Nominal Declensions in Jiwarli

As explained in the case marking and ergativity section, Jiwarli is a language which disambiguates participant relations through the use of case. In this section we examine the cases of Jiwarli, and their functions.

Cases, in languages which use them, can be loosely divided into two varieties. Firstly we have the cases which mark the ‘core grammatical relations’ of Intransitive Subject (IS), Transitive Subject (TS) and Transitive Object (TO). The reason these elements are referred to as ‘core’, is because they are required by verbs in a sentence. For example, an intransitive verb must have a subject, but cannot have an object. You may remember these concepts from the the case marking and ergativity section. If not, you may want to visit that page before continuing.

Any other entity or participant in a sentence is called an ‘oblique’, due to its optional status in a clause. For example, we can say:

The lion	sleeps	(under the tree)	or;
IS	V	OBLIQUE

Mary	kicked	the ball	(with her friends / with her foot)
TS	V	TO	OBLIQUE

In English, core argument relations are expresed through word order, and oblique relationships usually have something like a preposition telling us the relationship to the event described in the verb. In Jiwarli, however, all relationships are expressed by the use of the relevant case marker. In other words, if a speaker wants to talk about, for example, a hill kangaroo, the part it plays in the action of the sentence will determine the case that must be used. This will affect how the noun ‘hill kangaroo’ must be said.

Table of Cases in Jiwarli

meaning	case	'hill kangaroo'
the ‘doer’ or ‘actor’ in a transitive (TS)	ergative	mathantu
the ‘doer’ or ‘actor’ in an intransitive (IS)	nominative	mathanma
the thing being acted upon (TO)	accusative	mathannha
beneficiary, possessor of something	dative	mathanku
place (or time)	locative	mathanta
motion towards	allative	mathankurla
place from (or time from)	ablative	mathantanguru

The following examples are actual sentences taken from the Traditional Mythology text.

Nominative and Dative

(1)	Kapakurta	mantharta	mikalyaji	paja	yana-nyja
	spotted nightjar.nom	person.nom	bat.nom	angry.nom	go-past
	mantharta-wu.
	person-dat
	‘The nightjar and bat were angry with a man’.

Because word order plays no tangible role in Jiwarli, it is not necessary to put all the parts of a noun phrase together. But so that people can understand which parts of the sentence belong together, Jiwarli marks all elements of noun phrase with the same case marker.

Ergative and Instrumental

(32)	Thangka-rninyja	purrarti-lu	wana-ngku
	hit-past	woman-erg	yamstick-erg
	‘The women hit (them) with yamsticks’

In Jiwarli, if a speaker wishes to communicate that someone used something as an instrument, they use the ergative case to mark the relevant noun, as we can see above. This means we often have a sentence with someone performing an action (and being marked with the ergative case accordingly), and using something to perform that action — which takes the ergative case as well. In some languages, an instrument may use a different case, but in Jiwarli it is simply the ergative.

Ergative and Accusative

(41)	Papa	nhupalu-ru	paja-lkarringu	wakararri-ngu
	water.acc	2dl-erg	fight/drink-intent	fly-imperfSS
	‘You (two) will drink water while flying.’

This sentence is a good example of the basic case marking system of Jiwarli. We see here that the people doing the action are marked with the ergative case, while the water, which is having an action performed upon it, is in the accusative case.

Locative

(13)

Ngunhi-pa

juntalya-la

yapurru

kampa-rninyja

ngula-pa

there.loc-spec

Juntalya-loc

north.loc

heat-past

that.loc-spec

‘They straightened it there in the river north at Jundalya.’

The locative case is used to describe the location of something. It doesn’t have to be only geographical - it can mark a location in time as well as in space. In English, we would say ‘in the river’, or ‘on the table’. But in Jiwarli, this meaning is expressed by adding the locative case marker to the end of the relevant noun(s).

Ablative and Nominative

(4)	Warri	nhuku-parnti	ngunha	paja	yana-nyja
	not	close-ablat(2)	that.nom	angry.nom	go-past
	‘They didn’t go along angry from nearby’.

This sentence shows how the ablative case is used. In English, you will notice that we say ‘from nearby’, but in Jiwarli, again the meaning is expressed by marking the noun ‘nearby’ with the ablative case.

Some further facts about case marking in Jiwarli

Although its generally accepted than any nominal has only one case, Jiwarli has a system of double case marking because of various extra functions that case marking has. For example, the dative case is also used to mark the possessor of certain objects.

Dative signifying possession, also example of double case

Juma	jirrilarri-a	thuthu-wu	nganaju-wu	yakan-ku-wu
child.nom	be afraid-pres	dog-dat	1.dat-dat	spouse-dat-dat
‘The child is afraid of my wife’s dog’

Other facts to note:

In Jiwarli, there is a complicated system of subordinate clause linking. Referents which appear within a subordinate clause are marked differently from referents in main clauses, or are sometimes not expressed at all. Information on this can be found in the section on verb conjugations.