Mara (~ Marra) and Warndarang (~ Wandarang)                                back to Australian languages
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Mara and Warndarang appear to be genetically close to each other, and they are arguably additionally subgrouped with Alawa. This grouping is part of the larger “non-Pama-Nyungan” language group. Mark Harvey (Australian Journal of Linguistics vol 32) discusses whether Mara and Warndarang are genetically close or reflect diffusion.

I did salvage work on Warndarang with the last competent speaker at Ngukurr, whose death brought my work to a close. I worked off and on on Mara with a speaker at Numbulwar. Both languages make heavy use of compounds consisting of uninflected main verb and suffixally inflected auxiliaries (some of the latter also occur without a main verb), plus pronominal-prefix complexes and various derivational morphemes.

“Mara” is unrelated to the “Maric” group of Australian languages.

Warndarang (Glottolog spells it “Wandarang”)

The previous documentation of Warndarang  was by Arthur Capell and Margaret Sharpe, in both cases sketchy material based on brief fieldwork. I was able to finish a brief grammar and lexicon along with some texts. In unpublished manuscripts archived at AIATSIS, I edited (i.e. retranscribed and translated) Capell’s and Sharpe’s texts.

book
      1980c          Basic materials in Warndarang: Grammar, texts, and dictionary. (Pacific Linguistics, C‑72.) Canberra: Australian National University.
                                    http://sealang.net/archives/pl/ (search for author = Heath,  or title = Basic materials in W)
                                    DOI: 10.15144/PL-B62

article
      1986b         Massacre at Hodgson Downs. In: Louise Hercus & Peter Sutton (eds.), This is what happened: Historical narratives by Aborigines, 177‑81. Australia: AIAS. [text in Warndarang language]
                                    ISBN 0855751444

manuscripts at AIATSIS library:
Capell’s Warndarang texts, (re-)transcribed. (Catalog no. PMS 780)
Warndarang texts, Case history notebooks, (re-)transcribed from Sharpe’s texts. (Catalog no. PMS 782.)

Mara (also spelled “Marra”)
The interplay between prefix and suffix in Mara nouns as well as verbs is particularly interesting. There is a recent “Marra” dictionary by Ruth Singer.

book
      1981            Basic materials in Mara: Grammar, texts, and dictionary. (Pacific Linguistics C‑60.) Canberra: Australian National University.
                                    http://sealang.net/archives/pl/ (search for author = Heath, or title = Basic materials in M)
                                    DOI: 10.15144/PL-C60

articles
      1981d         Aspectual 'skewing' in two Australian languages (Mara, Nunggubuyu). In: P. Tedeschi & A. Zaenen (eds.), Tense and aspect. (Syntax and Semantics, 14), 91‑102. New York: Academic.
      *1980b        Mara moieties: A reply. Mankind 12(3):234‑40.
                                    DOI: 10.1111/j.1835-9310.1980.tb01196.x
                                    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1835-9310.1980.tb01196.x/epdf
      1978a          Mara 'moieties' once again. Mankind 11(4):468‑79.
                                    DOI: 10.1111/j.1835-9310.1978.tb01186.x
                                    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1835-9310.1978.tb01186.x/epdf

[last update Nov 2017]

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