ࡱ> c SjbjbSS n11w]$$$dHtttt8Dt$(PRRRRRR, f~-~P,tPhPP4t탲ttP Leerdil Yuujmen bana Yanangarr (Old and New Lardil)* Norvin Richards, MIT In 1960 and 1967 Ken Hale compiled extensive field notes on Lardil, a Pama-Nyungan language spoken on Mornington Island. At that point the language was still spoken by many adults on the island, although the younger generation consisted primarily of monolingual English-speakers. In July and August of 1996, Hale, along with Anna Ash, David Nash, Jane Simpson, and the author, returned to Mornington Island to complete a dictionary of Lardil begun by Hale during his earlier visits (Ngakulmungan Kangka Leman 1997). The language is now spoken by considerably fewer people, the youngest of which are in their early fifties. Furthermore, there are certain systematic differences between Lardil as it is spoken today by its youngest speakers (hereinafter referred to as New Lardil) and Lardil as it was spoken at the time of Hales first work on the language (referred to here as Old Lardil). There has thus apparently been a rapid, and fairly radical, change in the grammar of the language in the course of the last thirty years or so. In this paper I will investigate the nature of this change and speculate briefly about its origins. Two distinguishing characteristics of Old Lardil are illustrated in the sentences in (1): (1) a. Ngada latha diini libani I spear this-OBJ pumpkinhead-OBJ I speared/am spearing this pumpkinhead b. Ngada lathu diinku libanku I spear-FUT this-FUT pumpkinhead-FUT I will spear this pumpkinhead c. Diinku libanku lathu ngada. this-FUT pumpkinhead-FUT spear-FUT I I will spear this pumpkinhead As the sentences in (1) show, Old Lardil has a nominative-accusative case system, with morphological inflection for case on the nominal head and its modifiers. Case and tense interact in interesting ways (which I will be unable to discuss here); essentially, morphologically marked tenses are spread to the entire verb phrase. Furthermore, the word order is fairly free; (1b) and (1c) are synonymous in Old Lardil. Now let us turn to the properties of New Lardil. A typical New Lardil sentence is given in (2): (2) Ngada lathathu diin liban I spear-FUT this pumpkinhead I will spear this pumpkinhead (2) differs from its Old Lardil counterpart (1b) in a number of ways. One difference has to do with the morphological form of the verb; this will be discussed further in section 1.2.3. Another difference is that the case morphology on the object is frequently dropped. Finally, New and Old Lardil differ in that the word order in (2) is by far the most common in New Lardil; a comparison of the frequencies of the various possible word orders for transitive sentences in the New and Old Lardil corpora is given in table 1: Table 1:Old and New Lardil Transitive Word Order Frequencies SVOVSOOSVSOVOVSVOSOld Lardil49 (38%)25 (20%)19 (15%)19 (15%)13 (10%)3 (2%)New Lardil146 (94%)3 (2%)4 (2%)1 (1%)1 (1%)0 (0%) We have seen two major differences, then, between Old and New Lardil; New Lardil has comparatively impoverished nominal morphology and a more fixed word order than Old Lardil. It seems reasonable to assume that these changes are at least partly due to the decline in common everyday use of Lardil, and to its contact with English. These two factors are sociologically related, of course, in that Lardil has largely been replaced by English in everyday use. Still, they are linguistically distinct. One might hold, for instance, that the changes in Lardil are entirely due to English influence; the internal grammars of New Lardil speakers, on this theory, largely or entirely reflect the structure of English, with the only differences between New Lardil and English being the lexical items used. On this theory, New Lardil word order is overwhelmingly SVO because this is the word order of English, and New Lardil, like English, has impoverished nominal morphology. I will refer to this approach as the English influence theory. Alternatively, one might believe that Lardil has changed in the way that it has purely because of the scarcity of the Lardil data available to children attempting to acquire Lardil. According to this theory, because Lardil is no longer used as often as it once was, Lardil learners do not hear crucial data which would lead them to posit and acquire the Old Lardil grammar, and arrive at the New Lardil grammar instead. A theory of this type would owe us an account, of course, of why we see the particular changes that we do. Let us refer to this approach as the scarce data theory. These two positions are extremes, and a number of intermediate positions could be distinguished, but at our current level of understanding, ruling out one or another of these extremes may be the best we can do. In this paper I will try to argue that the English influence theory, though plausible, is in fact incorrect. I will suggest that the scarce data theory is closer to the truth, and will offer an account of why New Lardil differs from Old Lardil in the way that it does. We saw that New and Old Lardil differ in two major regards, one having to do with morphology and the other with word order. Section 1 will discuss the morphological differences between New and Old Lardil at greater length, and section 2 will consider word order. Finally, in the appendices, I will consider briefly a couple of other distinctions between Old and New Lardil which may have arisen. 1. Morphology Section 1.1 will discuss the morphological properties of Old Lardil. In Section 1.2, I will focus on how New Lardil differs from New Lardil. 