School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 12
-
ItemTo have and to hold: the semantics of the proprietive case in Australian languages( 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.
-
ItemChildren’s verbal inflection development in Pitjantjatjara: an acquisition sketch( 2021)This thesis reports on a small-scale, naturalistic corpus study of children's verbal inflection development in Pitjantjatjara, an Indigenous language of Central Australia. To date few studies have documented the acquisition of Australian languages, all of which are endangered, and of which only a fraction are currently being learnt by children. This study is grounded in a novel approach recently proposed as a way of reducing barriers to child language documentation in endangered, minority, and under-studied languages, prioritising sketch descriptions at a small scale over the intensive corpora typically required of studies in English and other well-resourced languages (Defina, Hellwig, Allen, Davidson, Kelly, & Kidd, 2021). The data consists of five hours of naturalistic Pitjantjatjara caregiver-child interaction, selected from a larger corpus recorded by Rebecca Defina and several families in Pukatja, South Australia. The recordings feature five focus children (4 boys and 1 girl) in a ‘cross-lagged’ arrangement, with two children recorded at each six month interval between 2;0 and 4;0 years of age, and each interval spanned by at least one child. From this sample, the thesis aims to provide a preliminary characterisation of the nature of the developmental path followed by Pitjantjatjara learners, in relation to the rich, large, yet extremely regular verbal inflectional paradigm. Description is guided by two research questions: ‘What broad trajectory is apparent with regard to the timing and sequence of verbal inflection use?’ and ‘To what extent do children’s inflected verbs show adultlike characteristics, across the span of the sketch corpus?’ Results relating to the trajectory of acquisition suggest a relatively clear pattern in the broad sequence of emergence, with a ‘core group’ of inflectional categories observed early and frequently. These comprise the perfective imperative, present, and past perfective forms. Three broad stages are apparent, with the youngest children’s verbs observed to be few in number and predominantly in the imperative, followed by an expansion in lexical variety and lexeme-specific inflectional ranges (within the core group), from Mean Length Utterance (MLU) 2.0. The rest of the paradigm then begins to be observed from MLU 3.4, or roughly 3 years of age, in low type and token counts relative to the core group. One notable exception is the action nominaliser, an inflectionally integrated nominalising suffix, which is observed with comparable frequency to the core inflections in this third broad stage. Results regarding adultlike characteristics comprise analyses of both function and form. In terms of function, the sketch outlines the range of usages in which children are recorded to use verbs in past perfective, present (imperfective), and future forms. These results largely align with cross-linguistic tendencies: the focus children are seen to use the past/present distinction in relation to complete versus ongoing events before later making temporal distinctions, and they primarily talk about future events with verbs in ‘present’ form (conventionally conveying ‘certain future’ in adult Pitjantjatjara), before later beginning to add the future (potential) marker to their repertoire. The functional analysis also illuminates the particular constructions driving the intriguing prominence of the action nominaliser in the dataset: namely verbal negation constructions (in assertions and prohibitions), and insubordinated purposive clauses (as a ‘requesting’ strategy). In terms of form, results show that overgeneralisation between inflectional verb classes is very rare. Of 451 total verb tokens, only two examples of overgeneralisation are identified once the effects of systematic phonological substitutions are accounted for. Verbs overwhelmingly correspond to inflected forms from the earliest sample, and there is no observed period characterised by omission of suffixes. While a small number of uninflected stem tokens do occur, their nature is ambiguous at this scale, compatible with both prosodic and morphological accounts. A second pattern of omission is also observed, with word-medial stem augment syllables absent from longer words, in a distribution suggesting interaction with emerging metrical structures. Overall, it is hoped that these results will provide a preliminary indication of children’s typical learning pattern in relation to the Pitjantjatjara verbal paradigm, and contribute to the documentation of children’s communication and development in Australian Indigenous languages more broadly. It is also hoped that they add some new data to the existing cross-linguistic literature on how children learn to make use of rich morphology.
-
ItemThe core of Mangarla grammar( 2020)Mangarla is a Pama-Nyungan language of the Marrngu subgroup, originally spoken in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. Today, the language is severely endangered with a small number of speakers living in disparate communities outside of traditional lands. This work describes the core grammatical features of Mangarla and examines its linguistic connections to other languages in the region, both related and typologically unrelated, providing insight into the fluidity of individual language varieties in contact. The analysis is based on notes and audio recordings of narratives, elicited data and spontaneous conversations, recorded between 1990 and 1994, in the Kimberley communities of Bidyadanga (formerly La Grange) and Jarlmadangah Burru (formerly Mt. Anderson Station), Derby and Fitzroy Crossing. It is also informed by the work of Kevin McKelson collected between the 1960s and 1980s. All aspects of the language are impacted by its distinctive location, surrounded by three different Nyungic subgroups and the prefixing non-Pama-Nyungan languages in the north. Mangarla’s phonological inventory and lexical classes are similar to those of related suffixing languages, but unlike those further south, Mangarla’s lexicon includes many consonant-final preverbs and particles, which are often monosyllabic. Morphologically, it is a split-ergative system, with nominal arguments (including free pronouns) marked in an ergative-absolutive system while the pronominal clitics in agreement with them are split along nominative-accusative lines. Unlike other members of the Marrngu subgroup where these clitics attach to the verb, Mangarla’s bound pronouns typically encliticise to the first element of the clause or to an optional post-initial catalyst, although pragmatics also impacts on their placement. Other interesting features include the loss of the widespread dative marker and lateral-initial ergative/locative forms, its movement away from complete case-concord to free marking within the NP, and the reduction of verb conjugation classes to three. A large number of complex predicates, formed with a preverbal element and a relatively small number of inflecting verb roots, augment monomorphemic members of the verbal category. Argument structure also displays a degree of flexibility not generally recognised in Australian languages. Clause combining strategies include coordination of full and reduced clauses by parataxis, subordination of both finite and nonfinite clauses, typically employing a small number of case markers as complementisers, and unusually, clause chain cosubordination. The work adds to the knowledge of Pama-Nyungan languages in this remote region and leaves a detailed record of the language for the future use of both the Mangarla and academic communities.
