Grammatical Sketch

This sketch outlines some of the basic grammatical features of Garawa. It also addresses in more detail some points in Flint’s data which have required explanation or clarification.

Nominals

In Garawa, nouns follow an ergative-absolutive case system, and pronouns follow a nominative-accusative case system (Furby & Furby 1977:2). Within most types of noun phrase (excluding kinship, location modification and negative noun phrases), all words are marked for case which may be marked (Furby & Furby 1977:3). For the case-marking suffixes of Garawa, see Furby & Furby 1977: 4-6 (including charts 1,2 and 3).

Pronouns

The pronouns of Garawa are free, and comprise a morphologically complex word class. Interestingly, they (optionally) host tense, aspect and mood clitics, being, in fact, the most highly preferred hosts for most clitics (Belfrage 1992:76). Possessive, demonstrative and interrogative pronoun stems take a range of derivational suffixes (Furby 1972:20, 23).

Osborne (1966:1a) comments that "[t]he Garawa personal pronouns differ very little from those of Wanji".

Personal and Possessive Pronouns

Among the personal and possessive pronouns of Garawa, singular, dual and plural number are distinguished for first, second and third persons, and an inclusive/exclusive distinction is made in the first person dual and plural. For tables of personal and possessive pronoun stems, see Furby 1972:2 (table 1), Belfrage 1992:14 (table 4), and Osborne 1966:1a (there are some differences between these sources). As well as subject and object pronouns, Garawa also has compound pronouns, which are formed by the combining of an object and a subject pronoun (the object pronoun always precedes the subject). These compound pronouns are used in certain cases in which the subject and object of a clause are both pronominal. For tables of the compound pronouns of Garawa, see Furby 1972:4 (table 2) and Belfrage 1992:15 (table 6) (there are slight differences between these sources).

Reflexive pronouns are formed by the addition of the (first-order) reflexive suffix -ngka ~ -ka (Furby 1972:2) to the basic stem.

Personal pronouns (specifically, subject and object pronouns, object-subject compounds and reflexive pronouns) optionally take tense, aspect or mood markers (Furby 1972:1, Belfrage 1992:22).

The possessive forms of the pronoun consist, in general, of the basic pronoun stems plus the suffix -ngi (Furby 1972:13). To the possessive stem up to three orders of suffixes marking number, case and "emphasised possession" may be added (Furby 1972:13).

Demonstrative and Interrogative Pronouns

Furby (1972:15-16) identifies four demonstrative pronoun stems:

These stems are marked for number (by first order suffixation) and case (by second order suffixation) (however, Furby notes that nanama is only attested in the nominative case, and that nanama and naniji- are only attested in the singular (1972:16)). Osborne’s data appear to contain the following demonstrative pronouns: nani, nana, nanaman and nanama (the difference between the last two is probably not lexical (see Note 1 in "Flint’s phonological notes on Garawa and Yanyula")). Furby notes that certain demonstrative pronouns (with particular number and case values) optionally host the "third-order suffixes" -kiyi (obligative mood) and -wa (continuative aspect) (Furby 1972:17).

The interrogative stem has the allomorphs wanyi- ~ wanyja-, which appear in (virtually) free variation. Interrogative pronouns are marked for number (by first order suffixation) and case (by second order suffixation) (Furby 1972:18).

Verbs

Garawa verbs fall into 5 conjugations: J, M, ¯, RRI and N (as distinguished by Belfrage 1992:46). There are no definitive rules regarding conjugation membership, but, as Belfrage (1992:49) notes, "[t]here are some weak correlations between transitivity and phonological characteristics on the one hand, and conjugation membership on the other" (Belfrage 1992:49). Membership in the M and ¯ conjugations tends to be associated with transitive verb status, while membership in the RRI and N conjugations, with intransitive status. J conjugation, while fairly neutral with regard to the transitive/intransitive distinction, contains all the ditransitive verbs in the language (Belfrage 1992:51-52).

There are six inflectional categories for verbs in Garawa: Unmarked, Purposive, Sequential, Same Subject, Different Subject and Infinitive (Belfrage 1992:46, table 10). The unmarked inflection is the most common inflection: main verbs always occur in this inflection, and clitics and suffixes can be added only to verbs appearing in this form (Belfrage 1992:55). The unmarked inflection is also the citation form for verbs (Belfrage 1992:54).