1.1 Old Lardil In this section we will investigate the morphological properties of Old Lardil in more detail. Old Lardil distinguishes a number of morphological cases, as can be seen in Table 2: Table 2: Old Lardil nominal morphology kirdikir moon wangal boomerang Nominative kirdikir wangal Objective kirdikirdi-n wangalk-in Future kirdikirdi-wur wangalk-ur Marked Non-Future kirdikirdi-ngarr wangalk-arr Locative kirdikirdi-i wangalk-e Genitive kirdikirdi-kan wangal-kan Intransitive Allative kirdikirdi-ya wangalk-iya Transitive Allative kirdikirdi-mari wangal-mari Intransitive Ablative kirdikirdi-burrii wangal-burrii Transitive Ablative kirdikirdi-burri wangal-burri Comitative kirdikirdi-ngun wangalk-ingun Proprietive kirdikirdi-wur wangalk-ur Privative kirdikirdi-werr wangal-werr Instrumental kirdikirdi-wur wangalk-ur Old Lardil nominal morphology is added to the base, which is often distinct from the nominative or citation form; for instance, the base for kirdikir moon is /kirdikirdi/, and the base for wangal boomerang is /wangalk/. The citation form is predictable from the base, roughly via the rules given in 3 (for further discussion, cf. Hale 1973, Klokeid 1976, Wilkinson 1988, Ngakulmungan Kangka Leman 1997): (3) a. final high vowels become non-high /nguku/--> nguka water /kerndi/--> kernde wife b. trisyllabic (or longer) bases are shortened /kirdikirdi/--> kirdikir moon c. monomoraic bases are lengthened /ja/--> jaa foot /yak/--> yaka fish /jul/--> julda hair /kang/--> kangka speech d. final clusters are simplified /wangalk/--> wangal boomerang e. certain final consonants (including all bilabials and velars) are deleted /kurkang/--> kurka panja Note that although the citation form is predictable from the base, the reverse is not true; identical citation forms may arise from distinct bases, as in minimal pairs like that in (4): (4) /wun/ --> wunda rain (undergoes rule (3c)) /wunda/ --> wunda stingray sp. (no change) Thus, the relation between the citation form of a noun and the base to which nominal morphology is added is opaque. A version of rule (3c) can also be seen in the domain of verbal morphology. Verbs with monosyllabic bases receive an augment /-tha/ when they are uninflected. Compare the paradigm for the monosyllabic base /la/ spear with that of the polysyllabic base /kebe/ get: Table 3: Old Lardil verbal inflection kebe get latha spear Plain kebe latha Future kebe-thur la-thur Marked Non-Future kebe-tharr la-tharr Negative kebe-jarri la-jarri Negative Imperative kebe-ne la-ne Negative Future kebe-nengkur la-nengkur Negative Non-Future kebe-nerr la-nerr Contemporaneous kebe-jirr la-jirr Evitative kebe-nymerr la-nymerr Thus, the citation form latha spear reflects a monosyllabic base /la/. Of course, a polysyllabic base /latha/ would also surface as *latha; the rules in (3) would make no alterations to such a base. Interestingly, however, there appear to be no verbal bases of this form in the Old Lardil lexicon; that is, there are no bisyllabic bases of which the second syllable is /tha/ (although this syllable certainly occurs in longer bases, as in darrathala sweat or jithale put in coolamon). 1.2 New Lardil Now let us consider the changes made by the New Lardil speakers to the Old Lardil morphological system. As noted above, New Lardil speakers often do not inflect objects: Table 4: New Lardil nominal inflection frequencies unmarked marked objective 66 (66%) 34 (34%) future 23 (68%) 11 (32%) Thus, objects are inflected in New Lardil roughly a third of the time. Here the English influence theory would say that the morphological system of Lardil is becoming more like that of English. On the scarce data theory, on the other hand, the data in Table 4 reflect a conclusion drawn by the New Lardil speakers on the basis of a comparatively small amount of Lardil data, which they presumably would not have drawn had they been exposed to more Old Lardil as children. To see what this conclusion might be, let us consider more carefully the allomorphs of the Old Lardil objective and future object markers: (5) a. -(i)(n) objective wangalk-i(n) boomerang-OBJ bultha-(n) dust-OBJ b. -(k)(u)(r) future kurkang-ku(r) panja-FUT birdibirdi-wu(r) crescent moon-FUT wangalk-u(r) boomerang-FUT bultha-(r) dust-FUT In Old Lardil, the Objective and Future cases are marked with suffixes -in and -ur respectively. For many Old Lardil speakers, however, the final consonants of these suffixes often fail to appear; for a certain set of Old Lardil speakers, then, the suffixes appear as -i and -u. Furthermore, for vowel-final bases, even these forms often fail to appear in Old Lardil: the objective ending -i vanishes after all vowel-final bases, and the Future ending -u is not found after bases ending in vowels other than /i/. In other words, the Objective and Future markings are often absent even in Old Lardil, especially with vowel-final bases. The scarce data theory might therefore claim that New Lardil speakers have generalized this absence of inflection On this theory, New Lardil speakers failed to realize, from the small Lardil sample from which they were working, that the relevant factor determining whether inflection appears or not has to do with the presence or absence of a base-final vowel. In other words, New Lardil differs from Old Lardil in that the null alternate of certain inflectional suffixes may appear freely, rather than being phonologically conditioned. The conclusion that inflectional markers could be freely dropped might have been aided by a collapse of the opaque relation between bases and citation forms which we saw in section 1.1. Recall that Old Lardil citation forms are predictable from nominal bases via the rules in (3), repeated as (6): (6) a. final high vowels become non-high /nguku/--> nguka water /kerndi/--> kernde wife b. trisyllabic (or longer) bases are shortened /kirdikirdi/--> kirdikir moon c. monomoraic bases are lengthened /ja/--> jaa foot /yak/--> yaka fish /jul/--> julda hair /kang/--> kangka speech d. final clusters are simplified /wangalk/--> wangal boomerang e. certain final