Appendix - The name Barngarla

Summary

The phonological shape of the language name Schürmann transcribed as Parnkalla may be checked against recent recordings of this word. In Adnyamathanha the word occurs as Varngarla (Mcentee & McKenzie 1992: 56) showing retroflex nasal and lateral, although in 1960 O'Grady spelled the name Pankarla, (O'Grady 2001: 292), a representation he must have checked with Hale, who worked with Barngarla man Harry Crawford at Iron Knob on that occasion. Hercus & White (1973: 61) recorded the name as Baŋga?a, showing a velar nasal, as do maps drawn by Berndt and Tindale (reproduced in Hercus & Simpson 2001: 268-9), which have Banggala and Baŋga?a respectively. Tindale appears to have considered that Banggala was a valid alternative pronunciation1, and Hercus (1999: 12) treats this word as a northern dialect label. In view of Mcentee & McKenzie's Varngarla, and Crawford's Pankarla, a form Banggarla or something like it may have been a northern dialectal variant, or even an exonymic pronunciation.

Hercus & Simpson (2001: 271) discuss a possible etymology for the word Barngarla, incorporating kalla ‘voice, speech’, probably phonemic garla, corresponding to archaic Adnymathanha arlda ‘language’. The nineteenth-century settler AN Swiss spelled the word Parnkulta in a letter to RH Mathews (cited in Hercus & Simpson 2001: 271), supporting both the retroflex place of the nasal, as well as their proposed etymology. The language name was likely to have been phonemic /parnkarla/, at least around Port Lincoln. Swiss's spelling Parnkulta makes it fairly certain that this label variant, as Barnkarlda, reflects archaic Adnyamathanha arlda ‘language’ and Barngarla garla, or reconstructable early Thura-Yura *karlta ‘language’.

Simpson and Hercus (2001: 271, fn 11) point out that an initial element parn would be phonotactically illegal in Barngarla, so we may wish to look for an initial element parnga that might have formed parnga-garla^* → parngarla. The Barngarla word parnga probably meant ‘hot, heat’ or similar. Schürmann lists a verb parnkata, phonemic barngadha, without a gloss but with a sentence example: ngalli parnkata/parnkalliti bukarranga ‘to be hot’. The verb parnkata occurs under another lemma with another sentence example, ngalli parnkata, again without a gloss. Under the lemma parnkata it looks as if an original printed sentence example ngalli parnkata has been overwritten by hand to read ngalli parnkalliti bukarranga.