Mparntwe Arrernte (Aranda) : studies in the structure and semantics of grammar
Creators: name: Wilkins, David P.
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 1989

description: This thesis is essentially a description of the grammar of Mparntwe Arrernte, the traditional language of Alice Springs, in Central Australia. The main aims of the thesis are two-fold: (i) to provide a comprehensive descriptive overview of the language and (ii) to give some indication of how the language conveys, reflects and responds to the socio­ cultural concerns of its speakers. To fulfill these aims, chapters surveying broad areas of the grammar are interleaved with chapters that survey particular grammatical and semantic phenomena in detail. A major concern of the thesis is to describe the semantic, as well as the structural, details of the grammar. Where possible, natural language definitions are provided for grammatical elements and structures. Chapter One is divided into four main sections: the first places Mpamtwe Arrernte within the context of other Arandic languages; the second provides an introduction to the post-contact history and culture of the speakers; the third is an account of the fieldwork for the thesis and the nature of the community's control over the research; and the fourth provides an introduction to the linguistic aspects of this work. It discusses the semantic and functional orientation taken here and introduces the four parts of speech - nominals, verbs, adverbs, and particle clitics - around which much of the thesis is organised. Chapter Two is a brief description of segmental phonology and introduces the orthography which is used throughout this work. Chapter Three centres on the description of nominals and nominal morphology. As nominals are defined by their occurrence, and position, within a simple noun phrase, the structure of simple noun phrases is also discussed. Chapter Four focuses in on one aspect of nominal morphology: case and case marking. The structure of the case system is outlined and the functions of each of the fourteen cases is discussed in detail. Chapter Five is primarily a description of verbs and verb morphology, although it begins with a look at case assigning predicates (including nominal predicates) generally. Chapter Six examines the "category of associated motion", a unique and elaborated grammatical category with which verbs may be inflected. Each of fourteen forms in this group is defined and their function in discourse and reports of events is discussed. Chapter Seven deals with adverbs and adverb morphology, focusing particularly on spatial concepts. Chapter Eight provides a basic inventory of particle/clitics and introduces the phenomenon of particle/clitic insertion into a verb stem. Chapter Nine focuses on one conversation and demonstrates the semantic contribution of five distinct particle/clitics to the conversation. The way an implicature of criticism and/or complaint is derived using these forms is also investigated. Chapter Ten discusses aspects of syntax. Complex noun phrases (including NPs modified by relative clauses), basic clause structure, discourse structure, and complementation are described. Chapter Eleven centres on switch-reference and demonstrates how a narrow syntactic definition of coreference fails to account for subtle semantic contrasts which can be expressed. This chapter also investigates the morphological relationship between switch­ reference and several other complex construction types. Appendix 1 contains twelve texts which are the source for many examples in the thesis. Appendix 2 is a lexicon containing the suffixes, clitics, and most of the lexemes which appear in the examples and texts.