Murrinh-Patha
The Murrinh-Patha are a small tribe of Native Australian people, living in Australia's Northern Territory, inland from the settlement of Wadeye, between the rivers Moyle and Fitzmaurice. Their language, also called Murrinh-Patha, is still spoken by about 900. It is one of two members of the Garaman language family, which in turn is part of the large Australian phylum; its intermediate affinities are subject to current debate.
The Murrinh-Patha culture is characterized by typical Native Australian social structure, including a complex kinship system with elaborate behavioral norms for interactions between the different kinship groups.
The Murrinh-Patha language displays extensive classifications both of nouns and verbs. Nouns are divided into ten classes or genders along roughly semantic lines, with exceptions; each noun class is associated with particles which must agree with the class. Verbs occur in some 35 different conjugations. Each verb is morphologically complex, with the verb root surrounded by prefixes and suffixes identifying subject, object, tense, and mood; these affixes are different in the different conjugations.
A useful reference is The Language and Culture of the Murrinh-Patha by Chester S. Street, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Australian Aboriginal Branch, Darwin, 1987.
