Nhirrpi Sketch Grammar
Claire Bowern
Draft 2.545 - June 2000

1.  Introduction	
2. Phonology	
3. Nominals	
4. Verbal Morphology	
5. Clausal Syntax	
6. Conclusions	
7. Wordlist	
8. Sentences	
Introduction
1.1	Language Name [this bit mostly written by Luise]
There is extensive evidence that the languages once spoken in the area to the north-east, east and southeast of Innamincka were closely akin to Yandruwantha (or were in fact dialects of this language). The placenames in the area provide evidence of this, where either part of the whole of the name is analysable only in terms of Yandruwantha, not the more easterly Wangkumara language. Examples are:

Nappa Merrie	Ngapa-miRi	‘water-sandhill’
Nappapethera waterhole	ngapa	water
Murdrapunyah Ck	mardra	‘stone’
Muddlemurra Ck	(prestopped laterals)
Pudlapatchie Ck	padla-patyi	land-good
Bunga-Bunga dili 	pangga-pangga-thili	‘the two young men’

The area in question consists of the stony ranges east of Innamincka. In the sandhill country further east, we find Wangkumara-type names, such as Baryulah Waterhole (parri-ula ‘beetles-two’), Yanda Ck (Wang. yandra ‘stone’) and numerous names beginning with ngaka, the word for ‘water’ in Wangkumara and closely related languages.

There appear to have been two dialects in the ranges area, both closely akin to Yandruwantha. Yawarrawarrka people living in Birdsville in the 1960s and 1970s always referred to people from those stony ranges as Parlpamadramadra. Wangkumara people had the same opinion. In a late addition to his 1971 work Breen (1971:18) mentions the second dialect, Nhirrpi. “East of Parlpamadramadra on Coopers Creek were Nhirrpi, a Yandruwantha group, and then further east the Parlpakurnu.” This last term was quite different in connotation from Parlpa-madramadra; it does not refer to a Yandruwantha dialect. Breen states that it “was used by Yandruwantha speakers to refer to the Wilson River group of dialects”, that is, Wangkumara and associated dialects. Breen also quotes Ben Kerwin as saying that the term refers to a specific group of people speaking a Wangkumara-type language, and this was probably the original meaning. Yawarrawarrka people explained the term in a similar way, implying that it referred to a language from around Bariyulah. Whether used in a general or a specific sense, the term refers to a Wangkumara-type language. Sally Flash, mother of George (dec), Chippie (dec) and Colin, was said to be the last speaker. Her sons spoke mainly Wangkangurru and some Yawarrawarrka, but not Sally’s language.

The meaning of the word parlpa is unknown. It does not appear in the extensive manuscript dictionary by Gavan Breen (Breen 1993?), which is based on the Innamincka dialect of Yandruwantha, spoken by Ben Kerwin. There is, however, an entry in Ruether (nd) for Yandruwantha - 165 palpapadrari ‘to answer’, where padrari corresponds to the entry pardra ‘hold, catch’ of Breen’s Yandruwantha dictionary. Arabana, from West of Lake Eyre, and Wangkangurru, from the Simpson Desert, are languages which like Yandruwantha belong to the Karnic subgroup fo Pama-Nyungan. In these languages the normal way of saying ‘to answer’ is wangka parda-, where wangka means ‘speech’ and parda means ‘to hold’. This word is cognate with Yandruwantha pardra- ‘to hold’. The expression literally means ‘to hold speech (with someone)’. This raises the possibility that the word palpa in Reuther’s palpapadrari ‘to answer’ may also be some alternative or archaic word in Yandruwantha for the normal yawarri ‘speech’. Therefore Parlpamardramardra could mean ‘the language of the stony country’, and Parlpakurnu ‘the one language’. Nothing is known of the origin of the term Nhirrpi.