consonants (including all bilabials and velars) are deleted /kurkang/--> kurka panja Several of these rules ((6c) and (6e)) have the effect of creating vowel-final citation forms out of consonant-final bases. Suppose that New Lardil speakers have reanalyzed these nominals, making the bases identical to the citation forms; thus, the New Lardil base for fish, for instance, would be /yaka/, rather than /yak/ as in Old Lardil. New Lardil would then have considerably more vowel-final bases than Old Lardil, and consequently more cases in which Objective and Future endings would have a null realization even in Old Lardil. In the next three sections we will see some evidence suggesting that the scarce data approach is in fact the correct one; the relevant distinction between New Lardil and Old Lardil is a loss of regular but opaque morphosyntactic rules, such as those which relate bases and citation forms and the one which says that inflectional affixes are only dropped after vowel-final bases. We will see that New Lardil case morphology differs from English morphology in ways which are unexpected on the English influence account. 1.2.1 Imperative objects In Old Lardil, objects of imperative verbs are in the nominative case: (7) a. Nyingki latha kiini libani you spear that-OBJ pumpkinhead-OBJ You spear(ed) that pumpkinhead b. (Nyingki) latha kiin liban! you spear that pumpkinhead Spear that pumpkinhead! This is apparently also true of New Lardil. While objects of non-imperative verbs, as we saw, are marked for objective case roughly a third of the time, objects of imperatives are almost never marked: Table 5: New Lardil Imperative Object Marking unmarked marked 34 (92%) 3 (8%) The difference between imperative and non-imperative objects is statistically significant (p<.001). This result is expected on the scarce data theory. On this theory, New Lardil speakers and Old Lardil speakers have essentially the same grammar, but New Lardil speakers differ in having generalized the null allomorph of the Objective and Future case endings. We therefore expect New Lardil speakers to always correctly mark objects of imperatives with nominative, which appears to be the case. On the English influence theory, on the other hand, these results are unexpected. If New Lardil objects often drop their case because English objects have no case marking, then New Lardil, like English, should make no distinction between objects of imperatives and objects of non-imperatives. 1.2.2 Regular and irregular opaque relations Further evidence for the scarce data theory comes from the different morphological behavior of different nominals in New Lardil. Table 6 gives frequency counts for unmarked and marked objective forms of various common New Lardil nominal elements. Recall from Table 4 that nominals in general are typically marked for objective case 34% of the time: Table 6: New Lardil objective marking on particular nominals unmarked marked yaka fish 10 (63%) 6 (37%) werne food, animal 15 (65%) 8 (35%) dangka man, person 12 (75%) 4 (25%) bidngen woman 10 (100%) 0 (0%) diin this 27 (93%) 2 (7%) jika many 8 (53%) 7 (47%) ngada I 0 (0%) 15 (100%) nyalmu we (pl.ex.dish.) 7 (100%) 0 (0%) By far the most statistically significant result in Table 6 is the behavior of ngada I, which appears in the objective form in all fifteen of its appearances in the corpus as an object (p<.000001). This might in principle be taken as support for the English influence theory, given that pronouns are also among the few nominals English declines. Such a theory would have no account, however, for the behavior of nyalmu we (plural exclusive disharmonic); New Lardil consistently fails to decline this, although its English equivalent is declined. In fact, it seems that the most reliable indicator of whether a New Lardil nominal will be declined has to do with Old Lardil, rather than English. What distinguishes ngada I from nyalmu we (pl.excl.dish.) and other nominals is that its declension is entirely irregular: Table 7: three Old Lardil nominal declensions ngada I nyalmu we (pl.excl.dish.) kurka panja Nominative ngada nyalmu kurka Objective ngithaan nyalmuun kurkang-in Future ngithantha nyalmung-ku kurkang-ku M. Non-Future ngithunarr nyalmung-arr kurkang-arr Genitive ngithun nyalmung-an kurkang-an Learning the declension of ngada I, in other words, is a matter of learning several completely irregular forms. nyalmu we (pl.excl.dish.), on the other hand, has an irregular Objective form but is otherwise completely regular; its base is /nyalmung/, and all of its forms other than the Objective one (including the Nominative form) are predictable from this. Morphologically, then, nyalmu is more like kurka panja than it is like ngada I. Its declension is handled primarily by regular morphophonological rules, and these are precisely the morphophonological rules which, on this analysis, are being lost in New Lardil. New Lardil speakers thus appear to have had enough evidence to acquire irregular forms in certain cases, but not enough to make the generalizations across different forms which are needed to posit a regular morphophonological rule. 1.2.3 Further evidence for reanalysis: verbs Further evidence for this particular account of the morphological differences between New and Old Lardil comes from the behavior of verbs in New Lardil. Recall that Old Lardil verbs are subject to a minimal word requirement; monosyllabic stems, when uninflected, receive an augment -tha in order to make them sufficiently metrically heavy: Table 8: Old Lardil verb inflection kebe get latha spear Plain kebe latha Future kebe-thur la-thur Marked Non-Future kebe-tharr la-tharr Negative kebe-jarri la-jarri Negative Imperative kebe-ne la-ne Negative Future kebe-nengkur la-nengkur Negative Non-Future kebe-nerr la-nerr Contemporaneous kebe-jirr