Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 3:07 am
Okay, so some of the links off of the earlier link for the Australian Languages are dead. The following still work:
Aboriginal English
Malyangapa Workshop -- Merely a course outline
Dyirbal -- Seems like it has some good stuff, and includes German translation.
Jiwarli
Martuthunira -- Provides a link to request a grammar.
Mawng -- Suggested texts and contact information for the Warruwi Literacy Centre.
Nhirrpi
So, just skimming over what little I can find, I have a question. When we're talking about these languages as being "nouny," how nouny are we talking? Are we talking as "nouny" as the Iroquois and Algonquian languages are "verby," or do we simply mean they act largely like those two language groups but rely more on nouns (I.e. there are more unicorporated nouns and more noun forms in general). Because I'm already seeing terms like "noun incorporation" just in what little I've looked at.
Also, I can't for the life of me find it to prove I'm not making it up, but I seem to recall reading a posting by Jeff somewhere (I thought it was in this thread, but if it is, I missed it) talking about diachronic change in these languages.
Mods, I'll try to make sure I take care of it, but feel free to delete this if I'm remembering incorrectly or misunderstanding what I remember.
I seem to remember the statement being that when sound change happens, it happens on a morpheme by morpheme basis.
So, if you had an expression (broken into morphemes) an-aki-k-on-ati (jibberish--I'm not making up a whole language for the example) and you had sound change -voice>+voice V_V instead of getting anagigonadi, you'd get anagikonadi, because even though the second k is between two vowels, it's treated as being in isolation since it's its own morpheme. But if k>p _ then the expression would become anapiponati.
Am I at all remembering that correctly? It's possible I'm thinking of this post and this post and later combined the two in my mind without realizing it.
Edit: I've deleted part of my question, because it occurred to me after thinking about it that one of the things I remembered Jeff saying about poly languages was actually something Maknas said about triconsonantal languages.
Aboriginal English
Malyangapa Workshop -- Merely a course outline
Dyirbal -- Seems like it has some good stuff, and includes German translation.
Jiwarli
Martuthunira -- Provides a link to request a grammar.
Mawng -- Suggested texts and contact information for the Warruwi Literacy Centre.
Nhirrpi
So, just skimming over what little I can find, I have a question. When we're talking about these languages as being "nouny," how nouny are we talking? Are we talking as "nouny" as the Iroquois and Algonquian languages are "verby," or do we simply mean they act largely like those two language groups but rely more on nouns (I.e. there are more unicorporated nouns and more noun forms in general). Because I'm already seeing terms like "noun incorporation" just in what little I've looked at.
Also, I can't for the life of me find it to prove I'm not making it up, but I seem to recall reading a posting by Jeff somewhere (I thought it was in this thread, but if it is, I missed it) talking about diachronic change in these languages.
Mods, I'll try to make sure I take care of it, but feel free to delete this if I'm remembering incorrectly or misunderstanding what I remember.
I seem to remember the statement being that when sound change happens, it happens on a morpheme by morpheme basis.
So, if you had an expression (broken into morphemes) an-aki-k-on-ati (jibberish--I'm not making up a whole language for the example) and you had sound change -voice>+voice V_V instead of getting anagigonadi, you'd get anagikonadi, because even though the second k is between two vowels, it's treated as being in isolation since it's its own morpheme. But if k>p _ then the expression would become anapiponati.
Am I at all remembering that correctly? It's possible I'm thinking of this post and this post and later combined the two in my mind without realizing it.
Edit: I've deleted part of my question, because it occurred to me after thinking about it that one of the things I remembered Jeff saying about poly languages was actually something Maknas said about triconsonantal languages.