School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses

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End date: 1999 × Start date: 1980 × Type: Honours thesis ×

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    To have and to hold: the semantics of the proprietive case in Australian languages
    Saulwick, Adam ( 1996)
    In this thesis I carry out a preliminary typological study on the semantics of the proprietive case in Australian languages. (The details on how far the proprietive is a standard case are discussed in §1.4) Throughout Australia a special proprietive is the main means of expressing the ‘have’ relation, except for a small group of languages on the Arafura coast. (Burarra, the Iwaidjic languages and Tiwi located at the very top of the country, and, most likely, some languages not covered in this survey, use alternate constructions to express proprietive semantics.) Dixon (1972) glosses an affix -yi in Dyirbal as ‘with’ and in his study or the languages of Australia (1980:322 ff.) classes it as a derivational affix. Blake (1987:77 ff.) discusses what he calls a group of ‘pre-case suffixes’ and gives solid argumentation for recognising their relational use, but withholds from attributing them with full blown case status. Dench and Evans (1988:10 ff.) clearly show that the proprietive is a productive case, with relational as well as adnominal scope, and which can derive new lexemes. In fact, the proprietive frequently functions relationally, in the same way as a typical adnominal case like the genitive.
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    The pronominal system of Yaraldi
    Cerin, Mark ( 1994)
    The aim of this work is to provide a detailed description of the pronominal system of Yaraldi, an Australian language traditionally spoken around the lower reaches of the Murray River and the Lakes area of South Australia. In this language, pronominals occur both as free forms and as clitics, and a major part of the thesis is occupied by an examination of the syntactic characteristics of pronominals in these two environments. The thesis also includes a description of the morphology which occurs on pronominals in Yaraldi, and some remarks on the functions of pronominals and on discourse factors affecting their distribution. A number of previous authors, including Capell (1956) and Yallop (1975), have proposed analyses of various aspects of the Yaraldi pronominal system, but these descriptions have been less thorough than might be desirable, partly due to lack of data. The publication of a large collection of Yaraldi texts by Ronald and Catherine Berndt in 1993 has made possible the current study. Where appropriate, the analysis proposed by this thesis is compared with those put forward by earlier writers. Although the focus of the thesis is on pronominals, some introductory analysis is also provided of Yaraldi morphology and syntax, and other features of the language that are relevant to an understanding of the pronominal system.