Inquiry: Phonemic system of Ngaanyatjarra (Australian aboriginal language)

[sm167]

Respondents to this inquiry should reply directly to the message
originator (address at end of message).

The other subject that I'd like to discuss is the sound pictures of
world languages. Why it is important to compute the phonemic
frequencies of occurrence in a language. Every language has this or
that unigue sound picture. One can intuitively feel that language "A"
is different from language "B" hearing the sound picture of a
language. The phonemic frequencies of occurrence create this or that
sound mosaic of a language. We can compare world languages with each
other after we obtain the sound picture of every world language.  Now
linguists believe that there are about 4000 or 5000 languages in the
world. However, unfortunately, there are only 120 data on phonemeic
frequency of occurrence I that I could collect for world languages.
Many of them we computed in Novosibirsk (Russia). This is why, I urge
world linguists to join our group of phoneticians who investigate the
sound picture of world languages. The data on frequency of occurrence
of phonemes and phonemic groups have been published in my 3 books in
Russian. One can find the references in the third book: Nekotorye
teoreticheskie polozhenija  tipologii upor'adochennosti fonem v
zvukovoj tsepochke jazyka i kompendium statisticheskih harakteristik
osnovnyh grupp soglasnyh fonem.  - Novosibirsk: Novosibirsk
klassicheskij institut, 2001. - 130 pages.  I'd like to go on
studying the frequencies of phonemic occurrences of less known
world languages.

This time I took up the Ngaanyatjarra language which is an aboriginal
language of Australia. Could anyone send me the phonemic system of
Ngaanyatjarra? I need especially the system of Ngaanyatjarra
consonants. In the Linguistlist I read a lot of interesting
discissions on different matters but never on phonostatistics. I
wonder how one can foresee the labial consonants being distributed in
different world languages. One should bear in mind that languages are
different in all aspect. I wonder if labial distribution is the same,
no matter how different languages may be. This is why I took the
Aboriginal Australian language of Nunggubuyu and Hanga of Ghana and
compared them to Japanese and 120 other world languages. The results
are rather unexpected, at least for me. I wonder where I could publish
them in English?

Those linguists who are interested or could help may write me to my
email address yutamb at hotmail.com

Looking forward to joint efforts.

Wishing you a Happy 2002 year,
Yuri Tambovtsev
Novosibirsk Ped.University