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Reflexive and Reciprocal Encoding in the Australian Mixed languages Article Reflexive and Reciprocal Encoding in the Australian Mixed Language, Light Warlpiri Carmel O’Shannessy 1,* and Connor Brown 2 1 School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia 2 School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia; [email protected] * Correspondence: Carmel.O’[email protected] Abstract: Mixed languages combine significant amounts of grammatical and lexical material from more than one source language in systematic ways. The Australian mixed language, Light Warlpiri, combines nominal morphology from Warlpiri with verbal morphology from Kriol (an English-lexified Creole) and English, with innovations. The source languages of Light Warlpiri differ in how they encode reflexives and reciprocals—Warlpiri uses an auxiliary clitic for both reflexive and reciprocal expression, while English and Kriol both use pronominal forms, and largely have separate forms for reflexives and reciprocals. English distinguishes person and number in reflexives, but not in reciprocals; the other source languages do not distinguish person or number. This study draws on naturalistic and elicited production data to examine how reflexive and reciprocal events are encoded in Light Warlpiri. The study finds that Light Warlpiri combines near-maximal distinctions from the source languages, but in a way that is not a mirror of any. It retains the person and number distinctions of English reflexives and extends them to reciprocals, using the same forms for Citation: O’Shannessy, Carmel, and reflexives and reciprocals (like Warlpiri). Reflexives and reciprocals occur within a verbal structure Connor Brown. 2021. Reflexive and (perhaps under influence from Warlpiri). The results show that a mixed language can have discrete Reciprocal Encoding in the Australian contributions from three languages, that the source languages can influence different subsystems to Mixed Language, Light Warlpiri. different extents, and that near-maximal distinctions from the source languages can be maintained. Languages 6: 105. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/languages6020105 Keywords: Warlpiri; Light Warlpiri; reflexive; reciprocal; Australia; endangered language; Pama- Nyungan; Kriol; mixed language; language contact Academic Editors: Juana M. Liceras and Raquel Fernández Fuertes Received: 28 January 2021 1. Introduction Accepted: 19 May 2021 Published: 10 June 2021 Mixed languages combine significant amounts of structural and lexical material from two or more languages in a systematic way, so much so that they cannot be said to have Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral only a single parent language (Matras and Bakker 2003; Thomason and Kaufman 1988, with regard to jurisdictional claims in p. 12). Although there are general typologies of source language combination (Matras 2003; published maps and institutional affil- O’Shannessy 2021; Thomason 2003), each mixed language may show differences in how iations. source language materials are configured in different subsystems. In an area where the source languages show differing typologies, how the differences will be resolved in each part of the grammar is an open question. The Australian mixed language, Light Warlpiri, combines elements of three source Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. languages in a conventionalised structure. The three languages can be categorised into Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. two types in terms of lexifier language and type of structure. Warlpiri, a Pama-Nyungan This article is an open access article language with an agglutinative structure, is of one type, and provides the nominal structure distributed under the terms and of Light Warlpiri. The other type includes both English and Kriol, separate English-lexified conditions of the Creative Commons languages that are isolating in structure, and provide the verbal structure, with innovations. Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// Kriol is an English-lexified Creole spoken across the north of Australia. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Languages 2021, 6, 105. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020105 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages Languages 2021, 6, 105 2 of 26 The focus of this paper is an area where the source languages of Light Warlpiri clearly differ—in the encoding of reflexive and reciprocal constructions, with a three- way distinction between them. English and Kriol provide the verbal structural frame of Light Warlpiri, but they do not use verbal morphosyntax to encode reflexives and reciprocals. English has separate pronominal forms for reflexives versus reciprocals, and only reflexives distinguish person and number (e.g., myself, yourself, themselves). Most varieties of Kriol also have separate pronominal forms for reflexives and reciprocals (forms related to mijelp < English myself ), but neither of those distinguishes person and number. Warlpiri provides the nominal structure of Light Warlpiri, but reflexives and reciprocals are not encoded in nominal structure in Warlpiri. Warlpiri encodes reflexives and reciprocals with a pronominal clitic in the auxiliary, -nyanu, and also does not distinguish person and number. There is in effect a gap in source language material for encoding reflexives and reciprocals in Light Warlpiri. This raises the question of how reflexives and reciprocals are encoded, and has implications for what might be expected in the structures of mixed languages. Are the forms and structures of one language retained to the exclusion of those of the others? Or are all of the source language features combined in some way, and if so, how? Will there be a simplification of the morphology of the source languages, or will all, or most, distinctions be retained? A further question relates to semantic scope—which types of events are expressed using morphological reciprocal constructions, and how do they compare to the source languages? This paper describes the encoding of reflexive and reciprocal events in Light Warlpiri, examining both structure and semantics, and showing how the differences in source languages play out in the mixed language. It reports on naturalistic data for both categories, and on a dedicated elicited production study about the semantic scope of reciprocals (cf. Evans et al. 2011). Background to the structure of Light Warlpiri is given in Section2, and background to the crosslinguistic encoding of reflexives and reciprocals is given in Section3, including details of the source languages of Light Warlpiri: Warlpiri, English and Kriol. Section4 describes the methodology of the study. In Section5, the reflexive and reciprocal system of Light Warlpiri is described, including the semantic scope of reciprocal constructions. Section6 discusses Light Warlpiri reflexives and reciprocals in comparison to its source languages and the implications for typologies of mixed languages, and Section7 concludes. 2. Background to Light Warlpiri Light Warlpiri is an Australian Mixed Language that emerged in the 1970s–80s in the remote Warlpiri community of Lajamanu, in the Northern Territory. It combines Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan) nominal morphology with Kriol and English verbal morphology and structural innovations in the verbal auxiliary system (O’Shannessy 2005, 2013). In the examples elements from Warlpiri are in italics, and elements from English and Kriol are in plain font. 1. yu=m hit-im nyuntu-ngu 2SG=NFUT hit-TR 2SG-ERG1 “You hit him.” (2015Elicit_LW_LA21_LAC58) Example (1) shows an English-derived transitive verb hit ‘hit’ with a Kriol transitive marker -im ‘TR’. The auxiliary consists of an English and Kriol-derived weak pronoun yu ‘2SG’ with an innovative morpheme -m ‘NFUT’ attached (O’Shannessy 2013). The subject 1 Abbreviations: 1 ‘1st person’, 2 ‘2nd person’, 3 ‘3rd person’, ALL ‘allative’, CAUS ‘causative’, COM ‘comitative’, COORD ‘coordinator’, DAT ‘dative’, DEM ‘demonstrative’, DET ‘determiner’, DIM ‘diminutive’, DIS ‘discourse marker’, D ‘dual’, EXCL ‘exclusive’, EMPH ‘emphatic’, ERG ‘ergative’, FUT ‘future’, IMP ‘imperative’, INCHO ‘inchoative’, INCL ‘inclusive’, INF ‘infinitive’, ITER ‘iterative’, LOC ‘locative’, NFUT ‘nonfuture’, NPST ‘nonpast’, O ‘object’, PAUC ‘paucal’, PL ‘plural’, PRES ‘present’, PRIV ‘privative’, PROG ‘progressive’, PST ‘past’, RECIP ‘reciprocal’, REFL ‘reflexive’, REL ‘relativiser’, S ‘subject’, SG ‘singular’, TOP ‘topic’, TR ‘transitive’. Languages 2021, 6, 105 3 of 26 of the transitive verb, nyuntu ‘2SG’ is a free, or strong, pronoun from Warlpiri and in this clause takes a Warlpiri ergative case-marker -ngu ‘ERG’. In Light Warlpiri free, or strong, pronouns are from Warlpiri and bound, or weak, pronouns are from English and/or Kriol, e.g., yu ‘2SG’ in (1). The auxiliary is categorised as part of the verbal complex, as it inflects for tense–mood–aspect (TMA) and functions in concert with inflections on the lexical verb to realise specific TMA readings (O’Shannessy 2005). In addition, in LW the auxiliary and verb are always adjacent, no other material can occur between them. Lajamanu community has a population of approximately 600, and was formed in 1948–49 when Warlpiri people were relocated there by the government (Berndt and Berndt 1987; Rowse 2002)—the new way of speaking is a legacy of this relocation. In the 1950s–70s Warlpiri adults worked on cattle stations, some of them hundreds of kilometres from the community and Warlpiri lands (Tasman and O’Shannessy 2020), and interacted with speakers of many traditional languages as well as
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