Language Contact in Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri

The Australian Pama-Nyungan language, Warlpiri, is spoken by about 4,000 people mostly in small remote communities in the Northern Territory, and also in a sizable diaspora. Australia has long been a site of extensive language contact, and there is considerable work on Warlpiri and its historical relationships to neighboring languages, including language contact effects. This chapter reviews work on language contact with regard to Warlpiri from historical and contemporary perspectives, situating the work within that about Australian languages more generally. There is clear evidence of the genetic position of Warlpiri, and also of transfer of lexical items between Warlpiri and neighboring languages, including diffusion of a subsection kinship system. More recently, dramatic contact effects have been seen in the emergence of a mixed language, Light Warlpiri.