Nhirrpi was spoken close to Wangkumara. It is one of the aims of this paper to examine possible borrowings from Wangkumara into Nhirrpi, which do not appear in Innamincka Yandruwantha. While this is complicated by the possibility that Alice Miller mixed languages, it should be possible to see whether any diffusion from Wangkumara into Nhirrpi has taken place.
1.2	The Yandruwantha dialect chain
A few wordlists from this area appear in Curr (1886). Meston (1901) contains approximately 20 words. This is all that can be found for Nhirrpi, although other dialects of Yandruwantha are better recorded. Breen (1975) is a full grammar of Innamincka Yandruwantha, and Breen (1993?) is a draft dictionary. Reuther wrote a grammar of another Yandruwantha-type language (probably Matya); this is unpublished. Hercus and Breen have both a large amount of unpublished material in Yawarrawarrka and Strzelecki Creek Yandruwantha.
1.3	Nhirrpi Material
The following sketch is based entirely on the material collected by Prof. Stephen Wurm from Alice Miller, in November 1957 at Tibooburra. There is a tape which is approximately 20 minutes long, and 24 pages of notes, representing approximately 400 words and around 200 sentences. The first 13 pages of notes also appear on the tape. 

	Elicitation took place in Wangkumara and English. Mrs Miller’s first language was Wangkumara; she learnt Nhirrpi as an adult and did not speak it fluently. The tape quality is excellent considering its age, although the higher frequencies have deteriorated and this makes retroflection of stops particularly hard to hear. In some places the voices are distorted, and Alice Miller shouts into the microphone in places. There is also some distortion of the tape where it starts and stops. There is, however, very little background noise and most of the sounds are fairly clear.
1.4	Notes on Format
The following pages contain a tentative sketch grammar of Nhirrpi, with a comparison to the Yandruwantha in Breen (1975, 1993). Section 0 contains the example sentences on which the analysis is based, and Section 0 is a wordlist drawn from the sentences and words elicited on the tape in isolation. The wordlist includes the corresponding word in Innamincka Yandruwantha, the dialect recorded by Reuther (where known), and Wangkumara. Asterisks following Nhirrpi words or the example number indicate that the word was not on the tape and appears only in the notes (and thus its exact phonemicisation cannot be determined).
2.	Phonology
The phonology of Nhirrpi is almost identical to that of the neighbouring and much better studied Innamincka Yandruwantha (Breen 1975). There are six places of articulation for stops and nasals, four for laterals, and a phonemic distinction between voiced and voiceless stops in clusters and intervocalically. There is no distinction initially, where stops are usually voiceless.
2.1	Phoneme Inventory
	Labial	Alv	Dental	Palatal	Retroflex	Velar	Glottal	
Stop –v	p	t	th	ty	rt	k	(?)	
+v	b	d(r)	dh	dy	rd(r)	g		
nasal	m	n	nh	ny	rn	ng		
lateral		l	lh	ly	rl			
rhotic		r, rr			r			
glide	w			y				

Phonetically, the voiceless stops are quite long, and are often notated by Wurm as lengthened; eg mak·a ‘fire’. For this compare also Nils Holmer’s (1988) transcription of Punthamara, where the distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants is translated into a distinction in length.

The voiced alveolar and retroflex stops mostly have trilled release, although there are a few tokens where the stops are plain. For example, parnrdri alternates on the tape with parnrdi ‘hit’. The alveolar trill can be very short, sometimes almost indistinguishable from the tap. One example is thakuru ~ thakurru ‘by and by’. The notation of the three rhotics follows Hercus (1994). The retroflex glide is represented by r, the trill by rr and the tap by r. All Karnic languages have a three-way distinction in rhotic consonants.

The digraph ng is used to denote the velar nasal [N]; the cluster [ng] is written n.g. 

