Pama-Nyungan

[pah-muh-nyoong-guhn]

noun

1. a family of Australian Aboriginal languages, the most widespread within the Australian group of languages.

Pama-Nyungan

/ ˈpɑːməˈnjʊŋɡən /

adjective

1. of or relating to the largest superfamily of languages within the phylum of languages spoken by the native Australians

noun

1. this phylum

Example Sentences

Of that enormous group of languages, most belonged to the Pama-Nyungan family, with dozens of branches that descended from a protolanguage probably spoken 6,000 years ago in the northeastern part of the continent.

From Scientific American

If Hale was right, then Pama-Nyungan, with more than 200 identified languages, would be one of the world's largest language families—larger than Indo-European and almost as large as Sino-Tibetan.

From Science Magazine

That suggests that Pama-Nyungan languages developed much as other world languages did, rather than being a rarefied case, she argues.

From Science Magazine

Some suggested that the Pama-Nyungan family, if it exists, entered the continent in a separate migration, whereas others argued that it split off from other Aboriginal languages only a few thousand years ago.

From Science Magazine

They analyzed 36,000 words from 195 Pama-Nyungan languages and compared the loss and gain of cognate words in 189 meanings through time.

From Science Magazine