Australian Journal of Linguistics

Vol. 17, no. 1 (1997)

Articles

Semantic primes and grammatical categories	Cliff Goddard	1-41
Putting the Mathimathi stress rule in its proper perspective	Rob Goedemans	43-69
The development of antipassive constructions in Australian languages	Angela Terrill	71-88

Book reviews

Give: A cognitive linguistic study (John Newman)	Nick Enfield	89-93
Talk at work (Paul Drew and John Heritage, editors)	Janet Holmes	93-99
Sociolinguistic theory (Jack Chambers)	Scott F. Kiesling	99-103
Principles of linguistic change, vol. 1: Internal factors (William Labov)	Scott F. Kiesling	103-109
Case marking and reanalysis: Grammatical relations from Old English to Early Modern English (Cynthia Allen)	Peter Peterson	109-113
Window Speech Audio Lab with video option (Ingolf Franke)	Peter Paul	113-117
Voice and inversion (Talmy Givón, editor)	Alan Rumsey	117-120
Using language (Herbert H. Clark)	Jyh Wee Sew	120-124

Abstracts

Semantic primes and grammatical categories

Cliff Goddard

Abstract: This paper argues that all 55 of the semantic primes currently posited in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory (Wierzbicka 1996) are frequently found as components of grammatically encoded meanings. Examples are taken from a wide variety of the world's languages, and include phenomena such as pronoun systems, indefinites, classifiers, reflexives, experiencer constructions, evidentials, locational deixis, tense systems, diminutives and augmentatives, and modality. The study seeks to contribute towards the development of a more rigorous semantic basis for grammatical typology, by demonstrating that the proposed semantic metalanguage is able to encompass and explicate a wide variety of grammaticalised meanings. This finding also cuts across a commonly-held view that, for the most part, grammatical semantics and lexical semantics call for rather different descriptive tool-kits.

Putting the Mathimathi stress rule in its proper perspective

Rob Goedemans

Abstract: Ever since it was first described the Mathimathi stress rule has evaded straightforward analysis in any framework of metrical phonology. The complicating factor is the supposed influence of coronal onsets on the placement of main stress. Several attempts to analyse the Mathimathi stress facts through onset-weight or onset-prominence have been made in the past. None of these are completely satisfactory since they defy the universal rule that onsets cannot feature in stress rules. In this article I show that any doubts about the characteristics of the Mathimathi stress pattern can be taken away by phonetic evidence. Furthermore, I take up an onset-insensitive solution to the Mathimathi problem recently put forward by Gahl (1996) and try to reconcile it with the views general held of stress in Aboriginal languages. A comparison with the stress patterns of the neighbouring languages in the proper linguistic setting sheds some light on the nature of the Mathimathi stress rule and how it came to be the way it is.

The development of antipassive constructions in Australian languages

Angela Terrill

Abstract: Antipassive constructions occur in a small minority of Australian languages. The overwhelming majority of these antipassive constructions are marked by the same verbal morphology that each language uses to mark its reflexive construction. This paper compares the functional properties of antipassives and reflexives, in order to suggest a historical explanation for their shared morphology, and proposes that antipassive construction in these languages developed from reflexive constructions through a diachronic process of functional extension and reanalysis. Further, a chain of extensions and reanalyses is proposed, whereby it is suggested that reflexives provided the source material for so-called pragmatic antipassives, which in turn provided the source material for structural antipassives.

Last update: 26 April 2000
Comments to Tim Curnow