The Wati (Western Desert) subgroup of Pama-Nyungan

Abstract

Abstract This chapter looks at internal variation among eleven varieties of languages known as Wati or Western Desert. Subgrouping within this part of Pama-Nyungan is difficult; here we shown, based primarily on morphological features, how different innovations cross-cut the network of Wati varieties. These languages form a complex dialect continuum; we comment on previous work that discusses dialect differentiation, before moving to a sketch which concentrates on morphology, in particular case marking, pronouns (free and bound), verb conjugation classes, and verb tense/aspect morphology. We find that the varieties can be broadly classified into three groups: Northern, Central, and South-eastern, though with innovations that are sometimes inconsistent with such groupings. Warnman shares more features with northern languages than languages elsewhere in Wati but does not share all the innovative forms.