-
ItemArgument realisation in Wubuy( 2018)In Wubuy, a highly endangered polysynthetic language from northern Australia, there are a number of morphosyntactic phenomena that can manipulate how verbal arguments are realised, including causative, affectedness and conjunctive constructions. However, the reasons why these sometimes vary in their effect on argument realisation are unclear, as are the ways they are distributed and constrained. In fact, there are very few descriptions of languages with multiple valency-changing processes that provide detailed accounts of them and how they interact with each other. This is a problem because it means that when we take a given verb, we are unable to predict how (or even if) it can participate in such constructions, nor can we predict what the range of possible interpretations will be. Through a reconsideration of the current corpus and the collection of new data, this thesis uses empirical description and analysis to investigate the distribution and constraints of causative, affectedness and conjunctive constructions in a number of ways, including: considering how a verb’s transitivity, semantic subclass and argument-structure influences its interaction with derivational morphology and the morphosyntactic realisation of arguments; extending investigations past the current (and crosslinguistically) predominant focus on morphological constructions to also include lexical and syntactic ones; and approaching similar construction types in a unified way (e.g. comparing verb agreement strategies in coordinative, comitative and reciprocal contexts of conjunction). In doing so, this thesis not only clarifies the constraints and interactions mentioned above, it also discovers several construction types that were previously undescribed for Wubuy, some of which are also underdescribed in the broader Australian, polysynthetic and crosslinguistic contexts.
-
ItemLittle kids, big verbs: the acquisition of Murrinhpatha bipartite stem verbs( 2016)This thesis examines the acquisition of Murrinhpatha, a polysynthetic language of northern Australia, based on semi-naturalistic data from 5 children (1;9-6;1) over a two-year period. It represents the first detailed acquisition study of an Australian non-Pama Nyungan language and thus contributes to a growing crosslinguistic and typological understanding of the process of language acquisition. In particular it focuses on the acquisition of Murrinhpatha bipartite stem verbs and the acquisition of complex inflectional verbal paradigms. These structures pose a number of challenges to the language learner, which raise questions for current theories of morphological acquisition. The structure of this thesis is built around three major research questions. The first aims to describe the characteristics of early verb use in Murrinhpatha both with regard to their structure and their semantics and pragmatics. I describe the development of verb structures in Murrinhpatha finding that these are sensitive to phonological/prosodic factors and not truncated according to morphosyntactic factors. The semantics and pragmatics of early verbs show similarities to English-acquiring children despite the great typological differences of these languages. Secondly I examine the acquisition of the complex inflectional paradigms of Murrinhpatha classifier stems. This system appears to be too complex to allow for abstract rule-based morphological acquisition but also too large to rely on rote learning of individual inflected forms. I find that children begin by using a small core of rote learned inflected forms and gradually expand verb paradigms along predictable pathways relying on low level analogy and semi-regular patterns of inflection. Finally I consider the acquisition of Murrinhpatha bipartite stem verb morphology. These verbs are constructed of two stem elements, a classifier stem and a lexical stem, which co-vary to encode verbal semantics and argument structure. Such a system has not previously been explored from an acquisition perspective, and thus I investigate how children acquire the underlying compositional principles of the system. While children do use bipartite stem morphology contrastively, they are found not to acquire the compositional principles underlying the system in the age range considered. This suggests that the Murrinhpatha bipartite stem verb system is not regular or transparent enough to allow for the acquisition of the principles of compositionality during the earlier stages of development.
-
ItemAgreement in Mawng: productive and lexicalised uses of agreement in an Australian language( 2006-10)This thesis is a morphosyntactic description of the Australian language Mawng with a focus on verbal gender agreement and its lexicalisation. Mawng’s five genders have a strong semantic basis. In verbs with lexicalised agreement, a verbal pronominal prefix that usually indexes a core argument of a particular gender instead functions to specify a particular sense of the verb. Such verbs form a significant portion of the verbal lexicon in Mawng. An investigation of these verbs requires an updated description of Mawng, which has not been the object of linguistic study for some time. A non-Pama Nyungan language of the Iwaidjan language family, Mawng is still spoken by around three hundred people living on the north-west coast of Arnhem land, Northern Territory, Australia. This description is based on new fieldwork carried out at Warruwi (Goulburn Island) and adds to what was previously known about the Mawng language. Complex verb constructions, reciprocal constructions, argument structure, complex sentences, NP structure, the semantic basis of the gender system and the nature of verbal agreement are some of the topics explored in greater detail in this thesis than previously available materials. Lexicalised agreement was not discussed in previous work on Mawng.
