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By R. M. W Dixon
This ebook builds on R. M. W. Dixon's such a lot influential paintings at the indigenous languages of Australia during the last 40 years, from his trailblazing grammar of Dyirbal released in 1972 to later grammars of Yidin (1971) and Warrgamay (1981). fit for human consumption Gender, partner's mother kind, and Other Grammatical Wonders comprises extra experiences on those languages, and the interrelations among them. Following an account of the anthropological and linguistic history, half I offers an intensive exam of, and comparability among, the gender approach in Dyirbal (one of whose individuals refers to 'edible vegetables') and the set of nominal classifiers in Yidin. The chapters partially II describe Dyirbal's strange kinship method and the 'mother-in-law' language kind, and examines the origins of 'mother-in-law' vocabulary in Dyirbal and in Yidin. There are 4 grammatical reports partly III, facing syntactic orientation, serial verb buildings, complementation techniques, and grammatical reanalysis. half IV covers grammatical and lexical edition around the dialects of Dyirbal, compensatory phonological adjustments, and a examine of language touch around the Cairns rainforest quarter. the 2 ultimate chapters, partially V, recount the sorrowful tales of ways the Yidin and Dyirbal languages slowly slipped into oblivion.
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Extra resources for Edible Gender, Mother-in-Law Style, and Other Grammatical Wonders: Studies in Dyirbal, Yidin, and Warrgamay
Example text
These are phenomena of quite different grammatical natures which, nevertheless, achieve a similar result. The next two chapters deal, in turn, with the two mechanisms. At the end of chapter 3 there is comparison of their semantic roles. Gender constitutes an obligatory grammatical system. It involves: • a grouping of all the nouns of a language into a smallish number of genders so that each noun relates to one gender; • an obligatory indication of the gender of a noun in any clause in which it occurs, an indication which cannot be entirely within the form of the noun itself.
Principle c. Gender assignment to highlight an important property If a set of nouns has gender X, and a subset has some particular property, then this subset may be assigned a gender other than X. Three kinds of important property have been identified. (a) Can be eaten —(1) Pythons (or carpet snakes) are the only snakes which are eaten by speakers of Dyirbal. They are thus balan, to distinguish them from other snakes which are almost all bayi. Note that the generic term, bayi wadam ‘snake’, does not include pythons.
The firefly, balan yugiyam is balan whereas most other insects are bayi. This is because the flashes of light it emits are similar to sparks from a fire (although they are not hot). • Terms for song and dance styles, and all sorts of noises, are bala. When guns were introduced, their sound was felt to be like the metronymic boomerangupon-boomerang accompaniment for the song style bala gama. The generic term for ‘gun’ is bala gama in the northern dialects N, W, M, and A. ) Note that the gun was not seen as a fighting weapon (which would place it in the balan gender), but simply an instrument for murder.