Murrinhpatha Morphology and Phonology / / John Mansfield.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2019 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Mansfield, John,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter Mouton, , [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Pacific Linguistics [PL] , 653
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XVIII, 296 p.)

Murrinhpatha is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in a region of tropical savannah and tidal inlets on the north coast of the continent. Some 3000 speakers live mostly in the towns of Wadeye and Nganmarriyanga, though they maintain close ties to their traditional lands, totems and spirit ancestors. Murrinhpatha word structure is highly complex, and quite distinct from the better-known Pama-Nyungan languages of central and southern Australia. Murrinhpatha is characterised by prolific compounding, clitic clusters, cumulative inflection, irregular allomorphy and phonological assimilation. This book provides a comprehensive account of these phenomena, giving particular attention to questions of morphological constituency, lexical storage, and whether there is really such thing as a ‘word’ unit.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Tables -- List of Figures -- Abbreviations and glossing conventions -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Social setting and language ecology -- 3. Segmental sound patterns -- 4. Morphologically specific sound patterns -- 5. Finite verb stem inflection -- 6. Predicate inflectional suffixes -- 7. Nominal and phrasal morphology -- 8. Complex verbs and compounding -- 9. Murrinhpatha wordhood and gradient morphology -- Appendix I -- Appendix II -- References -- Index