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This study analyses the role of conjunctions in clause linkage in Australian languages. Conjunctions are seemingly straightforward clause-linking devices, but they remain under-studied, both for Australian languages and from a broader typological perspective. In this study, we propose a functional definition of conjunctions, as set against other resources for clause linkage. We show that this captures not just the prototypical free-standing elements (the equivalents of if, because, but etc.), but also various types of bound markers with a similar function (bound to clause-scoping positions or predicates). We survey the role of conjunctions in a representative sample of 53 Australian languages, showing that they are not a marginal clause linkage resource in Australia, as seems to be assumed in the relevant literature, but often form a major category within clause linkage systems. We also identify a number of areal patterns, based on the size of conjunction inventories and their morphosyntactic features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a lexical study of rations – flour, sugar, tea and tobacco – in Australian languages. The distribution of food played an important role in relations between Aboriginal people and colonizers: this study complements existing historical and ethnographic work on the topic by investigating the lexicon of rations in a set of 197 languages across Australia. We discern a number of patterns. There are relatively few extensions of terms for traditional equivalents in the case of 'flour', 'sugar' and 'tea', for a number of reasons, while 'tobacco' shows more such extensions. Extensions based on other terms highlight semantic features like texture for flour and sugar, shape of the main ingredient for tea, and smoking as the new mode of consumption for tobacco. Other minor patterns highlight colour, processing and flavour. There is also some areal patterning in the data, some related to borrowing, from Austronesian languages as well as internally, and others based on semantic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines whether Australian languages generally lack clear noun phrase structures, as has sometimes been argued in the literature. We break up the notion of NP constituency into a set of concrete typological parameters, and analyse these across a sample of 100 languages, representing a significant portion of diversity on the Australian continent. We show that there is little evidence to support general ideas about the absence of NP structures, and we argue that it makes more sense to typologize languages on the basis of where and how they allow 'classic' NP construal, and how this fits into the broader range of construals in the nominal domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the adnominal use of personal pronouns in a sample of 75 Australian languages. We develop two arguments. First, we argue that in all of the adnominal uses examined, the personal pronoun has a determiner-like function, showing both the functional properties and some of the behaviour of more typical determiner categories like demonstratives or articles. We support this analysis with evidence from positioning tendencies, semantics and discourse functions, and indications of grammaticization in some languages. Secondly, we show that this phenomenon is relatively widespread in Australia, occurring in about half of the languages examined here. We identify five potential geographic clusters, one or two of which can be analyzed as areally determined groupings around a centre with incipient grammaticization. From a typological perspective, these data present new evidence for a somewhat under-studied pathway to nominal determination, in addition to better-studied pathways involving demonstratives, numerals or adjectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the functions of represented speech and thought (RST) in narratives in Umpithamu, a Pama-Nyungan language of Cape York Peninsula (Australia). The paper first surveys the different mechanisms available for marking a shift from the narrator's deictic centre to a narrative participant, including a number of constructions that use perception and motion predicates to signal RST. The analysis then focuses on the narrative functions of RST, showing that it has a macrostructural function beyond the representation of a specific participant's speech and thought, more specifically highlighting the central episodes of a narrative. The evidence comes from an analysis of three genres with a different macrostructure: one (personal history) for which the classic Labovian schema of complication–resolution works well and two others (both dealing with the supernatural world) that rely on different structuring principles. It is shown that RST is systematically associated with central episodes across the three genres, and that the location and nature of RST co-vary with the different location and nature of these episodes in the three genres. In narratives of supernatural encounter, for instance, RST conveys modal negotiation about the interpretation of the central events in terms of the supernatural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper describes a system of ergative marking in Umpithamu (Cape York Peninsula, Australia), in which the use of the ergative marker is determined by a combination of principles of animacy and information structure. Inanimate transitive subjects receive obligatory ergative marking, whereas animate transitive subjects only receive ergative marking when they are in focus, defined here as a principle of local prominence. Further evidence for this analysis is provided by showing that the principles governing optional ergative marking also govern other aspects of morphosyntactic organization, specifically the position of pronouns and the marking of objects. The system in Umpithamu is compared with other optional ergative systems in Australia, and it is shown that the principle of local prominence is unusual, with most other languages relying on more global, episode-level types of prominence. This also has a number of theoretical implications, including the need to recognize different construction types in applying rules for case marking in transitive clauses, and the challenge of mixed categories to the modular organization of grammatical models. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study investigates construction-level effects of animacy for Agents in a set of Australian languages. It is shown that the presence of an inanimate Agent can not only affect the marking of the Agent, but also the marking of the verb and of the Undergoer. On the basis of a detailed study of the extent of these effects in specific languages, it is shown that they are not always directly related to animacy, but can also be related to factors that are typically but not exclusively associated with animacy, like unusual instigation and unusual affectedness. It is also shown that there is a correlation between the part of the construction that is affected, and the type of motivation. Special marking of the Agent tends to be a direct animacy effect, while special marking of verbal transitivity is an effect of unusual instigation, and special marking of the Undergoer is an effect of unusual affectedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a linguistic perspective on the structure and the interpretation of a key historical narrative in Umpithamu (a Pama-Nyungan language of Cape York Peninsula, Australia), against the background of a larger corpus of narrative texts in Umpithamu. The analysis focuses on the role of participant tracking devices in the macro-structure of the narrative, and the role of case marking in the build-up of narrative motifs. It is argued not only that marked types of participant tracking serve to mark the boundaries of episodes, as often noted in the literature, but also that some types have additional functions within episodes, which leads to a proposal for refinement of Fox's (1987) Principle of Morphosyntactic Markedness. On a micro-structural level, it is shown how a rare system of case marking is used by the narrator to construe white-Aboriginal interactions as events in which the Aboriginal participants experience an extreme lack of control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]