Sketch of a Jaminjung grammar of space.pdf

3Sketch of a Jaminjung grammar of space Eva Schultze Berndt 3 1Introduction The aim of this paper is to describe the systems of spatial orientation and the linguistic resources that are employed in descriptions of spatial relations and motion events in Jaminjung an Australian language The most notable features of Jaminjung in this domain are fi rst the existence of two distinct predicative word classes verbs and coverbs These show a clear division of labour with respect to the expression both of spatial relations and of the components of motion events In motion expressions verbs encode only the fact of motion and the anchoring of the path while both manner of motion and other aspects of the path are expressed by coverbs This means that Jaminjung falls outside the verb framed satellite framed typology as it is currently conceived The second interesting feature which is notable in that Jaminjung differs in this respect from other Australian languages whose system of spatial orienta tion has been investigated in more detail is the existence of a drainage based absolute frame of reference rather than one based on compass directions In descriptions of small scale spatial arrangements however speakers prefer to employ expressions based on an intrinsic frame of reference or expressions describing an overall confi guration The paper is structured as follows Section 3 2 presents a brief introduction to the language and its speakers Section 3 3 in describing the grammatical and lexical resources for spatial descriptions also serves as a brief introduction to the grammatical properties of the major word classes and to other grammat ical features of Jaminjung In Section 3 4 strategies of encoding topological relations are discussed Section 3 5 is dedicated to the description of motion events Section 3 6 deals with the ways that both a drainage based absolute frame of reference and an intrinsic frame of reference are employed in spatial descriptions The results are summarized in Section 3 7 3 2The language and its speakers The language name Jaminjung is used here as a cover term for Jaminjung and Ngaliwurru twocloselyrelatedlinguisticvarietiesspokenintheVictoriaRiver 63 64Eva Schultze Berndt Area of Northern Australia in the border region between the Northern Terri tory and Western Australia Together with a somewhat more distantly related language Nungali nowalmostextinct theyconstitutealanguagefamilywhich has been referred to as Jaminjungan Djamindjungan or Yirram in the lit erature Hoddinott and Kofod 1976a b c Chadwick 1984 1997 Green 1995 and which belongs to the non Pama Nyungan group of language families in Australia Previous work on the grammar and lexicon of these languages con sists of three unpublished sketch grammars Cleverly 1968 Bolt Hoddinott and Kofod 1971a b a thesis focusing on the syntax and semantics of complex verbs in Jaminjung and Ngaliwurru Schultze Berndt 2000 and a few articles Hoddinott and Kofod 1976a b c Schultze Berndt 2001 2002 as well as unpublished fi eld notes by Arthur Capell Michael Walsh and Mark Harvey Jaminjung NgaliwurruandNungalipeopletraditionallyoccupiedacontigu ous area along both sides of the lower Victoria River between the Fitzmau rice River in the north the East Baines River in the west Jasper Gorge in the south andLanggay VictoriaRiverCrossing intheeast TheVictoriaRiverisa majortidalriver andtogetherwithitstributariesconstitutesthemostprominent geographical feature of this area The rivers cut through steep rising plateaus formingmostlynarrowvalleysandgorges andonlypartlywiderplains around the West Baines River It is therefore not surprising that the direction of the fl ow of water plays an important role in the Jaminjung and Ngaliwurru system of spatial orientation see 3 6 Today Jaminjung and Ngaliwurru speakers mainly live in Timber Creek and surroundingoutstations afewspeakersalsoliveinthetownshipsofKununurra Wadeye Port Keats and Katherine but only constitute a minority in each of theseplaces LikeAboriginalpeopleelsewhereintheregion Jaminjung Ngali wurruandNungalipeoplehavesuffered andcontinuetosuffer fromtheeffects of European settlement and the establishment of cattle stations in their tradi tionalcountry Thisisalsorefl ectedinthesituationofthelanguagesinthearea Thereareapproximately100remainingspeakersofJaminjungandNgaliwurru and the language is no longer acquired by children The fi rst language of the children and the language of much of the