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Thesis FINAL DRAFT Breaking up is hard to do: Teasing apart morphological complexity in Iwaidja and Maung A thesis submitted by Amos Teo Under the supervision of Professor Nick Evans i This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in the Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics of the University of Melbourne. Work presented herein is the original work of the author, unless otherwise acknowledged. Amos Teo November 2007 ii Acknowledgements My deepest gratitude goes to Nick Evans who agreed to take on the role of supervisor in late March of 2007, when I had neither a supervisor nor a thesis topic (due to certain unforeseen complications). It is thanks to his tremendous encouragement and his knowledge and passion for linguistics that I have started to consider a future in this field of study. I am grateful to the department for its support and for the opportunity to present my initial findings at a lunchtime seminar I gave in August of this year. I thank the people who attended and offered comments on my analyses. I also thank Bruce Birch for his quick replies to all my emails and for his insightful observations and comments. I would also like to mention all the friends and classmates who have made the past year special. Special mention goes to Aung Si for taking the time to read through this thesis and for attending my lunchtime seminar. I thank all my classmates, especially Sara Ciesielski, Thomas Mendelovits, Annie Unger and Stephanie Campisi for their sympathy and support. I am grateful also for all the friends, particularly Cate and Simon who have had to put up with my stressing for the past few months. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations & glossing conventions....................................................................... 1 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 2 1.1 Overview of Iwaidja and Maung ................................................................... 4 1.2 Orthographic conventions ............................................................................. 5 1.3 Sound correspondences in Iwaidja and Maung .............................................. 6 2 Iwaidja & Maung noun & verb morphology......................................................... 8 2.1 Compounding vs noun incorporation in Top End languages .......................... 8 2.2 Nominal morphology .................................................................................. 10 2.3 Verb template ............................................................................................. 11 2.4 Pronominal prefixes.................................................................................... 12 2.5 K-reduplication........................................................................................... 12 2.6 TAM suffixes.............................................................................................. 13 2.7 Verb stem ................................................................................................... 14 2.7.1 Verb root.............................................................................................. 15 2.7.2 Prepounds ............................................................................................ 15 2.7.3 Verbalisation of adjective roots ............................................................ 16 2.7.4 Reciprocal suffix .................................................................................. 18 2.7.5 Total reduplication of verb stem ........................................................... 18 2.8 Coverbs....................................................................................................... 18 3 Morphophonemics ............................................................................................. 20 3.1 Iwaidja consonant morphophonemics.......................................................... 21 3.2 Maung consonant morphophonemics .......................................................... 27 3.3 Vowel morphophonemics............................................................................ 33 4 Identifying roots in Iwaidja & Maung ................................................................ 35 4.1 Historical sound changes in Iwaidja & Maung ............................................ 35 4.1.1 Consonant shift in Iwaidjan.................................................................. 35 4.1.2 Flapped lateral /ld/................................................................................ 36 4.1.3 Consonant mutation in Iwaidja ............................................................. 37 4.1.4 Other sound changes ............................................................................ 37 4.2 Cognates vs borrowings .............................................................................. 38 5 Verb roots in macro verb stems.......................................................................... 39 5.1 Verbal conjugations in Maung .................................................................... 39 5.2 Verb roots in Conjugation Class 1............................................................... 41 5.2.1 Verb roots with thematic -bu ................................................................ 41 5.2.2 Verb roots ending in -u and -aw............................................................ 43 5.3 Verb roots in Conjugation Class 3a ............................................................. 44 5.4 Verb roots in Conjugation Class 3c ............................................................. 48 5.5 Verb roots in Conjugation Class 5............................................................... 49 5.6 Verb roots in Conjugation Class 7............................................................... 50 5.7 Verb roots in other conjugation classes ....................................................... 53 5.8 Verb roots in unknown conjugation classes ................................................. 55 5.9 Other puzzles .............................................................................................. 56 5.10 Concluding remarks .................................................................................. 57 6 Prepounds in verb stems .................................................................................... 58 6.1 Prepounds vs independent nominal roots..................................................... 58 6.2 Prepounds identical to independent nominal roots....................................... 59 6.3 Prepounds partially identical to independent roots....................................... 62 iv 6.4 Prepound doublets....................................................................................... 64 6.4.1 Head..................................................................................................... 64 6.4.2 Head Hair............................................................................................. 66 6.4.3 Face & Nose......................................................................................... 67 6.4.4 Belly / Stomach / Waist........................................................................ 68 6.4.5 Hand / Arm .......................................................................................... 70 6.5 -bal- morpheme........................................................................................... 72 6.6 Prepounds ldak-Iw / lak-M ............................................................................ 73 6.6.1 Foot / Leg............................................................................................. 73 6.6.2 Mouth / Lips......................................................................................... 75 6.7 Spatial prepound ......................................................................................... 78 6.8 Other puzzles .............................................................................................. 78 6.8.1 Eyes ..................................................................................................... 78 6.8.2 Ears...................................................................................................... 79 6.8.3 Mouth .................................................................................................. 80 6.8.4 Back..................................................................................................... 80 6.8.5 Miscellaneous ...................................................................................... 80 6.9 Concluding remarks.................................................................................... 82 7 Conclusion......................................................................................................... 83 Appendix A............................................................................................................. 85 References............................................................................................................... 91 v Index of tables Table 1 Comparison of size of noun and verb lexicons (‘eye’ and ‘head’).................. 2 Table 2 Consonant inventory ..................................................................................... 5 Table 3 Vowel inventory ........................................................................................... 6 Table 4 Examples of K-reduplication....................................................................... 13 Table 5 Inchoative suffix -(ny)mi(n).......................................................................
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