Kungkari language

Not to be confused with Gunggari language.

Kungkari (also Gunggari, Koonkerri, Kuungkari) is an extinct and unclassified Australian Aboriginal language.^[1] The Kungkari language region included the landscape within the local government boundaries of the Longreach Shire Council and Blackall-Tambo Shire Council.^[2]

Kungkari
Kuungkari of Barcoo River
Native to	Australia
Extinct	(date missing)
Language family	Pama–Nyungan (unclassified, possibly Karnic) Kungkari
Language codes
ISO 639-3	lku
Glottolog	kuun1236
AIATSIS[1]	L38
ELP	Kungkari

Classification

Geographically it lay near the Barcoo River between the Karnic and Maric languages, but had no obvious connection to either; the data is too poor to draw any conclusions on classification.

Bowern (2001) mentions Kungkari as a possible Karnic language.^[3]: 247

Wafer and Lissarrague (2008)^[4]: 324 report that a description of Kungkari by Breen (1990)^{[5]: 22–64} is of Kungkari, not the similarly-named Gunggari, which was Maric.^[3]

Phonology

Consonants

	Peripheral		Laminal		Apical
	Labial	Velar	Dental	Palatal	Alveolar	Retroflex
Plosive	p	k	t̪	c	t	ʈ
Nasal	m	ŋ	n̪	ɲ	n	ɳ
Rhotic					r
Lateral			(l̪)	ʎ	l	ɭ
Approximant	w			j		ɻ

• The dental lateral [l̪] mainly occurs as an allophone of /l/ within the consonant cluster /lt̪/.
• /t/ may be realized as a voiced stop [d] when after /n/, or as a voiced tap [ɾ] in intervocalic positions.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i iː		u (uː)
Low		a aː

• The long [uː] only rarely occurs.^[5]