la-jirr Evitative kebe-nymerr la-nymerr In New Lardil, on the other hand, this augment tha is often reanalyzed as part of the verb base; thus, the Old Lardil base /la/ spear, for instance, has been changed to /latha/ in New Lardil. Table 9 gives an exhaustive list of all inflected verbs ending in -tha in the New Lardil corpus; underlined forms are those reflecting reanalysis of -tha as part of the base: Table 9: New Lardil augment reanalysis Future Negative Negative Imperative betha bite bethajarri(1) bethane (1) wutha give wuthajarri (1) latha spear lathajarri (1) jitha eat jithathu (3) jithajarri (1) jithane (3) jijarri (6) netha hit' nethu (1) ditha sit dithu (1) Again, New Lardil appears to be in the process of doing away with the opaque (but regular) relation between the base and the overt form. On the other hand, completely irregular relations appear to be retained, as was the case with nominal inflection. The irregular verb waa still appears in its irregular Old Lardil forms: Table 10: New Lardil waa go Actual Future Regularized *waa-kun (0) *waa-thur (0) Irregular waangun (31) waangku (7) Waa is never changed to a regular verb. Here, again, it looks as though the New Lardil speakers had enough data on Lardil to learn completely irregular forms, but not enough to posit regular morphophonological relations between forms; the latter alternations are therefore being lost, while the former are retained. 2. Word Order The second major distinction between Old and New Lardil had to do with word order. New Lardil word order is in practice considerably less flexible than Old Lardil word order: Table 11: Old and New Lardil word order frequencies SVOVSOOSVSOVOVSVOSOld Lardil49 (38%)25 (20%)19 (15%)19 (15%)13 (10%)3 (2%)New Lardil146 (94%)3 (2%)4 (2%)1 (1%)1 (1%)0 (0%) SV VS VO OV Old Lardil 147 (55%) 119 (45%) 179 (77%) 52 (23%) New Lardil 158 (92%) 13 (8%) 67 (87%) 10 (13%) These facts are clearly consistent with an English influence theory; New Lardil word order, like English word order, is apparently essentially SVO. On the other hand, a scarce data theory might be able to handle these facts as well. It is interesting to note that the word orders which have become dominant in New Lardil are also the most common word orders in Old Lardil. We might theorize, then, that some syntactic processes which disrupt the basic word order in Old Lardil have become less available, or less frequently used, in New Lardil. One can easily imagine a connection between this phenomenon and the loss of nominal case endings in New Lardil. Evidence against the English influence theory comes from the behavior of a certain class of adverbs. These adverbs are typically preverbal in both New and Old Lardil: Table 12: Lardil preverbal adverbs Old Lardil New Lardil preverbal postverbal preverbal postverbal buda(a) behind 1 1 2 0 budameen behind 0 0 3 0 jarma quickly 1 0 8 0 maa only, just 9 1 17 0 merri again 4 1 1 0 nguthungu slowly 22 1 5 1 walmaan up 2 1 4 0 In English, on the other hand, these adverbs are frequently unable to be preverbal. Examples from the New Lardil corpus which would be ungrammatical in English are given in (8-10): (8) Bana Kirdikir, niya waa, walmaan waa and moon he go up go And Moon, he goes, goes up. (9) ...ngada budaa waa kangarakun I behind go ask-for-food-ACT Ill go behind, asking people for food (10) Nyingki jarma kangkakun you quickly talk-ACT Youre talking fast Here, then, is a case in which Old and New Lardil word order behave alike. On the English influence theory this is rather surprising; why should adverbs be unique in escaping the influence of English? There is one clear morphological difference, however, between the adverbs and nominal arguments; in Old Lardil, the latter but not the former carried case morphology roughly indicating their semantic role. In New Lardil, as we have seen, this morphology has partly been lost; it is therefore not surprising that the word order of just those elements which bore this morphology has changed in a certain way. 3. Conclusion In general, it appears that the role of English per se in the transition between Old and New Lardil is minimal. The differences between New and Old Lardil are not a matter of influence by a particular language, but rather of ordinary language change, probably accelerated by the scarcity of Lardil data available to the New Lardil speakers as they were acquiring Lardil. I have theorized that this language change consists largely of the loss of certain regular morphophonological rules of Old Lardil; various regular alternations have been regularized in favor of a particular form. Completely irregular alternations, on the other hand, have apparently been retained. This seems consistent with a theory in which children acquiring Lardil were exposed to less Lardil data than is typically available to learners of a first language. On this theory, the New Lardil speakers heard enough Lardil as children to learn the Lardil lexicon, including various irregular forms, and a number of arguably syntactic facts about Lardil grammar (for instance, the fact that objects of imperatives take nominative case, or that certain adverbs are obligatorily preverbal), but not enough to acquire various regular but language-specific morphophonological rules governing the concatenation of morphemes. The resulting impoverishment of nominal morphology has had effects on the possible orders of nominal elements in New Lardil. In the following appendices I will discuss two more apparent differences between New and Old Lardil. Appendix 1: Negative imperatives In Old Lardil, negative imperatives are formed by addition of a negative imperative suffix -ne to the verb: (11) Kunaa, kebene baya be get-NEG.IMP. anger No, dont get angry (12) Kilmu ngawithurane niya, banda niya thaathur... you-PL.DISH. miss-NEG.IMP. he