Peter Austin

Non-configurationality in Australian aboriginal languages

The syntax of the Australian Aboriginal language Warlpiri has led to two opposing models of non-configurationality: a dual structure hypothesis, which abandons the projection principle for a grammatical architecture that separates constituency and functional representations (Simpson 1983, 1991, Hale 1983, Kroeger 1993), and a pronominal argument hypothesis, which hypothesizes that bound or zero pronominals satisfy the projection principle in such languages, with free nominals analysed as adjuncts (Jelinek 1984, Baker 1991, Hale 1993). Although the pronominal argument hypothesis is widely accepted in the syntactic literature, we show that available evidence from Warlpiri, new evidence from the related language Jiwarli, and a survey of six other Australian languages actually support the dual structure hypothesis. The non-configurationality characteristics of free word order, null anaphora, and split NPs are in fact independent of each other and of the distribution of bound pronouns. Additionally, the clitic pronouns that Jelinek (1984) and others take to be the source of non-configurationality in Warlpiri are simply an areal feature of Australian languages that is independent of the syntactic properties that are supposed to derive from it.

Zero Arguments in Jiwarli, Western Australia

Jiwarli is an Australian Aboriginal language that was formerly spoken in the north-west of Western Australia. It shows a high degree of (suffixing) morphological complexity, has a split-ergative case-marking system, and a switch-reference system in dependent clause linkage. Verbs are also strictly subcategorized for transitivity and there are interactions between clause type and case marking. A prevalent feature of Jiwarli discourse is the non-occurrence of overt arguments in both main and dependent clauses. In narratives, 65–75% of transitive clauses have at least one missing argument (depending on genre), with 20% consisting of just a verb alone. Also, 25% of intransitive clauses lack their single (intransitive subject) argument. Zero arguments in Jiwarli can have either unspecified reference or else be anaphoric. This paper discusses the occurrence of zero arguments and outlines the means by which anaphoric relations are expressed. I will show that there is an interaction between verb transitivity, clause type, switch-reference, and the case-marking system which assists with reference determination in narrative discourse.