TIWI REVISITED A reanalysis of Traditional Tiwi verb morphology Aidan Wilson Submitted in total fulfilment of the degree of Master of Arts (Linguistics) December 2013 Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics School of Languages and Linguistics Faculty of Arts The University of Melbourne For Anita Pangiramini, Justin Puruntatameri, and all people whose languages have gone silent. May they and their words always be remembered. Abstract Traditional Tiwi is a language isolate within the Australian language group, traditionally spoken on the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin. This language exhibits the most complex verb structure of any Australian language. Altogether there are 18 distinct verb slots; 14 prefixes and 4 suffixes. They encode subject, object and oblique arguments, they inflect for tense, aspect and mood, the location and direction of events with respect to the speaker, and the time of day that an event takes place. They also take prefixes and suffixes denoting associated motion, can be argument-raised by a causative or detransitivised by derivational morphology, and can take incorporated nominals, incorporated verbs, and incorporated comitative or privative arguments. Traditional Tiwi has not been adequately described. Previous descriptions are limited and do not cover verb morphology with enough detail. This thesis brings together previous descriptions, early recorded data, and adds newly collected data and findings to produce an updated description of the language, with special reference to the verb morphology. I focus in particular on two aspects of the verb morphology: agreement and incorporation. The Traditional Tiwi agreement system of inflecting verbs shows a high degree of complexity due to the interactions between subject, object and tense marking. I argue for the occurrence of an otherwise unreported phenomenon by which agreement affixes can shift between various controllers depending on the morphosyntactic context. Incorporation is also highly complex, as with other northern Australian languages that exhibit this feature. There are four distinct types of incorporation including verb incorporation, comitative and privative constructions, body part incorporation and regular nominal incorporation. I describe these with reference to incorporation phenomena in other Australian languages. Traditional Tiwi however, is no longer spoken; the last two speakers died in 2012. The majority of the data on which this thesis is based was collected with one of these two last speakers, and therefore represents possibly the last documentary linguistic record of this important language. v Declaration This is to certify that: 1. the thesis comprises only my original work towards the degree of Masters, 2. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, 3. the thesis is less than 30,000 words in length, exclusive of examples, tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. ………………………………………………………………… Aidan Wilson vi Acknowledgements There are many people without the support of whom this thesis would not have been written. First and foremost I thank my two brilliant supervisors, Rachel Nordlinger and Gillian Wigglesworth, for being a formidable team, for knowing exactly when and how I needed pushing, and for ensuring that I was able to finish. To Tim McNamara, I extend my personal thanks for support in difficult times, and also to each of my colleagues in the department, in particular the ‘Langdoc’ lab, for providing me with constant encouragement and occasional catharsis. I also thank Lauren Gawne in particular for making a simple suggestion that kept this entire project from coming to a premature end. I also thank the department generally and the University of Melbourne for the institutional support without which research in Indigenous Australia would be all but impossible. This project was conducted with the support of two research grants: the Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition (phase 2) project, funded by an Australian Research Council grant (DP 0877762), and the Traditional Tiwi project funded by an AIATSIS research grant (G2011/7667). The maps in this thesis were produced by Chandra Jayasuriya, and the data in the language boundary map was contributed by many researchers and collated by Mark Harvey (University of Newcastle). My thanks go to Chandra and Mark for their work. To the entire PARADISEC team, particularly Linda Barwick and Nick Thieberger, thanks for keeping me employed, and being flexible with my long periods of concentrating on other things. Lorenzo, padrone, I owe you thanks for being my mentor on the islands and my representative when I could not be there. Thanks also to the Nguiu Aged Care facility for allowing me to visit just about every day, and for not neglecting me when it came to the residents’ meal times. vii Elisha, I may not have been able to accomplish this without your continued patience, support and, above all, love. It was not easy for us both to have theses to wrestle, and for us to have been so far away from each