We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
About one quarter of the languages of Australia have developed a highly synthetic – in some instances, a polysynthetic – verbal structure, with a number of prefixing positions (always including a pronominal prefix referring to at least one core argument); they also retain verbal suffixes. Some of the prefixing languages (which comprise groups NB–NL and WMa) maintain a fairly agglutinative structure but others have undergone phonological reduction which has led to various kinds of fusion. This chapter will survey the types of information coded onto verbs in prefixing languages, and make some suggestions concerning ways in which the prefixing structures developed.
But, like every other parameter in Australian linguistics, the geographical occurrence of prefixing and of fusion is not a clear-cut matter. That is, we find examples of both in languages from the ‘non-prefixing’ area.
(a) Prefixing in languages from groups A–Y, WA–WL.
(i) At the end of §8.8 we saw how in the Gurnu dialect of V, Baagandji, bound pronouns were originally attached to a verb after the tense inflection. Tense plus bound pronoun then broke away to form a new series of free pronouns. As shown in (49) of §8.8, each of these has an initial prefix indicating tense: present ŋ-, past w- and future g-. These are the only prefixes in the language.
[…]
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
