the Northern Worrorran group, known as Wunambal and related dialects
the Eastern Worrorran group, known as Ngarinyin, a.k.a. Ungarinyin, and related dialects
the Western Worrorran group, known as Worrorra, and related dialects
In addition, Gulunggulu is unattested but presumably a Worrorran lect.[3]
Validity
Worrorran languages (purple), among other non-Pama-Nyungan languages (grey)
There has been debate over whether the Worrorran languages are demonstrably related to one another, or constitute a geographical language group.
Dixon (2002) considers them to be language isolates with no demonstrable relationship other than that of a Sprachbund.
However, more recent literature differs from Dixon:
Rumsey and McGregor (2009) demonstrate the cohesiveness of the family and its reconstructibility, and;
Bowern (2011) accepts the Worroorran languages as a family.[4]
Vocabulary
Capell (1940) lists the following basic vocabulary items for the Worrorran languages:[5]
References
^McGregor, William (2004), The languages of the Kimberley, Western Australia, RoutledgeCurzon, ISBN 978-0-415-30808-3
^Adapted from Rumsey, Alan (2018). "The sociocultural dynamics of indigenous multilingualism in northwestern Australia". Language & Communication. 62: 91–101. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2018.04.011. ISSN 0271-5309. S2CID 150007441. Retrieved 7 November 2020.
^Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Worrorran languages". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
^Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, December 23, 2011 (corrected February 6, 2012)
^Capell, Arthur. 1940. The Classification of Languages in North and North-West Australia. Oceania 10(3): 241-272, 404-433. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1940.tb00292.x
Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McGregor and Rumsey (2009). Worrorran Revisited: The Case for Genetic Relations Among Languages of the Northern Kimberley Region of Western Australia. Pacific Linguistics.
Further reading
Clendon, Mark (2014). Worrorra: a language of the north-west Kimberley coast (PDF). University of Adelaide. ISBN 978-1-922064-59-2. Text may be copied from this source, which is available under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.