In a few words, the lamino-palatal stop alternates with the lamino-dental (or vice versa). One example is pulha ~ pulya. Interestingly, in Innamincka Yandruwantha the alternation in this word is between purla and pulya.
2.2	Distribution of Consonants
2.2.1	Initially
There is no voicing distinction word initially. [r] is attested only in the highly unusual word rere ‘thigh’, which is at present unidentifiable. No laterals occur in this position.
2.2.2	Medially
All consonants appear to occur intervocalically. Not all voicing pairs are reliably attested as minimal pairs intervocalically. The following are some minimal and subminimal pairs illustrating the voicing distinction:

pampu	‘egg’	kambu	‘thigh’
kintha	‘nose’	yandhu	‘that way’
ngarnka 	‘beard’	inggani	‘your (sing)’ 
mundya	‘sick’	pantya	‘knee(cap)’
thidharri	‘child’	kathi	‘meat, snake’

The distinctions are well established for Innamincka Yandruwantha and the lack of good data for the voicing distinction in Nhirrpi is a combination of my bad ears and few words to go on.
2.2.3	Finally
There are no word-final consonants. All words end in a vowel, although in fast speech this may be elided (and so there are a few entries in the lexicon with no final vowel). Innamincka Yandruwantha has the same conditions.
2.3	Consonant Clusters
There are four types of clusters in Nhirrpi:

nasal + stop
rn + p, k, rd(r)
m + p, b
ng + k, g
ny + ty, dy
n + p, k, g, t, dr
nh + th, dh
nasal + nasal
n + ng eg nganngu ‘chin’
lateral + stop
l + k, p
rl + rt, rd, k
lh + th
ly + ty
rr + stop
rr + p, k, ty

These can be summarised as either homorganic or coronal + peripheral (but not peripheral + coronal).
2.4	Prestopping
The prestopping of certain nasals and/or laterals (l > dl, n > dn) is quite common in the Southern Karnic languages such as Diyari and Arabana (see, for example, Hercus 1971). Arandic languages, spoken to the west of the Karnic subgroup, and Thura-Yura languages to the south, also exhibit prestopped consonants (cf Hercus 1971 and Austin 1981?) There are some good examples in Nhirrpi, such as madlandyi ‘bad’. Prestopping is optional in Nhirrpi. Interestingly, in the Nhirrpi of AM the word pani is also prestopped (padni). Nasals are not usually prestopped in Innamincka Yandruwantha, but they are in languages further west, such as Diyari and Arabana. Perhaps AM identified prestopping as a ‘western’ trait (it is absent from Wangkumara) and used it even in words which are not prestopped in Yandruwantha.

The prestopping is not regular, as some nominals with the right structure, such as pula ‘3dl’ are never prestopped. Prestopping in Nhirrpi appears to be optional to a certain extent. The following words were heard on the tape with optional prestopping:
	padni
	wadlya
	mudlhuru 
	yidni	(but not ina)
	madlandyi
2.5	Vowels
As in all Karnic languages, there are three contrasting vowels, /a/, /i/ and /u/, each with a number of allophones.

/a/	is often raised and rounded slightly after /w/ - yawarra [yawrra]
	is fronted following /i/ to [E] or [Q], but not when preceding /i/
	is raised and fronted a little following palatals (almost to [Q])
	is often reduced to [] word finally.
/i/	is lax in unstressed syllables [I]
/u/	is sometimes quite low, almost [o]
	
i and yi are in free variation word initially, such as in the second person singular nominative ini ~ yini (words are written with i, not yi, in the lexicon but are ‘as heard’ in the examples). No words begin with a or u.

A glottal stop is used to separate identical vowels in hiatus across morpheme boundaries (eg ngapa?ari ‘for water’) in careful speech. Normally such vowels are treated as long. The glottal stop is not phonemic.
2.5.1	Vowel Length
Stressed vowels are often marginally longer than unstressed vowels
	eg i:wa ‘woman’
	tha:wa- ‘go’

Some final vowels are stressed and lengthened considerably, for emphasis:

	ngarrtyila:: ‘look out, it’s burning!’

