Djambarrpuyŋu

A Yolngu Variety of Northern Australia

Melanie Wilkinson
Department of Education and Training Northern Territory Government, Australia

This study is a reference grammar of Djambarrpuyŋu. Djambarrpuyŋu is an agglutinative non-configurational language spoken in north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. There are perhaps 1000 speakers of Djambarrpuyŋu. Unlike other Australian languages it is being spoken by a greater number of people than would have occurred traditionally. This study focuses on the language of older Djambarrpuyŋu clanspeople as occurs in texts. It covers areas of phonology, morphology and syntax as revealed in this corpus and through elicitation. There are numerous examples from the texts throughout the study.

Phonologically the language is of interest because of the presence of a stop contrast and a glottal stop. Djambarrpuyŋu has been affected by regional morphophonological processes such as lenition and vowel deletion. Demonstratives are used not only to indicate spatial deixis and temporal relations, but also function prominently in referential tracking in texts. There is a specific set of pronominals used to code intraclausal coreference. Case suffixes may have adnominal, relational or complementizer functions. Tense needs to be described in terms of metrical and cyclical factors. The study also describes the synchronic relationship of Djambarrpuyŋu to other languages in the area, with particular attention to the closely related clan varieties Djapu, Gupapuyŋu and Gumatj.

ISBN 9783862883608. Outstanding grammars from Australia 11. 770pp. 2012.

Topics in Eastern and Central Arrernte Grammar

John Henderson
University of Western Australia

RMW Dixon (series ed.)

Eastern/Central Arrernte is a range of closely-related dialects spoken in an area around and including Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. It can be considered one of the strongest Australian Indigenous languages, with an estimated 2,000 speakers and continuing transmission to children. Nonetheless, Arrernte is under pressure and must be considered endangered.

There are four areas of particular focus in this work. The focus on segmental phonology reviews and extends modern analyses of the vowel system, and in the consonant system presents instrumental articulatory evidence on the contrast between alveolar and post-alveolar phonological categories. Three fundamental aspects of the morphological structure are presented, primarily in relation to verbs. A range of complex verb types is distinguished, including an analysis of variation in which a single verb may alternatively constitute either a single word or more than one word. Prosodic units are shown to play an important role in a rich variety of morphological processes which include suffix allomorphy, reduplication, compounding and verb splitting. The final area of focus is verbal and deverbal derivation. The approach throughout is basically descriptive. Numerous natural language examples are provided.
 

Outstanding grammars from Australia 12. 450pp. 2013.

ISBN 9783862884261 (print).

ISBN 9783862887682 (e-book, pdf).

Topics in Eastern and Central Arrernte Grammar

John Henderson
University of Western Australia

RMW Dixon (series ed.)

Eastern/Central Arrernte is a range of closely-related dialects spoken in an area around and including Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. It can be considered one of the strongest Australian Indigenous languages, with an estimated 2,000 speakers and continuing transmission to children. Nonetheless, Arrernte is under pressure and must be considered endangered.

There are four areas of particular focus in this work. The focus on segmental phonology reviews and extends modern analyses of the vowel system, and in the consonant system presents instrumental articulatory evidence on the contrast between alveolar and post-alveolar phonological categories. Three fundamental aspects of the morphological structure are presented, primarily in relation to verbs. A range of complex verb types is distinguished, including an analysis of variation in which a single verb may alternatively constitute either a single word or more than one word. Prosodic units are shown to play an important role in a rich variety of morphological processes which include suffix allomorphy, reduplication, compounding and verb splitting. The final area of focus is verbal and deverbal derivation. The approach throughout is basically descriptive. Numerous natural language examples are provided.
 

Outstanding grammars from Australia 12. 450pp.2013.

ISBN 9783862884261 (print).

ISBN 9783862887682 (e-book, pdf).

A Grammar of Northern Subanen

Josephine Sanicas Daguman

RMW Dixon (series editor)

This is a comprehensive description of Northern Subanen, an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 30,000 people living in the interior mountains of the north-eastern portion of Zamboanga peninsula in Mindanao, the Philippines. It analyses a Philippine-type Austronesian language using basic linguistic theory. After giving a summary of the phonology, it defines the category ‘word’ in the language and discusses the word classes identified on language internal grounds. It recognises a distinct adjective class, explaining its properties in detail. The demonstrative class is also discussed in depth.

A number of chapters are dedicated to explore the morpho-syntactic possibilities of a dozen semantic classes of verbs. Verbs are shown to have high propensity to change valency and/or rearrange arguments and syntactic functions. Basic verbal clause structures serve as templates for derived constructions and basic verbal affix forms are recycled for derivational functions. Active verb morphology marks syntactic transitivity. Only about one percent of mono-clausal verbal constructions would be headed by serial verbs. Pivot constraints in SVCs and other attested instances of syntactic ergativity are discussed; also examined is core argument marking, which displays morphological ergativity. Imperative, subordinate and conjoined constructions are dealt with in depth. The description concludes with a typological profile of the language.

ISBN 9783862884346. Outstanding grammars from Australia 13. 684pp. 2013.

A sketch grammar of Meryam Mir

Nick Piper

RMW Dixon (series editor)

Mer, or Murray Island in the Torres Strait, is known to most Australians as the place where the notion of terra nullius at the time of European settlement was challenged and won in the courts of Australia. It is the language of Mer and its neighbours, Erub (Darnley Is.) and Ugar (Stephen Is.) which is described in this book. The language is called Meriam or Meryam Mir, where mir means language. It is of great interest to scholars as it is related to Papuan languages spoken to the north whereas the other indigenous language spoken in the Torres Strait is related to Australian Aboriginal languages spoken to the south.

Meryam is a verb final language with an agglutinating morphology. The morphology includes case inflections and crossreference markers for the core syntactic roles. The crossreference markers also provide information about their number, singular, dual, paucal or plural, and to some degree, about person. Verbs are divided into two basic categories: atelic stative events, which are ongoing, and telic active events, which have a termination point. In typological terms, Meryam can be regarded as a double-marking language.

Piper has maintained her interest with the Eastern Islands of Torres Strait since the compilation of this sketch grammar. She has collaborated with Meriam for publications (Passi & Piper, 1994), the delivery of a language course for Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Education as well as interpreted for a Meriam witness for the Torres Strait sea claim.

ISBN 9783862884377. Outstanding grammars from Australia 14. 240pp. 2013.

Grammatical Relations in Javanese

Grammatical relations are important issues in linguistic theories. People, including those who do not study linguistics, commonly know the terms of grammatical relations such as subject and object. But, how to identify grammatical relations in a language and whether we can use grammatical relations to explain other linguistic phenomenon such as affixation on verb. This book tries to answer these two questions.

In this book grammatical relations in Javanese are described shortly. The description is presented within the relational based view in which the notions of grammatical relations are treated as labels of relations in a network. Subjects, objects, second objects, and obliques are identified based on their sintactic characteristics. Three grammatical relations-changing processes: passive, applicative and causative are also described. The analysis shows that some of the affixations on verb can be explained through the grammatical relation-changing processes.

This book is presented in a simple way so that it is easy to understand. The prior knowledge of linguistics is barely necessary to understand this book. This book is suitable for the undergraduate students of linguistics to broaden their knowledge on syntax.

ISBN 9783862886395. Outstanding grammars from Australia 15. 86pp. 2015.