eventually he return-FUT Dont be sad about him; eventually hell come back... In New Lardil, by contrast, this suffix does not appear with this meaning in the corpus. It may be that it can still have a negative imperative meaning; the suffix is seldom enough used in the New Lardil corpus that this possibility cannot be ruled out. The attested instances of -ne, however, seem to involve a more general negative modal force: (13) Diin wurdal birdi; ngada jithane this meat bad I eat-NEG.IMP. This meat is bad; I cant eat it (14) Diin thungal burndiny, murndamen thungal, this tree mangrove-cedar mangrove-with tree bana niwen werne, nyalmu jithane and its fruit we eat-NEG.IMP. This tree, mangrove cedar, it grows with the mangroves, and we dont eat its fruit This meaning of -ne does not appear to be available in Old Lardil. Negative imperatives in New Lardil are now typically formed using the word ngawun. Ngawun in Old Lardil seems to be an adverb meaning something like only a little bit, with restraint, but can also apparently have a negative imperative meaning: (15) Ngawun kuubarnga ngawun open-eyes Open your eyes just a little (not too much) (16) Kernde-kambin thaldii. Ngawun merri waa kurrithu burdalu. wife child stand-up ngawun again go see-FUT corroboree-FUT Wife, child, get up. Dont go see the corroboree again. In New Lardil, by contrast, ngawun only appears with a negative imperative meaning: (17) Ngawun dukurme ngithaan ngawun deceive me Dont lie to me (18) Ngawun duranji ngawun poke-RECIP Dont poke each other In New Lardil, then, the Old Lardil negative imperative suffix -ne has apparently been reanalyzed as having a more general negative modal force, and the adverb ngawun is used exclusively to form negative imperatives. As Michel DeGraff (p.c.) has pointed out to me, these developments are somewhat reminiscent of the evolution of negation in French, where the older negative head ne has largely been lost, to be replaced as the primary overt exponent of negative meaning by a phrasal element pas, formerly a noun phrase which was frequently associated with negation. Appendix 2: third person pronouns It is interesting to note that the Old Lardil non-singular third person pronouns (birri they (du. harm.), niinki they (du.dish.), bili they (pl.harm.), bilmu they (pl.dish.)) do not appear in the New Lardil corpus. Moreover, there are some examples in the corpus in which the pronoun niya he/she appears where we might expect to see plural forms: (19) Nyingki yukarr, karan ngakurrwen mangarda jika? you husband where our-DU.INCL.HARM. child many Niya denkawakun wajbelkan laka. niya dance-ACT white-person-GEN way Hey, husband, where are all our children? Theyre doing disco. (20) Dangka, bidngen warnawu yaka, thurarra, barun, kendabal, man woman cook fish shark/stingray sea-turtle sea-turtle/dugong dilmirru--warnawu. Bana wutha niya Kirdikir, Birdibir dugong cook and give niya moon crescent-moon The men and women cook fish, shark, sea turtles, dugongs--they cook them. And they give them to Moon, Crescent Moon. (21) Diin kiyanda, niya wayithu burdal marndar. this two-person niya sing-FUT corroboree marndar Bana diin kiyanda, diin kiyan dangka, niya kubarithu, and this two-person this two person niya make-FUT luulithu diin jika mangarda. dance-FUT this many child 'These two, they're going to sing the marndar song. And these two, these two people, they're going to fix him, they're going to initiate (lit. 'dance') these boys' In these cases niya appears to have a plural antecedent. It may be the case, then, that in New Lardil niya has become a general third person pronoun with no specified number; again, this is a language change which cannot be ascribed to English influence. Note that New Lardil, like Old Lardil, has an inclusive-exclusive distinction in the first person plural pronouns, a singular-plural distinction in the second person pronouns, and possibly also a dual-plural distinction; these distinctions are absent in English, of course. References Dorian, Nancy. 1981. Language death: the life cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dialect. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press. Evans, Nicholas. 1995. A grammar of Kayardild. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hale, Kenneth. 1973. Deep-surface canonical disparities in relation to analysis and change: an Australian example. Current Trends in Linguistics 11, 401-458. Klokeid, Terry. 1976. Topics in Lardil grammar. Doctoral dissertation, MIT. Lee, Jennifer. 1987. Tiwi today: a study of language change in a contact situation. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Maandi, Katrin. 1989. Estonian Among Immigrants in Sweden. In Investigating Obsolescence: studies in language contraction and death, ed. Nancy Dorian, 227-241. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ngakulmungan Kangka Leman (Anna Ash, Ken Hale, Kenneth Jacobs (Kulthangarr) David Nash, Norvin Richards, Lindsay Roughsey (Burrurr), Jane Simpson, et al). 1997. Lardil dictionary. Gununa, Queensland, Australia: Mornington Shire Council. Schmidt, Annette. 1985. Young people's Dyirbal: an example of language death from Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilkinson, Karina. 1988. Prosodic structure and Lardil phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 19. 325-334. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy 20D-219 MIT Cambridge, MA 02139 USA norvin@mit.edu Many thanks are due to my informants, especially Kenneth Jacobs (Kulthangarr), Cyril Moon (Birdibir), and Lindsay Roughsey (Burrurr), for their hard work and patience. Waa, ngithun kubarda jika--ngada malthurii ngawijmariku kilmuun. Thanks, too, to Anna Ash, Michel DeGraff, David Nash, Rob Pensalfini, Jane Simpson, the audience at the Australian Linguistics Circle in January of 1997, and especially Ken Hale, without whom this work would have been impossible. None of these people are to be held responsible for this paper's many faults, the responsibility for which is mine alone. One particularly egregious flaw in this paper is the lack of any discussion of similar phenomena in other languages; see, in particular, Schmidt 1985 and Lee 1987 for discussion of recent language change in Dyirbal and Tiwi, respectively. I hope to remedy this flaw in future work.  