A Grammatical Sketch of Ngarla (Ngayarta, Pama-Nyungan)
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Asia-Pacific Linguistics Open Access College of Asia and the Pacific The Australian National University A grammatical sketch of Ngarla (Ngayarta, Pama-Nyungan) Torbjörn Westerlund A-PL 016 A grammatical sketch of Ngarla (Ngayarta, Pama-Nyungan) Torbjörn Westerlund Ngarla, a critically endangered Pama-Nyungan language of the Pilbara region, has received very little scholarly attention. This book presents the first grammatical description of the language, and focuses particularly on the complexity of verbs and verbal clauses. The grammar sketch is complemented by a small collection of Ngarla texts, and a word list. Asia-Pacific Linguistics _______________________ Open Access College of Asia and the Pacific The Australian National University A grammatical sketch of Ngarla (Ngayarta, Pama-Nyungan) Torbjörn Westerlund A-PL 16 Asia-Pacific Linguistics ________________________________________ Open Access A-PL EDITORIAL BOARD: I Wayan Arka, Mark Donohue, Bethwyn Evans Nicholas Evans, Simon Greenhill, Gwendolyn Hyslop, David Nash, Bill Palmer, Andrew Pawley, Malcolm Ross, Paul Sidwell and Jane Simpson. Published by Asia-Pacific Linguistics College of Asia and the Pacific The Australian National University Canberra ACT 2600 Australia Copyright in this edition is vested with the author(s) Released under Creative Commons License (Attribution 4.0 International) First published: 2015 URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/14712 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Creator: Westerlund, Torbjörn, author. Title: A grammatical sketch of Ngarla (Ngayarta, Pama-Nyungan) / Torbjörn Westerlund. ISBN: 9781922185150 (ebook) Series: Asia-Pacific Linguistics; A-PL 16. Subjects: Ngarla language Ngarla language – Western Australia – Pilbara – Grammar Ngarla language – Western Australia – Pilbara – Glossaries, vocabularies, etc. Pama-Nyungan languages – Grammar Pama-Nyungan languages – Glossaries, vocabularies, etc. Aboriginal Australians – Western Australia – Pilbara – Languages Dewey Number: 499.15 Nyayi nganarna wangka wanyjarnu mirlimirlingura ngarla wangka pananga warnpartarra. This language, the Ngarla language, we have written down for the benefit of the Wanbarda people. vi Contents Acknowledgements x Abbreviations xi 1. The community and the material 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Ngarla – the community and its language 1 1.3 Classification of Ngarla 2 1.4 The decline of the Ngarla language 4 1.5 Previously collected Ngarla material 4 1.6 Materials used 4 1.7 Introducing the consultant 5 2. Phonology & prosody 7 2.1 Phoneme inventory & transcription conventions 7 2.2 Phonotactic constraints 9 2.3 Stress placement rules 10 3. Nominals 11 3.1 Preamble: Word classes in Australian languages 11 3.2 Introduction 11 3.3 Core cases, marking and glossing 11 3.4 Nominal subclasses 13 3.4.1 Common nouns and demonstratives 13 3.4.1.1 Introduction 13 3.4.1.2 Grammatical cases 13 3.4.1.3 Semantic cases 14 3.4.1.4 Number marking 17 3.4.2 Proper nouns 18 3.4.3 Toponyms 19 3.4.4 Pronouns 20 3.4.5 Adverbs of time and location 23 3.4.6 Numerals 26 3.4.7 Epistemes 27 3.4.8 Adjectives in Ngarla? 30 4. Finite verbs 33 4.1 Introduction 33 4.2 Ngarla conjugations and verb roots 33 4.3 Complex verbs 36 4.3.1 Formal features of Ngarla complex verbs 36 4.3.1.1 Introduction 36 4.3.1.2 Construction of the complex verb 36 vii 4.3.1.3 Phonological and grammatical word status 38 4.3.1.4 Zero verbalisation 39 4.3.2 Semantic features of Ngarla complex verbs 41 4.3.2.1 Introduction 41 4.3.2.2 Inchoative and causative: A note on terminology 41 4.3.2.3 The verbalisers karri-Ø, ngarri-Ø and ma-L, ja-L and telicity 42 4.3.2.4 The -rri-Ø/+rri-Ø verbaliser 45 4.3.2.5 The ku-L/+ku-L verbaliser 46 4.3.2.6 Restricted L conjugation verbalisers 47 4.4 Main clause verbal marking 49 4.4.1 Introduction 49 4.4.2 Defining tense, aspect and mood 49 4.4.3 Ngarla main clause verbal morphology 49 4.4.3.1 Introduction 49 4.4.3.2 Tense 51 4.4.3.2.1 Present tense 51 4.4.3.2.2 Remote past tense 52 4.4.3.2.3 Past tense combined with aspectual information: Past, Continuous past and Usitative 52 4.4.3.2.4 Future tense combined with imperative mood 55 4.4.3.3. Mood 56 4.4.3.3.2 Speculative 56 4.4.3.3.3 Purposive 56 4.4.3.3.4 Optative 58 4.4.3.4 Combined temporal and modal marking 58 4.4.3.4.2 Present contrafactual and Past contrafactual 58 4.4.3.4.3 Anticipatory 60 4.4.4 TAM marking with the two irregular verbs ya-/yaa-/yana- /yanangka- ‘go’ and karri- ‘carry’, ‘take’, ‘bring’ 60 4.4.4.1 ya-/yaa-/yana-/yanangka- ‘go’ 60 4.4.4.2 karri- ‘carry’, ‘take’, ‘bring’ 62 4.4.5 Person marking 64 4.5 Valency changing derivations 66 4.5.1 Introduction 66 4.5.2 Valency decreasing derivations 66 4.5.2.1 Antipassive 66 4.5.2.2 Reciprocal 69 4.5.3 Valency increasing derivation 70 4.5.3.1 Causative 70 5. Minor word classes 73 5.1 Introduction 73 5.2 Particles 73 5.3 Interjections 77 viii 6. The noun phrase 79 6.1 Introduction 79 6.2 Modifiers in the Ngarla noun phrase 80 7. Main clause types and word order 87 7.1 Introduction 87 7.2 Clauses with verbal predicates 87 7.2.1 Purposive clauses: an aberrant case (?) 