Finally, when the allative suffix –ari is suffixed to a stem ending in –a, the result can be a lengthened vowel a. (which is often raised).
2.6	Stress
Stress is regularly on the first syllable of the word. There is a secondary stress on the third syllable (if there is one). This is often on a suffix, as many words (both nominals and verb roots) are disyllabic. For example:

kaku		‘elder sister’
ngandyini	‘my’

3.	Nominals
The class of nominals may be further divided into the subcategories of nouns, pronouns and adjectives. They are identified in the material by their ability to take case marking, and by their lack of occurrence with tense marking. Apart from case marking, nominal also occur with focus/deictic markers and the dual –thili.
3.1	Case suffixes
The following cases were found in the data.

		Nhirrpi	Yandruwantha
	ergative/instrumental:	-li, -ru (?)	-li, -lu
	absolutive	-ø (-nha on pronouns)	-ø
	dative	?
	allative/purposive	-ari	-ngari
	locative	-yi	-yi
	causal	*-buRu	-puru
	possessive	-ni?

(Note that Yandruwantha also has an ablative, -ngura, which does not appear in the Nhirrpi corpus.)
3.1.1	Ergative/Instrumental
In Yandr there are two nominal ergative allomorphs, -lu before stems ending in u and the pronoun waRa ‘who, and -li elsewhere. Something about PK here. There are few indications of the existence of allomophy in Nhirrpi, since the great majority of transitive sentences have pronominal subjects and many sentences are intransitive, and also since there are very few nominal stems that end in u. The overwhelming majority of ergative- or instrumental- inflected nouns take –li. Of the two recorded stems ending in u, one takes -li (although this cannot be confirmed as it is not on the tape), and the other, which was recorded, appears as -ru. The sentence is:

17.9/18.1

wara ‘who’ also takes –lu in Nhirrpi:

XXX

There are a few examples where an ergative case-marked nominal is expected and none appears. None are attested on the tape, however.
3.1.2	Absolutive
Nouns in Nhirrpi, as in the Innamincka dialect, do not have a distinct accusative case, but rather an absolutive (nom=acc). Note that in the neighbouring language Wangkumara, there are three distinct suffixes for the core cases. In Nhirrpi there is a separate accusative case in the pronouns, for which see below.
3.1.3	Dative
There are no examples of nominal possessors, nor of structures involving dative arguments (such as beneficiaries). Since, however, the dative is often syncretised with the allative or the purposive, it is probably safe to assume that like in Innamincka Yandruwantha, the dative was marked by the purposive -ari.
3.1.4	Allative/Purposive
This case is used for the goal of motion and the purpose for which an action is done, as the following examples show:

GOAL:
	thana	thawinga	kirri(y)ari
	3pl.nom	go-fut	doctor-all
	‘They are going to the doctor/for the doctor.’	(2.6)

	thikinga 	nganyi 	nguraari
	return-fut	1sg.nom	camp-all
	‘I’m going home.’

PURP:
	muRali 	nganyi	ngapaari
	thirsty	1sg.nom	water-purp
	‘I’m thirsty for water.’

	The cognate suffix in Yandruwantha is -ngari. The nasal appears to have been lost in Nhirrpi. A glide or glottal stop is inserted between the vowel of the stem and the vowel of the suffix. WANGKUMARA?

	-i -ari	-> iyari
	-u -ari	-> uwari
	-a -ari -> a?ari or a:ri
(compare also example 1)
3.1.5	Locative
The locative suffix, -yi, is identical to that in Yandruwantha. The glide is usually, although not always, audible. The case has the following functions:
3.1.5.1	Spatial Location
	thurruru	maka	ngarrtyila	ngurayi
	fire-inst?	fire	burn-pres	camp-loc
	‘the fire’s burning in the camp.’	(5.2)

3.1.5.2	Time
	marrayi 	nganyi 	thuringa
	night-loc	1sg.nom	sleept-fut
	‘I’ll sleep at night.’

Note, however, that a verbal suffix or an uninflecting adverb is a more common way of expressing time.
3.1.5.3	Other
The object over which people are fighting is expressed in the locative:

	mudluRu-yi	thanawiri	parnrdriyindrirla
	food-loc	3pl.nom-foc	fight-recip-pres
	‘they are fighting over food.’

