Garawa

Background Information

Garawa is identified with the region between the McArthur River and the Queensland border, extending inland from the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and including the settlements of Borroloola and Doomadgee (Furby & Furby 1977:1; Belfrage 1992:1). In 1992 there were approximately two hundred Garawa speakers spread throughout this area (Belfrage 1992:1). There are two dialects of the language: Eastern Garawa, spoken around Wollogorang cattle station, and Western Garawa, spoken around Robinson River cattle station (Furby 1974:1).

Garawa is bordered by Yanyula to the west and Wanyi to the south-west. Belfrage notes that it is closely related to Wanyi (1992:1), and Osborne observes that the two languages have the same phonemic system (1966:1b). Furby and Furby (1977:1) note that Garawa shares some cognate (or borrowed) roots with Yanyula, although the languages are structurally different.

O’Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin (1966:33) classify Garawa (Karawa) as a non-Pama-Nyungan language, and a member of the Karwan family. According to their classification, the Karwan family comprises Karawa (the sole member of the Karwic group) and Wanyi (the sole member of the Wanyic group). However, Oates and Oates (1970:19) say that "studies by Osborne … confirm Wanyi as a dialect of Karawa, the two languages being mutually intelligible". Although classified as non-Pama-Nyungan, Garawa is a suffixing language with case concord among phrasal elements, and has a split-ergative case system and fairly free word-order (all typical features of Pama-Nyungan languages) (Belfrage 1992:1). The pronouns of Garawa and Wanyi have both Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan features, which leads Blake to observe that, on the basis of the pronouns, these two languages "are the only languages in the whole continent that do not fall unambiguously into one set or the other" (1988:25).

The material for Group 297 was recorded at Doomadgee Mission. Bindie West, the main informant for the Group 297 elicitation material said (on the recording) that most of the people who lived at the Doomadgee Mission were Garawa speakers.

References:

Belfrage, H. 1992. Aspects of Verb and Pronoun Morphology, Semantics and Syntax in Garrwa. (Honours Thesis, University of Melbourne).

Blake, B.J. 1988. "Redefining Pama-Nyungan: Towards the prehistory of Australian Languages". In Evans, N. & S. Johnson. Aboriginal Linguistics 1. Armidale, Australia: University of New England. 1-90.

Furby, E.S. & C.E. Furby 1977. A Preliminary Analysis of Garawa Phrases and Clauses. Pacific Linguistics Series B - No. 42. ANU.

Oates, W.J. & L.F. Oates (eds). 1970. A Revised Linguistic Survey of Australia. Australian Aboriginal Studies no. 33, Linguistics Series no. 12. Canberra: A.I.A.S.

O'Grady, G.N., C.F. Voegelin & F.M. Voegelin. 1966. Languages of the world: Indo-Pacific fascicle six. Anthropological Linguistics 8(2). 1-197.

Osborne, C. 1966. Garawa field notes (photocopy of manusript). Held in the AIATSIS Library, Canberra.