Ngumbarl (Ngombaru, Ngormbal) is an extinct, poorly-attested Nyulnyulan language formerly spoken in Western Australia, north of the town of Broome along the coast, by the Ngumbarl people.
Documentation The language was previously thought to be unattested. Although Daisy Bates had recorded data, comprising a wordlist and a few sentences, in the early twentieth century with Ngumbarl/Jukun informant Billingee, it had previously been thought the data were only for Jukun. The list contains about 800 words, but the orthography is inconsistent and the translations are somewhat unreliable (e.g. is translated "are you hunting kangaroo?" but actually means "you're going to the pindan").
Phonology It is difficult to infer much about Ngumbarl's phonology, because of the orthography used in its corpus. Claire Bowern reconstructs a tentative sound change of word-final in the proto-language to (e.g. *yaŋki 'what' to ).
Grammar The ergative suffix was ; if this evolved from , it matches the previously mentioned sound change from to . The locative was (compare Proto-Nyulnyuylan's *-kun).
Very few verbs, and no full paradigms, are found in the data, although there are some partial paradigms, e.g.: +NgumbarlEnglishI stealhe stealsthey steal Eastern Nyulnyuylan languages have experienced a group of changes in its verbal morphology:
Proto-Nyulnyuylan singular past intransitive > Eastern Nyulnyuylan non-past intransitive PN singular present transitive > EN non-past transitive PN plural present (both transitive and intransitive) > EN non-past plural
Ngumbarl's attested forms are consistent with these — assuming the verb forms were given in the same tense.
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