3.1.6	Causal
There is only one token of the ‘causal’ -buRu (also puRu?), and it is not recorded on the tape.

	thurru-buRu	kapara
	fire-caus	go away!
	‘Get away from the fire!’
3.2	Other Suffixes
3.2.1	Kin proprietive
There are two examples, neither of which were recorded, of a suffix attached to kin terms which possibly denotes a first person singular possessor. Unfortunately both sentences have other problems.

18.6

See also

	ngapaRingi	thinpala?	tyara	nhunuwiri
	father-?	make	boomerang	this-foc
	‘Father is making a boomerang.’

The cognate form in Yandruwantha (and a few other Karnic languages) is -ngi. I do not know why there is no ergative argument in example X.

In addition to -ngi, one instance of -dya (another kinship suffix common in Yandruwantha) was recorded.

	ngatya	kakudya	yanthapana
	1sg.gen	elder brother-KP	walk-ass.mot-rec.pst
	‘My elder brother went walking.’

Eirlier the word was cited as kaku. This could be interference from Wangkumara (where the citation form is kakutya (or kakudya?) or another kin suffix.

3.2.2	-wadyi
This could be related to the suffix watyu meaning ‘each’ (just in Wang?)

	muruwa	nhanuru-wadyi	thambala	ngapayi
	child	that-?	dance-pres	water-loc
	‘All those children are dancing in the water.’		(23.2)
3.2.3	Privative
The privative suffix, -bani or -pani, is cognate with the privative in many other Karnic languages. Not that it is almost never prestopped in Nhirrpi when functioning as a suffix; the free word meaning ‘nothing’, however, was often pronounced on the tape as [padni].

Example:

3.2.4	Dual
Two suffixes marking dual number were found - thili and -pula (or bula?) pula is obviously the 3rd person dual prnoun and its use in Nhirrpi by Alice Miller may be a calque frm the equivalent construction in Wangkumara (give an example). -thili is used in Yandruwantha. The noun is often accompanied by the third erson dual free pronoun, as the following example shows:

	ngampangapala	pularu	karnathili	thurruyi	wawananga;
	sit-pres	3dl.nom-foc	nam-dl	fire-loc	watch-rel
	‘Those two men are sitting looking at the fire.’

give the example with pula.

3.2.5	Plural
There was no plural marker analogous to the Yandruwantha waRa (?) foudn in the data.

3.2.6	Deixis

A few deictic suffixes have been recorded. These are also used for focus.

	-ru, Ru (?)	near
	-wiri		focus
	-kaRa/gaRa	far

Some examples. XXX

More about focus.
3.2.7	–ni
A few times a word is recorded with the suffix –ni. For example:

XXX

Its function has yet to be determined. It is possible that it is the equivalent of the Wangkumara 
–ni which is used on definite nominative arguments. A form –ni is also added to some oblique case suffixes in Wangkumara (cf Breen nd).
3.3	Pronouns
Many forms are missing in the following table; however, there are enough forms to see that the paradigm, with the exception of the first person singular, is pretty much identical to Innamincka Yandruwantha. Of special interest is the gender distinction in the third person singular. Nothing is known about an inclusive/exclusive distinction in Nhirrpi, although given its presence in all Karnic languages but one (Pitta-Pitta), we would expect one. 