-
ItemThe inclusory construction in Australian languages( 2001-11)A typological work, comparing the inclusory construction across Australian languages.
-
ItemA Grammar of Kuuk Thaayorre( 2006-07)This thesis is a comprehensive description of Kuuk Thaayorre, a Paman language spoken on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. On the basis of elicited data, narrative and semi-spontaneous conversation recorded between 2002 and 2005, this grammar details the phonetics and phonology, morphosyntax, lexical and constructional semantics and pragmatics of one of the few indigenous Australian languages still used as a primary means of communication. Kuuk Thaayorre possesses features of typological interest at each of these levels. At the phonological level, Kuuk Thaayorre possesses a particularly rich vowel inventory from an Australian perspective, with five distinct vowel qualities and two contrastive lengths producing ten vowel phonemes. It is in the phonotactic combination of sounds that Kuuk Thaayorre phonology is particularly noteworthy, however. Kuuk Thaayorre’s tendency towards closed syllables (with codas containing up to three consonants) frequently leads to consonant clusters of as many as four segments. Kuuk Thaayorre is also cross-linguistically unusual in allowing sequences of its two rhotics (an alveolar tap/trill and retroflex continuant) within the syllable – either as a complex coda or as onset plus syllabic rhotic. Finally, monosyllables are ubiquitous across all Thaayorre word classes, despite being generally rare in Australian languages.
-
ItemAn acoustic study of coarticulation: consonant-vowel and vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in four Australian languages( 2012)Acoustic phonetic experiments were conducted with the aim of describing spatial coarticulation in consonants and vowels in four Australian languages: Arrernte, Burarra, Gupapuyngu and Warlpiri. Interactions were examined between coarticulation and factors such as consonant place of articulation (the location of the point of maximal consonantal constriction in the vocal tract), the position of the consonant relative to the vowel (preceding or following), prosodic prominence and language. The principal motivation was to contribute to the experimental literature on coarticulation in Australian languages, given their unusual phonological characteristics. The results of acoustic measurements show that in stop consonant and vowel production, there are systematic contrasts between consonant places of articulation, especially between peripheral (i.e., bilabial and dorso-velar) and non-peripheral categories, and there are clearly discernible consonant place-dependent differences in the degree of vowel-to-consonant and consonant-to-vowel coarticulation. Additionally, consonant place of articulation is seen to strongly modulate vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. As observed in other languages, such as Catalan, Italian and German, the degree of vowel-to-consonant coarticulation is seen to vary inversely with the degree of consonantal articulatory constraint (i.e., degree of tongue dorsum raising), as does the degree of segmental context-sensitivity. However, findings reported in this dissertation suggest that, unlike results reported previously for European languages such as English, anticipatory vowel-to-consonant coarticulation tends to exceed carryover coarticulation in these languages. With regard to prosodic effects on coarticulation, it appears that prominent vowels do not typically undergo localised hyper-articulation or acoustical expansion as in English, Dutch and German. It is concluded that these results support the view that the maintenance of consonant place of articulation distinctions is pre-eminent in Australian languages. The analyses that are presented contribute to an understanding of the role of consonant place of articulation in coarticulation and, more generally, of the relationship between the acoustics and the biomechanics of speech.
-
ItemA sketch grammar of the Badjala language of Gari (Fraser Island)( 2003)This thesis is a sketch grammar of the Badjala language of Gari (Fraser Island), and is the result of a fresh transcription and analyses of taped material recorded by Professor Stephen Wurm (now deceased), in 1955, 1960 and 1962 with Gaiarbau, the main informant and one of the last speakers of Badjala. These recorded sessions were conducted on Stradbroke Island and Brisbane, before this elderly man passed away in 1964. All of this material was entered into a computer database, and many examples from this corpus are included within the body of the thesis. Relevant sections from this material is contained in the appendices to this thesis, in the form of sentence examples in Badjala with a free English translation, as well as an alphabetically arranged Badjala wordlist. The thesis comprises five chapters. Chapter 1 deals with The language and its speakers, referring to the historical situation, the spelling of language names, the present language custodians, and the scope of the present study. It also discusses the linguistic type of the language, its relationship to other languages in the region and previous work carried out on Badjala. Chapter 2 analyses the phonetics and phonology of the language. Chapter 3 is concerned with nominal morphology (including the case system). Nominals, nouns, personal pronouns, interrogatives, demonstratives, locational qualifiers and adjectives. Adverbs and particles are also dealt with in this chapter. Chapter 4 is concerned with the morphology and tense, aspect and mode inflections of verbs in Badjala, as well as the derivational morphology of verbs. Finally Chapter 5 examines the syntax of this language, including the main clause, the structure of the noun phrase, and the syntax of complex clauses.