Yanyuwa is spoken mainly at or near Borroloola,
Northern Territory, Australia. The series of consonants
described here as palatalized velars are called
palato-velar by Kirton and Charlie (1978). They arose
historically through coalescence of clusters of
palato-alveolar and velar consonants. Almost all
remaining clusters consist of a sequence of a coronal and
a 'peripheral' (bilabial or velar), so an analysis of
these as clusters would be defensible (Huttar and Kirton,
1981). The velar and palatalized velar series do not
contrast between high front vowels. Stops are said to
vary in voicing with a tendency for "voicing to be more
frequent between vowels and at the onset of a stressed
syllable in word-medial position" (Kirton 1967:18).
However, a tape recording of one Yanyuwa speaker showed
voiceless stops even in these positions. Kirton and
Charlie (1978) note that for prenasalized stops in
word-initial position "the nasal onset of the complex
phoneme is voiceless in almost every occurrence". This is
taken as an indication that the prenasalized stops are
also basically voiceless. /a/ is the most common vowel;
the sequence /aa/ is disyllabic and no other vowel
sequences occur.

Huttar, G.L., Kirton, J.F. 1981. Contrasts in Yanywa
consonants. In A. Gonzalez and D. Thomas (eds.),
Linguistics Across Continents: Studies in Honor of Richard
S. Pittman. Summer Institute of Linguistics, Manila.

Kirton, J.F. 1967. Anyula phonology. Papers in
Australian Linguistics No. 1, Pacific Linguistics, Series
A, 10:15-28. Australian National University, Canberra.

Kirton, J.F., Charlie, B. 1978. Seven articulatory
positions in Yanyuwa consonants. Papers in Australian
Linguistics No. 11, Pacific Linguistics, Series A,
51:179-197.