Dalabon pronominal prefixes and the typology of syncretism: a Network Morphology analysis

Abstract

This paper has three goals. First we wish to elucidate the complex paradigms of Dalabon. In languages like Dalabon, which encode information about multiple pronominal arguments on adjacent slots on the verb, the two slots are frequently merged. The resultant set of combinations typically lies somewhere between an irregular paradigm and a set of forms derivable by combining subject and object elements according to some set of rules. These paradigms are potentially vast — in Dalabon, which has a rich set of person, number and kinship categories in its pronoun system, there are 102 possible subject/object combinations, each of which further distinguishes six tense/aspect/mood categories. Most languages of this type reduce the number of forms by widespread identities of form within the paradigm. However, it is not always clear whether the formal collapse is accidental homophony or principled syncretism.

Evans gratefully acknowledges the following people and institutions for supporting his research on Daladon: †David Kalbuma, Daisy Bordok, †Jack Chadum, †Don Buninjawa, Peter Marnibirru, Alice Bohm, and Maggie Tukumba for teaching him Dalabon in such an insightful and colourful way; the Australian Research Council for funding his fieldtrips to Arnhem Land in 1991, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1997(under the auspices of Australian Research Grants “Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia” and “Polysemy and Semantic Change in Australian Languages”); Barry Alpher and Francesca Merlan for making available their unpublished fieldnotes and other materials; Murray Garde for helping organize several of the above trips, and for many enlightening discussions in the field; the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung for a research fellowship in 1997–8 during which part of this paper was written, and the following people for comments on earlier presentations of this paper; Barry Alpher, Peter Austin, Matthew Baerman, Steve Levinson, Rachel Nordlinger, Fritz Schweiger, Jane Simpson, David Wilkins, Dieter Wunderlich. The support of the ESRC under grants R000236063 and R000237939, which supported the collaboration of the three authors on this project, is gratefully acknowledged. Responsibility for the paper is shared; Evans carried out the fieldwork and the initial analysis, Brown wrote the Network Morphology analysis and the implementation in DATR, Corbett shared the analysis and the writing up.