Lardil is standardly viewed as Pama-Nyungan; see Evans (1995), however, for an opposing viewpoint.  The abbreviations used in this paper are (see Ngakulmungan Kangka Leman 1997 for detailed discussion of these terms): ACT=actual (roughly, indicates that a verb is actually occurring or has occurred) DISH=disharmonic (see footnote 8) DU=dual FUT=future HARM=harmonic (see footnote 8) IMP=imperative INCL=inclusive NEG=negative OBJ=objective (marks case on objects) PERF=perfective PLUR=plural RECIP=reciprocal  The Old Lardil corpus in question is a series of texts gathered by Ken Hale in 1960 and 1967. The New Lardil corpus consists of texts and dictionary example sentences gathered by Anna Ash, Ken Hale, and the author during the summer of 1996.  A number of authors have noted that language change appears to accelerate in situations in which children are learning the language on the basis of scarce data; see Dorian (1981), Schmidt (1985), Maandi (1989), Pensalfini (this volume) for discussion.  In fact, the augment does appear with certain types of inflection, in particular, the prefix yuurr- perfective (the only inflectional prefix in the language), and the suffix -kun actual. Both of these are arguably clitics; -kun appears to be a reduced form of the verb kunaa to be, and yuurr- can sometimes be found in isolation, unattached to the verb (see Klokeid 1976 for some discussion).  I have not included a count for subjects here; in New Lardil, as in Old Lardil, subjects never receive inflectional morphology. For reasons which will later become clear, this count does not include objects of imperative verbs. For purposes of this count, I counted as marked nominals like those in i. and ii., in which only part of the object exhibits case morphology: i. Dangka yuud- dene niweni maarn jirrka person PERF leave his-OBJ spear north Someone left his spear in the north ii. Ngada barrkithu diinku daljirr I cut-down-FUT this-FUT wild-cassava Im going to cut down this wild cassava Of the 34 marked objects, 12 were of this type, and of the 11 future-marked objects, 3 were partially marked. 10 of the 12 partially marked objects were like the one in i. in that marking appeared on a modifier rather than on the head noun; all 3 of the partially future-marked objects had this property.  Ken Hale (p.c.) informs me that the dropped final /-n/ was most common for roots of more than two syllables. Thus, zero marking of the objective may have been more uncommon than I have represented it as being here; it may have been marked on roots of more than two syllables by failure to to undergo the truncation rule in (3b), and on shorter roots by the addition of /-(i)n/.  Of course, (6b) has the opposite effect. I have no data to support this, but my impression is that the nouns affected by (6c) are far more common than those affected by (6b).  Another statistically significant result, which I will not try to account for here, is that diin is unusually infrequently marked for objective case (p<.001). One possibility is that this is a dissimilation phenomenon, given that the Old Lardil objective form for diin is diinin. Note the infrequency of objective marking on bidngen LINGUIST Network Message-ID: <199811200449.XAA03491@linguistlist.org> Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 23:49:57 +0000 Reply-To: LINGUIST Network  woman as well (pH".02), which might be explained in a similar way. Diin is marked for future case 27% of the time (3 out of 11 occurrences), which is comparable to other nominals and would not be expected to trigger the same kind of dissimilation (the Old Lardil form is diinkur).  Like a number of other Pama-Nyungan languages, Lardil has two sets of non-singular pronouns, conventionally referred to as harmonic and disharmonic. The distinction has to do with how the members of the group referred to are related to one another; roughly, if every pair in the group is separated by an even number (including zero) of generations, harmonic pronouns are used, and disharmonic pronouns are used in other cases. Thus, harmonic pronouns might be used to refer to groups of siblings, or grandparents and their grandchildren; disharmonic pronouns would be for groups containing, for instance, a parent-child pair.  In fact, this may be a case in which morphophonological irregularity has actually been created where none existed before, although (as with many of the conclusions drawn in this paper) more work would be needed to establish this for certain. If the various forms in Table 9 reflect inconsistency on the part of individual speakers as to the treatment of these forms (for instance, if there are New Lardil speakers who use jijarri for the Negative form of jitha 'eat' but the reanalyzed formjithathu for the Future), then they have become irregular forms (whereas in Old Lardil they were regular forms, with a regular morphophonological rule forcing the addition of -tha in the unaffixed form).  It is probably worth noting that New Lardil speakers still judge sentences as grammatical which appear quite infrequently in texts. Kenneth Jacobs (Kulthangarr), a fluent New Lardil speaker, volunteered early in our work together his observation that Lardil word order was freer than English word order, using as his example the pair of grammatical and synonymous sentences in (i): i. a. Ngada waangku b. Waangku ngada I go-FUT go-FUT I I will go I will go  It is potentially relevant that the cases of -ne in the New Lardil corpus all involve verbs like jitha eat which have monosyllabic bases in Old Lardil and have been reanalyzed with their augment -tha as bisyllables in New Lardil.  