Kalaw Lagaw Ya - Nominal Morphology

Nominal Morphology

Where the morphology is concerned, the language is somewhere along the continuum between agglutinative and declining. Nominals have the following cases: nominative, accusative, instrumental (subsumes ergative), dative (subsumes allative), ablative (subsumes elative), specific locative, nonspecific locative (subsumes perlative and comitative), and global locative. Nominals also have the following derived forms: negative, similative, proprietive (which also forms the noun nominative-accusative plural) and resultative. All stems end in a vowel or a semi-vowel, except for a few monosyllables ending in -r and -l (which includes a very few reduplicated words, like tharthar boiling, seething, as well as ngipel you two and -pal two]). For many nouns the surface nominative(-accusative) undergoes a final stem-vowel deletion rule; in the Kalaw Lagaw Ya dialect the rule results in final devoiced vowels accompanied by main vowel lengthening. There are three numbers, singular, dual and plural. Singular and dual are the same form in all nominals except the personal pronouns. Furthermore, the plural is only distinguished in the nominative-accusative - except for the personal pronouns, where the difference in number is shown by the stem.

There are two nominal classes, Common Nominals (common nouns, demonstratives, locative/temporal/etc. adverbs) and Proper Nominals (Proper names, pronouns). The major difference between the two classes are 1) semantic - Proper Nominals have pronominal characteristics, and, 2) declensional, for example Proper Nominals have one locative case rather than the three of Common Nominals (see further the declensions below).

Note that the following are in the Kalau Kawau Ya dialect.

Common nominal declensions

There are few irregular nouns, the most common being

(1) ái food, yá speech, language, message, etc., li basket, lú mound, bump, hump

instrumental aidu, yadu, lidu, ludu specific locative/proprietive-plural aidai/aide, yadai, lidai, ludai

(2) KKY ná, KLY naawu, KulY/KY nawu song

instrumental KKY nathu, KLY/KulY/KY nathun, nawun

specific locative/proprietive-plural KKY nathai, KLY/KY nawul, KulY nawlai

(3) zá thing, object, matter, etc.

This word has a fuller stem form, zapu-, which appears in certain forms:

instrumental zapun genitive zapu proprietive-plural zapul

In the locative forms both stems (za- and zapu-) appear:

specific locative zanu, zapunu, etc.

(4) gœiga sun, day; bireg/bereg shelf

The stems of these words have different forms to the nominative-accusative-

gœiga - stem:gœigœyi-, gœigi-; bireg/bereg - stem:bœreigi-

Demonstratives

The language has a closed class of demonstrative morphemes with special morphological characteristics:

Prefixes:

pi there in the distance in a specific position

kai there in the distance in a non-specific position

Stems:

ka, í here, this

se/si there, that (not too far away)

gui, mulu/ngùl down there

ka, karai/kadai up there (variant forms of the one underlying stem)

ngapa there beyond

pai, pa, paipa ahead there, up close there (variant forms of the one underlying stem *pai)

pun, pawa off from there, back from there, back over there, back there (possibly variant forms of the one underlying stem)

These demonstratives (as stem forms) can have masculine, feminine and non-singular forms (and as such are pronominal) as well as case forms. Í here, this and se/si there, that (not too far away) take the gender/number morphemes as suffixes, and the other demonstratives take them as prefixes. Note that ka non-specifically here and kai there in the distance in a non-specific position cannot appear with the gender/number morphemes, as these latter are specific by their nature. Í and se/si also take an article forming affix -bi to become demonstrative articles (e.g. senaubi kaz that boy, senabi kaz that girl, sepalbi kaz those two children, sethabi kœzil those children.)

Ka, í and se/si:

Other demonstratives:

Pronouns : singular

Note that the third person pronouns are also used as definite articles, e.g. Nuidh garkœzin nan yipkaz imadhin The man saw the woman.

Personal pronouns : dual

Ngawal who two is constructed from nga who plus the clitic -wal both, and two (dual conjunction).

Personal pronouns : plural

Ngaya who many is constructed from nga who plus the clitic -ya and others (plural conjunction).

Personal names and familiar kinship terms (Familiar kinship terms are the equivalent of English kin terms such as Dad and Mum, while non-familiar terms are the equivalent of Father and Mother; these latter are treated as common nouns in the language)