Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
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Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
wati-ngki ‘man-erg’, and yuwarli-ngirli ‘from the house’.
The local semantic cases primarily indicate the spatial notions of location at (or on, or in), motion to, motion from, motion along, and motion or position 162 Avery D. Andrews together with: (40) a. Lungkarda ka ngulya-ngka nguna-mi bluetongue(abs) pres burrow-loc lie-nonpast ‘The bluetongue skink is lying in the burrow’ (locative) b. Nantuwu ka karru-kurra parnka-mi horse(abs) pres creek-all run-nonpast ‘The horse is running to the creek’ (allative) c. Karli ka pirli-ngirli wanti-mi boomerang(abs) pres stone-elative fall-nonpast ‘The boomerang is falling from the stone’ (elative/ablative) d. Pirli ka-lu-jana yurutu-wana yirra-rni stone(abs) pres-they-them road-perlative put-nonpast ‘They are putting stones along the road’ (perlative) e. Maliki ka nantuwu-rlajinta parnka-mi dog(abs) pres horse-comitative run-nonpast ‘The dog is running along with the horse’ (comitative) Hale (1982) provides a detailed account of the semantics of these cases, Simpson (1991) a more formal analysis. The Warlpiri case system makes fewer distinctions than the systems of prepo- sitions of English, but similar effects are achieved by other means. There are, for example, adverbial particles which, although not syntactically bound to a local case-marked np, nonetheless refine the locative concept expressed. Kulkurru, for example, specifies between-ness: (41) Maliki ka nguna-mi yuwarli-jarra-rla kulkurru-jarra dog(abs) pres lie-nonpast house-du-loc between-du ‘The dog is lying between the two houses’ Without kulkurrujarra, the sentence could be interpreted as meaning merely that the dog was near the houses. Occasionally the local cases are used idiomatically, in ways not fully expli- cable in terms of their basic meanings. For example the verb manyu-karri-mi ‘play-stand-nonpast’, meaning ‘to play a game’, takes the locative case on the game played. This may co-occur with a locative designating the place where the event happens: (42) Ngarrka-patu ka-lu manyu-karri-mi kardi-ngka karru-ngka man-pl(abs) pres-they play-stand-nonpast card-loc creek-loc ‘The men are playing cards in the creek’ These usages are reminiscent of idiomatic p-objects in English. The major functions of the noun phrase 163 The non-local semantic cases are for the most part minor in the structure of the language. The ‘true’ instrumental expresses the instrument used by an agent to act on a patient. It only appears with transitive verbs taking an erga- tive agent and absolutive patient, not with intransitives (or with a category we shall discuss below of two-argument verbs not taking an ergative). See examples (43a) and (43b) below. There is another method for expressing the instrumental relation, and this one may be used with either transitives or intran- sitives. It involves one of the ‘derivational’ semantic cases, the proprietive -kurlu ‘with’. The basic meaning of -kurlu is possession, but the meaning of it can be extended to indicate not only possession but use, as shown in examples (43c) and (43d): (43) a. Wawirri kapi-rna kurlarta-rlu panti-rni ngajulu-rlu kangaroo(abs) fut-1sg spear-instr spear-nonpast 1sg-erg ‘I will spear the kangaroo with a spear’ b. *Purlka ka watiya-rlu warru-wapa-mi old man(abs) pres stick-instr around-walk-nonpast ‘The old man is walking around with a stick’ c. Ngarrka-ngku ka warlu paka-rni warlkurru-kurlu-rlu man-erg pres firewood chop-nonpast axe-with-erg ‘The man is chopping firewood with an axe’ d. Purlka ka watiya-kurlu warru-wapa-mi old man(abs) pres stick-with around-walk-nonpast ‘The old man is walking around with a stick’ Example (43c) could be interpreted as possessive for -kurlu rather than that of use, to give ‘The man with an axe is chopping firewood’ (using some other instrument), and so also (43d) ‘The old man with a stick is walking around’. The instrumental sense is nevertheless the usual one in sentences such as these, expressing an action where the use of the object in question is in fact likely. The ending listed as causal is also widely used to indicate source of motion (elative), and preferred as such by some speakers. But it also indicates the cause for the situation designated by the sentence, or a potentially causal prior event: (44) Ngarrka-patu ka-lu warrki-jangka mata nguna-mi-lki man-pl(abs) pres-they work-causal tired lie-nonpast-now ‘The men are lying down tired now after work’ It can also indicate the material out of which something is made: for example, from wood in ‘They are making boomerangs from wood’. The ‘considerative’ (cons) is applied to an np denoting something that is given in exchange for something else: 164 Avery D. Andrews (45) Japanangka-rlu ka-ju karli yi-nyi Japanangka-erg pres-1sg(obj) boomerang(abs) give-nonpast miyi-wanawana food-cons ‘Japanangka is giving me a boomerang in exchange for food’ This illustrates nicely that a serious account of semantic roles must go consid- erably beyond the simple agent, patient, source, goal, etc., categories that were defined in the introduction to this chapter above. The uses of the cases we have considered so far mostly involve qualifications of some facet of the action of the verb: the path taken by some participant (and thereby, in some sense, of the ‘action’), or additional participant. They thus express participatory semantic roles (see 1.1.2), and function analogously to the oblique argument (p-objects and p-complements) of English. The exception is the causal use of -jangka, which provides the background for the event, and is thus a circumstantial adjunct. The principal circumstantial case is the locative, which can place an event in space (already illustrated in (42) above) or in time: (46) Ngapa ka wanti-mi wajirrkinyi-rla water(abs) pres fall-nonpast greentime-loc ‘Rain falls in the “green” season’ These uses of the locative correspond to adjuncts in English. A striking difference between the obliques in Warlpiri and English is in the way in which the argument/adjunct distinction is drawn. Aside from the occasional idiomatic uses, as with kardi-ngka (‘card’ loc) ‘with cards’ in (42), a Warlpiri semantic case always seems to be usable wherever its meaning would make sense. ldiosyncratic restrictions such as those discussed for English in 2.3.1 are quite rare. Most usages of Warlpiri oblique cases thus behave like adjuncts in English. The idiomatic uses might be taken to be p-objects, so there would be a few representatives of this category, but there seems to be nothing whose grammatical behaviour corresponds to that of p-complements. It may be that this impression is a consequence of our insufficient knowledge of Warlpiri, and that more study might reveal the familiar categories, but at the moment it seems that in Warlpiri the argument–adjunct distinction is much more closely aligned with the core–oblique distinction than it is in English. Download 1.59 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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