The Yawuru language of West Kimberley : a meaning-based description
Date
1991
Authors
Hosokawa, K
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Abstract
The present study is a descriptive monograph of the language spoken
by Yawuru Aborigines of north-west Australia. The Yawuru
language is genetically classified as a member of the Nyulnyulan
family. Morphologically it is counted among the so-called "prefixing
languages" and has a highly complicated inflexional morphology of
verbs, whereas word ordering is remarkably flexible. In terms of
syntactic typology, Yawuru is an ergative language which, however,
reveals an accusative-type verb. agreement system.
The practical orthography for the Yawuru language employed in this
monograph is allophonic (i.e. slightly over-differentiating) rather than
purely phonemic. Reasons for using such a spelling system are stated
in Chapter 3.
Throughout the description, considerable weight is laid on elucidating
semantic aspects of the morphology and syntax of the language_ rather
than merely presenting forms and their combinations. A
meaningwise approach is central to this description, particularly in
the treatment of verbal and pronominal morphology (Chapters 4 and
7). Also semantically-oriented are accounts of preverbs. (Chapter 5),
case marking (Chapter 6), adverbs (Chapter 8), reduplication (Chapter
9) and syntactic construction patterns (Chapter 10). A large number of
sentential examples, more often context-bound than not, will be cited
·in order to substantiate the points of discussion. Unless otherwise
noted, all the sample sentences are taken from native speakers'
natural spontaneous utterances.
Comparative linguistics is outside the scope of this study, although
several important facts are pointed out in footnotes.
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