92 7.3 Clauses with nominal predicates 94 7.3.1 Introduction 94 7.3.1.1 Clauses with intransitive nominal predicates 94 7.3.1.2 Clauses with extended nominal predicates 97 7.4 Word order 98 8. Coordination & Subordination 103 8.1 Introduction 103 8.2 Coordination 103 8.3 Subordination 106 8.3.1 Introduction 106 8.3.2 Non-restrictive relative clauses 106 8.3.3 Purposive clauses 110 8.3.4 (Pure) nominalising suffixes 112 References 115 Appendix A: Transcription & glossing conventions 121 A.1 Introduction 121 A.2 Transcription of Ngarla phonemes 121 A.3 Hyphens, tildes, dots and pluses 122 A.4 Notes on glossing 122 A.4.1 Glossing of nominals: Case marking 122 A.4.2 Glossing of verbs 123 A.4.2.1 Glossing of TAM categories 123 A.4.2.2 Complex verbs: Inchoative and causative 123 Appendix B: Annotated stories 125 B.1 Text 1: My Life Story, page 1 125 B.2 Text 2: My Life Story, page 6 128 B.3 Text 3: Droving trip from Ethel Creek to Meekatharra, June 1949 130 B.4 Text 4: We were playing with a dangerous thing 136 B.5 Text 5: The mouse and the kestrel had a fight 139 B.6 Text 6: Purslane 144 B.7 Text 7: Let’s go fishing, boy! 147 B.8 Text 8: Yukurru Wangka (‘Dog Talk’) 151 Appendix C: Lexicon 155 ix Acknowledgements For their valuable contributions, I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of people. First and foremost I am indebted to my Ngarla consultant Alexander (Nyapiri) Brown†, and to former SIL-linguist Brian Geytenbeek, the latter of which has collected much of the Ngarla material in existence, and also made it available to me. My sincere thanks go to my Ph.D.-supervisors, professors Anju Saxena and Alan Dench. Useful, albeit minor contributions have come from Teddy (Mapayi) Allen†, Patrick Caudal and professor Peter Austin, and I hereby wish to express my gratitude to them. Ngarla linguistic material has been recorded for me by Eleonora Deak, Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre, when I could not do so myself. During my 2010 trip to Australia, she also provided a place for me to stay in South Hedland. During the 2008 trip, Wangka Maya provided accommodation, transport and office space. Thank you Ellie and Wangka Maya! Two anonymous reviewers have made useful comments about how to improve this work. Thank you! Further, I am thankful to my wife Ylva for putting up with all my time-consuming work on Ngarla (and for learning some of the language as well). Last but certainly not least, Molly and Emmy, you are my greatest achievements so far. Ngayinykapu mamarra murri. Uppsala, 15th May 2015 Torbjörn Westerlund x Abbreviations Ø Ø conjugation; zero marked morpheme 1 first person 2 second person 3 third person A transitive subject/answer ABL ablative ACC accusative ALL allative ANT anticipatory ANTIP antipassive AREA in the area of ASSOC associative AVERS aversive BEN beneficiary CAUS causative COM comitative COMP completely, exclusively CPST continuous past DAT dative; also marks genitive DEM demonstrative DOUBT doubt (particle) DS different subject DU dual DWELLER dweller of END sudden end (nominal suffix) EP epenthetic morpheme EPI episteme ERG ergative; also marks instrumental EX exactly (at) EXCL exclusive FREQ frequentive FUT future; also marks imperative mood GEN genitive HORT hortative IMP imperative INCAUS indirect cause INCH inchoative INCL inclusive INSNOM instrumental nominalisation INTNS intensifier xi L L conjugation LOC locative NEG negation/negative NMLZ nominaliser NOM nominative NP noun phrase OPT optative P transitive object p.c. personal communication PL plural PRIV privative PRS present PRSCONTRA present contrafactual PST past PSTCONTRA past contrafactual PURP purposive Q question particle/question RECP reciprocal REFL reflexive REL relative RELPRS relative present RELPST relative past REMPST remote past RESP respect S intransitive subject SCE source SEQ sequential SPEC speculative SS same subject TAM tense, aspect and mood USI usitative V verb xii 1. The community & the material 1.1 Introduction This work constitutes a modified version of Westerlund’s Ph.D.-thesis Finite verbs in Ngarla (Pama-Nyungan, Ngayarta).