Murrinhpatha Morphology and Phonology

Murrinhpatha Morphology and Phonology

by John Mansfield
Murrinhpatha Morphology and Phonology

Murrinhpatha Morphology and Phonology

by John Mansfield

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Overview

Murrinhpatha is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in a region of tropical savannah and tidal inlets on the north coast of the continent. Some 3000 speakers live mostly in the towns of Wadeye and Nganmarriyanga, though they maintain close ties to their traditional lands, totems and spirit ancestors.

Murrinhpatha word structure is highly complex, and quite distinct from the better-known Pama-Nyungan languages of central and southern Australia. Murrinhpatha is characterised by prolific compounding, clitic clusters, cumulative inflection, irregular allomorphy and phonological assimilation. This book provides a comprehensive account of these phenomena, giving particular attention to questions of morphological constituency, lexical storage, and whether there is really such thing as a ‘word’ unit.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781501511394
Publisher: De Gruyter
Publication date: 04/01/2019
Series: Pacific Linguistics [PL] , #653
Pages: 314
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

John Mansfield, University of Melbourne, Australia

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

List of Tables xiv

List of Figures xv

Abbreviations and glossing conventions xvi

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The morphology and phonology of Murrinhpatha 1

1.2 A brief sketch of Murrinhpatha 2

1.3 Previous work on Murrinhpatha 6

1.4 Previous work on word structure in Australian languages 8

1.5 Data sources used in this study 9

1.6 What I mean by phonology 10

1.7 What I mean by morphology 11

1.7.1 Morphological description, cognitive representation and gradience 13

1.7.2 What I mean by 'word' 15

1.7.3 Constructions; Abandoning the grammar-lexicon split 16

1.7.4 Summary 20

1.8 Prosodic constituency 21

1.9 Chapter outline 23

2 Social setting and language ecology 25

2.1 Introduction 25

2.2 Traditional language ecology 26

2.2.1 Neighbouring languages 27

2.3 Traditional social organisation 29

2.4 Contact and settlement 31

2.5 Post-missionary Wadeye 32

2.6 Contemporary language ecology of Wadeye 35

2.6.1 Status of neighbouring Aboriginal languages 36

2.6.2 Youth speech 38

2.6.3 English and Kriol 39

2.6.4 Digital diglossia 40

2.7 Summary 41

3 Segmental sound patterns 42

3.1 Introduction 42

3.2 Segmental inventory 43

3.3 Word and syllable shapes 44

3.3.1 Restrictions by word and syllable position 46

3.3.2 Consonant cluster constraints 48

3.4 Obstruent voicing, closure and length 51

3.4.1 Voicing and closure contrasts 52

3.4.2 Positional neutralisations 53

3.4.3 Phonetic realisation of contrasts 54

3.4.4 Word-medial obstruent lengthening 57

3.5 Geminate sonorants and voiced stops 60

3.6 The intermediate status of retroflexion 63

3.7 Connected speech processes 67

3.7.1 Progressive consonant assimilation 68

3.7.2 Degemination 70

3.8 Loanwords and lexico-phonological strata 71

3.9 Summary 75

4 Morphologically specific sound patterns 76

4.1 Introduction 76

4.2 Morphological categories and their phonological shape 77

4.2.1 Open lexical classes: Nominals and coverbs 80

4.2.2 Finite verb stems and semi-regular inflectional elements 82

4.2.3 Bound grammatical morphs 84

4.3 The prosodic word 85

4.4 Prosodie phrases and prominence 87

4.4.1 The pitch accent 89

4.4.2 Prosodic adjuncts 92

4.4.3 Prosodic phrase mapping to syntactic phrases 94

4.4.4 Previous descriptions of Murrinhpatha stress 96

