William McGregor

The grammar of inalienability : a typological perspective on body part terms and the part-whole relation

The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

Verb classification in Australian languages

This book deals with systems of verb classification in Australian Aboriginal languages, with particular focus on languages of the north-west. It proposes a typology of the systems according to their main formal and semantic characteristics. It also makes some proposals concerning the historical origins and grammaticisation of these systems, and suggestions regarding the grammatical relations involved. In addition, an attempt is made to situate the phenomenon of verb classification within the context of related verbal phenomena such as serial verb constructions, nominal incorporation, and complex predicates.

The grammar of reported speech and thought in Gooniyandi

Abstract This paper investigates the grammar of reported speech and thought in Gooniyandi, a Bunuban language of the southern Kimberley, Western Australia. According to a traditional analysis, indirect speech reports would be embedded in the clause of speech; such an analysis cannot be maintained for Gooniyandi. Nor can recent proposals such as those of Foley and van Valin (1984) and Halliday (1985) that subordination or hypotaxis is involved. Instead, a framing analysis of reported speech is elaborated, according to which the quoted utterance is contained within the scope of the clause of speech. This permits a systematic treatment of direct and indirect speech, and an explanation of their contrasting grammatical properties. It is further argued that the syntagmatic relationship involved is a sign, the signified of which is an interpersonal meaning: the clause of speech modifies the reported clause much as the particle utharri ’mistakenly believe’ modified the clause it holds in its scope.

Sound symbolism in Gooniyandi, a language of Western Australia

AbstractIn Gooniyandi, a non-Pama-Nyungan Australian Aboriginal language spoken in the vicinity of Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, many verb roots end in consonants, unlike roots of other classes, which are almost always vowel final. The distribution of final consonants across the class of verb roots is examined, and it is shown that those ending in the same consonant tend to cluster together into a small number of semantically coherent groups. It is further argued that these associations of final consonants and semantic features of the action are iconically motivated: that is, there is evidence of phonaesthesia in Gooniyandi verbs. Possible articulatory and acoustic bases for this sound-iconicity are proposed and evaluated. For example, final ng is strongly associated with processes which involve hollow or resonant sounds, blunt shapes, or bent things. These associations are likely to be motivated by auditory iconicity (velars are grave acoustically) and/or articulatory ico...