Sing
	1	2	3 masc	3fem
erg	ngathu	yundru	nhulu	nhandra?
nom	nganyi	(y)i(d)ni	nhia, nhunu	nhani, (nanu)
acc	nganha	ina	inha, nhunha	nhan(h)?a
			nhina
gen	ngandya(ni)	yin.gani	nhunggani
	ngantya(ni)	yinggani
	ngandyini

Dual
erg/nom	ngalu	yula	pula
acc	ngalhu, ngalunha	yulhu	
gen	ngalungga	yulgani	pulgani

Plural
erg/nom		yurra	thana
acc		yunhu	thanha
gen	nganungga	yun.gani	thanngani

Interrogative pronouns:
waRa	who
ilanggi	where
minha	what
minhayi	why (= ‘what-loc’)

1.sing	ngandya	is the form in Wangkumara; the Yandruwantha form is ngakani. It cannot, of course, be substantiated whether AM was using a variant of the Wangkumara form (ngantya), or whether Nhirrpi as a whole borrowed ngandya. (The relative chronology of the changes leading from PK *ngantya to Yandruwantha ngaka makes it very unlikely that Nhirrpi did not also undergo these changes.) Note that ngantya in Wangkumara is unetymological; it should be ngandya by the changes given in Austin (1990).

2.sing	idni was heard prestopped but the accusative ina never was.

3.sing	There appear to be three sets of 3sg pronouns - a set of feminine form, and two sets of masculine forms. There are two analyses
	1) AM is using both Wangkumara and Nhirrpi forms. This would explain all pronouns in the paradigm except the accusative nhunha, which could be a generalisation from nhulu and nhunu. (Note that Yandruwantha’s inha is also used). Compare the following masculine pronouns in Yandruwantha and Wangkumara:

	Yandr	Wang	Nhirrpi
erg	nhulu	nhulu	nhulu
nom	nhunu	nhia	nhunu, nhia, nhiwa
acc	inha	nhinha	inha, nhina, nhunha
dat	nhunggani	nhungkani	nhunggani

	2) There are two paradigms for the masculine sing in Nhirrpi, which have different meanings.

NON-Sing
	Yandruwantha has no distinct ergative case in non-singular pronouns, whereas Wangkumara retains three separate ergative, nominative and accusative forms throughout all paradigms. There is a single example in Nhirrpi of a non-singular subject pronoun; it is ngalu (the first person dual, in example XX below). 

1.dual	ngalunha is expected from Yandruwantha; ngalhu is formed by analogy with yulhu and thanha.
3.4	Adjectives
There is no evidence to posit a separate class of adjective in these data. The required data for Australian languages, such as ability to reduplicate, are lacking.
3.5	Noun Phrase Syntax
Because of the difficulty of determining the validity of areas of noun phrase syntax, such as constituent order, from elicited material, this section is rather brief.
3.5.1	Composition
Noun phrases can comprise:

	noun 	(adjective) 	(demonstrative pronoun)
		(poss. pronoun)

The optional elements may be in any order, preceding or following (but often preceding) the noun. 
3.5.2	Discontinuous Noun Phrases
Noun phrases may be discontinuous, as in the following example:

	malandyi	ngathu	inaRu	parnrdringa	pandi
	bad	1sg.erg	3sg.acc-foc	hit-fut	dog-abs
	‘I’m going to hit that bad dog.’		(3.8)

Compare also 18.11, 9.3
3.5.3	Case marking in the Noun Phrase
Not all constituents in the noun phrase need be marked for case (although there are examples where this is the case). This applies even when the elements of the NP are not contiguous

	[madlandyi	pandili]	thiri	pikana
	bad	dog-erg	always	fighting-pst
	‘The bad dog was always fighting.’			XXXXXXXXX??????????

	ngandyinili	pandili	ina	mathana
	1sg.gen-erg	dog-erg	2sg.acc	bite-rec.pst
	‘My dog bit you.’

One consequence of this is that pronouns are sometimes marked for more than one case (for example, genitive and ergative, as in example XX above). Anything more about case stacking?
3.5.4	Juxtaposed pronouns
Non-possessive pronouns also occur in NPs, juxtaposed with the head noun; 

	walya	ngalu	thayinga	nhanharu	kathi
	NEG	1dl	eat-fut	3sg.fem.acc.deix	meat
	‘We won’t eat that meat’			(13.5)

These are assumed to be used in the same way as pronouns in Yandruwantha and several other Karnic languages - to mark specificity. They are also useful in these data because they indicate that there was possibly a system of grammatical gender in Nhirrpi. Some nouns, such as kathi ‘meat’ and XX ‘wind’, appear always with feminine pronouns. Others, such as mulhuRu ‘food’, take the masculine set (CHECK). At other times, it appears that the system is based on natural gender (compare the excellent example of pandi nhiwa, pandi nhani ‘he-dog’, ‘she-dog’). Only the natural gender system is used in Innamincka Yandruwantha. 

