{{short description|Australian Aboriginal language}} {{Use Australian English|date=October 2020}} {{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}} {{Infobox language |name=Kokatha |states=Australia |region=Western South Australia |ethnicity=Kokatha |speakers=16 |date=2016 |ref=e18 |familycolor=Australian |fam1=Pama–Nyungan |fam2=Wati |fam3=Western Desert |iso3=ktd |aiatsis=C3 |glotto=koka1244 |glottorefname=Kokata |notice= |map=Wirangu Map.jpg |mapcaption=Tribal boundaries, after Tindale (1974), adapted from Hercus (1999) }}
The '''Kokatha language''', also written '''Kukatha''', '''Kokata''', '''Gugada''', and other variants, and also referred to as '''Madutara''', '''Maduwonga''', '''Nganitjidi''', '''Wanggamadu''', and '''Yallingarra''' and variant spellings of these, is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Western Desert group traditionally spoken by the Kokatha people, whose traditional lands are in the western part of the state of South Australia, north of the Wirangu people.
==Country== Kokatha was historically spoken in northern western areas of South Australia.
Norman Tindale recorded Kokatha speakers at Tarcoola, Kingoonya, Pimba, and McDouall Peak; west to Ooldea; north to Stuart Range and Lake Phillipson. At the time of first European contact, their lands appeared to centre on Mount Eba, covering surrounding land to Kingoonya, Tarcoola, Coober Pedy and possibly Ooldea.<ref name=c3>{{AIATSIS|C3|Kokatha}}</ref>
Today, Kokatha people live in Ceduna, Koonibba, Port Augusta, Adelaide and other places around the state.<ref name=mlt>{{cite web | title=Kokatha | website=Mobile Language Team | url=https://mobilelanguageteam.com.au/languages/kokatha/ | access-date=24 October 2020}}</ref> ==Classification== Kokatha is a dialect of the Western Desert language group, closely related to other dialects in the group. It is to be distinguished from the two other Western Desert dialects known as Kokatja or Kukatja dialect (A68 and C7 in AUSTLANG).<ref name=c3/>
Kokatha has also been grouped as a Far West Coast language, together with Mirning and Wirangu.<ref name=mlt/>
In 1972, linguist John Platt<ref>{{cite web | title=Platt, John Talbot - Full record view | website=Libraries Australia Search|publisher=National Library of Australia | url=https://librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au/search/display?dbid=auth&id=36297712 | access-date=24 October 2020}}</ref> published a grammar of the Kokatha language.<ref>{{cite book | last=Platt | first=John Talbot | title=An Outline Grammar of the Gugada Dialect: South Australia | publisher=Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies | series=Australian Aboriginal studies (48); Linguistic series (20)| year=1972 | isbn=978-0-85575-023-7 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lhOVzQEACAAJ | access-date=24 October 2020 }}</ref> Platt distinguished two types, Gugada and Gugadja, with Gugadja more like Western Desert than Gugada, which he thought was linked more closely to Wirangu. {{as of|2020}} the distinctions between the two are not clear, but both remain classified as Kokatha by AIATSIS in their AUSTLANG database.<ref name=c3/>
== Phonology ==
=== Consonants === {| class="wikitable IPA" style="text-align:center" ! rowspan="2" | ! colspan="2" |Peripheral ! colspan="2" |Laminal ! colspan="2" |Apical |- !Labial !Velar !Dental !Palatal !Alveolar !Retroflex |- !Plosive |p |k |t̪ |(c) |t |ʈ |- !Nasal |m |ŋ |n̪ |(ɲ) |n |ɳ |- !Lateral | | |l̪ |(ʎ) |l |ɭ |- !Rhotic | | | | |ɾ | |- !Approximant | colspan="2" |w | |j | |ɻ |}
* Sounds /t̪, n̪, l̪/ are only heard when preceding vowels /a, aː, u, uː/, when preceding /i, iː/ they are always palatal as [c, ɲ, ʎ]. * Stop sounds are voiced as [b, ɡ, d̪~ɟ, d, ɖ] when preceded by a nasal, and sometimes in intervocalic positions. * The flap sound /ɾ/ may also be heard as an alveolar glide [ɹ] in free variation. It may also be heard as a trill [r] in emphatic speech. * Sounds /ɲ, ŋ/ when in word-final position, may vary between being heard as voiced or voiceless [ɲ̊, ŋ̊].
