Australian Aboriginal words: jurnti, a word meaning ‘cave’, ‘curve’, and many other things

Many common words acquire lots of different meanings and nuances over time. And semanticists draw semantic maps to show how the different meanings are related, what meanings came before others, and so on. Can we draw semantic maps for words in Australian Aboriginal languages? It is definitely more challenging than for the big European languages, since we don’t have any historical information, but when it comes to the word jurnti in Ngarla (a highly conservative language of the Pilbara region of Western Australia), a word that means ‘cave’, ‘curve’ and a number of other things, we can definitely see that a number of meanings are related. Concerning other meanings, it is much more difficult to be sure. It might be homonyms we are dealing with (words that sound the same, but have different meanings, like ‘four’, ‘for’ and ‘fore’ in English). The meanings of this word in the neighbouring languages Nyamal and Nyangumarta are also mentioned.
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