Murrinhpatha morphology and phonology

PL XXX The series presents linguistic descriptions, dictionaries, atlases, bibliographies and other materials concerned with languages of the Pacific, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Southeast, South and East Asia, as well as language learning materials in the region’s major lingua francas. It is the most authoritative publisher of works on the languages of the Pacific and neighbouring areas, read by scholars with an interest in the region as well as by linguists with interests in language typology, sociolinguistics, language contact and the reconstruction of linguistic change and culture history. Autoren Rücken THE SERIES: PACIFIC LINGUISTICS TITEL RÜCKEN AUFLAGE RÜCKEN U4 Text. El int magniet et quis estem. Et ullaces sintus. Fuga. Ipsam litam int ullestiati dolut rem enimodit ut etusci is susam iundicipitio con rae peroreprae nonsecte latem. To inihil modiatiis ut moles aboreperis dio iduci berum et ut mi, sumquia tescim landipsam il iusdae vitat. John Mansfield MURRINHPATHA MORPHOLOGY AND PHONOLOGY PACIFIC LINGUISTICS www.degruyter.com ISBN 978-1-61451-723-8 ISSN 1448-8310 John Mansfield Murrinhpatha Morphology and Phonology Pacific Linguistics Managing editor Bethwyn Evans Editorial board members Wayan Arka Mark Donohue Nicholas Evans Gwendolyn Hyslop David Nash Bill Palmer Paul Sidwell Jane Simpson Andrew Pawley Malcolm Ross Volume 653 John Mansfield Murrinhpatha Morphology and Phonology ISBN 978-1-5015-1139-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0330-6 ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0310-8 ISSN 1448-8310 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018967116 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck Photo credit: John Mansfield www.degruyter.com For Damien and Heather Mansfield Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many Murrinhpatha speakers who shared their language with me. In Wadeye I have a constant feeling of support and encouragement from local residents, who receive warmly all my efforts to speak Murrinhpatha, and clearly go out of their way to make sure that I’m getting practice. For more concentrated Murrinhpatha instruction and elicitation I would like to thank Desmond Pupuli, Luke Parmbuk, Raphael Tunmuck, Keith Mardigan, Anne-Marie Nadjulu, Mark Ninnal, Samuel Longmair and William Parmbuk. Dozens of other Murrinhpatha speakers allowed me to record their stories and conversation on various occasions, and I thank them all for their openness and trust. I also owe great thanks to a non-Aboriginal resident of Wadeye, Mark Crocombe, who provided staunch support, wisdom and fascinating bush trips. I also received help and support in Wadeye from Tony ‘Tjithay’ Goodfellow, Will Peartree, Steven Wenzel, Marie Klesch. This research began during my PhD, in which Jane Simpson and Linda Barwick offered invaluable mentorship. As a junior researcher, Rachel Nordlinger has continued this mentorship, while I have enjoyed the friendship and intellectual engagement of other Murrinhpatha researchers, especially Joe Blythe, Lucy Davidson, Bill Forshaw and Michael Walsh. Chester Street, who sadly passed away during the preparation of this book, provided advice based on a deeper knowledge of Murrinhpatha than I can ever hope to attain. The manuscript for this book was improved substantially thanks to comments from Rachel Nordlinger, Adam Tallman, Claudia Mansfield and an anonymous reviewer. The research leading this book received institutional support from the University of Melbourne, Australian National University and the University of Sydney. Additional support in Wadeye was received from the Thamarrurr Corporation and Batchelor Institute. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the unflagging love and support of my parents, Heather and Damien Mansfield, to whom I dedicate this book. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501503306-201 Contents Acknowledgements List of Tables XIV List of Figures XV VII Abbreviations and glossing conventions XVI 1.7.2 1.7.3 1.7.4 1.8 1.9 1 Introduction The morphology and phonology of Murrinhpatha 1 A brief sketch of Murrinhpatha 2 Previous work on Murrinhpatha 6 Previous work on word structure in Australian languages Data sources used in this study 9 What I mean by phonology 10 What I mean by morphology 11 Morphological description, cognitive representation and gradience 13 What I mean by ‘word’ 15 Constructions: Abandoning the grammar–lexicon split Summary 20 Prosodic constituency 21 Chapter outline 23 2 2.1 2.2 2.2.1 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.6.1 2.6.2 2.6.3 2.6.4 2.7 25 Social setting and language ecology Introduction 25 Traditional language ecology 26 Neighbouring languages 27 Traditional social organisation 29 Contact and settlement 31 Post-missionary Wadeye 32 Contemporary language ecology of Wadeye Status of neighbouring Aboriginal languages Youth speech 38 English and Kriol 39 Digital diglossia 40 Summary 41 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.7.1 35 36 8 16 X Contents 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.3.1 3.3.2 3.4 3.4.1 3.4.2 3.4.3 3.4.