4.4.5 Comparison to other Australian prosodic systems 97

4.5 Prosodically internal juncture effects 98

4.5.1 Voiceless obstruent lenition 98

4.5.2 Nasal spreading 101

4.5.3 Cluster harmonisation 103

4.5.4 Non-syllabifiable clusters 109

4.6 Summary 110

5 Finite verb stem inflection 111

5.1 Introduction 111

5.2 Morphological structure in the finite verb stem 112

5.2.1 Basic and reflexive/reciprocal verb stems 114

5.2.2 Stem paradigms 114

5.2.3 Eroded inner stems and lexical identity 117

5.3 Inflectional paradigms and inflectional classes 118

5.3.1 Inflection by intersecting formatives 118

5.4 Intersecting formatives in the finite verb stem 120

5.4.1 PrefC 121

5.4.2 PrefV 123

5.4.3 Suffix 124

5.4.4 Inner stems 125

5.5 Unpredictable exponence and cross-linguistic comparison 130

5.6 Variation and change in inflectional paradigms 133

5.7 Whole-form storage or morphological structure? 134

5.8 Summary 136

6 Predicate inflectional suffixes 137

6.1 Introduction 137

6.2 The prosodically internal layer 138

6.2.1 Pronominal number categories 140

6.2.2 Single-argument verbs 144

6.2.3 Reflexive/reciprocal valency 146

6.2.4 Object and oblique arguments 148

6.2.5 Ethical datives 151

6.2.6 Verb stems and valency 152

6.3 The prosodically external layer 152

6.3.1 Paucal and dual number 153

6.3.2 Tense/modality 155

6.3.3 Imperfective 156

6.3.4 Adverbial clitics 158

6.3.5 Variable sequencing 159

6.4 Representational schemata for verb inflection 161

6.5 Predicating nominals 162

6.5.1 Syntactic strategies for nominal predication 163

6.5.2 Morphological argument indexing 164

6.5.3 Grammaticalisation of /ma/ 'hand' 165

6.6 Summary 166

7 Nominal and phrasal morphology 167

7.1 Introduction 167

7.2 Affixes and clitics 167

7.3 Noun phrases, nominal compounds and classifier nouns 170

7.3.1 Noun phrases and generic-specific relations 170

7.3.2 NOM-NOM Compounds 172

7.3.3 From compounds to class prefixes 176

7.3.4 Classifiers with verbs 179

7.3.5 Negative nominal prefix 179

7.4 Nominal derivations 180

7.5 Case clitics 181

7.5.1 Prefixing of comitative case 184

7.6 Adverbial clitics 184

7.6.1 Promiscuous attachment 186

7.6.2 Demonstrative and interrogatives hosting adverbials 188

7.7 Discourse clitics 190

7.8 Summary 192

8 Complex verbs and compounding 193

8.1 Introduction 193

8.2 Simple, phrasal and compound verbs 194

8.3 The verbiness of verb stems 196

8.3.1 Finite verb stems or inflection-class prefixes? 200

8.3.2 Psychological status of finite verb stems in compounds 201

8.3.3 A recent history of grammaticalisation 202

8.4 Coverbs 203

8.5 Compounding body part nominals to coverbs 205

8.5.1 Relation to independent nominals 206

8.5.2 Compounding relations 206

8.5.3 Fossilised compounds 209

8.5.4 Body-part applicatives 210

8.6 Pluractional coverbs 211

8.7 Prosodic compounding 215

8.7.1 Coverb attachment to a prosodic anchor 216

8.7.2 Recursive PWord constituency 217

8.7.3 Incoporating coverbs into the verb schemata 218

8.8 Representing compound verb lexemes 219

8.9 Summary 221

9 Murrinhpatha word hood and gradient morphology 222

9.1 Introduction 222

9.2 Murrinhpatha phonology 222

9.3 Murrinhpatha morphology 224

9.4 Three types of word in Murrinhpatha 226

9.5 Morphology, gradience, and methods of quantification 228

9.5.1 Number of words sharing a pattern 229

9.5.2 Proportional coverage of syntactic/semantic feature 230

9.5.3 Phonological transparency 231

9.5.4 The status of stems 231

9.5.5 Semantic transparency 232

9.5.6 Lexicon, morphology and syntax 232

9.6 Concluding comments: Wordhood and polysynthesis 233

Appendix I 235

Appendix II 275

References 278

Index 292

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