According to McDonald and Wurm (1979:1) and Wafer and Lissarrague (2008:287), there are two varieties of Galali, one which McDonald and Wurm refer to as Waŋkumara (Gaḷali) D71, associated with languages of the Wilson River and another, associated with the Bulloo River about which Breen has collected data (1971:13).
The Bulloo River Galali (D30) is classified as a 'Karna-Mari fringe language ... a discontinuous group of languages, mostly poorly attested, scattered between Karnic and Mari languages but not showing much connection with either or with one another. The only one well attested is also the most remote geographically, Kalkutungu' (Breen, 2007:180).
McDonald and Wurm (1979:2) suspect that Galali D71 was originally from the Bulloo River but some speakers moved to the Wilson River where they adopted features of the Wilson River languages.
Waŋkumara (Gaḷali) associated with the Wilson River D71 is very close to modern Waŋkumara L68 and Bundamara L26 (McDonald and Wurm 1979:1) and can thus be classified as a Karnic language (Bowern 2001:257; Wafer and Lissarrague 2008:287).
Previously these two language varieties were conflated under the same code, D30, based on McDonald and Wurm's suspicion that they were originally the same. However, given that this is not established fact and that, synchronically, the two are sufficiently different to be classified as belonging to different language families, they are now distinguished in this database and the Thesaurus.
Wafer and Lissarrague (2008:287) identify the Kalali data in Holmer's (1988) study of Punthamarra L26 as the Bulloo River variety (D30).
At Bulloo Downs; north to Orient, west to Grey Range; east to Clyde, south to Bulloo Lake floodplain)and Kalali (Eulo west to Thargomindah and Bulloo River; upstream to Norley; south to Orient, Clyde, and Curra-winya) (Tindale 1974)
The location in Bowern (2001) roughly matches the locations of Bitjara in Tindale (1974).
Search MURA people®
Search MURA language®
Search OZBIB
Search Trove
Search Worldcat
Speaker numbers were measured differently across the censuses and various other sources listed in AUSTLANG. You are encouraged to refer to the sources.
Speaker numbers for ‘NILS 2004’ and ‘2005 estimate’ come from 'Table F.3: Numbers of speakers of Australian Indigenous languages (various surveys)' in 'Appendix F NILS endangerment and absolute number results' in McConvell, Marmion and McNicol 2005, pages 198-230 (PDF, 2.5MB).
McDonald, Maryalyce.1979. Basic materials in Wankumara (Galali): grammars, sentences and vocabulary: Pacific Linguistics B65. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
