Warlpiri is an Indigenous Australian language spoken by over 3,000 people in four communities in the Tanami Desert area of the Northern Territory of Australia: Lajamanu, Nyirrpi, Willowra, and Yuendumu. There are also speakers in the major towns and cities in the Northern Territory, and in other parts of Australia. There are several varieties, and communolects, or community dialects, are also present. In one community a new language has emerged, known as Light Warlpiri. There are several studies of children’s acquisition of Warlpiri that demonstrate the input to children in a child-directed speech register, the phonology of children’s early productions, and children’s morphosyntactic development. Researchers have focused on typically-developing children. There is a single speech assessment tool dedicated to Warlpiri, a MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory app called the Little Kids Word List <https://mywordlist.app/app/little-kids-word-list> .

Key words: 
Warlpiri, Light Warlpiri, Australia, Indigenous, multilingual, communication, speech, language, children’s development, interdisciplinary, international communities, assessment, intervention

Book chapter:
O’Shannessy, C., Nelson, A. N., Bartlett, J. N., & Davis, V. P. (2025). Warlpiri speech development. In S. McLeod (Ed.). The Oxford handbook of speech development in languages of the world. Oxford University Press.

Language overview presentation – forthcoming:

• O’Shannessy, C., Nelson, A. N., Bartlett, J. N., & Davis, V. P. (forthcoming). Warlpiri: Multilingual children’s speech development. Charles Sturt University, Australia. https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/languages

This presentation relates to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:

• SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
• SDG 4: Quality Education
• SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
• SDG 17: Partnerships to Achieve the Goals