Bardi temperature terms

Bardi is a non-Pama-Nyungan (Nyulnyulan) language from Australia’s north. Bardi’s three temperature terms (moola ‘hot/warm’, inkoorr ‘cold’, and binyj(a) ‘cooled down’) are here discussed and exemplified. We give a survey of the syntactic constructions in which temperature terms appear, and discuss the semantics and range of each term. Bardi temperature terms have meanings beyond the temperature sphere, in the domain of ripeness and freshness. Bardi is perhaps unusual in having a split of terms for ‘cold’ which is governed by aspect rather than gradation, though there are other similar adjectival pairs elsewhere in Bardi. Temperature terms are not used metaphorically in the language. We conclude with discussion of the etymology of temperature descriptors in Bardi and other Nyulnyulan languages.