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.7.1 3.7.2 3.8 3.9 Segmental sound patterns 42 Introduction 42 Segmental inventory 43 Word and syllable shapes 44 Restrictions by word and syllable position 46 Consonant cluster constraints 48 Obstruent voicing, closure and length 51 Voicing and closure contrasts 52 Positional neutralisations 53 Phonetic realisation of contrasts 54 Word-medial obstruent lengthening 57 Geminate sonorants and voiced stops 60 The intermediate status of retroflexion 63 Connected speech processes 67 Progressive consonant assimilation 68 Degemination 70 Loanwords and lexico-phonological strata 71 Summary 75 4 4.1 4.2 76 Morphologically specific sound patterns Introduction 76 Morphological categories and their phonological shape 77 Open lexical classes: Nominals and coverbs 80 Finite verb stems and semi-regular inflectional elements 82 Bound grammatical morphs 84 The prosodic word 85 Prosodic phrases and prominence 87 The pitch accent 89 Prosodic adjuncts 92 Prosodic phrase mapping to syntactic phrases 94 Previous descriptions of Murrinhpatha stress 96 Comparison to other Australian prosodic systems 97 Prosodically internal juncture effects 98 Voiceless obstruent lenition 98 Nasal spreading 101 Cluster harmonisation 103 Non-syllabifiable clusters 109 Summary 110 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.3 4.4 4.4.1 4.4.2 4.4.3 4.4.4 4.4.5 4.5 4.5.1 4.5.2 4.5.3 4.5.4 4.6 Contents 5 5.1 5.2 5.2.1 5.2.2 5.2.3 5.3 5.3.1 5.4 5.4.1 5.4.2 5.4.3 5.4.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 Finite verb stem inflection 111 Introduction 111 Morphological structure in the finite verb stem 112 Basic and reflexive/reciprocal verb stems 114 Stem paradigms 114 Eroded inner stems and lexical identity 117 Inflectional paradigms and inflectional classes 118 Inflection by intersecting formatives 118 Intersecting formatives in the finite verb stem 120 PrefC 121 PrefV 123 Suffix 124 Inner stems 125 Unpredictable exponence and cross-linguistic comparison 130 Variation and change in inflectional paradigms 133 Whole-form storage or morphological structure? 134 Summary 136 6 6.1 6.2 6.2.1 6.2.2 6.2.3 6.2.4 6.2.5 6.2.6 6.3 6.3.1 6.3.2 6.3.3 6.3.4 6.3.5 6.4 6.5 6.5.1 6.5.2 6.5.3 6.6 137 Predicate inflectional suffixes Introduction 137 The prosodically internal layer 138 Pronominal number categories 140 Single-argument verbs 144 Reflexive/reciprocal valency 146 Object and oblique arguments 148 Ethical datives 151 Verb stems and valency 152 The prosodically external layer 152 Paucal and dual number 153 Tense/modality 155 Imperfective 156 Adverbial clitics 158 Variable sequencing 159 Representational schemata for verb inflection Predicating nominals 162 Syntactic strategies for nominal predication Morphological argument indexing 164 Grammaticalisation of /ma/ ‘hand’ 165 Summary 166 161 163 XI XII 7 7.1 7.2 7.3 Contents 7.3.1 7.3.2 7.3.3 7.3.4 7.3.5 7.4 7.5 7.5.1 7.6 7.6.1 7.6.2 7.7 7.8 Nominal and phrasal morphology 167 Introduction 167 Affixes and clitics 167 Noun phrases, nominal compounds and classifier nouns 170 Noun phrases and generic–specific relations 170 nom-nom Compounds 172 From compounds to class prefixes 176 Classifiers with verbs 179 Negative nominal prefix 179 Nominal derivations 180 Case clitics 181 Prefixing of comitative case 184 Adverbial clitics 184 Promiscuous attachment 186 Demonstrative and interrogatives hosting adverbials Discourse clitics 190 Summary 192 8 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.3.1 8.3.2 8.3.3 8.4 8.5 8.5.1 8.5.2 8.5.3 8.5.4 8.6 8.7 8.7.1 8.7.2 8.7.3 8.8 8.9 193 Complex verbs and compounding Introduction 193 Simple, phrasal and compound verbs 194 The verbiness of verb stems 196 Finite verb stems or inflection-class prefixes? 200 Psychological status of finite verb stems in compounds A recent history of grammaticalisation 202 Coverbs 203 Compounding body part nominals to coverbs 205 Relation to independent nominals 206 Compounding relations 206 Fossilised compounds 209 Body-part applicatives 210 Pluractional coverbs 211 Prosodic compounding 215 Coverb attachment to a prosodic anchor 216 Recursive PWord constituency 217 Incoporating coverbs into the verb schemata 218 Representing compound verb lexemes 219 Summary 221 188 201 Contents 9 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.5.1 9.5.2 9.5.3 9.5.4 9.5.5 9.5.6 9.6 Murrinhpatha wordhood and gradient morphology 222 Introduction 222 Murrinhpatha phonology 222 Murrinhpatha morphology 224 Three types of word in Murrinhpatha 226 Morphology, gradience, and methods of quantification 228 Number of words sharing a pattern 229 Proportional coverage of syntactic/semantic feature 230 Phonological transparency 231 The status of stems 231 Semantic transparency 232 Lexicon, morphology and syntax 232 Concluding comments: Wordhood and polysynthesis 233 Appendix I 235 Appendix II 275 References 278 Index 292 XIII