Murrinhpatha Morphology and Phonology

Download or read book Murrinhpatha Morphology and Phonology written by John Mansfield and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-04-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murrinhpatha is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in a region of tropical savannah and tidal inlets on the north coast of the continent. Some 3000 speakers live mostly in the towns of Wadeye and Nganmarriyanga, though they maintain close ties to their traditional lands, totems and spirit ancestors. Murrinhpatha word structure is highly complex, and quite distinct from the better-known Pama-Nyungan languages of central and southern Australia. Murrinhpatha is characterised by prolific compounding, clitic clusters, cumulative inflection, irregular allomorphy and phonological assimilation. This book provides a comprehensive account of these phenomena, giving particular attention to questions of morphological constituency, lexical storage, and whether there is really such thing as a ‘word’ unit.