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Kayardild
Region	South Wellesley Islands, north west Queensland, Australia
Ethnicity	Kaiadilt, Yanggal
Native speakers	8 (2016 census)
Language family	Macro-Pama–Nyungan? Tangkic Kayardild
Dialects	Kayardild Yangkaal
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: gyd – Kayardild nny – Yangkaal/Nyangga (two different languages)
Glottolog	kaya1318
AIATSIS	G35 Kayardild, G37 Yangkaal
ELP	Kayardild
	Yangkaal
Kayardild Traditional area
Kayardild is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Kayardild is a moribund Tangkic language spoken by the Kaiadilt on the South Wellesley Islands, north west Queensland, Australia. Other members of the family include Yangkaal (spoken by the Yangkaal people), Lardil, and Yukulta (Ganggalidda).

Kayardild is a critically endangered language, considered near-extinct. In 1981, there were around fifty native speakers of Kayardild. The number of speakers of Kayardild significantly reduced since the 1940s as a result of the stolen generations. By 1981, there were fifty known native speakers. In the 2016 census, there were eight.

Kayardild is known for its many unusual case phenomena, including case stacking of up to four levels, the use of clause-level case to signal interclausal relations and pragmatic factors, and another set of 'verbal case' endings which convert their hosts from nouns into verbs morphologically. It is also well-known for only allowing subordination one level deep. Kayardild is the only known spoken language where tense markers appear on both nouns and verbs.

Speakers tend to have a preference for subject–object–verb word order.

Phonology

References

1. ^ "Census 2016, Language spoken at home by Sex (SA2+)". stat.data.abs.gov.au. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Archived from the original on 26 December 2018. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
2. Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge University Press. p. xxxix. ISBN 0521473780.
3. G35 Kayardild at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies  (see the info box for additional links)
4. Endangered Languages Project data for Yangkaal.
5. "Kayardild". Glottolog 5.0. Retrieved 16 May 2024.
6. ^ Wuethrich, Bernice (2000). "Learning the World's Languages: Before They Vanish". Science. 288 (5469): 1156–1159. ISSN 0036-8075.
7. Dorian, Nancy C. (2002). "Commentary: Broadening the Rhetorical and Descriptive Horizons in Endangered-Language Linguistics". Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 12 (2): 134–140. doi:10.1525/jlin.2002.12.2.134. JSTOR 43104008.
8. Evans, Nicholas (1995). A Grammar of Kayardild: With Historical-comparative Notes on Tangkic. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-012795-9.
9. ^ Evans (1995b:51)

Bibliography

• Evans, Nick (1995a). "Current Issues in Australian languages". In Goldsmith, John A. (ed.). The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics (1st ed.). Blackwell. pp. 723–761.
• Evans, Nicholas (1995b). A Grammar of Kayardild: With Historical-comparative Notes on Tangkic. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-012795-9.

Further reading

• Evans, Nicholas (1988). "Odd topic marking in Kayardild". In Austin, Peter (ed.). Complex sentence constructions in Australian Languages. Typological Studies in Language. Vol. 15. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 219–266. doi:10.1075/tsl.15.11eva. ISBN 978-90-272-2887-1.
• Evans, Nicholas (1992). Kayardild Dictionary and Thesaurus. University of Melbourne: Department of Linguistics and Language Studies.
• Evans, Nicholas (1995c). "The Kayardild language". In Robinson, Julia (ed.). Voices of Queensland. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
• Evans, Nicholas (1995d). "Multiple case in Kayardild: anti-iconicity and the diachronic filter". In Plank, F. (ed.). Double case. Agreement by Suffixaufnahme. Oxford University Press. pp. 396–428. ISBN 9780195087758.
• Evans, Nicholas (2001). "Typologies of agreement: some problems from Kayardild". Transactions of the Philological Society. 101 (2): 203–234. doi:10.1111/1467-968X.00118. hdl:1885/33294.
• Evans, Nicholas (2006). "Kayardild". In Brown, Keith (ed.). Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 6. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 168–169.
• Round, Erich (2009). Kayardild Morphology, Phonology, and Morphosyntax (PhD thesis). Yale University.
• Round, Erich (2013). Kayardild Morphology and Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-965487-1.
• Round, Erich; Corbett, Greville G. (2016). "The theory of feature systems: one feature versus two for Kayardild tense-aspect-mood". Morphology. 27 (1): 1–55. doi:10.1007/s11525-016-9294-3.

• Critically endangered languages
• Endangered languages of Oceania
• North West Queensland
• Tangkic languages