The Proto-Pama-Nyungan language (abbreviated pPN) is the putative ancestor of all the languages of the Pama-Nyungan family, encompassing almost all the Australian Aboriginal languages, except for some non-Pama-Nyungan languages spoken in the north and the Tasmanian languages. Like most protolanguages it is not directly attested (e.g. in writing), but many linguists believe that it can be reconstructed using the comparative method. Some however, notably R. M. W. Dixon, think this is impossible.

Proto-Pama-Nyungan may have been spoken as recently as about 5,000 years ago, much more recently than the 40,000 to 60,000 years Indigenous Australians are believed to have been inhabiting Australia. How the Pama-Nyungan languages spread over most of the continent and displaced any pre-Pama-Nyungan languages is uncertain; one possibility is that language could have been transferred from one group to another alongside culture and ritual.^[1][2]

Phonology

Proto-Pama-Nyungan's phonological inventory, as reconstructed by Barry Alpher (2004), is quite similar to those of most present-day Australian languages.

Vowels

Vowel length is contrastive only in the first (i.e. stressed) syllable in a word.

Consonants

Proto-Pama-Nyungan seems to have had only one set of laminal consonants; the two contrasting sets (lamino-dental and lamino-alveopalatal or "palatal") found in some present-day languages can largely be explained as innovations resulting from conditioned sound changes.

Nevertheless, there are a small number of words where an alveopalatal stop is found where a dental would be expected, which are symbolised as *c. There is no convincing evidence, however, of an equivalent nasal *ñ or lateral *?.

Notes

References

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