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5 Constituency and Grammatical Relations in Australian Languages Rachel Nordlinger 5 Constituency and Grammatical Relations in Australian languages 1 Introduction Australian languages have had a signifi cant impact on the theoretical and typo- logical stage over the last 50 years, particularly in the areas of nonconfi gurational- ity and phrase structure constituency, ergativity, and case-marking.¹ This was trig- gered primarily by Hale’s work on Warlpiri (e.g. 1976, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1989, 1992, 1994) and Dixon’s work on Dyirbal and Yidiny (1972, 1977, 1979, 1994). The essence of Hale’s work was to show that Warlpiri (and by extension other dependent-marking Australian languages) doesn’t have the same syntactic nature as more familiar lan- guages in the areas of: phrase structure constituency (including the structure of the clause, and the existence of NPs and VPs), subordination, wh-movement and extra- position. Dixon’s work on Dyirbal (and by contrast, Yidiny) showed that the familiar nominative-accusative syntactic alignment of English and many other languages was not universal, and that linguistic theory needed to be able to incorporate the phenom- enon of syntactic ergativity as well. Each of these bodies of work, further reinforced by Silverstein’s (1976) study of on “split ergativity”, Dench and Evans’ (1988) seminal paper on multiple case-marking, and detailed analysis of particular languages (e.g. Nash 1980; Heath 1978, 1984; Austin 1981a; Blake 1983 and Simpson 1983, 1991) has since engendered great debate and a copious literature around the extent to which Australian languages can be analysed as underlyingly similar to other confi gurational and nominative-accusative languages in syntactic terms, or whether they really con- stitute a fundamentally diff erent language type. Such debate thus relates to the very core of the nature of human language, and thus has had enormous signifi cance for the development of thinking in linguistic typology and formal linguistic theory. In this chapter I survey the key issues relating to Australian languages in this exten- sive body of literature, including ergativity (§ 2), nonconfi gurationality (§ 3), noun incorporation and polysynthesis (§ 4), NP constituency (§ 5), case and multiple case- marking (§ 6) and subordination (§ 7). Australian languages fall into two broad grammatical types which we can loosely characterise as head-marking and dependent-marking (Nichols 1986).² Capell (1956) 1 My thanks for Harold Koch, Peter Austin, and Brett Baker for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter which led to a number of improvements. Any remaining errors or failings are clearly my responsibility. Copyright © 2014. De Gruyter, Inc.. All rights reserved. © 2014. De Gruyter, Copyright 2 This distinction almost lines up with the genetic classification of Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama- Nyungan (see Koch, this volume), but not perfectly. While all Pama-Nyungan languages are depen- The Languages and Linguistics of Australia : A Comprehensive Guide, edited by Harold Koch, and Rachel Nordlinger, De Gruyter, Inc., 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=1075528. Created from unimelb on 2018-10-19 18:32:33. 216 Rachel Nordlinger described this division as prefi xing and suffi xing respectively, although in fact the so-called “prefi xing” languages have suffi xes as well (e.g. Bininj Gun-wok (Evans 2003)), and some of the so-called “suffi xing” languages have pronominal agreement marking also (e.g. Warlpiri (Simpson 1991)). In fact, the primary diff erence between these language types has to do with the way grammatical relations are encoded in the clause. The head-marking languages of northern Australia – primarily the “Top End” of the Northern Territory, and northern Western Australia — encode core grammatical relations primarily through verbal morphology, oft en resulting in substantial verbal complexity such that a single verb can encode what would be a multi-word sentence in a language like English. Such languages are oft en described as polysynthetic, since verbs are capable or morphologically encoding all of their arguments (e.g. Evans and Sasse 2002). This group of Australian languages is typifi ed by languages such as Bininj Gun-wok (Evans 2003), Murrinh-Patha (Blythe 2009; Nordlinger 2010), Gooniyandi (McGregor 1990) and Wubuy (Nunggubuyu) (Heath 1984), as illustrated in the following examples.³ (1) nga-ban-marne-yawoih-dulk-djobge-ng 1sg.sbj-3pl.obj-ben-again-tree-cut-pst.pfv ‘I cut the tree/wood for them again.’ ‘I cut another tree for them.’ (Bininj Gun-wok: Evans and Sasse 2002: 2) (2) puddan-wunku-rlarl-deyida-ngime=pumpanka 3du.sbj.29.nfut-3du.obj-drop-in.turn-pauc.f=3du.sbj.6.nfut ‘They (dual sibling) are dropping them (paucal, female, non-sibling) off , one aft er the other, as they go along.’ (Murrinh-Patha: Blythe 2009: 134) dent-marking, and most non-Pama-Nyungan languages are head-marking, there are some non-Pama- Nyungan languages, such as Wambaya and the other eastern Mirndi languages (Nordlinger 1998a), and the Tangkic languages of Queensland (Evans 1995), which are primarily dependent-marking. 3 Wherever possible throughout this chapter, glosses have been regularised according to the Leipzig glossing rules. Additional abbreviations used are: act ‘actual’; assoc ‘associating case’; aug ‘aug- mented number’; cont ‘continuous’; custom ‘customary’; des ‘desiderative’; dub ‘dubitative’; ep ‘epenthetic’; F ‘feminine’; I ‘Class I gender’; ii ‘Class ii gender’; iii ‘Class iii gender’; imm ‘immediate’; impl(ss) ‘implicated - different subject’; impl(ss) ‘implicated - same subject’; iv ‘Class iv gender’; ivf ‘incorporating verb form’; l ‘lower animate object’ (Bininj Gun-Wok); min ‘minimal number’; m.abl ‘modal ablative case’ (Kayardild); m.loc ‘modal locative case’ (Kayardild); m.obl ‘modal oblique case’ (Kayardild); m.prop ‘modal proprietive case’ (Kayardild); N ‘neuter’; ni ‘new information’ (Diyari); nm ‘non-masculine’; o ‘object/oblique’ (Bilinarra); pauc ‘paucal’; pot ‘potential’; priv ‘privative’; prop ‘proprietive’; rdp ‘reduplicated’; ua ‘unit augmented number’; usit ‘usitative’; vb ‘verb thematic’. Copyright © 2014. De Gruyter, Inc.. All rights reserved. © 2014. De Gruyter, Copyright Additional numbers used in the Murrinh-Patha glosses refer to classifier stem paradigms, the seman- tics of which is not fully understood. The Languages and Linguistics of Australia : A Comprehensive Guide, edited by Harold Koch, and Rachel Nordlinger, De Gruyter, Inc., 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=1075528. Created from unimelb on 2018-10-19 18:32:33. Constituency and Grammatical Relations in Australian languages 217 These languages oft en also allow noun incorporation (such as incorporated -dulk- ‘tree’ in (1), see also § 4), although some do not (for example, the head-marking lan- guages of the Kimberley have no noun incorporation (McGregor 2004)), and they have minimal grammatical case-marking, with core argument NPs regularly omitted from the clause altogether. The dependent-marking languages, on the other hand, encode grammatical rela- tions through case morphology, which is oft en extensive (see § 6). Consider the fol- lowing examples from Jiwarli. (3) ngatha tharla-laartu ngurru-martu-nha pirru-ngku 1sg.erg feed-usit old.man-group-acc meat-erg ‘I used to feed the old men with meat.’ (Austin 2001: 310) (4) wuru ngunha tharrpa-rninyja ngarti-ngka kajalpu-la stick.acc that.acc insert-pst inside-loc emu-loc ‘(He) inserted the stick inside the emu …’ (Austin 2001: 315) In Jiwarli, which is completely dependent-marking, case morphology is the primary means by which grammatical relations are encoded. However, some other depend- ent-marking languages in Australia combine a robust case-marking system with pro- nominal agreement marking, as illustrated in the following examples from Bilinarra (Meakins and Nordlinger 2014: chapter 4), in which case-marked forms are bolded and pronominal clitics are underlined: (5) baga-lu=yi bu-nga ngayi=ma prickle-erg=1min.o poke-prs 1min(acc)=top ‘A prickle poked me.’ (6) liward-ba=nggu=lu g arra nyununy gajirri-lu wait-ep=2min.o=3aug.sbj be.prs 2min.dat woman-erg ‘The women are waiting for you.’ (7) jamana-lu=rni=warla=r na=rla ma-ni warlagu=ma foot-erg=only=foc=1min.sbj=3obl do-pst dog(acc)=top nyila=ma, garndi-murlung-gulu that(acc)=top stick-priv-erg ‘I kicked the dog of his with just my foot, not with a stick.’ Given that Australian languages can be broadly divided into these two general types Copyright © 2014. De Gruyter, Inc.. All rights reserved. © 2014. De Gruyter, Copyright — headmarking/polysynthetic and dependent-marking — many of the issues dis- cussed in this chapter will be relevant to only some Australian languages, and not The Languages and Linguistics of Australia : A Comprehensive Guide, edited by Harold Koch, and Rachel Nordlinger, De Gruyter, Inc., 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=1075528. Created from unimelb on 2018-10-19 18:32:33. 218 Rachel Nordlinger others. The discussions of ergativity (§ 2) and case-marking (§ 6) will primarily con- cern dependent-marking languages; whereas the discussion of noun incorporation (§ 4) concerns only (some) head-marking languages. Issues of nonconfi gurationality (§ 3), NP constituency (§ 5) and subordination (§ 7) relate to all types of Australian languages, and I draw on examples from diff erent language types as appropriate. 2 Ergativity The large majority of Australian languages
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