Native to Australia Dialects Northern, Southern | Native speakers 3 (2005) ISO 639-3 bia | |
Region Murchison area of Western Australia Language family Pama–Nyungan
Kartu
Badimaya | ||
Badimaya (sometimes recorded as 'Parti-maya') is an Australian Aboriginal language. It is a member of the Kartu subgroup of the Pama–Nyungan family.
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Badimaya is a critically endangered language, spoken by only a handful of elderly Aboriginal people, all of whom are over 65 years of age.
Geographic distribution
Badimaya was traditionally spoken across a large region spanning Lake Moore, Ninghan Station, Paynes Find and Dalwallinu in the south, to Mount Magnet, Wynyangoo Station and Kirkalocka Station in the north (Bednall, 2014).
Today Badimaya people are found scattered across the Murchison and Mid-West region, based in regional towns and communities including Mount Magnet, Geraldton, Yalgoo, Mullewa, Meekatharra, Wubin, Dalwallinu and Perth (Bednall, 2014).
Traditional Badimaya country is bordered by Western Desert language (Tjuparn, Wanmala) to the east, Noongar to the south-west and Wajarri to the north-west.
Varieties
Widi may have been another name for Badimaya, or for a particular variety of it.
Analysis of the lexicon and grammatical features of the language suggests that there were (at least) two varieties of Badimaya, a northern and southern variety. These varieties are unnamed, however Badimaya speakers are aware of differences in the speech of Badimaya people from different regions of Badimaya country.
Typology
Badimaya is typologically fairly standard of Western Australian Pama-Nyungan languages. It has a phoneme inventory typical of Pama-Nyungan languages, with six places of articulation (showing both a laminal and apical contrast) and a three-way vowel system, with (limited) length-contrast.
Badimaya is a suffixing language with fairly free word order. It has a split-ergative case marking system, consistent with neighbouring languages. Unlike neighbouring languages however, Badimaya does not show evidence for a bound pronominal system.