Pama-Nyungann.adj.
/ˌpʌməˈnjʊŋən/, /ˌpaməˈnjʊŋən/, U.S. /ˌpɑməˈnjʊŋən/ A. n.
A proposed language family which comprises most of the Aboriginal languages of Australia, excluding those spoken in the north-west, and covers nine-tenths of the continent.Typical features of languages in this proposed grouping include ergative case marking on the agent of a transitive verb and suffixing of all derivational and inflectional affixes.
ΚΠ
1962 Oceanic Linguistics 1 19 As a preliminary result of his work, he [sc. Kenneth Hale] could establish that perhaps 85% of the Australian languages are very closely interrelated, with the remaining 15% forming a large number of small groups, each of them coordinate with the large group for which he proposes the name Pama-Nyungan.
1976 J. E. Hoard & G. N. O'Grady in R. M. W. Dixon Grammatical Categories in Austral. Langs. iii. 51 Nyangumarda belongs..within the Marngu subgroup of the Nyungic branch of Pama-Nyungan.
1980 R. M. W. Dixon Langs. of Austral. i. 21 The non-Pama-Nyungan tongues show much more diversity (and were grouped into twenty-odd further ‘families’, each said to be on a par with Pama-Nyungan).
1994 Sci. Amer. Jan. 107 Farther south in Australia there is a single, embracing language family, Pama-Nyungan.
2003 Jrnl. Royal Anthropol. Inst. (Nexis) 1 Mar. 181 Dixon debunks the long-held idea that there is such a genetic grouping as ‘Pama-Nyungan’.
B. adj.
Of, relating to, or designating Pama-Nyungan or the languages regarded as belonging to it.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > language > languages of the world > Australian Aboriginal > [adjective]
Wiradjuri1884
Nyungar1896
Pitta-Pitta1898
Dyirbal1901
Pama-Nyungan1966
Anangu1983
1966 G. N. O'Grady et al. in Anthropol. Linguistics 8 ii. 96 Kariera-Ngaluma is a member of the Ngayarda subgroup of the Southwestern Group of the Pama-Nyungan phylic family.
1977 B. J. Blake Case Marking in Austral. Langs. i. 2 The Pama-Nyungan languages all employ suffixes to mark case relationships.
1982 Canad. Jrnl. Linguistics 27 ii. 178 T. Klokeid formulates a case assignment rule that accounts for the case marking in ergative languages in the Pamanyungan group of Australian languages.
1999 H. Morphy in P. Slack Environments & Hist. Change v. 180 There is also some evidence for linguistic change occurring around that time, with the spread of Pama-Nyungan languages across much of Australia.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, March 2005; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.1962