Nyulnyulan

Nyulnyulan is a proposed language family of Aboriginal Australian languages spoken in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The family takes its name from Nyulnyul, one of its member languages. Nyulnyulan languages are distributed across a portion of the northern Kimberley, with multiple languages historically spoken in the coastal and inland areas. Over the past century, many Nyulnyulan languages have experienced rapid decline as a result of colonization, with several varieties now extinct and others severely endangered.

Classification: Most linguists recognize Nyulnyulan as comprising two primary branches, Western Nyulnyulan and Eastern Nyulnyulan, with several languages assigned to each branch. The internal structure remains the subject of study, and some researchers have proposed broader connections to neighboring non-Pama-Nyungan languages, though consensus on such affiliations is limited.

Geographic distribution and status: The languages are localized to the Kimberley region, and a number have only a handful of speakers or are no longer spoken as community languages. Documentation exists for some Nyulnyulan languages through fieldwork, descriptive grammars, dictionaries, and archival recordings, but data are uneven and many languages remain poorly described.

Linguistic features: Across the Nyulnyulan family, languages show considerable variety, but they contribute to the regional typology common to northern Australian languages. Research typically focuses on phonology, pronoun systems, and verb morphology, as well as contact-induced changes in the region. Because Nyulnyulan comprises several languages with limited documentation, reconstructing a comprehensive proto-language remains tentative and debated.