=== Vowels === {| class="wikitable IPA" style="text-align:center" ! !Front !Back |- !High |i iː |u uː |- !Low | colspan="2" |a aː |}
* /i/ can also be heard as [ɪ] in stressed syllables or in word-final position, and as [ɪə̆] when emphasized before a retroflex consonant. * /a/ may also be heard as fronted [æ] when after /j/ or other palatal/dental phonemes, as [ɔ] when before or after /w/, as [ʌ] when in open word-final position, and as back [ɑ] in primary stressed syllables or before a retroflex consonant as well as being heard as [ɑə̆] when emphasized before a retroflex consonant. * /u/ may also be heard as [ʊ] when in word-final position or before a retroflex or nasal consonant, as [o] when between velar consonants or before /w/, as [ə] when in the second syllable of words with three or more syllables, or as [ʊə̆] when emphasized before a retroflex or nasal consonant.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Platt |first=John T. |title=An Outline Grammar of the Gugada Dialect: South Australia |publisher=Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies |year=1972}}</ref>
==Overlap with other languages== People from Kokatha, Mirning and Wirangu language groups lived at Koonibba Mission from around 1900,<ref name=libguide>{{cite web | title=Aboriginal missions in South Australia: Koonibba | website=LibGuides at State Library of South Australia | url=https://guides.slsa.sa.gov.au/Aboriginal_Missions/Koonibba | access-date=30 October 2020}}</ref> and many loan words moved among the languages there and across the region.<ref name=naessen>{{cite journal|title=The etymology of Coober Pedy, South Australia |first=Petter |last=Naessan|journal=Aboriginal History|volume=34|date=2010|jstor=24047032 |pages=217–233 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24047032 }} [https://cooberpedyregionaltimes.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/the-etymology-of-coober-pedy1.pdf PDF]</ref> A wordlist compiled by Pastor August Hoff, Superintendent of Koonibba Mission from 1920 to 1930, between 1920 and 1952 and published by his son Lothar in 2004, included words from the Wirangu, Kokatha and Pitjantjatjara languages.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Velichova-Rebelos, Margareta | author2=Mühlhäusler, Peter | author3=Hoff, Lothar C.| author4=University of Adelaide. Discipline of Linguistics | author5=Maintenance of Indigenous Languages and Records Program (Australia) | title=Draft word list of the indigenous languages spoken at Koonibba Mission: featuring words from the Wirangu, Kokatha and Pitjantjatjara languages from the far West Coast of South Australia | date=2005 | publisher=Discipline of Linguistics, School of Humanities, University of Adelaide] | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/34481262 | access-date=30 October 2020|quote=Extracted from The Hoff Vocabularies of Indigenous Languages collected by Reverend A.B.C. Hoff in 1920-1952.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | author1=Hoff, A. B. C. (August Bernhard Carl) | publisher=Lothar C. Hoff | title=The Hoff vocabularies of indigenous languages from the far west coast of South Australia | date=2004 | isbn=978-0-646-43758-3}}</ref>
According to Kokatha woman Dylan Coleman in her 2010 PhD thesis, Luise Hercus' work entitled ''A grammar of the Wirangu language from the west coast of South Australia'' (1999) was based on the words spoken by two fluent Kokatha speakers, who were Coleman's grandmothers. They believed that their input was part of the work to create a Kokatha dictionary, and refuted Hercus' claim that the language was Wirangu, as they had been taught Kokatha language and culture by Kokatha elders for generations.<ref name=coleman>{{cite thesis|url=https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2440/99923/6/Coleman2011_PhD.pdf|author=Dylan Coleman|title=minya wunyi gu wonga|date=Dec 2010|publisher=University of Adelaide|access-date=26 October 2020 }}</ref>
==Language revival== The Mobile Language Team works with the Far West Language Centre in Ceduna in researching the Kokatha language and performing other language-related activities.<ref name=mlt/> ==References== {{reflist}} ==Further reading== *{{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200326062921/https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/collections/language_bibs/kokatha.pdf|archive-date=26 March 2020|url=https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/collections/language_bibs/kokatha.pdf|title=Selected bibliography of the Kokatha language and people held in the AIATSIS Library|first=Margaret|last= O’Connell|website= AIATSIS Collections|date=Nov 2014}} *{{cite web | title=LibGuides: Aboriginal people of South Australia: Kokatha | website=LibGuides at State Library of South Australia |publisher=State Library of South Australia | url=https://guides.slsa.sa.gov.au/c.php?g=410294&p=5554789}}
Category:Western Desert language