other for these last three years while doing so. To the Tiwi people, I extend my warm and heartfelt thanks for inviting me into your country and into your culture. To nginyimini, my brother-in-law, Gordon, thank you for introducing me to your people. Bede Tungutalum, for naming me Payamarnuwa, I owe you a debt of gratitude. To the ladies in the literacy centre, Tara, Kalei and especially Maggie, thank you for giving me a place to work, and helping to educate me about Tiwi history and culture. To Molly and Jamie-Lee, thank you for enduring the cold weather in Melbourne and assisting me with my research. Finally, and most importantly, to Anita, my grandmother and teacher. Maningawu, I’m sorry that I couldn’t show you the result of our work together. I am forever grateful that you taught me your language and spent so much time with me in what turned out to be your last months. Your infectious laughter I will remember fondly. This thesis is dedicated to you. viii Table of Contents CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1 1.1 Outline 4 1.2 Scope of this thesis 5 1.3 Notes on examples 6 CHAPTER 2: The Tiwi people and their language 9 2.1 The Tiwi people 10 2.1.1 Location 10 2.1.2 Geographic and cultural isolation 11 2.1.3 Settlement 13 2.2 The Tiwi language 15 2.2.1 Typological profile 16 2.2.2 Classification 17 2.2.3 Current situation 19 CHAPTER 3: Methodology 21 3.1 Fieldwork 22 3.2 Corpus 23 3.2.1 Osborne materials 24 3.2.2 Wilson materials 26 CHAPTER 4: A Summary of previous linguistic descriptions 29 4.1 Phonology 30 4.1.1 Consonants 31 4.1.2 Vowels 32 4.2 Word classes 34 4.2.1 Nominals 34 ix 4.2.2 Pronouns 38 4.2.2.1 Personal pronouns 38 4.2.2.2 Impersonal pronouns 44 4.2.2.3 Demonstratives 46 4.2.3 Verbs 49 4.2.3.1 Agreement morphology and tense 50 4.2.3.2 Incorporation 56 4.2.4 Coverbs 58 4.3 Syntax 60 4.3.1 Word order 60 4.3.2 62 4.3.3 Imperativ 63 4.3.4 Complex predicat 65 CHAPTER 5: The Verb 71 5.1 Agreement 73 5.1.1 Subject 74 5.1.2 Object and Oblique 76 5.2 Tense, Aspect, Mood and Polarity 80 5.2.1 Tense 81 5.2.2 Aspect 84 5.2.3 Polarity 87 5.2.4 Mood 89 5.3 Location, Direction, Time and Motion 94 5.3.1 Location and Direction 95 5.3.2 Time of Day 98 5.3.3 Associated Motion 100 5.4 Incorporation 101 5.4.1 Noun Incorporation 102 x 5.4.2 Verbal Incorporation 103 5.4.3 Comitative and Privative 104 5.5 Verb Derivations 107 5.6 Summary 110 CHAPTER 6: Agreement morphology 111 6.1 Canonical agreement 114 6.2 Interactions 118 6.2.1 Subject and tense 118 6.2.1.1 Subject Classes 118 6.2.1.2 Portmanteau forms 120 6.2.2 Object and tense 122 6.2.3 Subject, object and tense 125 6.2.3.1 2MIN subjects 126 6.2.3.2 3MIN subjects 128 6.3 Lexicalised agreement 134 6.4 Summary 139 CHAPTER 7: Incorporation 141 7.1 Features of incorporation 144 7.2 Noun Incorporation 147 7.2.1 Body part incorporation 148 7.2.2 Generic incorporation 151 7.3 Verb incorporation 157 7.4 Comitative and Privative incorporation 161 CHAPTER 8: Discussion and Conclusion 167 8.1 Contribution of this thesis 167 8.2 Traditional Tiwi in a cross-linguistic context 170 xi Map 1: Map of Tiwi Islands and surrounding areas N Timor**Sea D u n d a s * Milikapiti * * Cobourg S t Peninsula Pirlangimpi r A a ps le i y t * * Melville * S t r Bathurst ait Island Island Wurrumiyanga Buchanan Van*Diemen*Gulf Island S t r a i t n c e * * l a re C Vernon Beagle*Gulf Islands Darwin Jabiru Location(map Map 2: Location of Tiwi language with respect to its neighbours1 N IIgar Wurrugu Garig Warrgu Location(map Tiwi Manangkari 0 50km Iwaidja Mawng Kunbarlang Amurdak Ngaduk Njebbana Gurr@goni Gonbudj Gaagudju Giimbiyu Limilngan Wuna Bininj7Gunwok Gulumoerrgin Bugurnidja Ngombur Batjjamalh Umbugarla Dalabon Gungarakany Warray Uwinymil 1 The data on which this map is based was contributed by many researchers and collated by Mark Harvey, University of Newcastle (2008). xii List of Abbreviations 1 First person IPFV Imperfective 2 Second person IRR Irrealis 3 Third person ITER Iterative 1/2 First and second person LOC Locative A Class A M Masculine B Class B MIN Minimal number AM Associated motion MORN Morning AUG Augmented number NEG Negative ASS Associative NFUT Non-future tense CAUS Causative NPST Non-past tense COM Comitative O Object COMP Complementiser OBL Oblique COMPL Completative OBLIG Obligative CONJ Conjunction PL Plural CV Connective PRIV Privative DEM Demonstrative PREP Preposition DIST Distal PROX Proximal DUR Durative PST Past tense EVE Evening Q Question F Feminine RECP Reciprocal FRUST Frustrative REFL Reflexive FUT Future S Subject HITH Hither SG Singular IMP Imperative = Indicates clitic boundary - Indicates morpheme boundary _ Separates multiple English words within same lexical gloss (e.g., be_deaf) > Denotes direction of transitivity or possession (e.g., 3MIN>3MIN.M ‘S/he did it to him’) xiii CHAPTER 1 Introduction Traditional Tiwi is a language isolate which has not been demonstrated to be genetically related to any of the established Australian language families, although all classifications agree that it is within the broad Australian language group.