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7. Pronominal accretions in Pama-Nyungan

2008; John Benjamins Publishing Company; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1075/cilt.298.11bla

0304-0763

Paul Black,

Linguistic Variation and Morphology

Pama-Nyungan languages tend to have similar systems of pronouns, allowing the reconstruction of such protoforms as *tyana ‘they’, whose reflexes include dhana in Kalaw Kawaw Ya (in Torres Strait) and tjana in Pitjantjatjara (in central Australia). In occasional languages the same pronouns are found with an additional consonant or syllable. For example, in south western Cape York Peninsula, Kurtjar dhanabh ‘they’ could reflect an earlier *tyana-pV, with the addition of a syllable *pV that could perhaps be cognate with a syllable -bha found in longer forms of many pronouns in Uradhi, near the tip of Cape York Peninsula. The present paper explores this and other ‘additions’ to pronominal forms, including the consistent historical addition of -w or -ntuw (perhaps reflecting *-kV or *-ntVkV respectively) to pronouns in the Koko-Bera language of western Cape York Peninsula.