It is possible that this is interference from Wangkumara. Some dialects of Wangkumara use the feminine pronoun as the default definiteness marker. (cf Holmer and also McD and Wurm).
3.6	‘Classifiers’
eg kathi. 9.3 This is the only one attested. There may be others.
3.7	Some notes on the Lexicon
3.7.1	Lexicostatistics
Nhirrpi and Innamincka Yandruwantha share 78.5% common vocabulary, calculated on a list of 242 items (all the items in the Nhirrpi list that could be ascertained with reasonable confidence). On the same list Nhirrpi had only approximately 18% shared vocabulary with Wangkumara, and of those 18%, 63% were also shared with Yandruwantha. That is, there were only approximately 20 words which were shared by Nhirrpi and Wangkumara and not also by Innamincka Yandruwantha.
3.7.2	Sound changes
Nhirrpi (incidentally along with Yawarrawarrka) preserves some forms where Yandruwantha has undergone changes. Most obvious is initial *ty, which has been lenited to y in Yandruwantha. eg

	Nh tyara, Y yara ‘boomerang’

Another change, this time in Nhirrpi, is the sporadic lenition of R to y, as in warrayi ‘don’t’ (compare Y. warraRi). This change has occurred in sme words in many parts of Karnic, for example in the pronominal dative suffix in Pitta-Pitta, -kaRi ~ -kai.

Nhirrpi has different prestopping rules from Yandruwantha. See section 2.4	Prestopping above.

Some retroflex syllables in Yandruwantha do not appear on the tape as retroflex, for example ngandri ‘mother’ (cf Y ngarnrdri), but cf ngarnka ‘beard’ (Y ngan.ga).
4.	Verbal Morphology
Nhirrpi is like Yandruwantha in having many verbal suffixes to indicate difference in tense, aspect and associated motion. Not as many distinct suffixes were recorded as are known to exist in Innamincka Yandruwantha, but given the very short length of time spent in elicitation, the list of different verbal suffixes is impressive.

	STEM-	ASSOC		TAM
			FACT
			REFL/RECIP

4.1	Tense
The following table lists the tense suffixes found in Nhirrpi, together with their cognates in Innamincka Yandruwantha (and Wangkumara for comparison):

Nhirrpi	Inna. Yandr	Wang	English
-la. rla	-rla	-garla	present
-na	-na	-nga?	immed. pst (last few hours)
-nhana	-nhana		near pst (last few days)
-nha	-nha		“	“
-inga	-nga	-rra	future

The precise designation of the past tenses and the terms used to denoted them are taken verbatim from Breen’s (1975) grammar of Yandruwantha. Two further past tenses were recorded in that language (lapurra remoted past and nhukara)

While in Yandruwantha the present tense is always -rla, in Nhirrpi -rla was only recorded following stems which contain a rhotic as final consonant, and even then not in every instance. Note, however, that deterioration of the tape may have contributed to this.

The ‘future’ suffix, -inga, is the most frequent suffix in the corpus. This is odd if it is simply a future marker (there are clear indications, such as its occurrence with thakurru ‘by and by’ and marripathi ‘tomorrow’, that it can be used to denote future tense). It is similar in form to the Wangkumara ?? suffix; perhaps there is interference or borrowing at work. Alternatively, it is possible that the Nhirrpi –inga has a broader range of meanings than the Yandruwantha –nga, or that AM was presented with a lot of future sentences.
4.2	Aspect
Like the tense distinction, the paucity of data meant that the aspectual markers were identified with the help of cognates in Yandruwantha.