The referent of niya in (20) is not entirely clear, but it seems mostly likely that it is the subject of its clause; it appears in the nominative form, and niya, like ngada I, regularly appears in its objective form when it is an object in New Lardil (also like ngada, its objective form is irregular). It is perhaps worth noting that these examples all come from a single informant, our main New Lardil informant, Kenneth Jacobs (Kulthangarr).  Dual pronouns are fairly infrequent even in the Old Lardil corpus, but there are a few examples of their use in the New Lardil corpus ((19) above is one such example). Norvin Richards Leerdil Yuujmen bana Yanangarr  PAGE 14  PAGE 15 MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics, no. 13, xxx-xxx. Papers on Australian Languages 1997 N. Richards #89:<=T* + /0FN ai\` % + x 5>*CJ5CJ>*CJ j0JU6CJCJ>*CJEH5>*5T#<=>TUpq- . ^  : ; s _ $ 8#<=>TUpq- . ^  : ; s _ `  6 7 FG  !"34hi ab%W~H}-. c_ `  6 7 FG$$4P H $$ 8$ 8  !"34hi $ 8 $$ 8$$4P Hab%W~H}-. 3 4 d $ 8. 3 4 d !!F!j!k!!!!""""#t#u#$$$$$ %6%[%%%%&,&-&((+(,((()$)E)d)e)?+@++++ ,',(,A,_,,,,,..f1g122223313U3V3|333333474844446688888999i9ed !!F!j!k!!!!""""#t#u#$$$$$ %6%$ 8 !!W!]!!!""""$$$$$$$$$$E&J&&&'''((*(((((4)6)?)A)S)U)^)`)++,,D,Q,_,r,,,,,----------R.T...2222E3M333333333$4*444$5%588 9>*CJ5CJ>*CJ j0JU6CJCJZ6%[%%%%&,&-&((+(,((()$)E)d)e)?+@++++ ,',(,A,_,$ 8_,,,,,..f1g122223313U3V3|3333334748444$ 8446688888999i99999: :!:::;2;J;K;;;>=?=f>$ 8i99999: :!:::;2;J;K;;;>=?=f>g>>>??8@Q@t@@@@A6AXAAACCDDD1EVEEEEFF|I}IIIKK(K)KLKfKKKKK-LXLLLLNNDNENpNNNNO$O;OROSOPPPPP!Q"Q_R`RoRpR"S#SWSXS\S`SdShSlSpS c8::;;=;F;G;g>>??Q@U@e@g@o@q@t@y@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@AA AAAA'A)A1A3A6A;AGAHARAUAXA^AvAyAAAAAAAAA*C0CRCSC]DbDlDrDDDDDDEE E"E'E6F;FFFGGGGGG6CJ j0JU5CJ>*CJCJ\f>g>>>??8@Q@t@@@@A6AXAAACCDDD1EVEEEEFF$ 8F|I}IIIKK(K)KLKfKKKKK-LXLLLLNNDNENpNNNNO$ 8G|IIJJK K1K5K>KCKbKeKLLMMNNN#NpNuNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOO OOO$O)O1O6O;OAOHOMOOOdPgPPPPPPPPPPPQQQQ!Q%Q`RnRoRRR!S"S+SXS[S\S_S`ScSdSgS j0JU 5>*CJ 9>*CJ>*CJ6CJ5CJCJXO$O;OROSOPPPPP!Q"Q_R`RoRpR"S#SWSXS\S`SdShSlSpS $$ 8$ 8gShSkSlSoSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS TTT%T'T/T1T8T:TNTPTWTXT`TbTiTkTWWWW"X)XDXLXfXkXXXXXXXXXYYNZSZZZk]l]z]sccccddpdrd-f0fnfofffgg h j0JU6CJ 5>*CJ>*CJ5CJCJZpSqS|SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS T=TnToTUUWWWWWW"XDXfXXXXX Y YYYYZ?Z@ZcZZZZZZ[[k]l]{]|] c csctcccdd"dAdXdYdddeeqfrfffff-gagggghhUhVhNiOifiziiii7jsjtjj cpSqS|SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS T=TnToTUUW$ 8 $$ 8$$4P HWWWWWW"XDXfXXXXX Y YYYYZ?Z@ZcZZZZZZ[[$ 8[k]l]{]|] c csctcccdd"dAdXdYdddeeqfrfffff-gag$ 8agggghhUhVhNiOifiziiii7jsjtjjjjjkk&k;kTkUkm$ 8 h#hhhhhUi[igimiii jjjjjjjjkk'k-kkkkkllAmDmmmmn nn$n8n*CJ6CJCJ>*CJ j0JU 5>*CJ5CJCJ6CJUjjjjkk&k;kTkUkmmmmooeooooApBpppqVqqqqrCrrrrrDssssuuuuUvvEww xxyTzzzzz{ { {{i}~~b)9Gp$ʅJvӇRK̔?*bmmmmooeooooApBpppqVqqqqrCrrrrrDssss$ 8suuuuUvvEww xxyTzzzzz{ { {{i}~~b$ $ 8$ 87w]wuwwwMxx}yyy)zzzz {{{{{{|~~~~~DHx|$%;=ӇԇQRSbfM;B\a.2KL?@nq5CJ j0JUCJEH>*CJ6CJCJ6CJCJX)9Gp$ʅJvӇRK̔?$ *+<@Ȗ̖Ӗؖ49ʘ˘ҘӘ՘֘ژۘOPRS>*CJmH jU j0JU6CJCJ ?*ɘʘטؘ>PQRS$ 8$ʘ˘̘јҘӘ՘֘ژۘܘRS) 0 00/P|. A!@ "@ #($(%|HH +7G{HHLd'` as PreviousShow/Hide Document TextRedoEdit TOA CategoryFormat Frame or Frame PictureGo to CommentExamples and PracticesAdd Caption TypeMove SelectionReview AutoFormat ChangesEnvelopes and LabelsSettings optionsLock DocumentDraw Table...Inside BorderOutside BorderLine StyleLine WeightShadingData FormAdd New RecordFill ColorLine ColorLine Style [0@0NormalCJOJQJmH <A@<Default Paragraph Font6*@6Endnote ReferenceH*, @,Footer  !,@,Header  !<&@!<Footnote ReferenceCJEH2@22 Footnote TextCJ0B0jdbtext$ LRLnormal + tab stops at 0.25$9*/  $)$1=R?KNnbkq l{y 9Wze'  .{yy 9zze'Yt n+n     -E a$-5>F!MSR]PeClvtO 2  #   O)3AQQ 8GgS h7wS_ d 6%_,4f>FOpSW[agms?S.i9pSjS3;>CKN!!Norvin Richards Mac HD:Norvin:www:papers:Leerdil@vvYvv#P(TT@@GTimes New Roman5Symbol3 Arial9MNew York3Times#h+++:4b2$+xLardil RTG GrantNorvin Richardsw ! VBA Converter (1.0)shlbVBE  #&:pNt:66b be we appear monthly (almost!) and our production time is relatively short, we will be able to publish squibs very soon after their acceptance. The review procedure we have set up is also geared at losing as little time as possible. What squibs are? What squibs do? Squibs inspire. They present ideas, yet to be fleshed out but one at the time. They find connections between facts that nobody ever thought were related. They spell out the beginning of a new analysis, not necessarily daring. They give you new facts from old languages and old facts in a new guise. They come up with beautiful observations that somehow seem theoretically relevant as well. They tell you about wonderful problems and possibly only hint at a solution. And they have the length of one page in Glot International, which is about 1500 words (including the references!). If you are interested in submitting a squib, please send us three hard copies and one soft copy to the addresses below. However, before sending us anything, please consul Oh+'0t  $ 0 < HT\dl'Lardilfard RTG Grant TG NormalnNorvin Richards2rvMicrosoft Word 8.0d@0@"Y@@"Y:4b The Netherlands *************************** Lisa Cheng and Rint Sybesma Editors Glot International HIL/Department of General Linguistics Leiden University PO Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands fax: +31-70-448-0177 http://www.hagpub.com/glot.htm -------------------------------- Message 2 ------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 15:05:03 +0100 From: Angeliek van Hout Subject: Language Acquisition and Language Breakdown CALL FOR PAPERS: Language Acquisition and Language Breakdown 1st language aquisition, SLI & aphasics May 28-29, 1 Salon | Comics
