“It’s Etymology Captain, but Not as We Know It”: Pump in North Australia

Abstract

We consider the words originating from the English word ‘bamboo’ borrowed into the indigenous languages of northern Australian and denoting the didjeridu (drone pipe) or other aerophones. The word ‘bamboo’ must have been first acquired by speakers of Australian Aboriginal languages in the 19th century, and in north Australia where the large stem plant is endemic, namely in the region of Darwin. The available data is organised in support of an hypothesised spread whereby the word was applied to the aerophone made from bamboo, and then to similar aerophones made of other wood. In this sense, ‘bamboo’ (as pampu) spread inland southwards, and eastwards to western Cape York Peninsula. In western Cape York Peninsula the word lost the final vowel, and in this form was borrowed southwards and applied to the particular aerophone the ‘emu caller’, used to attract the emu (a large flightless game bird). A comparable distribution is collated for an indigenous word denoting aerophones: kurlumpu(rr) and corresponding forms in various north Australian languages. The study demonstrates how some etymological headway can be made on loanwords in languages with only a recent documentary record.

It is a pleasure to associate this paperlet with Lauri Carlson. We knew each other as fellow graduate students in linguistics at MIT, and also shared a group apartment. Lauri would occasionally put to us his roommates (mostly native speakers of English of various kinds) that a (to us implausible) pair of English words would prove to be etymologically related, and invariably on us reaching for dictionaries he would turn out to be right. An earlier version appeared as blog posts (Nash 2011a, 2011b). I am grateful to the editors for providing this opportunity, and for their forebearance.