daily interaction even among older people is Kriol an English based Creole language Even when the traditional languages are spoken code switching and borrowing are very common All older speakers are multilingual in Jaminjung or Ngaliwurru Kriol and one or moreneighbouringlanguages suchasMurrinh Patha Miriwoong Gajirrabeng Ngarinyman Bilinarra or Wardaman This situation refl ects traditional and on going social and cultural relationships with surrounding language groups 3 3Grammatical and lexical resources for spatial description The main grammatical features of Jaminjung are typical of many of the non Pama Nyungan languages of Australia Word order or rather phrase order Sketch of a Jaminjung grammar of space65 on the clause level is free i e serves to indicate information structure rather than grammatical relations Core argument roles are marked by pronominal prefi xes on the verb In addition Jaminjung has an elaborate case system Case marking of core arguments follows an ergative accusative pattern although there is some freedom of marking i e actors in transitive clauses are not necessarily ergative marked for details see Schultze Berndt 2000 169 73 Lexical arguments can be freely omitted Acrucialaspectofthelanguage whichisalsohighlyrelevantforthestructure of spatial expressions is the division of predicative lexemes into two distinct lexical categories Verbs that is those lexemes carrying verbal infl ections con stitute a closed class with around thirty members Members of an open class of uninfl ected elements termed coverbs here cover a semantic area which is usually covered by verbs but also by adverbs and adpositions in other lan guages ThedifferencesbetweenNgaliwurru Ng andJaminjung J aremainlylexi calorconcerntherealizationofcross referencemarkingontheverb Phonolog ically the two dialects differ in that Jaminjung has an additional lamino dental stop Ngaliwurru cognates of Jaminjung words which contain this con sonant have the palatal stop instead Where differences are of relevance for the present paper they will be indicated In the following subsections the grammatical properties of the major lexical categories nominals coverbs and verbs are discussed briefl y with spe cial consideration of those properties of relevance for spatial expressions in Jaminjung 3 3 1Nominals Nominals in Jaminjung can be identifi ed by their ability to function as con stituents of case marked or absolutive unmarked noun phrases functioning as referential arguments as in 1 and as ascriptive or equative predicates in verbless clauses as in 2 1 1 The following abbreviations are used in the glosses ABL ablative ABS absolutive case unmarked ALL allative COMIT comitative CONTR contrastive focus marker DAT dative DEM neutral demonstrative du dual DIR directional marker DIST distal demon strative DUBIT dubitative clitic ERG ergative excl exclusive IMP imperative IMPF pastimperfective incl inclusive INTERJ interjection IRR irrealis L ALL locationalalla tive L ABL locationalablative LOC locative NEG negative N nominal OBL oblique pl plural POSS possessive POT potential future marker PRED predicative PROPR proprietive PROX proximal demonstrative PRS present tense PST past tense QUAL qualitynominaliser RDP reduplication REFL refl exive reciprocal RESTR restrictiveclitic SFOC sentence focus marker sg singular SUBORD subordinator Boundary symbols used are for a word internal morpheme boundary for a clitic boundary for a fi nal falling intonation unit boundary and a comma for a non fi nal rising intonation unit boundary Short pauses within an intonation unit are indicated by 66Eva Schultze Berndt 1 lawu gani yu ngabulu NP ABS janju nijalig ni NP ERG spill 3sg 3sg SAY DO PST milkDEM ERG child ERG that child spilled milk 2 ngayug NP ABS gurrany gujarding ngunggina NP PRED 1sgNEGmother2sg POSS I am not your mother Jaminjung has a rich case system of thirteen cases twelve in Ngaliwurru Three of these the locative gi g J gi ni Ng the allative bina and the ablative ngunyi J giyag Ng have primarily though not exclusively spatial functions and will be discussed in more detail in Sections 3 3 and 3 4 In addition to the ablative case Jaminjung but not Ngaliwurru has an origin case nyunga whichservestoindicateaspatialorigin asin sheisfromTimber Creek or a material origin or cause but not a starting point of motion The case markers although treated here as suffi xes for simplicity s sake are better described as postpositional enclitics somewhere in between postpositions