Kartutjarra (Kardutjara) is one of the Wati languages of the large Pama–Nyungan family of Australia. It is sometimes counted as a dialect of the Western Desert Language, but is classified as a distinct language in Bowern.Claire Bowern and Quentin Atkinson. 2012. Computational phylogenetics and the internal structure of Pama-Nyungan. Language 88. 817-845. Johns Hopkins University Press.
It is one of the components of the Martu Wangka koine.
Sign language
Most of the peoples of central Australia have (or at one point had) signed forms of their languages. Among the Western Desert peoples, sign language has been reported specifically for Kardutjara.Miller, Wick R. (1978). A report on the sign language of the Western Desert (Australia). Reprinted in Aboriginal sign languages of the Americas and Australia. New York: Plenum Press, 1978, vol. 2, pp. 435–440. Signed Kardutjara is known to have been well-developed.Kendon, A. (1988) Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semiotic and Communicative Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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