[Navigation bar]
[Salon Magazine] [Salon Magazine Archives] [Salon Magazine Search] [Contact Salon Magazine] [Salon Magazine Services] [Salon Emporium] [Salon Magazine Table Talk] [Brilliant Careers] [Entertainment] [Salon Magazine] Yn]^]a ]on]t]y]n]]]n]]^n^ ^^vbN:&r^J6"eloping children, SLI children and aphasics? Can the comparison between these populations tell researchers anything new about language acquisition or language breakdown? What exactly is lost in aphasia - the knowledge of language or the capacity to implement this knowledge? Do normally developing children and SLI children posses the relevant knowledge but are they unable to implement it? If so, why? Or is their linguistic system different from the adult system? What can the differences between impaired and unimpaired language development be attributed to? The Language Acquisition and Language Breakdown Conference, organized by the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics in the framework of its Language in Use research program aims at bringing together researchers whose work focuses on the comparison of these populations. Papers are invited for 30-minute presentations (plus 10 min for discussion). Papers must focus on the comparison between the language capacities of any two or three of these populations: normally developing children, SLI children, and people with aphasia. Please send four copies of a two page anonymous abstract (single space, including examples and references) and one copy with your name and affiliation to: Language Acquisition and Language Breakdown Utrecht University UiL OTS Trans 10 NL-3512 JK Utrecht The Netherlands Please include also a card with your name(s), affiliation(s), the title of your abstract, your e-mail(s), mailing address and telephone number(s). All materials must be rece ՜.+,D՜.+,4 hp|  'il2x: Lardil Title 6> _PID_GUID'AN{A510F782-85F5-11D2-A668-0005028CDF3A}w.kanda.kuis.ac.jp (8.6.12+2.4W/3.3Wb) with ESMTP id DAA29909 for ; Sun, 22 Nov 1998 03:34:41 +0900 Received: by kgg1.kuis.ac.jp (8.8.8+2.7Wbeta7/3.4Wbeta5) id DAA22945 for ; Sun, 22 Nov 1998 03:47:45 +0900 (JST) Received: (qmail 24050 invoked from network); 21 Nov 1998 18:11:22 -0000 Received: from linguist.ldc.upenn.edu (158.130.16.169) by linguist.ldc.upenn.edu with SMTP; 21 Nov 1998 18:11:22 -0000 Received: from LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU by LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8c) with spool id 368759 for LINGUIST@LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU; Sat, 21 Nov 1998 13:11:07 -0500 Delivered-To: LINGUIST@listserv.linguistlist.org Received: (qmail 23989 invoked from network); 21 Nov 1998 18:11:05 -0000 Received: from linguist.emich.edu (HELO linguistlist.org) (164.76.102.59) by linguist.ldc.upenn.edu with SMTP; 21 Nov 1998 18:11:05 -0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by linguistlist.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id NAA14555 for LINGUIST@listserv.linguistlist.org; Sat, 21 Nov 1998 13:11:04 -0500 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: linguist.emich.edu: localhost [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol X-Mts: smtp Approved-By: LINGUIST Network Message-ID: <199811211811.NAA14555@linguistlist.org> Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 13:11:04 +0000 Reply-To: LINGUIST Network Sender: The LINGUIST Discussion List From: LINGUIST Network Subject: 9.1655, Qs: Semantic dotting, Articulatory setting Comments: To: LINGUIST@listserv.linguistlist.org To: LINGUIST@LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU LINGUIST List: Vol-9-1655. Sat Nov 21 1998. ISSN: 1068-4875. Subject: 9.1655, Qs: Semantic dotting, Articulatory setting Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Wayne State U. Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona Reviews: Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona Associate Editors: Martin Jacobsen Brett Churchill Ljuba Veselinova Assistant Editors: Scott Fults Jody Huellmantel Karen Milligan Software development: John H. Remmers Chris Brown Home Page: http://linguistlist.org/ Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel =========================================================================== We'd like to remind readers that the responses to queries are usually best posted to the individual asking the question. That individual is then strongly encouraged to post a summary to the list. This policy was instituted to help control the huge volume of mail on LINGUIST; so we would appreciate your cooperating with it whenever it seems appropriate. =================================Directory================================= 1) Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 21:46:26 +0500 From: "Victor Pekar" Subject: Distribution of semantic dotting 2) Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 10:19:12 +0900 From: Noel Hunt Subject: Articulatory setting -------------------------------- Message 1 ------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 21:46:26 +0500 From: "Victor Pekar" ?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~Root EntrypL F33M1Table6$"R X@ @$6  |WordDocument  (` vh3M@Xt$6nSummaryInformationRD((pR(DocumentSummaryInformation989PlVCompObjml`Xll %Pl%GlMdld{Ll FMicrosoft Word DocumentNB6WWord.Document.8 LINGUIST@listserv.linguistlist.org; Sat, 21 Nov 1998 14:12:39 -0500 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: linguist.emich.edu: localhost [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol X-Mts: smtp Approved-By: LINGUIST Network Message-ID: <199811211912.OAA18092@linguistlist.org> Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 14:12:38 +0000 Reply-To: LINGUIST Network