and suffi xes in terms of their degree of grammaticalization see McGregor this volume on Warrwa They can follow any one constituent of a noun phrase and also more than one constituent Nominals can be divided into further subclasses based on their predominant function and in some cases based on distinct morphological marking The subclasses can be arranged in a continuum ranging from pronouns and nouns denotingentities withmainlyreferentialfunction toquantifi ersandadjectival nominals with mainly modifying or predicative function and demonstratives locationals and time nominals with mainly adverbial function A subset of demonstratives also function as determiners as in 1 above Only the sub classes of locationals and demonstratives will be considered in more detail in Sections 3 3 1 1 and 3 3 1 2 3 3 1 1Locational nominals Expressions that function as unmarked locational and temporal adverbials are considered here as subclasses of nominals rather than as members of a separate adverb class This is in line with observations made for other Australian lan guages see Wilkins 1989 301 but is not unproblematic in all instances see below The locational interrogative is warnang where which as 4 shows also functions as a locational indefi nite somewhere anywhere Usually the unmarked form is used with a locative interpretation see 13 below for an example but warnang may also take locative case As 3 and 4 show war nang has a special allative or directional form warnaja and does not combine with the regular allative case however it takes the regular ablative case Sketch of a Jaminjung grammar of space67 3 ngayinwarnajaga jga ny meat animal where DIR 3sg GO PST Where did this animal go 4 gurrany biya warnajaga jga ny NEG nowwhere DIR 3sg GO PST she didn t go anywhere then Directionalnominalsformadistinctsubsetoflocationalnominals Unlikemany other Australian languages Jaminjung does not make regular use of compass direction terms Instead Jaminjung speakers regularly employ two direction als based on water fl ow manamba upstream and buya downstream Ng buyagu and two directionals based on verticality thangga Ng janggagu up and thamirri Ng jamurrugu down The use of these terms is discussed in Section 3 5 Directionals may also be derived from demonstratives with the directional suffi x wurla as in 5 below Formally directionals can be identifi ed as a distinct subset of nominals in that they are unmarked in stative locational function and often also in goal function and may take special spatial cases see Dixon 1980 282f the loca tional allative L ALL is ngining in Jaminjung and ngarnang in Ngaliwurru and the locational ablative L ABL is yun yin in both dialects However the general allative and ablative suffi xes are also found on directionals The use of the locational allative suffi x is illustrated in 5 5 pigipigi mungga yuyina wurla ngining piglook at 3sg BE PRS DIST DIR L ALL manamba ngining upstream L ALL a pig is looking that way upstream Farm Animals 7 While directionals are easily identifi ed by their special spatial case forms class membershipismorediffi culttodetermineforotherlocationalexpressionssuch as warriya J warrgayin Ng far ganjagawu close gamurr in the middle and balarrgu outside Two of these are illustrated in 6 6 warrgayin ngunyi ga ramyina far ABL3sg COME PRS DIST gamurr waga ga yugirrb gan unggu m middle sit3sg BE PRS quiet 3sg 3sg SAY DO PRS he comes from a long way over there halfway he sits down and stops Usually theseformsarenotinfl ectedwhenexpressingstativelocationordirec tion and could therefore be considered positional coverbs see 3 3 2 rather than nominals On the other hand they regularly take ablative case as in 6 68Eva Schultze Berndt Table 3 1 Jaminjung nominal demonstratives GlossAdverbialAdnominal PROXimatengi yi ya ngi yinthu J ngi yinju ngiya Ng DISTalyina ya ngi yina neutral DEMonstrative given thanthiya J janjiya Ng thanthu J janju ngiya Ng and always occur outside a complex verb formed with a positional as is also illustrated in 6 that is the order waga gamurr gayu is not found It may also be necessary to posit a separate class of adverbs for these forms as McGre gor this volume does for comparable items in Warrwa cf also Merlan 1994 254f The word class status of locational expressions of this type requires further investigation 3 3 1 2Demonstratives A complete grammar of space of Jaminjung would have to contain a full description of the syntax and conditions of use of demonstratives Here only a very brief