Nhirrpi	Inna. Yandr	English
-nhina	-nhina	continuous
-parapara	-parapara	habitual
-tharV	-tharra	‘right through’

The final vowel of tharV cannot be determined because the suffix always appears before the future suffix -inga, which replaces the final vowel of the stem. 

Egs XXX
4.3	Mood
The potential is marked by –yi, as in Yandruwantha. There is only one example:

XXX

The ‘future’ suffix, -inga, also has modal functions:
4.4	Associative Suffixes
4.4.1	Motion

Nhirrpi	Inna. Yandr	English
-panthi	-panthi	‘downwards’
-thika, -dhika (?)	-thika	‘return’
-ka	-ka	‘away’
-pa	-	?
-warra	-warra	‘arrival’	?
-thigathiga	-thigathiga	‘widespread action’
-walka	

Lots of Exs.

4.4.2	Time
Nhirrpi	Inna. Yandr	English
-thalka	-thalka	this morning
-yukarra	-yukarra	at night

4.5	Valency-Changing Suffixes
The reflexive and reciprocal are marked by -(y)indri. he single core argument of the clauses appears in the nominative case:

	kuka	nanuRu	parnrdriyindrina	wathili
	head	dem.nom	hit-refl-pst	stick-inst
	‘He hit himself on the head with a stick’ (NOT: the stick hit itself on the head!)

	thanawiri	parnrdriyindrila
	3pl.nom-foc	hit-recip-pres
	‘They are hitting each other.’

There is also an inchoative suffix -ka attested in one example:

pundra
pundrakinga
find whole sentence.

4.6	Commands and Prohibitions
4.6.1	Commands
Polite requests appear to be expressed with the future -inga. Otherwise, the verb stem is used. 

XXX

4.6.2	Prohibitions
Prohibitions are expressed by the particle warrayi ‘don’t’ and optionally pani towards the end of the sentence.
4.6.3	Number marking on verbs
Like in Yandruwantha, plural subjects are marked by the suffix -ni. (ETYMOLOGY?)

	warrayi	parnrdrini	pani
	PROHIB	hit-pl.subj	nothing
	‘Don’t you mob hit (him).’

Yandruwantha also have a dual imperative -li but this was not recorded in Nhirrpi.
4.7	Unidentified Suffixes
4.7.1	–warra
give eg
could be ‘mistaken belief’? – ‘arrival’???

4.7.2	–la

4.7.3	–nga

5.	Clausal Syntax
5.1	Word Order
Clauses may contain no verb:

The main verb is generally at the end of the clause:

XX

5.2	Subordination
For the purposive, -nga is used, as in the following:

	pampu	patyi	thayinga
	egg	good	eat-purp
	‘Eggs are good for eating.’

Apart from this there are only two or three subordinate clauses in the corpus. They are given below:

	ngampangampala	pularu	karnathili	thurruyi	wawananga
	sit-pres	3dl.foc	man-dl	fire-loc	see-relSS
	‘Those two men are sitting down looking at the fire.’	(10.5)

For the identification of the suffix compare the Yandruwantha relativiser -rnanga (although I heard no retroflection in the Nhirrpi).

	kadra	thawala	nganyi	kadra?ari	pakuthikinga	thalgurruli
	yam	go-pres	1sg.nom	yam-all	dig up -purp	yam stick-inst
	‘I’m going for yams, to dig up yams with a yam-stick.’	(14.10)

6.	Conclusions
6.1	Comparison with Yandruwantha
Nhirrpi is fairly clearly a member of the Yandruwantha dialect group. They share over 75% of common vocabulary, the case system has a great many common points and the verb system is almost identical.
6.2	Comparison with Wangkumara
Since AM was a native speaker of Wangkumara, it is very difficult to tell what features of her Nhirrpi are interference and what parts are components of Nhirrpi which are not shared by Yandruwantha.

7.	Wordlist 

8.	Sentences

9.	References

Austin
Hercus
Breen
Holmer
Reuther
Curr
Meston