Dalabon has no official status. Local schools spent years holding sporadic programs teaching Dalabon, but these operations didn't receive enough governmental support. Therefore, the condition of the programs is still vulnerable.
Given the limited number of Dalabon speakers, the study of dialects has become challenging to investigate. Speakers recall a distinction between two different types of speech, dalabon-djurrkdjurrk ("fast." "lively") and dalabon-murduk ("articulate"). However, no significant difference has been found between the two speeches.
There are 22 or 23 phonemic consonants in Dalabon, depending on the phonemic status of /h/. A table containing the consonantphonemes is given below with their orthographic representation (in angle brackets).
Dalabon restricts the trilled [r] and long stops to only occur word-internally. Constraints regarding the edges of a phonological word also limit the glottal stop [ʔ] from occurring word-initially.
The syllable structure of Dalabon is CV(C)(C)(C), or more specifically:
Dalabon has a pattern of eliding unstressed vowels and unstressed syllables. For example, the word /'cabale/ 'shoulder blade' is often realized as ['cable].[5]
The location of phrasal stress in Dalabon appears one or two peaks with an initial rise into the first peak at the left edge of the constituent and a final fall at the right edge of the constituent.[6]
The diminutive enclitic=wurd is derived from noun wurd 'woman's child', its reduplication wurdurd means 'child'.
wurd can attach to most word classes and functions in 3 ways of meaning: to denote small objects, to add emotional connotations and to serve as pragmatic functions (especially for interactional softening). The examples are shown below.[15]
1.
to denote small objects
Bad-dulum-no=wurd
stone-hill-fill=DIM
kanidjah
there
ka-h-di.
3SG-R-stand/be.PRS
Bad-dulum-no=wurd kanidjah ka-h-di.
stone-hill-fill=DIM there 3SG-R-stand/be.PRS
'There is a small stone hill there.' Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);
2.
to add emotional connotations
Wa:h
INTERJ
ka-h-rakka-ng=wurd.
3SG-R-fall-PFV=DIM
Wa:h ka-h-rakka-ng=wurd.
INTERJ 3SG-R-fall-PFV=DIM
'Oh, he fell over poor fellow.' Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);
Dalabon is a head-marking language. Dalabon has limited use of subordinate clauses, but it has a distinctive subordination strategy, which is to attach pronominal prefixes to the verb, and marked verbs are used for subordinate clause functions[16]
Pronominal Prefixes
Subordinate1
Subordinate2
1sg
nga-
ngaye-
2sg
dja-
djaya-
3sg
ka-
kaye-
1dis
nge-
ngey-
3dis
ke-
key-
3du
barra-
barre-
3pl
bala-
bale-
subordinate1: the unmarked form of prefixes to show subordinate status, used when the status is overt by other means.
subordinate2: used when prefixes are the only way to show subordination.
dis: disharmonic, meaning odd-numbered generations.
^ abCutfield, Sarah (30 June 2018). "Dalabon exophoric uses of demonstratives". In Stephen Levinson; Sarah Cutfield; Michael Dunn; Nick Enfield; Sergio Meira; David Wilkins (eds.). Demonstratives in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Cambridge University Press. p. 92. ISBN978-1-108-34137-0.
^Fletcher, Janet; Evans, Nicholas (2002). "An acoustic phonetic analysis of intonational prominence in two Australian languages". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 32 (2): 123–140. doi:10.1017/S0025100302001019. S2CID144244382.
^Ross, Belinda (2003). The phonological/grammatical mismatch in the Dalabon word: a phonetic study (Thesis). hdl:11343/35879.
^Evans, N. and D. Brown and G. Corbett. (2001). Dalabon pronominal prefixes and the typology of syncretism: a Network Morphology analysis. Yearbook of Morphology 2000. 187-231.
^Evans, N. (2017). Polysynthesis in Dalabon. In Fortescue, Mithun & Evans (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis, 312-335. Oxford University Press.
^Evans, N. & Merlan, F. (2003). Dalabon Verb Conjugations. In Evans, Nicholas (ed.), The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia : comparative studies of the continent's most linguistically complex region, 269-283. Pacific Linguistics.
^Evans, Nicholas (1 April 2006). "Who Said Polysynthetic Languages Avoid Subordination? Multiple Subordination Strategies in Dalabon". Australian Journal of Linguistics. 26 (1): 31–58. doi:10.1080/07268600500531628. S2CID59647678.
^Ponsonnet, M. (2015). Nominal Subclasses in Dalabon (South-western Arnhem Land). Australian Journal of Linguistics 35(1): 1-52.
^Cutfield, S. (2011). Demonstratives in Dalabon: A language of southwestern Arnhem Land. (Doctoral dissertation, Monash University; xx+485pp.)
Alpher, Barry. 1982. Dalabon dual-subject prefixes, kinship categories and generation skewing. In J. Heath, F. Merlan and A. Rumsey, eds, Languages of Kinship in Aboriginal Australia, 19-30. Sydney: Oceania Linguistic Monographs #24
Cutfield, Sarah. 2011. Demonstratives in Dalabon: A language of southwestern Arnhem Land. (Doctoral dissertation, Monash University; xx+485pp.)
Evans, Nicholas, Dunstan Brown & Greville Corbett. 2001. Dalabon pronominal prefixes and the typology of syncretism: a Network Morphology analysis. Yearbook of Morphology 2000, 187-231.
Evans, Nicholas. 2006. Who said polysynthetic languages avoid subordination? Multiple subordination strategies in Dalabon. Australian Journal of Linguistics 26.1:31-58.
Evans, Nicholas. 2007. Standing up your mind: remembering in Dalabon. In Mengistu Amberber (ed.) The language of memory in a crosslinguistic perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 67–95.
Evans, Nicholas, Janet Fletcher & Belinda Ross. 2008. Big words, small phrases: mismatches between pause units and the polysynthetic word in Dalabon. Linguistics 46.1:87-127.
Evans, Nicholas & Francesca Merlan. 2003. Dalabon verb conjugations. In Nicholas Evans (ed.). The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent’s most linguistically complex region. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 269–283.
Evans, Nicholas, Francesca Merlan & Maggie Tukumba. 2004. A first dictionary of Dalabon (Ngalkbon). Maningrida: Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation. Pp. xxxviii + 489.
Ponsonnet, Maïa (2010). "Aspects of the semantics of emotions and feelings in Dalabon (South-Western Arnhem Land, Australia)". The Australian Journal of Anthropology. 21 (3): 367–389. doi:10.1111/j.1757-6547.2010.00102.x.
Ponsonnet, Maïa; Australian Linguistic Society (26 September 2012). "Body-parts in Dalabon and Barunga Kriol: matches and mismatches". Proceedings of the 42nd Australian Linguistic Society Conference 2011. hdl:1885/9421. ISBN978-0-9802815-4-5.
Ponsonnet, Maïa (1 October 2018). "Expressivity and performance. Expressing compassion and grief with a prosodic contour in Gunwinyguan languages (northern Australia)". Journal of Pragmatics. 136: 79–96. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2018.08.009. hdl:1885/165435. S2CID149776540.
Dalabon DoReCo corpus compiled by Maïa Ponsonnet. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and - for some texts - time-aligned morphological annotations.