overview can be given The core set of nominal demonstratives comprises six forms with dialectal variants listed in Table 3 1 As Table 3 1 shows a three way distinction is made between a proximal and a distal demonstrative based on distance from the speaker and a third form simply glossed as DEM in examples which is distance neutral Its function canberoughlycircumscribedas re introducingacontextually given referent it can be used to refer to an entity given in the extralinguistic context e g in interactional space but also anaphorically to refer to a previously mentioned entity as e g in 1 above In its adnominal form it functions as a general determiner and is on its way to grammaticalizing to a defi nite article It is therefore not surprising that it is far more frequent than the proximal and distal demonstratives Allthreedemonstrativesoccurintwoforms labelled adverbial and adnom inal in Table 3 1 The adnominal forms mainly occur in determiner function as in 1 above and in 8 In Ngaliwurru the proximal and the neutral adnom inal demonstrative may be reinforced with the proximal adverbial form ngiya asindicatedinTable3 1 Dataaretooscarcetoallowgeneralizationsontheuse of these forms impressionalistically they function similarly to the correspond ing German reinforcements like der hier the one here or dieser hier this one here Sketch of a Jaminjung grammar of space69 The adverbial forms function not only as adverbials 2as in 7 but also as head nouns and as adnominal modifi ers as in 8 and as the predication base in identifi cational clauses or identifi cation questions 7 majani ngiya walyag ya rdbaj maybe PROX insideIRR 3sg FALL maybe here he got inside Frog in Frog Story p 9 see Chapter 1 1 4 3 for a description of this elicitation tool 8 gurrany jurriya ngarrgu ngiya yagbali NEGknow1sg OBL PROX place I don t know this place Furthermore adverbial demonstratives can be extended with the suffi x ngurrinygi J wulguli Ng to yield forms with the meaning on this that side The Jaminjung form contains the locative marker gi but apart from that theformsarenon transparent Theequallynon transparentformjilinymu this side was also heard from Jaminjung speakers The use of one of these forms is illustrated in 9 a response in an elicitation with toy fi gures 9 yeah ngiyi ngurrinygi gurdij ga yu yesPROX SIDEstand 3sg BE PRS gurrurrij biyang birang ngunyi ga yu nu car nowbehind ABL3sg BE PRS 3sg OBL yes he is standing up on this side the car is behind him elicitation with toy fi gures 3 3 2Coverbs Asalreadyindicatedatthebeginningofthissection Jaminjunghastwodistinct parts of speech in predicative function The term verb is reserved here for a closed class of lexemes which obligatorily take verbal infl ections see 3 3 3 Members of the open class of lexemes with verbal and adverbial semantics do not infl ect these are termed coverbs here cf Kofod 1996 Wilson 1999 The term coverb rather than preverb e g Tsunoda 1981 Nash 1986 McGregor this volume or verbal particle e g Hoddinott and Kofod 1976c Merlan 1994 is used here because i it does not suggest a fi xed order with respect to the verb and ii it does not have the connotation of a minor word class restricted in size It also captures the dependent nature of members of this class coverbs do not function as the main predicate in a fi nite clause but have to be combined with a verb to form a complex predicate This is illustrated in 2 In this function the demonstrative may take any of the spatial case markers although most often it occurs unmarked in locative function 70Eva Schultze Berndt 10 where three coverbs waga sit burrb fi nish and durd hold pick up a single entity occur in combinations with different verbs 10 waga ngaj nu burrb ganu wu yuskul sit 1sg POT BE 3sg OBL fi nish 3sg 3sg POT SAY DO school durdnga bili hold one 1sg 3sg POT GET HANDLE I will wait lit sit for her and when school fi nishes I will pick her up Coverbs may also function as the predicate in a subordinate clause without an accompanying verb and in this function can take one of a number of case markers Coverbs can however be distinguished from nominals in that they are necessarily predicational and do not occur as constituents of referential case marked noun phrases Coverbs may reduplicate and take a number of derivational suffi xes Nominals can be derived from coverb roots but not vice versa Coverbs cannot in fact be derived from words of other classes but the class is massively extended by borrowings Coverbs are a crucial component