Garawa verb stems may be simple, reduplicated, compound or derived (Belfrage 1992:43). Belfrage notes that, unlike most Australian languages, alternation of transitivity for Garawa verb stems is marked not by derivational suffixes, but by alternation in conjugation membership (Belfrage 1992:45). For example, Garawa has the intransitive verb kili, meaning "remain, stay, be sick", and the transitive verb kili-mba, meaning "keep, reserve, save" (Belfrage 1992:54).

Clitics

Tense, aspect, mood and polarity are, in general, marked by a set of morphemes variously classified as suffixes or clitics (compare Furby 1972 and Belfrage 1992). Belfrage argues for the clitic status of these morphemes on syntactic and phonological grounds (1992:67-68), and his analysis has been adopted in the \na and \ng fields of the Flint data. For the tense/aspect/mood/polarity clitics of Garawa, see Belfrage 1992:71, table 16.

Belfrage identifies an implicational hierarchy for the hosting of clitics (1992:70), in which pronouns are generally the most highly preferred hosts (Belfrage 1992:76). The imperative clitic shows a strong preference for sentence-initial hosts (ibid.).

Tense

There is a three-way tense contrast in Garawa (past, present and future). Tense-marking clitics are not obligatory: all three meanings have been attested for verbs appearing in the unmarked inflection without a clitic (Belfrage 1992:55). The Garawa tense-marking clitics are =i/=yi (past), =a/=ngka (present) and =ja/ja= (future), where =i and =a occur with pronouns, and =yi and =ngka, with verbs. Future tense is marked by the clitic =ja or the proclitic ja= on pronouns, or by =ja on verbs (Belfrage 1992:71, table 16). The past tense and present tense clitics =i/=yi and =a/=ngka (respectively) emphasise the past or present nature of events (Belfrage 1992:78,81).

The clitic =ya

There is some uncertainty as to the meaning of person singular =ya. Osborne (1966) analyses it as a third suffix (glossed "he" or "she"). For example:

A problem for this analysis is the fact that Flint’s material contains clauses with =ya, which have a subject which is not third person singular.

Belfrage says that there is no particular semantic or syntactic function which can be associated with the clitic, although it may be a type of discourse marker, such as a topic marker, or new information marker (1992:91). He says that its meaning cannot be defined without further data, and does not analyse it in his glosses (ibid.). We have followed his practice of leaving =ya unanalysed.

The imperative

Furby and Furby (1977:80) note that the imperative mood is expressed by the addition of the imperative clitic =kiyi to an element of the clause (generally the first element).

Osborne’s (1966) data contain more variation among the imperative sentences:

In some sentences the imperative clitic (generally =ki, rather than =kiyi) is cliticised to the first element of the sentence, whether it be the verb or another part of speech. The final vowel of verbs which take the clitic is quite often, but not always, changed to i before the addition of the clitic. For example, wijba ("return") (Belfrage 1997:69) becomes wijbiki in the imperative "Come here!" (Osborne 1966:4):

In other sentences the verb’s final vowel (generally a) is changed to i even though the clitic =kiyi is absent. For example, wudumba ("get") becomes wudumbi in the imperative sentence "You, girl, get the water" (Osborne 1966:5):

It seems possible that the "i-form" of the verb (eg. wurdumbi) is a reduced version of the fuller imperative form (wurdumbiki).

In other sentences, such as the one given below, there is apparently no imperative marking:

References

Belfrage, H. 1992. Aspects of Verb and Pronoun Morphology, Semantics and Syntax in Garrwa. (Honours Thesis, University of Melbourne).

__________1997. Garrwa Jangkurr: Garrwa Dictionary (draft). (Held in the AIATSIS Library, Canberra).

Furby, C.E. 1972. The pronominal system of Garawa. Oceanic Linguistics 11, 1:1-31.

Furby, E.S. & C.E. Furby. 1977. A Preliminary Analysis of Garawa Phrases and Clauses. Pacific Linguistics Series B - No. 42. Canberra: ANU.

Osborne, C. 1966. Garawa field notes (photocopy of manuscript). (Held in the AIATSIS Library, Canberra).

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