sounds available and the linguists/ethnologists who worked with them respect of course that wish.

I hope to obtain soon an article about Damin phonology and therefore clarify that issue.

Uwe Brauer

Hi, not sure what the question is. Are you asking if the IPA symbol should be "L"? It wouldn't be. The belted el is a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative, and the down arrow indicates that it is ingressive. You won't find many examples of that symbol because it's normally only used in the speech pathology lit. kwami 03:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Hello,

Sorry for any misunderstanding. It is like this: Hale was an eminent linguist, who had a command over 50 languages. Now he states that he does not know of any language which posses /L/ and /p'/.

In that article there is a IPA for /L/ and I found a sound example. I thought there are 3 possibilities.

1. The sound example is wrong, that is the sound found in it is not /L/.
2. Hale was wrong there are more languages with this sound (there are more than 5000 languages, no wonder that Hale did not know an example.
3. the IPA symbol is wrong (given your explanation that seems unlikely now)

but since you mention it, there is another possibility.

1. the sound is /L/ but it an example of a speech pathology.

I find the second possibility exciting but I think I have to ask an specialist before running in any premature conclusions. Oub 15:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC):