Story Time 3: Yeri & Warray

Yeri belongs to the Torricelli family of languages, which comprises approximately fifty languages and around 80,000 speakers. The Torricelli family has a number of branches, but since these are currently far from certain, we shall not discuss them here.

The Yeri language is spoken in only a single village in the Sanduan Province of Papua New Guinea.

Our story here is called The bad-skinned snake kills a woman, and was recounted by Josepa Yikaina. It did not have a Yeri title, so I created one.

Yotu nogual oden harkanogɨl = The women and the snake

1. Ta mnobia yuta nogual wiai.
2. Lawiaki atia miakual. Atia miakual anor wul.
3. Aro aro wuakɨr tɨhewo. Tei atrei sasapiten, o wul.
4. Amotɨwai amotɨwai amenor lelia.
5. Aro ŋa wakia woli ŋa wakia woli.

6. Aro woimewɨl wdolkɨdi sareiga. Iepoua harkanogɨl.
7. Harkanogɨl losi weide yiwo wiluada.
8. Wohewɨl walia wamenor lelia.
9. Wanor lelia te hamote, luten dawowa hagɨl.
10. Luten wlopen. Dawowa hagɨl.

11. Harkanogɨl yotu psia war wamena. Wgamera luten ndodi hagɨl wde.
12. Wnobiada “haraharahi, ye ko nɨtren maŋan nbanokɨl?”
13. Te wnobia “hiro ya, hiro ya, lolewa hiro. Miakual nadɨ.”
14. Harkanogɨl namenia lutei. Worme mani. Yawi wden psia warma.
15. Wnobiada, “haraharahi. Harkanogɨl kɨ nanor norme hamaul wye.

16. Hem ta hiro mɨlmkialen, hiro.”
17. Aro psia ar tɨnogɨl. Amo wul wo weli.
18. Ameyaka te woheka, hiro.
19. Wormia goimabɨ lapaki. Amenodai olbɨl yo.
20. Nobia ta amotɨwa harkanogɨl almkialen, hiro.

21. Noimo ni weide, noimo nonemo, wan wde.
22. Hamote yuta walmo wodɨ harkanogɨl.
23. Ode ormia aro gamerade.
24. Aro yotu hepa. Pɨrsakai tiawa laladɨl nadɨ.

In English:

1. I will talk about two ladies.
2. A long time ago they looked for frogs. They looked for frogs downriver.
3. They went all the way downriver. They saw many of them in the water.
4. They caught and caught them and put them down into the limbum.
5. They went and one walked on one side of the river and the other walked on the other side.

6. She went and she got them, she shook the box. They were all around the snake.
7. The snake’s name is Bad Skin.
8. She grabbed it, and threw it down into the limbum.
9. It went in the limbum of the woman who had a big sore on her back.
10. It was a big sore. It was on her back.

11. That snake comes out. It digs at the sore on her back.
12. She said, “Friend, you look at it. What bit me?”
13. The friend replies, “No, no, there is nothing there. It’s only frogs.”
14. The snake is going inside the sore. It is sleeping inside. Only its tail is coming out.
15. She said, “Friend. The snake has already gone down and is lying in your stomach.”

16. I won’t pull it out, no.”
17. They arrived at the village. They boiled some water.
18. They give it to her and she drank, but no.
19. She sits and breaks the tongs. They push them inside the hole of the sore.
20. They want to catch the snake and pull it out, but no.

21. It eats her intestines and eats her heart.
22. That lady died with the snake in her.
23. They sit with her and they went to bury her.
24. That’s all. The story is very short.

1. Not only is this story very short, but it is actually a streamlined version of the original. The section I removed is not very long, and does not affect the overall meaning of the story. Essentially, the woman asks her friend whether there is a snake, and she says no. She asks again, and this time she can see it. They do this at intervals on their walk back to the village.

When they reach the village, they first inform the soon-to-be widower of his wife’s condition, before proceeding with their attempts to kill the snake.   

2. Speaking of the snake, although harkanogɨl refers to snakes in general, does this story refer implicitly to a particular species?          

After consulting both Wikipedia and the Reptile Database, I have arrived at the educated guess that harkanogɨl refers to the species Toxicocalamus buergersi, also known as the Torricelli Mountains snake.

Since Yeri is spoken in that same mountain range, this is my first point of evidence.

3. My second line of proof arises from the text itself. To quote line 6:

Iepoua harkanogɨl. = They were all around the snake

But why are the frogs mentioned at all in the story, considering their meagre impact on the story as a whole? Would the story still make as much sense if they were foraging for berries or nuts instead?

Well, we can answer this if we look at the snake itself. I have included a link to the Reptile Database itself, and I am sure you’ll agree that it bears a resemblance to a certain residence at the bottom of your garden, one whose initials are W.W.

Another similarity between the two is that both of these individuals are fossorial in nature, which means that they dig through soil and mud in order to gain their sustenance.

An aspect wherein they diverge is their sleep patterns: while T. buergersi is diurnal (the opposite of nocturnal), W.W. takes no heed of the sun’s behaviour as it regards his wiggling.

For anyone raised outside of England (and, I assume, other parts of the Anglosphere), T. buergersi looks like a worm, thus explaining why the frogs took an interest in him. Furthermore, members of the genus Toxicocalamus tend to be quite small, with the largest specimen, Toxicocalamus ernstmayri, measuring just above a metre from snout to vent.

(As will be discussed in the Translation Analysis, snakes in Yeri tend to be Masculine.)

4. This leads us to the question as to whether miakual could also refer to a specific sort of frog. I would wager that it belongs to the family Microhylidae. This family constitutes the majority of frogs found in Papua New Guinea, and thus it seems a reasonable guess.

In truth, I did not consider it particularly important to determine the species of the frog, since they are not overly important to the story.

5. My last thought on the frogs is the purpose whereto the women have chosen to collect them. My first thought was that frogs were a traditional (or perhaps even contemporary) Yeri cuisine.

Then it occurred to me that perhaps these frogs had a role in traditional Yeri medicine. This may be more likely since the Torricelli Mountains contain creatures with much greater protein content.

Meanwhile, a somewhat more unorthodox hypothesis is that the Yeri may have used these frogs in a manner similar to that of certain South American tribes. Personally, I find this unlikely because most of the Papuan frogs I have seen have colours that blend into the environment.

(This comes from a cursory glance at the list of pictures on the Ecology Asia website. This cannot capture every frog species that calls Papua New Guinea home, but it is a start.)

Poisonous frogs, on the other hand, tend towards bright, garish colours that contrast as much as possible with their surroundings. This is in order to scare away predators, since being poisonous brings zero benefit if no-one knows to avoid eating you.  

6. Last, but most importantly, what is the purpose of this myth? To what perennial truths does it allude?

Put simply, this appears to be a cautionary tale about the fauna of the Torricelli Mountains, in particular the amphibians.  

As creatures that live in the water and on land, frogs and toads are in excellent position to act as a transit for water-borne parasites, which can enter through open sores, as well as via ingestion.

(Although the Guinea Worm is not, to my knowledge or research, present in Papua New, the bit where the snake’s tail is hanging out very much reminds me of how the worm is coaxed out of the poor victim’s foot.)

Indeed, the end of the story, where the tongs and hot water fail to kill the snake, probably comes from previous trial and error.

Thus, it is not unreasonable, I feel, to perceive this story through an educational framework.

On a tangent, a detail that I left out is that the woman with the snake inside her was married. This could, in context, indicate that she was pregnant. If one takes this reading, then it may be used to impart that pregnant women are more vulnerable to malign parasites; certainly in terms of effects, but perhaps they are also more attractive to them.

(This makes me wonder whether the Yeri, or related tribes, have taboos against pregnant women engaging in certain sorts of foraging mission.)

Warray was a language once spoken along the Margaret and Adelaide Rivers in the Northern Territory of Australia. It belonged to the Kunwiñkuan language family, with its closest relation being Jawoyn.

Especially unfortunately, before Harvey was able to record is grammar, the language had undergone a significant degree of vocabulary loss, although grammatical structures appear to have escaped relatively unscathed.

Nevertheless, we are here to celebrate the language and its stories as they were, so let us dive straight in.

In this chapter, we will in fact, cover two versions of the same story.

Original Text:

Awananaŋku Antjeriñ

1. Altumaru yuŋuyiñ puk:aniñ.
2. Tjatpulayi kuntiyiniñ anwak mamam akalawu katjiyaŋ altumaru pulmiñ.
3. Altumaru pokliliñ puñi anpik pulam.
4. Tjatpula yatjiñ puk:aŋi tjitpak:u wayiñ ñiliñ tjipak.
5. Punwuy mamam akalawu keraŋlul wuyi anpik natlakiñ.

6. “Yañ” altumaruyi tjiyi akalawu.
7. Wuyi.
8. Anpik mi katjiyaŋ molwikyi tañmi.
9. Tjatpula liñ.
10. Anpik altumaruyi tañmi milwikyi.
11. Amukuy liñ tjatpula katji awananaŋku katji liñ.

Awananaŋku Keraŋlul

12. Tjatpula awananaŋku waŋu puk:aŋi.
13. Yatjiñ lam pikiriŋu tjipak.
14. Luramiñ leriklik.
15. Mamam alkalawu keraŋlul paniniñ leriklik.

16. Antjeriñwuy mi.
17. Pakuntiyiniñ antjeriñ almutek.
18. Katjiyaŋ altumaru wayiñ punnay.
19. Punnay.
20. Neŋkiñ mi.

21. Puñi tañmi pokliliñ pulanu anpik anpuruyu.
22. Katjiyaŋ tjatpula yatjiñ kawuy.
23. Kawuy wayiñwuy katjiyaŋ nattañmi.
24. Tjatpula katji liñ ŋumpwaruwat.

The English Translation:

Awananangku One

1. The old woman used to go out hunting for tucker.
2. While she was out, the old man used to play around with his daughter, which caused the woman to become angry.
3. The old woman rubbed banyon tree fibres and made a rope.
4. The old man went out hunting for fish, which he would bring back with him.
5. He gave the fish to his two little daughters, and clumbup the rope that the old woman had dropped towards him.

6. “Come up” the old woman said to him.
7. He clumbup.
8. He grabbed the rope and then the old woman cut it with a mussel shell.
9. The old man fell.
10. The old woman cut the rope with a mussel shell.

11. Okay, he fell, that old man, Awananangku, that one fell.

Awananangku Two

12. The old man Awananangku went out hunting for meat.
13. He speared some fish for his daughters.
14. He brought them back to camp.
15. Her (the old woman’s) two daughters were sitting in the camp.

16. He got one of them.
17. He played around with the big one.
18. The old woman came back and she saw them.
19. She saw them.
20. Then she got, oh what are they called.

21. Banyon fibres, she cut them and tied them into a long rope.
22. Then the old man went out again.
23. Then he came back again and this time she cut the rope on him.
24. That old man fell forever.

1. In contrast to the all of the previous tales discussed, this one does not require some detective work on my part to figure out the meaning of this story. Harvey provides it for us directly after the story.

Rather than re-invent the wheel, as it were, I will quote him verbatim:

“These two versions of the same story are concerned with the Milky Way. The old man, the old woman and their two daughters lived in the Milky Way. As the two versions recount, the old man had illicit sexual relations with his [eldest] daughter while the old woman was out hunting. The old woman came back and saw him misbehaving ad became angry.

When the old man went out hunting again, the old woman made a rope from banyon fibres. The old man came back with fish and the old woman lowered down the rope so that he could climb back up to the Milky Way. While he was climbing the old woman cut the rope with a mussel shell. The old man made a hole, next to the Southern Cross on the pointer side, in the Milky Way as he fell.

He hit the ground at a banyon tree near Humpty Doo camp called Awananangku. This story explains why the Milky Way is called Anpik[, or] ‘rope’.”

2. Many of you will notice a similarity in etymology. In Warray, our native galaxy is referred to as Anpik because of the rope that sent the old man tumbling back down to Earth.

In English, we call our galactic home the Milky Way because of Heracles who, as a child, spat out his mother’s breast milk across the sky.

3. This is not the only Warray myth, recounted by Harvey, which involves an old man, an old woman and two daughters. It is called: “The Old Woman and Old Man Dreaming”, and I shall give you the English version:

“The old woman, a mother and her (two) daughters, they both went down to the saltwater. The old man came from there, from Titi to the saltwater. He saw them both (the mother and the daughters). Then they came this way to Loliwa. They both came out (of the water), they both came. Then they (all) followed the one road. They went down (further) and are now staying forever at Tjetteriñ.”

4. This story describes the complex journey of several dreaming trails centred around the Adelaide River. The woman and her two daughters begin at Scott’s Creek and go to Malweyi, which is on the eastern side of the river.

The old man, meanwhile, starts at Titi, which is at the mouth of the Adelaide, and journeys upwards. (His exact starting point is Natiyañku, or Old Man Rock, which lies in the middle of the river’s mouth.)

Together, they travel to Loliwa on the western side of the river, and further on to Tjininti, also known as Mosquito Pass, where the two daughters decide to stay.

The old man and old woman, on the other hand, make a journey to Tjettjeriñ ridge, which forms the eastern side of Manton Dam. On the way they walk through Alawarr ridge (The Daly Range), Kwik:i (Fred’s Pass) and Palankanaŋ creek (Manton River).

At Tjettjeriñ range there is a red ochre deposit, a cave or a site in general, where they might still be found to this day, possibly waiting for Warray speakers who will never come.

5. Anyway, why do I mention this?

It is not my intention to posit whether the participants in this story are the same as in the other one, because personally I find this unlikely. In one story, only the old man is sent back to earth while the three women remain in the Milky Way, while in the other, all four people make separate homes on Earth.

6. But could the old man be the same in both stories, with Natiyañku being the sequel to Awananaŋku?

This is not impossible, but I do not have enough textual evidence to prove it definitively. A brief gander at the relevant maps shows that Humpty Doo lies relatively close to the mouth of the Adelaide, so the journey from Awananaŋku to Natiyañku is a plausible one.

However, what is interesting is that both stories end with the word ŋumparuwat, which means forever.

7. In addition, ŋumparuwat also finalises another myth, this being “The Three Dogs”.

This tale concerns three dogs, these being the husband and father Liyeyima, the wife and mother Wirminpul, and their son Wayinima.

Here, we witness again the recurring motif of man, woman and child.

8. The motif of a close family unit appears in all three of the myths mentioned so far (as well as a few others). Nevertheless, it does not appear in the same way each time.

In Awananaŋku, we have a father, mother and two daughters.

In Natiyañku, we have a mother, two daughters and an unrelated man.

In Ŋiri Keraŋantjeriñ (lit. Dogs Three), we have a father, a mother and one son.

9. In Ŋiri Keraŋantjeriñ, the age of the dogs is not specified, (indeed, it is not even specified in the text that they are dogs) but in Awananaŋku and Natiyañku, the mother is designated as altumaru and the father/man as tjatpula, which mean old woman and old man respectively.

I have some thoughts and musings on the significance and consequences of older parents, both in myth and real life, but that falls outside the scope of this article.

The Sheep and the Horses

1. [On a hill,] a sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly.
2. The sheep said to the horses: “My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses.”
3. The horses said: “Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool.”
4. Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

Sipsip Wodei Hosegal

1. Tutupi la sipsip hiro wul matrem hosegal, ŋan nalkialen nebalgi tiawai, ŋan narkiakan porpori wlopen, ŋan narkiakan ndarku hamoten.

2. Sipsip wnobiadam hosegal: “Wan whem wo weli, wnobiadan hamoten namotɨwam hosegal.”

3: Hosegal nobiawan: “Sipsip ida! Wan whebi o weli, nobiadan: hamoten, hamoten wlopen ndodia wul wde sipsip pade. sipsip hiro wul.”

4: Nomal wiedada, sipsip la wdarku wnania halma pebo.

The Sheep and the Horses:

1. On a hill, a sheep that had no wool saw some horses: one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load and one carrying a man quickly.
2. The sheep said to the horses: “My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses.”
3. The horses said: “Listen sheep our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool.”
4. Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain

Nentu waŋ anturk:u

1. Waŋ amala mitjayiwu punnay nentu kirilik: antjeriñ pamuñ akunkun yurmayim, antjeriñ tup:u amutek wukmayim, antjeriñ nal wukmayim kiyakyiwu.

2. Waŋ nentuwu puntjiyi: “Antwuy pankatjipum patnayu: nalyi nentu inpitjipmalañ.”

3. Nentu patjiyi: “Waŋ ŋa! Antwuy inkatjipum palinayu: nal, tjatpula, mitja waŋu kalilitpun anmewelu amalmal akalawu. amala waŋ mitja kankakaŋi.”

4. Kak:wuy nayu, waŋ wuppum kolallik

yuta nogual is built from two components. These are:

1. yuta is a noun which means woman.
2. nogual is a noun which indicates plural number, and is most commonly used with yuta.

yuta can also function as an adjective, where it means female.

nogual can also occur alongside the word hagɨl, which is the plural form of the word han, which means man.

oden is built from three components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. ode is a verb which means to be with, but it also translates as and in many contexts.
3. -n is the 3^rd Person Plural Object Suffix.

harkanogɨl is the singular form of the noun harkanogɨ, which means snake.

The plural form, meanwhile, is harkanogɨi.

harkanogɨ is very much a base form of the noun, which does not appear in grammatical speech.

ta is the Future Tense Particle. It does not in specify the relative distance in the future wherein the event takes place, merely that it occurs after the moment of speech.

mnobia is built from two components:

1. m- is the 1^st Person Singular Subject Prefix.
2. nobia is a verb which means to talk or to speak.

wiai is the Feminine form of wia, which refers to the number two.

For context, the Masculine form of wia is wiam

Yeri has two grammatical Genders: Masculine and Feminine.

For an exploration into how Gender works differently in Yeri compared to the languages of Western Europe, I refer you back to the original chapter on the language.

lawiaki is a noun which means a long time ago.

It is possible that this could be related to the Past Tense Particle la, but I do not have any evidence to make a claim one way of the other.

atia is built from two components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. atia is a verb which means to see or to look at something.

The Yeri verb for to see actually has four roots, these being atia, atr, arnia and arr.

To quote Wilson, atia occurs when “there is neither a predicate morpheme nor a third person object morpheme.”

miakual is the plural form of the noun miakua, which means frog.

anor is built from two components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. anor is a verb which means either to descend or to go down.

wul is a noun which refers to any body of water, e.g. a river or a lake, as well as water in general.

wul is classified as an Invariate Noun, which means that the Singular and Plural forms are identical.

As a result, the phrase anor wul, which receives here the translation downstream has the more literal meaning the waters descend.

aro is built from two components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. aro is an alternate form of the verb ar, which means to go.

The repetition of aro indicates that they travelled a long while, in this context all the way down the river.

wuakɨr is built from two components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. uakɨr is a verb which means to fall.

In Yeri, there are two Plural Subjects which take alternate Prefixes.

These are the 1^st Person Plural, which takes the Subject Prefixes h- and Ø-, and the 3^rd Person Plural, which takes the Subject Prefixes Ø- and w-.

tɨhewo is built from two components:

1. tɨ- is the Yeri Locative Prefix, which occurs before a restricted class of nouns.
2. hewo is a noun which beans bottom or ground.

A Locative Prefix, as the name suggests, indicates location, and can take English translations including on, in and at.

In addition to this, Yeri has three Locative Suffixes, though these only occur on fully-inflected verbs.

The pronoun tei is, in fact, built from two components:

1. te is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Pronoun, also known as she.
2. -i is the Plural Suffix.

In Yeri, there is no Gender distinction amongst the 3^rd Person Plural Pronouns, as is the case in some Western European languages.  

Not only does there exist the alternate form tem, but tei can also take the abbreviated form ti.

atrei is built from four components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. atr is a variant of the verb for to see.
3. -e is one of many Augmented Object Suffixes.
4. -i is the 3^rd Person Plural Suffix.

With many verbs, the 3^rd Person Objects are constructed with the use of an Augment Suffix, which stands between the verb and the Object Suffix.

Other verbs take simply the regular Suffix, while a select few take an Infix instead.

sapiten is a quantifier which means many or a lot, and here it has undergone Reduplication of the first syllable.

Although it is composed of both a single syllable and a single letter, o has two components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. o is a verb which means to stay in the sense of to be located in.

Other meanings of o include to live and to stay in the location.

It can also mean to be in general, but this verb works differently to the others.  

amotɨwai is built from three components:

1. amotɨ is the irregular Imperfective form of the verb otɨ, which means to hold something.
2. -wa is another Augmented Object Suffix.
3. -i is the 3^rd Person Plural Suffix.

The Imperfective is roughly equivalent to the English Progressive –ing form. For example:

C – 1    ten la nor = He slept

C – 2   ten la norme = He was sleeping

The Imperfective indicates that the event was still ongoing during the specific period of time.

amenor is built from three components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. anor is a verb which means to descend.
3. -me- is the Imperfective Infix.

The Imperfective occurs most frequently after the first syllable of the verb wherewith it interacts. As most Yeri verbs have more than one syllable, it typically manifests as an Infix, but not always, as seen in the examples above.

The term limbum refers to a container made from the bark of the limbum palm, used in this story to carry frogs.

ŋa is built from two components:

1. ŋa is the numeral one.
2. -Ø is the Feminine Singular Suffix.

In addition, ŋa can also take the Masculine Singular Suffix –n and the Plural Suffix –i.

The resultant form ŋai occurs with Pluralia Tantum nouns, these being nouns which always trigger Plural Agreement on the accompanying adjectives, regardless as to actual number.

wakia is built from two components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. akia is a verb which means to move in a particular direction.

woli is an invariant noun which refers to the side of a river or of a house.

woimewɨl is built from three components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. owɨl is a verb which means to take something or to bring something.
3. -me- is the Imperfective Infix.

By this point, you have probably long since noticed that w- can serve as the Subject Prefix for both the 3^rd Person Feminine Singular and the 3^rd Person Plural. I mention this now as I made that same mistake when I first wrote the vocabulary list.

wdolkɨdi is built from two components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. dolkɨdi is an alternate form of the verb dorkɨdi, which means to shake.

sareiga is a noun which can refer to one of two things. These are a box hung above a fire to dry protein, and a large bird nest. I imagine that this double meaning originates from the shape and overall appearance of the drying box.

iepoua is built from four components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. iepou is a verb which means to roll or to curl around, and it is often used to refer to the act of rolling tobacco.
3. -a is one of the Augmented Object Suffixes.
4. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Object Suffix.

The phrase miakual iepoua harkanogɨl has a literal meaning of the frogs curl around the snake or the frogs roll the snake. However, it seems that the meaning has extended to mean the frogs surround the snake.

losi is an Pluralia noun which translates as name or names respectively, depending on context.

weide is built from three components:

1. w- is called the Relational Prefix, which appears in a number of contexts, including the Genitive.
2. -ei is the 3^rd Person Plural Possessed Suffix, which means that more than one thing is being possessed.
3. -de is the form that the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Pronoun te takes when building a Genitive (or Possessive) Pronoun.

Thus, weide by itself means something akin to her things.  

The phrase harkanogɨl losi weide has a literal meaning of the snake her name, but this is how Yeri does possessives in general.

Thus, the closest English translation is the snake’s name.

yiwo is an Invariable noun which means skin.

wiluada is built from four components:

1. w- is the Relational Prefix, which can also appear with some Adjectives as well as Genitives.
2. ilua is an adjective which means bad.
3. -da is the Bare Non-Verbal Pronominal Suffix.
4. -Ø is the Singular Feminine Suffix.

Now, what exactly is a Non-Verbal Pronominal Suffix, and what does it do?

To be honest, this is where we reach the limit of both my understanding and capacity for explanation. In Yeri there is a complex system of Pronominal forms, and their behaviour.

Hopefully I will one day be able to understand and explain this particular area of grammar, but that day is not today.

wohewɨl is built from three components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. owɨl is a verb which means to take something.
3. -he- is the 3^rd Person Feminine Singular Object Infix.

The Infixes are unique among the 3^rd Person Object Affixes in the sense that the Singular Feminine is actually marked. When the 3^rd Person Object takes the form of a Suffix, the Singular Feminine is indicated via its absence, whether it be unmarked or take any of the various Augmented suffix.

walia is built from three components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. alia is a verb which means to drop or to throw.
3. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Object Suffix.

In her grammar, Wilson collected approximately 330 verbs, only 40 of which take Infixes. The rest take suffixes, but I did not find a distribution of Augment versus non-Augment Suffixes. In theory I could scan the dictionary and do the maths, but I have neither the time nor inclination to engage in such an exercise in pedantry.

wamenor is built from three components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. anor is a verb which means to descend or to go down.
3. -me- is the Imperfective Infix.

wanor is built from two components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. anor is a verb which means to go down or to descend.

te is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject, also known as she.

It is the base whereon all other 3^rd Person Pronouns are built.

hamote is built from two components:

1. hamote is a noun which means individual.
2. -Ø is the Singular Feminine Suffix.

hamote can also mean woman more specifically .

If we replace the second component with the Singular Masculine Suffix, we get hamoten, which means man.

The plural form of hamote is the irregular noun hamei, which also appears in a number of its own constructions, some of which feature in the original Yeri chapter.

luten is built from two components:

1. lute is a noun which means sore or an open wound.
2. -n is the Singular Masculine Suffix.

As mentioned earlier, Yeri takes a rather more relaxed approach to the assignment of Grammatical Gender, at least compared to the European languages with which you are probably more familiar.

dawowa is built from four components:

1. d- is the Middle Use Prefix.
2. awo is a verb which means, quote, “to set something down that has neither an overly long horizontal axis nor an overly long vertical axis.”
3. -wa is one of Augment Suffixes.
4. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Object Suffix.

Now what does the Middle Use Prefix do?

Essentially, it turns a Transitive Verb into an Intransitive Verb which roughly means to be in that position.

For example, we have the verb awɨl means to hang:

C – 3   peigɨliai wahewɨl = Some hangs it (up)

C – 4   hɨwol wanagawɨl yotua wdawɨl = The breadfruit hangs there

In the former sentence, ahewɨl refers to the act of hanging something up, e.g. on a hook or on the wall, while in the latter, wdawɨl, or the breadfruit, is simply hanging there.

As a result, it can also take on a Reflexive meaning. luten, the sore, is both the thing doing the setting, and the thing being set on the back.  

hagɨl is a noun which means back. 

wlopen is built from three components:

1. w- is the Relational Prefix.
2. lope is a noun which means good.
3. -n is the Singular Male Suffix.

In relation to both sentences, I have given dawowa the independent translation of it sets itself on her.

Now, you may be wondering why dawowa lacks a Subject Prefix.

I am also wondering this. Perhaps the answer is hidden somewhere in Wilson’s grammar, but I could not locate it.

Personally, I wonder whether luten dawowa should in fact read lute ndawowa, but because it appears twice in that form, I shall err on the side of caution and leave it as it is.

yotu is built from three components:

1. yot is the Yeri Demonstrative, which has four functions.
2. -u is the Middle Distance Suffix.
3. -Ø is the Feminine Suffix.

All of the Yeri Demonstratives are built following this pattern. The Yeri Demonstratives have four functions, which fall into four categories:

1. Nominal

C – 5    kɨ maŋa yotu? = What is that?

In instances where the gender of a noun is unknown, the Feminine form is used as a default.

Additionally, it is morphologically the simplest.

2. Adnominal

C – 6     wonela yotun namena = That centipede is coming

yotun is built from three components, the last being the Singular Masculine Suffix –n.

wonela, meaning centipede, is considered a Masculine Noun.

In Yeri, the classification of Grammatical Gender follows a number of rules. For non-human animals, Gender is assigned in one of two ways.

If the biological sex of the animal can be discerned, e.g. larger animals like pigs, cows and dogs, then male animals are Masculine and female animals are Feminine.

If the biological sex of the animal is difficult to discern on sight, then its Gender is based on the size and shape of the animal. The longer and larger the animal, the more likely it is to be Masculine. The smaller and more spherical the animal, then the more likely it is to be Feminine.

As an insect, the biological sex of a centipede is near impossible for a non-entomologist to discern. Although it is small, it appears that the unambiguously long shape of the insect places it in the Masculine category.

3. Locative

C – 7     ta nela bou yotuan = It will go boom over there

yotuan is built from three components:

The second component is the Distal Suffix –ua, which indicates a great distance away.

The third component is the Masculine Suffix –n.

There are three Distance Suffixes which can be added to the Demonstrative yot-.

The Proximal is –a, the Mid-Distal is –u, and the Distal is –ua.

At a glance, it looks as though the lattermost suffix is built from the former two put together. The process whereby this has occurred is unknown to me at this time. Is it a coincidence, did the two team up to build the third, or did the latter break down?

4. Temporal

C – 8     hem miemki yota = I am going ahead now

Relevant to the socio-linguistic situation of Yeri is the fact that all Yeri speakers wield some degree of fluently in Tok Pisin, an Englis-based creole language that serves as the lingua franca facilitating communication between the many language groups of Papua New Guinea.

As a result, it is not uncommon for Yeri speakers to use the Tok Pisin word nau to mean now.

yota, meanwhile, is considered the closest Yeri equivalent.

Another example of Demonstratives being used in temporal a meaning is:

C – 9     hello yotui kɨ meiwerewa = in the year that I have already mentioned

psia war is built from three components:

1. psia is a word which means arrive, and it only ever occurs alongside the verb ar.
2. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
3. ar is a verb which means to go.

Taken together, psia ar is a compound verb which means to arrive, to reach a location or to come out.

wamena is built from three components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. ana is a verb which means to come.
3. -me- is the Imperfective Infix.

As a general rule, only a trained herpetologist can discern the biological sex of most reptiles, including snakes. As a result, the Grammatical Gender of a snake is based on its size and shape.

Like a centipede, a snake is unambiguously long and thin in shape, which implies that it should be Masculine.

However, in contrast to the languages of Western Europe, Grammatical Gender is a somewhat more fluid affair in Yeri. In practice, this means that you can use the less intuitive Gender in order to emphasise a certain characteristic of a particular noun.

In this sentence, the designation of Feminine Gender to harkanogɨl, or snake, indicates that it is very small.

wgamera is built from three components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. gara is a verb which means to dig.
3. -me- is the Imperfective Infix.

I would have assumed that wgamera would carry the Object Suffix –wan, but I assume that in the context wherein it appears, it is not strictly necessary.

ndodi is built from two components:

1. n- is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Subject Prefix.
2. dodi is a verb which means to stand or to wait.

The complete phrase luten ndodi means something along the lines of the sore which stands.

Having pondered it further, I feel that lute has acquired the Masculine Suffix in order to imply that the open wound is particularly large, thus explaining how the snake was able to enter.

wde is built from three components:

1. w- is the Relational Prefix.
2. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Possessed Object Suffix.
3. -de is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Possessor Suffix.

Taken altogether, the phrase luten ndodi hagɨl wde means the sore which stands on her back.

wnobiada is built from four components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. nobia is a verb which means to talk or to speak.
3. -da is the 3^rd Person Augmented Object Suffix.
4. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Object Suffix.

haraharahi is an Invariable noun which means friend, and it can refer to men and women alike.

ye is the 2^nd Person Singular Pronoun.

In order to create the 2^nd Person Plural Pronoun, one simply adds the rare Plural Suffix –m. thus creating yem.

ko is an alternate form of the particle kua, which means still, yet or first, depending on context.

nɨtren is built of four components:

1. n- is the 2^nd Person Singular Subject Prefix.
2. ɨtr is the Irrealis form of the verb atr, which means to see.
3. -e is the 3^rd Person Augmented Object Suffix.
4. -n is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Object Suffix.

What, I hear you ask, is the Irrealis?

Up until this point, all our verbs have been in their Realis forms. Basically, the Realis is used for positive statements of fact.

The Irrealis has a number of uses. In this sentence, the Irrealis carries an Imperative function.

In practice, this means that nɨtren is a command which means you look at him!

maŋan is built from two components:

1. maŋa is an Interrogative (or Question Word) which, depending on context, means who, which or what.
2. -n is the Singular Masculine Suffix.

maŋa has two different plural forms, depending on whether one is asking about more than one human or more than one inanimate.

The Inanimate Plural is the regular maŋai while the Human Plural is magɨl.

nbanokɨl is built from three components:

1. n- is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Subject Prefix.
2. b- is the 1^st Person Singular Object Prefix.
3. anokɨl is a Realis verb which means to bite.

Yeri contains three Object Prefixes. These are:

The 1^st Person Singular Object Prefix b-.

The 1^st Person Plural Object Prefix w-.

The 2^nd Person Object Prefix y-. (In this respect, it acts in a similar manner to the English 2^nd Person.)

wnobia is built from two components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. nobia is a verb which means to speak or to talk.

hiro, which can also take the alternate form hirua, is a particle which expresses negation in general.

ya is a particle whose meaning, at least in linguistic terms, remains unclear.

hiro ya is a relatively common phrase which means not at all.

lolewa, meanwhile, is an Invariate noun which refers to any number of unspecified things.

miakual is the Plural form of miakua, which means frog.

nadɨ is a word which, depending on context, can mean either only or very.

wnamenia is built from three components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. nania is a verb which means to go into or to go inside.
3. -me- is the Imperfective Infix.

lutei is the plural form of lute.

I am unsure as to why it is in the Plural and not the Singular.

worme is built from three components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. or is a Realis verb which means to lie down.
3. -me is the Imperfective Infix, but because the verb has only a single syllable it becomes a Suffix.

mani is a noun that refers to the inside of something.

yawi is a noun which means tail. Its plural form is yawigal.

wden is built from three components:

1. w- is the Relational Prefix.
2. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Possessed Item Suffix.
3. -den is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Possessor Suffix.

For some reason, when a Genitive Pronoun contains a 3^rd Person Possessor, whether it be Plural or Singular, it can only take the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Possessed Item Suffix.

In practice, regardless as to the Gender of the Possessed Item, only wde and wden are the valid forms of her and his respectively.

The forms *wnde and *wnden are invalid.  

wnobiada is built from four components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. nobia is a verb which means to talk or to say.
3. -da is one of several Yeri Augmented Object Suffixes.
4. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Object Suffix.

harkanogɨl is the Singular form of the noun harkanogɨ, which means snake.

nanor is built from two components:

1. n- is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Subject Prefix.
2. anor is a verb which means to descend.

In the previous sentence, the snake took Feminine Gender, whereas in this one, it takes Masculine Gender. This is an interesting example illustrating how Gender Assignment in Yeri is somewhat of a more fluid affair compared to Western Europe.

Here, we can imagine that the speaker chose to assign the snake as Masculine in order to elicit the image of a snake wriggling its long thin body into the woman’s sore.

norme is built from three components:

1. n- is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Subject Prefix.
2. or is a verb which means to lie down.
3. -me is the Imperfective Suffix, which becomes an Infix following the 1^st syllable in longer words.

hamual is a singular noun which means belly or stomach. The plural form is hamualgɨl.

As you may have noticed, it does not take any Locative Suffixes or Prefixes. Indeed, as far as most nouns are concerned, the Locative is implied via context, and is not explicitly stated.

wye is built from three components:

1. w- is the Relational Prefix.
2. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Possessed Item Suffix.
3. -ye is the 2^nd Person Singular Pronoun Suffix.

The 3^rd Person Pronouns are the only ones that take a slightly different form when present in a Genitive Pronoun, i.e. the initial /t/ undergoes lenition and becomes a /d/. (In layman’s terms, it softens.)

mɨlmkialen is built from five components:

1. m- is the 1^st Person Singular Subject Prefix
2. ɨlkial is the Irrealis form of the verb alkual, which means to pull.
3. -m- is the Imperfective Infix.
4. -e is the 3^rd Person Augmented Object Suffix.
5. -n is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Object Suffix.

Here we see another purpose of the Yeri Irrealis, which is to indicate a Negative Sentence.

In Yeri, all negated verbs take the Irrealis Mood.

When it appears between two consonants, the Imperfective Infix –me- is abbreviated to –m-.

This also show us that, as far as Yeri is concerned, the syllable break occurs between the /l/ and the /k/. Some might have assumed that it came between the /k/ and the following vowel, but that does not appear to be the case.

In this sentence, aro is an alternate form of the verb ar, which means to go (and which appears shortly where it is preceded by the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix Ø-).

I mention this because the verb aro actually means to carry by resting the strap of a container across the forehead.

tɨnogɨl is a noun which can mean village or villages.

amo is built from two components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. amo is the irregular Imperfective Conjugation of the verb o, which means to be.

As mentioned earlier, the noun wul refers to any form of water.

wo is built from two components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. o is a verb which means to be.

The adjective weli can mean either to be hot in temperature or the often related meaning of to be painful.

Taken altogether, the phrase amo wul wo weli means they made the water hot.

However, the literal meaning of amo wul wo weli is somewhere along the lines of they are, the water is hot.

ameyaka is built from five components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. aya is a verb which means to give to someone.
3. -me- is the Imperfective Infix.
4. -ka is the 3^rd Person Augmented Object Suffix.
5. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Object Suffix.

The verb aya can also mean to plant something. When it is used in this context, it takes the 3^rd Person Feminine and Masculine Object Infixes –he- and –ne- respectively.

woheka is built from three components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. oka is a Realis verb which means to drink.
3. -he- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Object Infix.

oka has an irregular Irrealis in the form of okɨ. (It is irregular since it is typically the 1^st vowel in a Realis verb that will change in order to create the Irrealis.)

I mention this because okɨ also functions as a Realis verb, where it means to use, and furthermore takes the regular Irrealis form iekɨ.

wormia is built from two components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. ormia is the irregular Imperfective form of the verb o, which means to be located at.

As you may have noticed from this and other sentences, Yeri does not use any equivalent to the word and in order to separate verbs.

Only nouns can be separated with an equivalent to and, and this is done via the verb ode.

goimabɨ is built from three components:

1. gobɨ is an alternate form of the Realis verb goba, which means to bend in half.
2. -i- is the 3^rd Person Plural Object Infix.
3. -ma- is another form of the Imperfective Infix.

When an Object and an Imperfective Infix occur within the same verb, the Object comes first.

Thus, if replace the 3^rd Person Plural Object Infix with the Singular Feminine or Masculine equivalents, you get gohemabɨ and gonemabɨ respectively.

lapaki is the singular form of the noun meaning tongs. Wilson specifies that this refers to “a piece of bamboo, cane or other material that has been bent in half to permit [the] moving of hot items.”

lapaki can take three related plural forms, these being lapakigal, lapakihegal and lapakilgal, though I do not know whether there are conventions governing when they are used.

olbɨl is built from two components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. olbɨl is an intransitive verb which means to enter.

yo is a verb that has three meanings, these being i) a path or a road; ii) a door, and; iii) an opening or a hole.

In context, these can be distinguished based on their different plural forms.

For path or road, the plural form is yo lapi; for door, the plural is yobaliagi; and for opening or hole, the plural remains yo.

nobia is built from two components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. nobia is a verb which means to speak or to talk.

nobia ta, which literally means they will speak, here means they want.

This is because the verb nobia can also mean to want, when it is followed by another verb.

amotɨwa is built from four components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. amotɨ is the irregular Imperfective conjugation of the realis verb otɨ, which means to hold something.
3. -wa is the 3^rd Person Augmented Object Suffix.
4. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Object Suffix.

harkanogɨl, which is the singular form of the noun harkanogɨ, means snake. In direct contrast to the languages of Western Europe, it takes in a single sentence both Feminine and Masculine Gender simultaneously.

almkialen is built from five components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. alkial is a verb which means to pull.
3. -m- is the Imperfective Infix.
4. -e is the 3^rd Person Augmented Object Suffix.
5. -n is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Object Suffix.

hiro, which is a general Negation word, here means but, no. As far as I am aware, Yeri lacks a specific word meaning but, and that its meaning is derived from context. 

noimo is built from three components:

1. n- is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Subject Prefix.
2. omo is an irregular form of the verb oga, which means to eat.
3. -i- is the 3^rd Person Plural Object Infix.

omo is used instead of oga when it occurs in a sentence containing predicate morphemes.

ni is an Invariate noun which means intestines, and it also appears in the expression ni nɨbuegi, which means food.

weide is built from three components:

1. w- is the Relational Prefix.
2. -ei is the 3^rd Person Plural Possessed Item Suffix.
3. -de is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Possessor Suffix.

I am not entirely sure as to why noimo appears twice in this sentence. Perhaps this is to indicate that due to their length, the intestines took a long time to eat.

nonemo is built from three components:

1. n- is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Subject Prefix.
2. omo is a verb which means to eat.
3. -ne- is the 3^rd Person Singular Masculine Object Suffix.

wan is an Invariate noun which means heart, and based on the previous verb, it appears to take Masculine Gender Agreement.

wde is built from three components:

1. w- is the Relational Prefix.
2. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Possessed Item Suffix.
3. -de is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Possessor Suffix.

As mentioned earlier, if the Genitive Pronoun contains a 3^rd Person Possessor and a 3^rd Person Singular Possessed Item, the latter always takes Feminine Gender Agreement, even if the Possessed Item is Masculine.

In context, this means that the seemingly correct *wan wnde is not allowed.

hamote is a noun which means individual, and yuta is an adjective which means female.

When placed next to one another, we get the form hamote yuta, which means woman or that woman.

walmo is built from two components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. almo is an intransitive verb which means to die.

In case you were wondering, almo takes the regular Imperfective Infix –me-, which gives us the form almemo.

wodɨ is built from two components:

1. w- is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Subject Prefix.
2. odɨ is an alternate form of the verb ode, which means to be with, though it often takes the translation and.

I assume that odɨ is the form taken by ode when it is not followed by an Object Suffix.

In this instance, the lack of an Object Suffix could be in order to create cross-verbal agreement with walmo, which never takes an Object Suffix.

ode is built from three components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. ode is a verb which means to be with.
3. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Object Suffix.

Here, ode combines with the following verb ormia to create ode ormia, which roughly translates as they sit with her, even though a more literal translation would be they are with her, they sit.

aro and ormia are both built from two components, the first in each case being the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix Ø-.

ormia is the irregular Imperfective form of the verb o, which means to stay; aro is an alternate form of the verb ar, which means to go.

gamerade is built from five components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. gara is a verb which means to dig, although in this instance it means to bury.
3. -me- is the Imperfective Infix.
4. -de is the 3^rd Person Augmented Object Suffix.
5. -Ø is the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Object Suffix.

The verb gara takes on of two Augmented Object Suffixes. When a human is being buried, it takes the Augment Suffix –de; when anything else is being dug or buried, the Augment Suffix –wa is used.

aro is built from two components:

1. Ø- is the 3^rd Person Plural Subject Prefix.
2. aro is an alternate form of the verb ar, which means to go.

As far as I can discern, the short phrase aro yotu hepa has a rough literal meaning of they go – that is all.

yotu is built from three components:

1. yot is the Yeri Base Demonstrative.
2. -u is the Middle Distance Suffix.
3. -Ø is the Singular Feminine Suffix.

For a more in-depth discussion of the Yeri Demonstratives, I refer you to the analysis under Sentence 11.

hepa is built from two components:

1. he is a the Continuous Particle.
2. -pa is the Additive Suffix.

In Yeri, the Continuous Particle has a number of functions.

First, it indicates that the action or event is still ongoing, as the name suggests.

In addition, it also implies a permissive attitude towards the event or action, e.g. “let it happen” or “it is okay if it happens”.

However, further research is required to understand the Particle’s full range and complexity.  

The Additive Suffix, meanwhile, has a wide range of meanings, most of whose translations lie somewhere along the lines of also, too or still. It takes a number of forms depending on where it occurs, but they all starts with either /p/ or /b/, followed by a single vowel.

pɨrsakai is a Singular Noun which means story, although the connotation is typically legend, and it can take the alternate form sɨprakai, this being formed via Metathesis (the process whereby two sounds, typically consonants, swap places.)

The plural form is pɨrsakaigɨl or sɨprakaigɨl.

tiawa is the Singular Feminine form of the adjective tiawa, which simply means short.

laladɨl is an Adjectival Intensifier which means very. It only occurs alongside two adjectives, these being tiawa, which means short, and sɨpekɨ, which means to be little or small in size or amount.

nadɨ is also another Adjectival Intensifier that also means very, but it can occur alongside any adjective.

antjeriñ is built from two components:

1. an- is the Body Part Classifier.
2. -tjeriñ is a Suffix which means one.

In Warray, there are numbers from 1 to 5, and they are all built from a number of components.

The numbers are:

1 – antjeriñ; 2 – keraŋlul; 3 – keraŋantjeriñ; 4 – yelikeraŋlul; and 5 – annepattjeriñ.

We will explore the components later, but for now you should be able to discern some patterns.

altumaru is built from two components:

1. al- is the Human Female Classifier Prefix.
2. tumaru is a noun which means old woman.

Although it is referred to as the Human Female Classifier Prefix, al- also occurs on nouns that refer to humans without inherent or explicit gender. (Although it is worth noting that not all human nouns require a Noun Classifier Prefix.)

yuŋuyiñ is the irregular Imperfective Conjugation of the verb yaŋ, which means to go, to walk or to fly.

There is no explicit Subject Prefix, which means that the action is being carried out by a single man or woman.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for yaŋ:

Imperative:               yaŋ

Realis:                       yatjiñ

Irrealis:                      yiñ

Imperfective:            yuŋuyiñ

puk:aniñ is the regular Imperfective Conjugation of the verb puk:aŋi, which means to hunt.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for puk:aŋi:

Imperative:               puk:aŋ

Realis:                       puk:aŋi

Irrealis:                      puk:an

Imperfective:            puk:aniñ

In general, the Imperfective is used to indicate a habitual or recurring action.

Because both yuŋuyiñ and puk:aniñ are in the Imperfective, the two activities are inherently related.

tjatpulayi is the Ergative Case Declension of the noun tjatpula, which means old man.

In Warray, the Ergative Case marker is only used in order to clear up potential ambiguity. In most contexts, it is optional.

(For whatever reason, tjatpula does not take the Human Male Classifier Prefix a-. This is true for a surprisingly high number of nouns referring to human males.)

kuntiyiniñ is the regular Imperfective Conjugation of the verb kuntiyiñ, which means to smile, to laugh or to play, with it being possible for the last to indicate inappropriate sexual behaviour.

Here is the full Conjugation Table for kuntiyiñ:

Imperative:               kuntiyi

Realis:                       kuntiyiñ

Irrealis:                      kuntiyin

Imperfective:            kuntiyiniñ

anwak is an Adjective which means little or small.

mamam is a noun which means both daughter and son. Warray does not have individual words that refer exclusively to one or the other.

akalawu is the Dative Case Declension of the pronoun akala, which means he.

Unlike most languages discussed thus far, Warray actually makes a  grammatical distinction between he and she.

Also in Warray, the Dative Case takes on a Genitive function, and thus akalawu can mean his or to him.

katjiyaŋ is built from two components:

1. katji is the Non-Proximate Demonstrative Pronoun.
2. -yaŋ is the Origin Suffix.

katji is a direct equivalent to the English word that, e.g.

C – 10  ŋiri katji kawawamal = That dog is barking

(Strangely enough, there is no Warray Proximate Demonstrative Pronoun, i.e. an equivalent to the English word this.)

As its name suggests, the Origin Suffix indicates that something functions as a source or cause of something. It can also indicate movement away from an object or location.

By itself, katjiyaŋ is a Conjunction which, depending on context, translates into English as then, therefore, because of (this), thus and so.

Here, altumaru has received the translation of woman. This is to avoid repetition of the word old.

In order to refer to a woman in general, the Warray word is alkulpe, while the term for Warray woman is alwaray.

Last, but not least, we have pulmiñ, which is the regular Realis Conjugation of pulmal, which means to be angry or to become angry.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for pulmal:

Imperative:                           pulma

Realis:                                   pulmiñ

Irrealis:                                  pulmal

Imperfective:                        pulmalañ

Non-Complete Potential:      pulmi

Warray has no fewer than 8 regular Verb Conjugation Paradigms. For most of these Paradigms, the Imperfective and Non-Complete Potential are identical.

In this sentence, altumaru does not take the Ergative Case Suffix because the context makes it unnecessary.

pokliliñ is the irregular Imperfective Conjugation of the verb poklam, which means to make a string by rubbing the fibres of the banyon tree on one’s thighs.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for poklam:

Imperative:               pokli

Realis:                       poklam

Irrealis:                      poklen

Imperfective:            pokliliñ

puñi means banyon tree. In his grammar, Harvey identifies it as the species Ficus virens.

As well as meaning rope and Milky Way, anpik can also refer to a string or a fence.

pulam is the Realis Conjugation of the regular verb pulam, which means to make or to cure.

Here is the Conjugation Paradigm for pulam:

Imperative:               pula

Realis:                       pulam

Irrealis:                      pulan

Imperfective:            pulaniñ

In this sentence, we have an Imperfective and a Realis verb. In this situation, the implication is that the Imperfective verb is done in order to achieve the Realis one, e.g. the banyon is rubbed on the thigh in order to make a rope.

tjatpula means old man.

yatjiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the irregular verb yaŋ, which means to go.

Now, you may be wondering how Warray distinguishes between Past, Present and Future Tense.

This is done via the choice of Subject Prefix.

In Warray, Subject Prefixes fall into one of three categories: Complete, Non-Complete and Potential.

Here, we need only concern ourselves with the first two.

yaŋ is an Active Verb, which means that it operates under a Past/Non-Past Distinction.

The 3^rd Person Singular Complete Subject Prefix is Ø-, giving us:

C – 11  akala yatjiñ = he went

C – 12  alkala yatjiñ = she went

Meanwhile, the 3^rd Person Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix is pa-, giving us:

C – 13  akala payatjiñ = he goes or he will go

C – 14  alkala payatjiñ = she goes or she will go

puk:aŋi is the Realis Conjugation of the regular verb puk:aŋi, which means to hunt.

tjipak:u is the Dative Declension of the noun tjipak, which refers to fish in general.

In his grammar, Mark Harvey includes the names of 18 specific fish and 2 unidentified species. That said, only a few of them include the Latin names, which are:

tumtingtingu = Glossogobius giurus

tuntun = Glossamia aprion

mun = Ophieleotris aporos and Oxyeleotris lieolatus

kalalpa = Nematolosa erebi

wayiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the regular verb wayiñ, which means to return, both in the sense of to go back as well as to come back.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for wayiñ:

Imperative:               wayi

Realis:                       wayiñ

Irrealis:                      wayin

Imperfective:            wayiniñ

ñiliñ is the Realis Conjugation of the regular verb ñilal, which means either to bring or to bring up.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for ñilal:

Imperative:                           ñila

Realis:                                   ñiliñ

Irrealis:                                  ñilal

Imperfective:                        ñilalañ

Non-Complete Potential:      ñili

Last, but not least, we have tjipak, which means fish.

The prior appearance of tjipak:u confirms that it is the man who hunted and brought the fish, rather than te other way round.

punwuy is built from two components:

1. pun- is the 3^rd Person Plural Object Prefix.
2. wuy is the Realis Conjugation of the regular verb wuy, which means to give.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for wuy:

Imperative:               wu

Realis:                       wuy

Irrealis:                      wun

Imperfective:            wuniñ

As mentioned previously, mamam means son/daughter while akalawu means to him/of him or his.

keraŋlul is the Warray word for two. Its construction is explored below.

wuyi is the Realis Conjugation of the irregular verb wuyi, which means to hang or to climb.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for wuyi:

Imperative:               wuy

Realis:                       wuyi

Irrealis:                      wuñ

Imperfective:            wuniñ

In this sentence, anpik takes on the meaning of rope.

natlakiñ is built from two components:

1. nat- is the Unexpected Object Prefix.
2. lakiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the irregular verb lakil, which has many meanings.

The Unexpected Object Prefix is used to clarify something that could be unclear. In this context, it indicates that the rope is the thing that was dropped, since the woman is not specifically mentioned.

The full range of meanings for lakil is to chuck, to toss, to push, to drop, to throw without aiming and to put somewhere without a location in mind.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for lakil:

Imperative:               laki

Realis:                       lakiñ

Irrealis:                      lakil

Imperfective:            lakilañ

yañ is the Imperative Conjugation of the highly irregular verb tjim, which means to come, to arrive or to approach.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for tjim:

Imperative:               yañ

Realis:                       tjim

Irrealis:                      tjimin

Imperfective:            tjiminiñ

altumaruyi is the Ergative Case Declension of the noun altumaru, which means old woman. The Ergative Case specifies that it is the woman who is doing the talking, although here it is clear from the presence akalawu, which specifies that it is the man who is being told something.

tjiyi is the Realis Conjugation of the irregular verb tjiyi, which means: to say, to do, to call, to promise, to mean and to believe.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for tjiyi:

Imperative:               tji

Realis:                       tjiyi

Irrealis:                      tjiñ

Imperfective:            tjuŋutjiñ

You’re probably wondering why I chose to use the irregular form clumb as oppose to the far more common form climbed.

Well, a few months ago I read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and I came to have an aesthetic preference for the one over the other. Indeed, even though I spent the first 23 years of my life ignorant to the existence of clumb, I have come round to the perspective that climbed looks more irregular.

Personally, I preferred Tom Sawyer, which I read just before. I’ve never been able to warm to phonetic spelling, and the more fantastical plot of Huck didn’t quite strike the right tone following Tom’s more down-to-earth subject matter.

I should, however, admit that my favourite scene in both was the boys‘ attempts to rescue the slave Jim in Huck Finn. I shan’t spoil it for those who wish to discover it for themselves.

mi is the Realis Conjugation of the highly irregular verb mi, which means to get, to grab or to pick up.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for mi:

Imperative:               may

Realis:                       mi

Irrealis:                      mañ

Imperfective:            mayim

milwikyi is the Instrumental Declension of the noun milwik, which here means mussel shell.

The Instrumental Case, as suggested by the name, indicates the tool or instrument with which an action was achieved.

Warray has two words that translate into English as mussel. While Harvey implies that they are separate species, it is not explicitly stated, nor any Latin names given.

tukpu is merely defined as mussel species, while milwik specifies a mussel whose home is in fresh water.

tañmi is the Realis Conjugation of the verb tañmi, which means to cut. It follows the same pattern as the previous verb mi, observe:

Imperative:               tañmay

Realis:                       tañmi

Irrealis:                      tañmañ

Imperfective:            tañmayim

liñ is the Realis Conjugation of the highly irregular verb liñ, which means to fall.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for liñ:

Imperative:               liñitañ

Realis:                       liñ

Irrealis:                      liŋan

Imperfective:            liŋaniñ

In case you were wondering, tjatpula is a fully independent word.

Accordingly, the general word for man is nal, and the word for a Warray man in particular is awaray.

Harvey does not include a specific word for old in his dictionary, nor one for young. Whether this is due to an absence of such words, or because they were victims to the loss of vocabulary among the last speakers, is unclear.

altumaruyi is built from three components:

1. al- is the Female Human Classifier Prefix.
2. tumaru is a noun which means old woman.
3. -yi is the Ergative Case Suffix.

milwikyi, meanwhile, is built from two components:

1. milwik is a noun which means mussel or mussel shell.
2. -yi is the Instrumental Case Suffix.

As its name suggests, the Instrumental Case Suffix indicates the tool with which an action was carried out.

In languages where the Ergative Case is present, it is not uncommon for it to perform double duty as another Case, typically either the Instrumental or the Locative.  

amukuy is a common Warray Exclamation which means okay or enough.

I wonder whether this comes from the English phrase “I’m okay”.

Warray has a number of other Exclamations. Here they all are:

amala = no

kalkal = slow down or wait

katjak:u = true

kuttjari = good thing

lukluk = hurry up

matjpatji = shut up

mulkiŋla = poor fellow or poor thing

yak:ay = heh

yu = yes

yuyu = leave it

At this point, we are about to go through the exact same story again. As a result, I shall try to avoid repeating myself, and thereby provide deeper and wider exploration into the language.

Earlier we mentioned that numbers in Warray are built from a number of components. These are the components in their isolated forms:

1. an-: the Body Part Classifier Prefix.
2. -tjeriñ, which means one.
3.  keraŋ, which means two.
4. -lul: the Pair Suffix.
5. yeli-, a Prefix that appears only once throughout the entire language.
6. nepat, a noun which means hand.

In Warray, all 5 numbers are built from a combination of these constituents, even the numbers for one and two. A couple of them go further and enjoy a literal translation.

Here is the exact breakdown:

1:       antjeriñ = an- + tjeriñ

2:       keraŋlul = keraŋ + -lul

3:       keraŋantjeriñ = keraŋ + an + tjeriñ (lit. two-one)

4:       yelikeraŋlul = yeli + keraŋ + lul

5:       annepattjeriñ = an + nepat + tjeriñ (lit. one hand)

waŋu is the Dative Case Declension of waŋ, which means game, meat or animal.

The Dative Case, in contrast to the other cases present in Warray, has three different forms, these being:

-yu                this occurs after the /i/ final verb forms of the –ŋi, -mi and –Ø conjugations, but only when it is not preceded by a palatal consonant, i.e. /tj/, /tj:/, /ñ/ and /y/.

-wu               this occurs after all other vowel final stems, as well as on pum.

-u                  this occurs on all other consonant final stems (or words).  

In total, Harvey ascribes 8 functions to the Warray Dative. In this sentence, waŋu exhibits the Purposive function, as can be seen in this example sentence:

C – 15  waŋu ipuk:aŋi kakiŋ = We hunted for meat yesterday

In this sentence, waŋu indicates that the search for meat is the purpose of the hunt.

lam is the Realis Conjugation of the irregular verb lam, which means to spear, to pierce, to shoot or to scratch.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for lam:

Imperative:               li

Realis:                       lam

Irrealis:                      len

Imperfective:            leniñ

pikiriŋu is the Dative Case Declension of the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Pronoun pikiriŋ.

In this context, pikiriŋu takes on the Benefactive function of the Dative Case, i.e. the person on whose behalf the action is carried out.

Here is another example of the Benefactive in action, once again involving meat:

C – 16  waŋ patjiyi kapañilal yapuru = They promised to bring some meat for us

yapuru is the irregular Dative Case Declension of the 1^st Person Plural Inclusive Pronoun yepe.

In context, yapuru specifies that the person being addressed will also receive some of the meat.

luramiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the regular verb luramal, which means to bring back.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for luramal:

Imperative:                           lurama

Realis:                                   luramiñ

Irrealis:                                  luramal

Imperfective:                        luramalañ

Non-Complete Potential:      lurami

leriklik is the irregular Allative Case Declension of the noun le, which means camp, country or nest.

The Allative Case, whereof the regular Suffix is –lik, indicates motion towards something.

Like other cases in Warray, the Allative Case Marker can occur on verbs as well as nouns, observe:

C – 17  paliyatjiñ keŋanawu kirilik tjatpula kaninilik = We are going to that hill over there where the old man sits. (In context, this refers to a dreaming site.)

In this sentence, the Allative Suffix appears twice:

1. kirilik = kiri + lik = to the hill
2. kaninilik = kanini + lik = where he sits

In the latter it acts as the Locative, and creates a link between the two.

alkalawu is built from three components:

1. al- is the Human Female Classifier Prefix.
2. kala is the 3^rd Person Singular Pronoun, though it cannot occur by itself.
3. -wu is the Dative Case Suffix.

Warray, unlike many other Australian languages, makes a distinction between Masculine and Feminine in its 3^rd Person Singular Pronouns. In simpler terms, it possesses a he/she distinction.

Both these pronouns are built with the dummy pronoun kala. I call it a “dummy pronoun” because it never occurs alone, it must always be preceded by either a- or al-, creating akala (Eng. he) or alkala (Eng. she) respectively.

paniniñ is built from two components:

1. pa- is the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Complete Subject Prefix.
2. niniñ is the Imperfective Conjugation of the Irregular Verb ni, which means to sit, to stay or to squat.

In Warray, verbs take Subject and Object Prefixes in order to indicate who is doing what to whom.

Subject Prefixes divide into three categories: the Complete, the Non-Complete and the Potential.

Here are the Complete Subject Prefixes:

1^st Person Singular:               at-                    atniniñ = I was sitting

1^st Person Dual Inclusive:     ma-                  maniniñ = Us two, you and I, were sitting

1^st Person Plural:                   i-                      ininiñ = We were sitting

2^nd Person Singular:              an-                   anniniñ = You were sitting (alone)

2^nd Person Non-Singular:      a-                     aniniñ = All of you were sitting

3^rd Person Singular:               –                       niniñ = She was sitting or he was sitting

3^rd Person Non Singular:       pa-                   paniniñ = They were sitting

If you wish to learn more about the Warray Subject Prefixes, all of them are explored in the chapter dedicated to Warray.

antjeriñwuy is built from two components:

1. antjeriñ is the Warray word for one.
2. -wuy is a Suffix which is glossed in the text as one of.

As much as I tried, I could not find an explanation for the Suffix –wuy.

What I can tell you is that it can also occur by itself as a verb meaning to give.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for wuy:

Imperative:               wu

Realis:                       wuy

Irrealis:                      wun

Imperfective:            wuniñ

Curiously, wuy is a completely regular verb in Warray.

pakuntiyiniñ is built from two components:

1. pa- is the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Complete Subject Prefix.
2. kuntiyiniñ is the Realis Conjugation of the regular verb kuntiyiniñ, which means to smile, to laugh or to play.

almutek is the Human Female form of the adjective mutek, which means big.

If we add to this the Inchoative Suffix –nayiñ, we get the verb almuteknayiñ, which means either to become female human big, or more succinctly to become pregnant. For example:

C – 17  almuteknayiñ atjaŋki anwak kakankan = She has become female big. Maybe she will have the baby (soon) or She is pregnant. Maybe she will have the baby (soon).

Consequently, almuteknayiñ cannot be used to refer to a human male.

Instead, one uses amuteknayiñ, which means to become human male big or to become a man. For example:

C – 18  amuteknayiñ nalwiru kayiñyiñ lam = He has become an adult, he is a proper man, his beard has pierced through.

As far as I can tell, the Inchoative Suffix behaves like a regular –ñ Class Verb.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for –nayiñ:

Imperative:               -nayi

Realis:                       -nayiñ

Irrealis:                      -nayin

Imperfective:            -nayiniñ

Warray, in fact, has two Inchoative Suffixes, one for Adjectives and one for Nouns.–nayiñ is used for nouns (though this category behaves differently than in English, as seen in the examples above.)

punnay is built from two components:

1. pun- is the 3^rd Person Plural Object Prefix.
2. nay is the Realis Conjugation of the regular verb nay, which means to see or to look.

Warray has a total of 7 Object Prefixes, and these are:

1^st Person Singular:               pan-                pannay = She saw me

2^nd Person Singular:              ana-                 ananay = She saw you

3^rd Person Singular:               –                       nay = She saw him

1^st Person Plural:                   in-                    innay = She saw us

2^nd Person Plural:                  in-                    innay = She saw all of you

3^rd Person Plural:                   pun-                punnay = She saw them

In addition, the 3^rd Person Plural Object Prefix has the variant put-, which only occurs with a 1^st Person Singular Subject Prefix.

All of the 1^st Person Singular Subject Prefixes also end in /t/, observe:

Complete:                 at-                    atputnay = I saw them

Non-Complete:         pat-                 atpatnay = I see them or I will see them

Potential:                  kat-                 amala atkatnay = I do not see them or I will not see them or I did not see them

In addition, when it is followed by put-, the Subject Prefix at- is typically omitted, but this is not obligatory.

As well as having both Subject and Object Prefixes, Warray also has a number of Portmanteau Prefixes, i.e. prefixes which combine both subject and prefix.

All the Portmanteau Prefixes include a 1^st Person Subject and a 2^nd Person Object. We will list them all now.

1^st Person Singular Subject > 2^nd Person Singular Object:

Complete:                 ariñ-                ariñnay = I saw you

Non-Complete:         pariñ-              pariñnay = I see you

Potential:                  kariñ-              amala kariñnay = I did not see you

1^st Person Singular Subject > 2^nd Person Plural Object:

Complete:                 aritj-                aritjnay = I saw all of you

Non-Complete:         paritj-             paritjnay = I will see all of you

Potential                   karitj-             amala karitjnay = I do not see all of you

1^st Person Plural Subject > 2^nd Person Object

Complete:                 ini-                   ininay = We saw you or We saw all of you

Non-Complete:         panini-            panininay = We see you or We will see all of you

Potential:                  kanini-            amala kanininay = We will not see you

Before we move on, it is worth mentioning that Subject and Object Prefixes follow this pattern:

1. 1^st Person Subject
2. 2^nd and 3^rd Person Potential Subject
3. Object
4. 2^nd and 3^rd Person Non-Potential Subject

Of course, the category of 1^st Person Subject also includes the aforementioned Portmanteau Suffixes. I referred it to a “pattern” as opposed to an “order” because, ultimately, a verb can only take a single Subject Suffix.

neŋkiñ is defined as a Hesitation Form.

Harvey gives it the translation of whatchamacallit, but I prefer my form because it cultivates a sense that the speaker is addressing the listener.

In addition to this, Warray possesses a number of Particles or Prefixes which indicate Attitudes, Knowledge and Predictions. I shall list a few examples here.

1. kul-

This indicates that the sentence or clause represents the speaker’s opinion. Examples include:

C – 19  ampaampa punkakankan kulakupam = How many have you got? I think it is too many.

kulakupam = I think it is too many.

akupam = lots

C – 20  kulŋiñaŋ katji kayuyu = I do not know what that is (lit. I think unknown lying)

kulŋiñaŋ = I do not know what

ŋiñaŋ = what

2. kuñ

This indicates that the speaker, or subject, found out that a previously held belief was true, when it was not.

Here a few example sentences, both with and without kuñ.

C – 21  kuñ wañlak paliyatjiñ itjiyi = I thought that we said we were going today

wañlak paliyatjiñ itjiyi = We said we were going today

In addition, it can also be translated as mistakenly, for example

C – 22  wek kuñ kattirimpun = I was mistakenly trying to light a fire

wek kattirimpun = I was trying to light a fire

(In Harvey’s Grammar, the original sentence precedes to explain that the firewood was wet.)

pulanu is built from two components:

1. pulan is the Irrealis Conjugation of the regular verb pulam, which means to make or to cure.
2. -u is the Dative Case Suffix.

When attached to a verb, the Dative Case has a number of functions. In this sentence, the Dative appears to indicate a Causal relationship between cutting the banyon fibres and making the rope.

Another example would be:

C – 22  pulpil lakiñ wikyaŋ piŋu = He is sick from drinking

(piŋu = from drinking)

piŋu is built from two components.

1. piŋ is the Realis Conjugation of the irregular verb pil, which means to drink.
2. -u is the Dative Case Suffix.

Here, the Dative quite clearly shows that the drinking is the cause of this poor soul’s sickness.  

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for pil:

Imperative:               pi

Realis:                       piŋ

Irrealis:                      pil

Imperfective:            pilpilaŋ

anpuruyu, meanwhile, is built from two components:

1. an- is the Body Part Classifier Prefix.
2. puruyu is an Adjective which means long, although in other contexts it can also mean tall.

In case you were wondering, the opposite of anpuruyu is antatjpik:u, meaning short.

Although Warray has four Noun Classes, it is not obligatory for Adjectives to agree with them. This is in stark contrast to Warray Nouns, whose interactions with Noun Class Prefixes are far more predictable.

To quote Harvey, “in general [adjectives] probably fail to display [agreement] as often as they display it”.

kawuy is a word which translates into English as again.

I could not find anything particularly interesting about this word, other than that it bears a stark similarity to the Temporal word kak:wuy, which means after.

This, fortunately, leads us into a brief exploration of the Warray Temporals, which divide into three categories:

1. Temporals which illustrate the relation between two points in time:

yitjmi                        before / already

wañlak                     now / just then / soon

kak:u / kak:wuy      after

In addition, wañlak has two further variants, these being the reduplicated form wañlawañlak and the idiom wañlak aŋilak (lit. today over here).

An example of the idiom in action is:

C – 23 wañlak aŋilak tumpaymiñ = He blinked just then

The verb tumpaymiñ is built from two components:

1. tum is a noun meaning eye
2. -paymal is an Auxiliary verb which means to open, though it only occurs her (as far as I can see).

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for tumpaymal, which is regular:

Imperative:                           tumpayma

Realis:                                   tumpaymiñ

Irrealis:                                  tumpaymal

Imperfective:                        tumpaymalañ

Non-Complete Potential:      tumpaymi

In turn, this leads us onto a discussion of Compound Verb stems, almost all of which involve a Body Part Noun. Basically, if you do something that affects a particular part of the body, that body part becomes incorporated into the verb itself.

For example:

C – 24  atnepattañmiyiñ = I cut my hand (lit. I hand-cut myself)

This is built from four components:

1. at- is the 1^st Person Singular Complete Subject Prefix.
2. nepat is a noun meaning hand. When a noun undergoes verbal incorporation, it does not require a Classifier Prefix.
3. tañmi is a verb stem meaning to cut.
4. -yiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the Reflexive Suffix –yi, which indicates that the individual is performing the action on him- or herself.

In addition, the compounding can still occur even the action is done to someone else. For example:

C – 25  ariñnepattañmi = I cut your hand (lit. I hand-cut you)

This is built from three components:

1. ariñ- is the 1^st Person Singular Subject > 2^nd Person Singular Object Complete Portmanteau Prefix.
2. nepat is a noun meaning hand.
3. tañmi is the Realis Conjugation of the verb tañmi, which means to cut.

Furthermore, this form of compounding is not restricted to human beings. For example:

C – 26  malawuliyiñ yumpal = The tree has lost its leaves (lit. tree leaves-finished-self)

malawuliyiñ is built from three components:

1. mala is a reduced form of the noun malamala, which refers to dry leaves on the ground.
2. wuli appears to be the Non-Complete Potential form of the verb wulal, which means to finish.
3. -yiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the Reflexive Suffix –yi.

Naturally, the process in Warray is more complex than this, and we lack the time to go into the details now.  

This process of Body Part Noun Incorporation is a feature of most Kunwiñkuan languages, although I don’t know how it differs between members.

wayiñwuy is built from two components:

1. wayiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the verb wayiñ, which means to return.
2. -wuy is a Suffix of whose meaning I am unsure.

As mentioned earlier, Harvey assigns it the gloss of one of.

nattañmi is also built from 2 components:

1. nat- is the Unexpected Object Prefix.
2. tañmi is the Realis Conjugation of the verb tañmi, which means to cut.

Here, the Unexpected Object Prefix indicates that the woman is not cutting the man, but rather something else, in context being the rope.

All these things we have mentioned before. Thus, in order that this section should have original content, I shall include the other Warray Temporals.

The second category of Temporals is thus:

1. Temporals which enjoy “today” as their point of reference:

mariwak:                 a long time ago or in the olden days

kakiŋpawuy            the day before yesterday or a few days ago

kakiŋ                        yesterday

kakiŋ ñikpa             last night

wañlak                     today or nowadays

lariwu                       tomorrow

lariwutjeriñpa         the day after tomorrow or in a few days time

Not only can both meanings of kakiŋpawuy be summarised as the other day, but it can also take the rare-occurring alternate form kakiŋpa.

liñ, as mentioned previously, is the Realis Conjugation of the verb liñ, which means to fall.

ŋumparuwat is built from two components:

1. ŋumparu is a word which means forever.
2. -wat is analysed as a Suffix as to whose meaning Harvey was ignorant.

Unless there is a later work where Harvey, or another expert on Warray, elucidates on the semantic range of the Suffix –wat, then upon my shoulders falls the heavy duty of informing you that it will remain forever unknown.

Nevertheless, I do not wish to end on a sombre note, so we shall explore the final category of Temporals:

iii.      Temporals that refer to a specific period of time

ñikpa                        night

ñikpayaŋ                  morning (lit. from the night)

tjumi                         afternoon

tjanti                         week (possibly derives from the English word Sunday)

tjipiñ                         year or wet season

paŋkerin                  dry season

puŋkataŋ                 the onset of the wet season

Harvey’s informants did not habitually use the words paŋkerin or puŋkataŋ, and only produced them after Harvey consulted an earlier list by Spencer. Instead, this is the phrase with which they referred to the dry season:

C – 27  wik katilmalu = when the rains dry up

wik means rain or water in general.

katilmalu is built from three components:

1. ka- is the 3^rd Person Singular Non-Complete Prefix.
2. tilmal is the Irrealis Conjugation of the regular verb tilmal, which means to dry up.
3. -u is the Dative Suffix.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for tilmal:

Imperative:                           tilma

Realis                                    tilmiñ

Irrealis:                                  tilmal

Imperfective:                        tilmalañ

Non-Complete Potential:      tilmi

As a general rule, the Warray seem to have measured the passage of years by counting the number of wet seasons, hence why tjipiñ can mean both.

Indeed, there even exists the verb tjipiñpum, which means to stay for years or to stay for a long time, for example:

C – 28  tjipiñ ŋulak itjiminiñ ininiñ le itjipiñpuniñ = We used to come here every year and stay for ages

itjipiñpuniñ is built from two components:

1. i- is the 1^st Person Plural Complete Subject Prefix.
2. tjipiñpuniñ is the Imperfective Conjugation of the verb tjipiñpum.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for tjipiñpum:

Imperative:               tjipiñpu

Realis:                       tjipiñpum

Irrealis:                      tjipiñpun

Imperfective:            tjipiñpuniñ

Moreover, you may have noticed that the above list of Temporals is short of a word that translates to day.

In its stead, the word tumkika, which means sleep is used, observe:

C – 29  ñek tjamuñlul panininaynay atjaŋki tumkika keraŋkeraŋ = Grandfather and I will look after you, maybe for a few days

In case you are wondering, the Warray verb for to sleep is yuŋ, which also means to lie or to camp.

Here is the full Conjugation Paradigm for yuŋ:

Imperative:               yuñ

Realis:                       yuŋ

Irrealis:                      yu

Imperfective:            yuyiñ

This concludes our discussion of the Yeri and Warray languages, explored through their myths. In the next article, we will return to the regular Pronoun Chapters with the Wardaman language, which is a language isolated spoken in the Northern Territory of Australia.

Chapter 6: Warray

Warray belongs to the Kuwiñkuan language family, although the word belonged may be more apt in this case, since sadly it passed from this world around the Year of Our Lord 2000.

Within the Kuwiñkuan (or Guwinyguan) family, Warray related to Jawoyn, which is still spoken by around 16 elder speakers in Arnhem Land, Northern Australia.

Warray, meanwhile, was spoken south-east of Darwin in and around the present-day town of Amungal, also known as Adelaide River, principally in the Margaret and upper Adelaide river valleys.

By the time that Harvey began his field studies in the early 1980s, there were only five native speakers of Warray left. As a result, extensive vocabulary loss appears to have been occurred among these speakers.

For example, the language informant Litawi, also known as Mrs Doris White, used this expression:

yul akutjkutj = mud  

yul = ground

akutjkutj = wet

However, when presented with the word burna from a vocabulary list collected by Walter Baldwin Spencer in his 1914 book Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia, Mrs White suddenly recognised it and produced the correct form puna, and stated that it refers to the black soil found on the local floodplains.

This is but one example where Mrs White had trouble recalling words, and Harvey’s dictionary contains only 900 entries. It is probable that Warray had a much larger vocabulary, which may sadly be lost to us forever.

The death of this language cannot be reversed, but I do not want to dwell on this, and instead celebrate the beauty of its features. For this reason, and also so I do not have to change my writing style, I shall refer to this language in the present tense in the following chapter.

(If I remember correctly, then at the end of the previous chapter I referred to Warray as our 1^st extinct Australian Aboriginal language. There will be a second. And a third. At the very least.)

Part 1: Sans sentences:

Due to the highly asymmetrical nature of the Warray pronouns, I shall divide it into each table into two halves, the Singular and the Non-Singular.

What, I hear you ask, is the functional difference between the Feminine and Non-Feminine 3^rd Person Singular Pronouns?

Basically, the 3^rd Person Singular Feminine Pronoun alkala is a direct translation of the English word she. I say this because it can only refer to a human female.

On the other hand, the 3^rd Person Singular Non-Feminine Pronoun akala can mean either he or it. Essentially, it refers to everything except human females.

Now, the only truly plural form in the above table is yepe. Due to the somewhat awkward existence of the irregular dual pronoun ñama, all of the pronouns that end in –riŋ should be referred to more simply as non-singulars, which I shall try to do consistently throughout this chapter.

At this point in previous chapters, I would dive straight into the example sentences. However, as you will learn to understand for yourself, the grammar of Warray is such that this is not the best way to do it.

As we progress through this chapter, we shall gain a greater understanding of how Warray indicates the subject and object of a sentence via the attachment of prefixes to the verb.

Naturally, we shall split this singular table into a number of smaller ones before we move onto our sentences. I do not necessarily expect you to be able to make either heads or tails of this table at this point, but I wanted you to see the whole thing in all its glory so as to better appreciate the complexity of this system.

If you took some time to study this table in its full form, you have probably noticed a number of interesting quirks. For the sake of brevity, we shall explore these when we discuss the reduced tables.

While there are a number of prefixes which include both a 1^st Person Subject and a 2^nd Person Object, most objects have a prefix of their own. You will be either relieved or crestfallen to discover that the following table is much simpler in composition.

Within this table, we see that the prefixes for the 1^st and 2^nd Persons Plural Objects are identical.

Meanwhile, the lack of a 3^rd Person Singular Object prefix is compensated for by the presence of 2 alternatives for its Non-Singular equivalent.

Concerning the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Object prefixes, there is a slight different in usage.

To put it simply, pun- is the default version, while put- is a variant which occurs with all 1^st Person Singular Subject Prefixes (all of which also end in /t/).

When a verb carries both Subject and Object prefixes, they adhere to the following pattern:

1. 1^st Person Subject / kan- 
2. Object
3. 2^nd Person Subject
4. ka-
5. pa-

(It should be borne in mind that a 1st Person Subject and kan- Prefix will never occur in the same verb.)

Thus far, this chapter has proven to be one of the most theory-heavy, having yet to analyse a single sentence. I shall strive to rectify this in the remainder of this chapter, which I have elected to divide into three parts: the Complete, the Non-Complete and the Potential.

Part 2: The Complete Prefixes:

It is possible that the absence of a 1^st Person Dual Exclusive Subject Prefix can be explained by the forgetfulness of Mrs Doris White and her siblings (who were Harvey’s other informants).

However, one should remember that the Dual/Plural distinction only exists among the Inclusive pronouns. Therefore, it might be more probable that the function of a 1^st Person Dual Exclusive Subject is taken up by the Plural Prefix.

Personally, I prefer the latter explanation, since it seems unlikely that all 4/5 of the native speakers whom Harvey insulted would have forgotten it.

Prefix 1: The 1^st Person Singular Complete

6.1       atputnay = I saw them

This verb, which acts as a full sentence in English, is composed of three components: these being

1. The 1^st Person Singular Complete Subject Prefix at-, which is equivalent to the English I.

2. The 3^rd Person Non-Singular Object Prefix put-, which translates directly to them.

3. nay is the Realis coñugation of the verb nay, which means to see.

This brings us to the nature of Warray verbs.

Warray verbs fall into one of two categories, Stative and Active. This distinction is important because it affects how it affects the Tense division.

In Warray, grammatical tense is indicated via the use of prefix.

With Active Verbs, such as nay, the choice of subject prefix creates a Past/Non-Past distinction.

With a Complete Prefix, the verb is in the Past Tense, while with a Non-Complete Prefix, the verb is in the Non-Past Tense, which can be either Present or Future.

Thus, if we replace at- with its Non-Complete equivalent pat-, we get:

6.2       patputnay = I see them or I will see them

We will introduce Stative verbs in the following section.

Prefix 2: The 1^st Person Dual Inclusive Complete:

6.3       mapuntjikmiñ = The two of us, you and I, were afraid of them

This verb is built also from three components:

1. ma–, which is the 1^st Person Dual Inclusive Complete Subject Prefix, which means the two of us, you and I.

2. pun-, which is the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Object Prefix, which directly translates to them.

3. tjikmiñ is the Realis coñugation of the verb tjikmal, which means to fear or to be afraid of and is a Stative verb.

In contrast to Active verbs, which have a Past/Non-Past Tense distinction, the Stative verbs have a Future/Non-Future distinction.

With Complete prefixes, Stative verbs have a Non-Future meaning, which can be either Past or Present Tense. This also means that our above sentence can have this meaning:

6.4       mapuntjikmiñ = The two of us, you and I, are afraid of them

Therefore, if we replace ma- with its Non-Complete equivalent manma-, then we get:

6.5       manmapuntjikmiñ = The two of us, you and I, will be afraid of them

For the time being I shall refrain from delving into the Potential prefixes until I reach that part of the chapter, since these have their own dynamics. What I will say here, however, is that all sentences with a negative meaning take a Potential prefix, regardless of Tense.

Prefix 3: The 1^st Person Plural Complete Subject Prefix:

6.6       imutjpunwaliñ = We yelled out to them together

This verb, meanwhile, is built from four components, which are as follows:

1. i- is the 1^st Person Plural Complete Subject Prefix, which means we.

2. mutj- is a prefix which occurs immediately after the subject prefix that it modifies, and translates as together.

3. pun- is the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Object Prefix, which here means to them.

4. waliñ is the Realis coñugation of the Active verb waliñ, which means to call out.

Since we have a Complete Subject Prefix, waliñ takes on the meaning called out.

As already mentioned, mutj- always occurs immediately after the subject prefix. However, as there are a number of Subject prefixes that occur after the Object prefixes, then the location of mutj- is flexible relative to the Object prefixes.

In addition, mutj- can also take the free form mutjla, for example:

6.7       iyatjiñ mutjla putawan = We went to Darwin together

iyatjiñ = we went

mutjla = together

putawan = Darwin

iyatjiñ is built from two components:

1. i-, the prefix of the hour.

2. yatjiñ, which is the Realis Coñugation of the extremely irregular verb yaŋ, which means to go, to walk and also to fly.

The nature of Verb Coñugation in Warray is a topic which we will discuss in greater detail later in the chapter.

At this point, you may have noticed that none of the above sentences have included the relevant pronouns. I shall try to include a few more in some of the later sentences, since this is series is ostensibly centred round them.

Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that Warray is an extremely pro-drop language.

In fact, I would even go one further and state, based on the example sentences which I have seen, that if the role of a pronoun is covered by the relevant prefix, then its inclusion is highly unusual.  

There are two words that can be used to refer to a prefix (or other linguistic feature) that encodes both subject and object.

In his grammar, Harvey favours the more technical term direferential.

Since I am prone to rhetorical flourishes, I favour the term portmanteau, which I shall employ throughout the rest of this chapter.

To make the exploration of these prefixes somewhat easier to follow, and to arrest the excessive proliferation of vexatious word salads, I shall employ this set of abbreviations:

1sgS = 1^st Person Singular Subject

1plS = 1^st Person Plural Subject

2sgO = 2^nd Person Singular Object

2nsgO = 2^nd Person Non-Singular Object

2ndO = 2^nd Person Object

The symbol “>” will be used to indicate the direction of transitivity, with the Subject on the left-hand side, and the Object on the right-hand side. This is because this particular crocodile stands up for the underdog.

Prefix 4: The 1sgS>2sgO Portmanteau Complete:

6.8       ariñwaliñ. “may ñek:uwu muñtjiwa” ariñtjiyi = I yelled out to you. “Get my knife,” I said to you.

ariñwaliñ = I yelled out to you

may = get

ñek:uwu = my

muñtjiwa = knife

ariñtjiyi = I said to you.

ariñwaliñ is built from two components:

1: ariñ-, which is the 1sgS>2sgO Complete Portmanteau Prefix, which indicates that I am doing the action to you alone.

2. waliñ is the Realis Coñugation of the verb waliñ, which means to yell out or to call out.

waliñ is an Active verb, which means that the presence of a Complete prefix gives it a Past Tense meaning.

may is the Imperative Coñugation of the irregular verb mi, which means to get, to grab or to pick up.

ñek:uwu translates as the English word my, but is built from three components.

However, before we dive into this, you’re probably wondering why there is a colon in the middle of this word.

The reason for this derives from Warray’s consonant inventory, which makes a distinction between Short Stops and Long Stops.

The Short Stops are: /p/, /t/, /tj/ and /k/.

The Long Stops are: /p:/, /t:/, /tj:/ and /k:/.

As is fairly self-explanatory, the difference between these two sets is the length of time for which they are held.

Now, what are the three components of ñek:uwu?

1. ñek, which is the 1^st Person Singular Pronoun.

2. –u is the Oblique Suffix, which turns ñek:u into a 1^st Person Object Pronoun. (It also lengthens the stop at the end of ñek.)

3. –wu is the Dative Suffix, which here takes the role of a Genitive marker, giving us ñek:uwu, which means mine.

(In general, the Dative indicates the Indirect Object of a sentence.

Last but not least to go under the microscope is ariñtjiyi:

1. ariñ is our aforementioned 1sgS>2sgO Complete Portmanteau Prefix.

2. tjiyi is the Realis Conjugation of the irregular verb tjiyi which here means to say, but it can also mean to do, to call, to promise, to mean and to believe.

Before we move on to the next prefix, I will include another example of the Dative in use:

6.9       ŋiri tjatpulawu = The dog belongs to the old man.

ŋiri = dog

tjatpulawu = to the old man

tjatpulawu is the Dative Declension of tjatpula, which means old man.

A more word for word translation of the above sentence is:

6.10     ŋiri tjatpulawu = the dog to the old man

Since, however, the Dative can take on a Genitve meaning, this sentence (as well as 6.9) indicates possession.

Since we are already on the subject, it is worth bringing up the 3 variants of the Dative Suffix:

-yu occurs after the /i/ final verb forms of the –ngi, -mi and –ø Verb Classes, but only when the /i/ is preceded by a /tj/, /tj:/ or /ñ/.

-wu occurs after all other stems (words) ending in a vowel, as well as pum, which is the Realis Conjugation of the verb pum, which means to hit, to kill or to fight.

-u occurs after all other words ending in a consonant.

In addition, there are three irregular Dative forms:

apwuye, which means smelly, becomes anpwuyeru.

yepe, which is the 1^st Person Plural Pronoun, becomes yapuru. It is safe to assume that all other pronouns take regular Dative forms.

kak:u or kak:wuy, both of which mean after, become kak:uyun.

As already mentioned, the Dative case fulfils a number of other functions, some of which we will come across in later sections.

Prefix 5: The 1sgS>2nsgO Complete Portmanteau

6.11     luywayiwu aritjpalawan = I was painting (traditional designs on) all of you with red ochre

luywayiwu = with red ochre

aritjpalawan = I was painting all of you

luywayiwa is the Comitative Case Declension of luywa, which means red ochre.

The Comitative Case is somewhat vague in definition, as some of its functions are also executed by other sentences. However, this is not as much of a problem as one would expect, since it almost, if not always, translates into the English preposition with.

Ochre was an important aspect of traditional Warray ceremonies and spiritual life. Ochre comes in two varieties, these being luywa (red ochre) and pulk (white ochre).

aritjpalawan, meanwhile, is built from two components:

1. aritj- is the 1sgS>2nsgO Complete Portmanteau Suffix.

2. palawan is the Irrealis conjugation of palawam, which means to paint or to rub.

Prefix 6: The 1plS>2ndO Complete Portmanteau

6.12     initjikmiñ = We are afraid of you

This is built of two components:

1. ini- is the 1plS>2ndO Complete Portmanteau prefix.

2. tjikmiñ is the Realis Conjugation of tjikmal which means either to be fear or to be afraid of.

In contrast to the previous two Portmanteau suffixes, this one does not distinguish between the 2^nd Person Singular or Non-Singular.

Therefore, the person uttering this sentence could be afraid of one or more than one person. In addition, this also means that the word is an almost 1-to-1 translation into English.

However, there is another way to express fear (and by extension other mental states), and this can be used to specify the number of feared persons.

6.13     mutj:i iyatjiñ ŋuñu = We were afraid of you alone

mutj:i = fear

iyatjiñ = we are

ŋuñu = of you

ŋuñu is the Dative Declension of ŋuñ, which is the 2^nd Person Singular Pronoun.

If, meanwhile, you are afraid of more than one person, then this pattern gives us the following sentence:

6.14     mutj:i iyatjiñ ñikiriŋu = We were afraid of all of you

Prefix 7: The 2^nd Person Singular Complete Subject:

6.15     mimi natantjiyi = You told uncle

mimi = uncle

natantjiyi = you told

The word mimi means uncle, and refers specifically to mother’s brother.

There is no specific word for father’s brother, because this is the same as the word for father itself, which is pip:i.

As a result, your brother’s father’s children are treated in the same manner as full siblings.

The mirror image of this is true on the other side of the family tree. The word for mother and mother’s sister is pulpul, while the word for father’s sister is tjukuŋ.

Just as before, your mother’s sister’s children are also, for all intents and purposes, the same as your full siblings.

This leads us to an exploration of Warray social organisation.

Warray has a rather complex Section System, which I shall try to explain here.

The Section System dictates whom one can marry.

Warray has 4 Sections, these being tjambit, wimitj, pularan and paŋati.

For reference, I shall refer to the men from these Sections as atjambit, awimitj, apularan and apaŋati respectively. (Here, the Prefix a- acts as the Male Human Prefix, which is identical to the Non-Human Female Prefix on the Pronoun akala.)

On the same token, the women from these Sections are known as altjambit, alwimitj, alpularan and alpaŋati. (al- is the same Human Female Prefix which appears on the Pronoun alkala).

Among these four Sections, there are only four acceptable marriage pairings, and these dictate the Sections to which their children belong:

1. An atjambitj marries an alpaŋati. Their sons are apularan and their daughters are alpularan.

2. An apularan marries an alwimitj. Their sons are atjambitj and their daughters are altjambitj.

3. An apanŋati marries an altjambitj. Their sons are awimitj and their daughters are alwimitj.

4. An awimitj marries an alpularan. Their sons are apaŋati and their daughters are alpaŋati.

Those of you who read that several times may have noticed that each Section may only marry from one other Section, and all their children, regardless of sex, will belong to the same third Section.

The only complication is that the Section to which the children belong is dependent on the sex of each Section-parent.

If you still aren’t quite sure whether you comprehend this system, then maybe the following table will help:

(On a side note, this information comes from earlier research by Spencer. By the time that Harvey conducted his own research, most of the speakers had entirely forgotten this system, among them Litawi, or Mrs White, who was Harvey’s principal informant.

One exception, however, was her sister Mapul, also known as Mrs Dolly Fejo, who remembered that she and her siblings were tjambitj, while her father was an apularan, but their mother was not an alwimitj on account of the fact that she was a woman from the nearby MalakMalak tribe.)

But what, you may be wondering, is the purpose of this system?

Aside from making the spouse-selection process much simpler, what wider benefits does this offer?

Basically, this is used to regulate marriage among first-cousins, which was allowed in Warray society, but only among cross-cousins, i.e. the ones who are not also your siblings (also known as your parallel-cousins).

Here, it is important to consider the genetic differences between your parents and their siblings. In particular, one must remember their biological sex is determined by your grandfather’s half of your genome.

Your grandmother, a human female, has XX sex chromosomes, and therefore can only give your parent an X chromosome.

Your grandfather, a human male, on the other hand, has XY chromosomes, determines whether the parent in question is either your mother or your father.

As a result, your maternal aunt will always have at least one chromosome in common with your mother; and the same is true of your paternal uncle with your father. By extension, this degree of genetic similarity will trickle down into their children.

Since your maternal uncle and mother, as well as your paternal aunt with your father, immediately have one chromosome that is different, then there is a guaranteed point of divergence. And once again, this point of genetic dissimilarity will disseminate into their respective children.

Is this a call to normalise the marriage of first cousins, as long as they are cross-cousins? No, because I am not yet finished.

Let us pretend, for a moment, that I am an apularan. Naturally, this means that my wife is an alwimitj, and that my sons are atjambitj and my daughters are altjambitj.

Since both my children are –tjambitj, they will be obliged to marry –paŋati.

As a result, my sons will give me grandchildren who, like me, are pularan; and my daughters will give me grandchildren who take after my wife in being –wimitj.

Then we repeat this process, and we will reach my great-grand-children.

The grandchildren of my grandsons will be –pularan, and the grandchildren of my granddaughters will be –wimitj.

In this example, my wife and I are Generation 1. Our children are Generation 2, our grandchildren are Generation 3, and so on…

Now, if we assume that the –pularan and –wimitj in Generation 3 did not marry each other, and instead found unrelated people in the same Section, then those in Generation 5 will be each other’s third cousins.

But why do I bring this up?

Third-cousins are a distinct set of cousins, and I will explain why, though it may get uncomfortable for some.

From a short-term point of view, marrying your sister is beneficial as it maximises the number of your own genes that you pass on to your children, since as siblings you probably share some. At the same time, this is also the primary disadvantage, since you are more likely to possess the same faulty genes, causing various genetic defects.

Marrying a first-cousin, whether cross or parallel, is actually quite safe, since your genes are more diverse from one another. However, if they also marry their first-cousins, then the risk of genetic defects increases dramatically, meaning that you have merely postponed it by one generation.

If you follow this line of thought to its endpoint, you will more than likely come across this question: What is the closest relationship where not only I can maximise the number of genes I pass on to my children, but they and their children and every generation of my descendants can pass on the maximum number of genes without any significant increase in the risk of genetic diseases?

That relationship is the third-cousin.

What I mean is that, in theory, everyone could marry their third cousins forever without ever having to worry about their children inheriting genetic diseases.

Therefore, the Warray had a strict system of marriage which helped to ensure that if someone married within the group, they would be pushed towards someone who would be similar enough to increase overall individual gene propagation, and at the same time avoid some of the risks of incest.

Of course, it is not a perfect system, and I’m not saying that they were consciously aware of this rationale. Indeed, this may have encouraged the Warray to marry from other groups, in particular the MalakMalak, which would help to avoid inbreeding depression in a community where first-cousin marriage was allowed.

Anyway, this has probably been enough social anthropology for one day. Let us return to the sentence which triggered this exploration:

6.15     mimi natantjiyi = You told uncle

natantjiyi is built from three components:

1. nat- is the Unexpected Object Prefix.

2. an- is the 2^nd Person Singular Complete Subject Prefix.

3. tjiyi is the Realis Conjugation of the verb tjiyi, which here means to tell.

The Unexpected Object Prefix is optional, which means that this sentence is equally valid:

6.16     mimi antjiyi = You told uncle

In sentence 6.15, the Unexpected Object Prefix acts as an ersatz 3^rd Person Singular Object Prefix. However, what does it actually to, and when do you use it?

Typically, the speaker will utilise the Unexpected Object Prefix if he or she thinks that the listener will not be able to figure out that the Verb contains an Object Prefix.

This may be the case when the speaker is some distance away from the listener, or if communication is somewhat compromised.

This will require a demonstration with these two examples:

6.16     mimi antjiyi = You told uncle

6.17     mimi anatjiyi = Uncle told you

The first component of anatjiyi is the 2^nd Person Singular Object Prefix ana-.

As you can see, although the Prefixes an- and ana- are very similar, and could be confused with one another fairly easily, the difference between them causes a 180^o degree shift in meaning.

Under conditions of perfect communication, this similarity will not cause any problems.

If, on the other hand, there is a hindrance to communication, e.g. the speaker as a stutter or the listener is somewhat preoccupied, then an- could sound like ana- or vice versa.

There are a number of ways to resolve this ambiguity, but in order to specify that your meaning is 6.16, you can include the Unexpected Object Prefix in order to make it known that uncle is the one being told, rather than the one doing the telling.

Therefore, even if the listener were to still mishear antjiyi as anatjiyi, then nat- will specify that it must be the former, because the latter would not have any single coherent meaning.

Prefix 8: The 2^nd Person Non-Singular Subject Prefix:

6.18     anmewel animpiñ altumaruwu = All of you brought some clothes for the old woman

anmewel = clothes

animpiñ = all of you brought

altumaruwu = for the old woman

anmewel is built from two parts.

1. an-, which is the Body Part Prefix.

2. mewel means clothes.

Earlier, we mentioned the Female and Male Human Prefixes, and here we have the Body Part Prefix.

This brings us to a brief discussion of the Warray Noun Class system. This will be brief not because it’s very complicated and it will occur in several parts.

It will be brief because it is not very complex.

Warray has four Noun Classes, each of which is preceded by a prefix. These are:

1. Female Human: al-

2. Male Human: a-

3. Body Part: an-

4. Everything Else: –

The vast majority of nouns fall into the last category, and naturally, there are several exceptions to these categories.

Meanwhile the Body Part Class nouns refer to those things that are not easily separated from the body. This applies not only to humans, but also to all animals and plants.

Harvey lists six exceptions to this rule, a list which he claims is exclusive and total. These can be divided into three categories, each of which has only two nouns.

1. Nouns which should take an- but do not:

palmuk = wing

yatjay = gizzard 

2. Body Part Nouns that do take an- but apparently shouldn’t:

anŋar = fur

anpun = feather 

3. Nouns that take an- but to do not refer to body parts:

anñi = name

anmewel = clothes

This should provide a sufficiently basic guide to the Warray Noun Class System. I won’t delve into it in more detail except in cases where I come across an interesting exception.

animpiñ is built from two components:

1. a- is the 2^nd Person Non-Singular Complete Subject Prefix.

2. nimpiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the verb nimpal, which means to transport something for somebody, though in most contexts it can translate simply as to bring.

altumaruwu is built from three components:

1. the Human Female Classifier Prefix al-.

2. the noun tumaru, which means old woman.

3. the Dative Suffix –wu, which always appears on the recipient of the verb nimpal.

(Curiously, while altumaru always requires the prefix al-, the opposite is true of the previously mentioned tjatpula (old man), which never takes the prefix a-).

Prefix 9: The 3^rd Person Non-Singular Complete Subject:

6.19     patirimal anpat annepeyi = They were crawling on their hands and knees

patirimal = they were crawling

anpat = knee

annepeyi = with the hand

patirimal is built of two components:

1. pa-, which is the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Complete Subject Prefix.

2. tirimal is the Irrealis Conjugation of tirimal, which means to crawl.

anpat has two parts:

1. an-, the Body Part Prefix.

2. pat-, a noun which means knee.

annepeyi is built of three constituents:

1. an–, the Body Part Prefix.

2. nepe, a noun which means hand.

3. –yi, which is the Instrumental Case Suffix.

The Instrumental Case is used to indicate the thing, or instrument, with which something is accomplished. In this example, it translates as on, but in other contexts it can translate as with or by, among others.

As you may have noticed, the Instrumental Case Suffix is identical to the Ergative Case Suffix, which is a common cross-linguistic phenomenon.

In contrast to the Ergative Case Suffix, which is rarely used and optional, the Instrumental Case Suffix is obligatory. It is also rather common, as Warray uses it in circumstances where English would not. For example:

6.20     miralyi tumpitpittjiñ = The sun burnt her face

miralyi = by the sun

tumpitpittjiñ = she face-reddened

miralyi is the Instrumental Case Declension of miral, which means sun.

tumpitpittjiñ is built from three components:

1. tum is a shortened form of the word antum, which means eye or face. When a Body Part noun is incorporated directly into the verb, then it loses the prefix an-. This makes sense because the Prefix an- has other uses, and its inclusion would only lead to confusion.

2. pitpit is a shortened form of the adjective anpitpit:u, which means red.

3. tjiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the Adjectival Inchoative tjiñ.

There is another word ankimitj which also means face, but this is very rarely used, usually replaced in favour of antum, which means eye.

The Inchoative Suffixes serve the same function as the English verb to become. Therefore, the verb pitpittjiñ literally means to become red, or to redden.

If we then attach the noun tum (face), we get the verb tumpitpittjiñ, which literally means to face-redden, although a more natural English translation would be to become red in the face.

In Part 2, the distribution of new concepts and non-linguistic tangents was somewhat bottom-heavy. I shall keep this in mind when writing Parts 3 and 4, although we will see for ourselves how things pan out.

Part 3: The Non-Complete Prefixes:

Prefix 10: The 1^st Person Singular Non-Complete Subject:

6.21     kakulik le patyatjiñ = I will go to grandfather’s camp

kakulik = at grandfather

le = camp

patyatjiñ = I will go

kakulik is the Locative Case Declension of kaku, which means father’s father.

But it also means mother’s mother’s brother, or maternal great uncle.

This calls for a brief summary of the Warray words for grandparents and their siblings, which we shall order into several short lists.

Paternal Grandparents:

kaku = father’s father

tjamuñ = father’s mother

Maternal Grandparents:

wetj:i = mother’s mother

tjamuñ = mother’s father

Paternal great-aunts and uncles:

kaku = father’s father’s brother

wetj:i = father’s father’s sister

tjamuñ = father’s mother’s sister

tjamuñ = father’s mother’s brother 

Maternal great-aunts and uncles:

wetj:i = mother’s mother’s sister

kaku = mother’s mother’s brother

tjamuñ = mother’s father’s brother

tjamuñ = mother’s father’s sister

Earlier, I mentioned that in Warray, the word for the same sex siblings of your parents are the same as the word for that parent themselves. For example, pip:i means both father and father’s brother.

(If I did not make it clear earlier, I would like to say that this is an educated guess on my part, but a very educated guess, if I do say so myself).

I bring this up because I have taken this principle and applied it back one generation, i.e. to the grandparents’ generation. As a result, I have made the assertion that the word for your parent’s same-sex parent is the same as the word for your parent’s same-sex parent’s same-sex sibling.

If this explanation is a bit too dense, then hopefully this list might help you:

kaku = father’s father or father’s father’s brother or mother’s mother’s brother

wetj:i = mother’s mother or mother’s mother’s sister or father’s father’s sister

tjamuñ = father’s mother or father’s mother’s sister or mother’s father’s sister

tjamuñ = mother’s father or mother’s father’s brother or father’s mother’s brother

We can simplify this list further:

kaku = father’s father or parent’s same-sex parent’s brother

wetj:i = mother’s mother or parent’s same-sex parent’s sister

tjamuñ = parent’s opposite-sex parent or parent’s opposite-sex parent’s sibling

At this point, you may be wondering how we talk about our own as well as our siblings’ children and grandchildren. We will explore this later, but it is safe to say that while fans of the word kaku may be disappointed, fans of the words wetj:i and tjamuñ will not.

Now, let us return to the sentence:

6.21     kakulik le patyatjiñ = I will go to grandfather’s camp

-lik is the Locative Case Suffix, which, as the name implies, indicates location.

In addition, it also has an Allative Function, which means that it indicates movement towards, as is the case here.

In this sentence, the phrase kakulik le translates as to grandfather’s camp.

Although the person in this sentence is going to the camp, it is the noun for grandfather which takes the Locative (or Allative) Suffix.

This is because here, -lik takes on a Genitive function, i.e. it indicates that kaku is the owner of le. (Warray does not possess a dedicated Genitive Marker).

It is worth noting that in a sentence including the verb to go, the Allative function of le is already strongly implied.

We will no doubt return to the suffix –lik as I gradually wrap my head around its intricacies.

Last, but not least, we have the verb patyatjiñ, which is composed of two parts:

1. pat- is the 1^st Person Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. yatjiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the Irregular Verb yatjiñ, which means to go.

Prefix 11: The 1^st Person Dual Inclusive Non-Complete Subject

6.22     manmawayin anluŋkayaŋ tjiŋañyiwu = The two of us, you and I, are coming back from the billabong with the red lilies

manmawayin = the two of us, you and I, are returning

anluŋkayaŋ = from the billabong

tjiŋañyiwu = with the red lilies

manmawayin is built from two components:

1. manma- is the 1^st Person Dual Inclusive Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. wayin is the Irrealis Conjugation of the regular verb wayiñ, which means to return. This applies to both senses of the word, i.e. it can mean to come back or to go back.

anluŋkayaŋ is the Ablative Declension of the noun anluŋka, which means billabong.

The term billabong has two definitions:

1. An oxbow-lake, which is a still body of water that was once part of a river, but became separated after the river changed course. (Indeed, the word billabong itself comes from another Australian language, though alas I do not know which one.
2. A backpack brand that was really popular in the early to mid-noughties but has since fallen out of fashion.

The Ablative Case Suffix –yaŋ indicated the object wherefrom one is moving away.

In English this always translates into the preposition from.

tjiŋañyiwu is the Comitative Case Declension of tjiŋañ, which means white lily.

According to Harvey, this term directly correlates to the species Nelumbo nucifera.

The native distribution of this plant extends from central and northern India through northern Indochina and into east Asia, with a few isolated locations around the Caspian Sea. Since then, humans have transported it to Sri Lanka, virtually all of Southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea, and the eastern and northern coasts of Australia.

Other colloquial names include the Indian lotus, sacred lotus or the bean of India. It has a three millennia-long history of cultivation for its edible seeds, and is the national flower of India and Vietnam.

Prefix 12: The 1^st Person Plural Non-Complete Subject

6.23     kiri palikakaŋi alwulkan waripa alkalawu = We have some money for our sister and her children

kiri = money

palikakaŋi = we have

alwulkan = sister

waripa = children

alkalawu = her

kiri is a noun which means money, although other translations include stone and hill.

palikakaŋi is built from three components:

1. pali- is the 1^st Person Plural Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. ka- is a reduplication of the 1^st syllable of the verb.
3. kaŋi is the Realis Conjugation of the verb kaŋi, which means to have.

(The Warray verb kaŋi is completely regular, which in my opinion implies that it is a relatively recent innovation. One reason for this is that kaŋi can also mean to take, and we can guess that this was the original meaning.)

alwulkan is built from two components:

1. al- is the Female Human Noun Class Prefix.
2. wulkan is a noun which means sibling, but cannot occur by itself.

waripa is the Irregular Plural of the word anwak, which means child, and does indeed contain the Body Part Prefix.

More specific words for children include:

alil (a-lil)= boy

alwun = girl

atjurin = little boy

alkalawu is the Dative Case Declension of the 3^rd Person Female Human Singular Pronoun alkala.

alkalawu very much means her, but only in the Possession sense.

Now, if you wanted to make this sentence about your brother instead of your sister, all you need to do is replace alwulkan with awulkan and alkalawu with akalawu. Observe:

6.24     kiri patkakaŋi awulkan waripa akalawu = We have some money for our brother and his children

Remember the words awulkan and alwulkan, because they will be relevant in our discussion of the following prefix.

Prefix 13: The 1sgS>2sgO Non-Complete

6.25     kwok pariñkitj:ililimiñ maŋkaŋ = I don’t know if I will tickle you, cousin

kwok = don’t know

pariñkitj:ililimiñ = I will tickle you

maŋkaŋ = cousin

kwok is a special particle which is used to indicate that the speaker is unaware as to the full truth of a situation. Essentially, it is used to communicate uncertainty on the part of the speaker.

In addition, it can also be used as an exclamation, for example when you throw up your hands in frustration and yell I don’t know, before explaining yourself your side of the story.

pariñkitj:ililimiñ is built from two components:

1. pariñ- is the 1^st Person Singular Subject > 2^nd Person Singular Object Non-Complete Portmanteau Prefix.
2. kitj:ililimiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the verb kitj:ililimal, which means to tickle.

maŋkaŋ is the Address Term for cross-cousin, i.e. the children of your parents’ opposite-sex siblings.

However, before we discuss the words for cross-cousin, I shall briefly discuss the difference between the Address Terms and Reference Terms.

To put it simply, some kinship terms have different forms depending on whether you are talking about them or talking to them directly.

The Reference Term is used when talking about them, while the Address Term is used when talking to them.

Ultimately, there are six kinship nouns that have different Reference and Address Terms. These can be summarised in a simple table:

Now is the time for our vocabulary lists, which I shall initially divide based on the side of the family from which they fail.

Maternal cousins:

alwulkan = mother’s sister’s daughter

awulkan  = mother’s sister’s son

alwañtjaŋ = mother’s brother’s daughter

awañtjaŋ = mother’s brother’s son

Paternal cousins:

alwulkan = father’s brother’s daughter

awulkan = father’s brother’s son

alwañtjaŋ = father’s sister’s daughter

awañtjaŋ = father’s sister’s son

Naturally, we can simply these into a single list:

alwulkan = mother’s sister’s daughter or father’s brother’s daughter

awulkan = mother’s sister’s son or father’s brother’s son

alwañtjaŋ = mother’s brother’s daughter or father’s sister’s daughter

awañtjaŋ = mother’s brother’s son or father’s sister’s son

This list can be simplified even further, and this is its final form:

alwulkan = female parallel-cousin

awulkan = male parallel-cousin

alwañtjaŋ = female cross-cousin

awañtjaŋ = male cross-cousin

As previously mentioned, alwulkan and awulkan also mean sister and brother respectively. This will be the penultimate discussion of kinship terminology.

Prefix 14: The 1sgS>2nsgO Non-Complete Portmanteau                                                 

6.26     kalampa paritjkuwal = I am tying headbands on all of you

kalampa = headband

paritjkuwal = I am tying on all of you

paritjkuwal is built from two components:

1. paritj- is the 1^st Person Singular > 2^nd Person Non-Singular Object Non-Complete Portmanteau Prefix.
2. kuwal is the Irrealis Conjugation of the verb kuwal, which means to tie.

Other meanings of kuwal include to bind and to lock up.

kalampa means headband, and is interesting because it forms part of the traditional Warray male initiation ritual.

Anyway, the ritual goes like this:

The older men put the young boys through “the law”.

They are placed in a shelter which they cannot leave for a long time.

The older men take out the young boys and paint them with red and white ochre, and carve cicatrices into their skin.

The old woman make armlets for the young boys. They then tie headbands onto their foreheads, and tie belts of hair around their waists. Once this is done, the old men paint on them with more white ochre.

At this point, the boys are no longer allowed to eat with their sisters, and their sisters are no longer allowed to cook for them. The sisters must find their own firewood and cook for themselves, while the mothers, aunts and grandmothers collect firewood, and the mother alone makes a meal for the boys.

Meanwhile, just as the sister cannot cook for her brother, he cannot provide her with tucker or kangaroo. If he does and she eats it, then she might be killed with a spear.

This last threat is probably carried out by the kutaŋ, whom the Warray refer to in English as the clever fellow, but is more widely known as the kataitja man.

The kutaŋ wears emu feathers on his feet, and these may serve to quieten his footsteps so that he can sneak up on you, kill you, and take your kidney fat. (Though I imagine that the police in Northern Australia have probably clamped down on this sort of thing).

However, although his footfalls are muffled by emu feathers, one can predict his arrival when the hooting of the tjuŋutjuŋutj owl is heard for a few nights in a row.

tjuŋutjuŋutj can refer to a number of birds.

The colloquial names include: sparrowhawk, mopoke owl, tawny frogmouth, western barn owl and barking owl, among others.

Meanwhile, Latin names include Tyto alba, Ninox connivens, Podargus strigoides and Caprimulgus macrurus (though it may cover other members of the genus Caprimulgus).

In addition, kutaŋ also refers to a native doctor.

Meanwhile, the word for white or European doctor is akutaŋyi¸ which also means clever.

(Occasionally, however, akutaŋyi was also used to mean native doctor, so the two terms are not completely mutually exclusive.)

Prefix 14: The 1plS>2ndO Non-Complete Portmanteau

6.27     wikyaŋ paniniyamal = We are arguing with you because of the booze

wikyaŋ = because of the booze

paniniyamal = we are arguing with you

wikyaŋ is the Ablative Case Declension of the word wik, which means booze or water.

The term wik essentially refers to liquids in general, though specifically it refers to water, rain, petrol and all beverages except for tea and coffee.

Now, in his grammar, Harvey actually refers to –yaŋ as the Origin Suffix.

This is because the one thread that unites its myriad functions is that it indicates the origin of something.

Thus, in this sentence, -yaŋ can be translated as because of, since the booze is the cause of the argument.

paniniyamal is built from two components:

1. panini- is the 1^st Person Plural Subject > 2^nd Person Object Non-Complete Portmanteau Prefix.
2. yamal is the Irrealis Conjugation of the verb yamal, which means to argue or to swear.

yamal can also mean to swear, but this requires a slightly different construction. For example:

6.28     anletma panyamiñ = She swore at me

anletma = tooth

panyamiñ = she swore at me

Translated more literally, we get this phrase:

6.29     anletma panyamiñ = She swore the tooth at me

Although this sentence does not make any literal sense in English, it puts me in mind of one of those antiquated phrases which, although they have long fallen out of use, one can still understand its inherent message.

Something that you may have noticed is that each of these prefixes contain the component –ka-, and this is not a mere coincidence. In his grammar, Harvey goes one step further and analyses the -ka– as a Non-Complete prefix in its own right.

Indeed, it is possible to analyse each of these prefixes as a combination of the equivalent Complete Prefix plus –ka-.

With the exception of the 3^rd Person Non-Singular, the Complete Prefix comes before –ka-. However, it is worth remembering that the Subject and Object prefixes adhere to a pattern, one wherein ka- always comes before pa-.

In the sentence-breakdowns, meanwhile, I chose to analyse each prefix as a single entity in order to prevent my analysis from becoming too complicated.

Prefix 15: The 2^nd Person Singular Non-Complete Subject

6.30     ŋuñ antjalmi ankatañmi waŋ = It is your turn to cut the meat

ŋuñ = you

antjalmi = in tun

ankatañmi = you cut

waŋ = meat

ankatañmi is built from two components:

1. anka- is the 2^nd Person Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. tañmi is the Realis Conjugation of tañmi, which means to cut.

Although Warray has no fewer than eight Regular Verb Classes, there exists a not insignificant number of irregular and semi-regular verbs.

One of these semi-regular verbs is mi, which means to get, and acts as a sort of Auxiliary Suffix to other verb stems without changing the meaning.

This brings us to another degree of divergence between how Harvey and I analyse Warray verbs, but I will discuss this in part 5.

waŋ is a noun which means game, meat or animal.

antjalmi is a particle which means in turn, but its precise translation is highly dependent on context. I shall demonstrate this via three other examples:

6.31     pum kurawakyi kakiŋ. antjalmi akalayi pum kuruwak = David hit him yesterday. In return he hit David.

pum = he hit him

kurawakyi = David

kakiŋ = yesterday

antjalmi = in return

akalayi = he

pum = he hit him

kurawak = David

Sentence 6.31 is a rare use of the Ergative Case Suffix –yi being used to full effect.

In the 1^st part, it is used to indicate that David, or kuruwakyi, is the one doing the hitting, as opposed to the one being hit.

In the 2^nd part, it is used to indicate that he or akalayi, is now the one doing the hitting, rather than the one being hit. As a result, David now becomes kuruwak, to indicate that he is the one receiving the hit in this occasion.

In this sentence, antjalmi is used to indicate that the second hit is a form of retaliation for the previously mentioned hit.

Our second example of antjalmi has a similar meaning to the first:

6.32     kak:wuy patwuy antjalmi = Later I will pay him back

kak:wuy = later

patwuy = I will pay him / I will give him

antjalmi = back

Here, antjalmi indicates that the money being exchanged is related to a previous, not yet mentioned transfer of money.

Our third and final example of antjalmi is by far the most interesting. However, since it contains a number of other grammatical ideas, as well as another of the Non-Complete Subject Prefixes, it will form a section of its own.

Prefix 16: The 3^rd Person Singular Non-Complete Subject

6.33     mutaka kayiñyiñ keŋanawu antjalmi ankipepa = The car over there is going backwards

mutaka = car

kayiñyiñ = is going

keŋanawu = over there

antjalmi = in turn

ankipepa = via the back

The word mutaka appears to be a loan word from the English motor car.

Although in English the term motor car is rather old-fashioned, it is this form of the word that entered the languages of Aboriginal Australia. Another example comes from either Yidiñ or Dyirbal, two neighbouring languages from Northern Queensland, where we have the word mudaga. (Off the top of my head I cannot remember which one, and the same word could easily be present in both).

kayiñyiñ is built from three components:

1. ka- is the 3^rd Person Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. yiñ is a reduplication of the following syllable.
3. yiñ is the Irealis Conjugation of the highly irregular verb yaŋ, which means to go.

ankipepa is also built from three components:

1. an- is the Body Part Prefix.
2. kipe is a noun which means back, and can only occur if it is preceded by an-.
3. –pa functions as a variant of the Perlative Case Suffix –pwuy.

The Perlative Case is a linguistic feature that appears primarily, though not exclusively, in the languages of Aboriginal Australia. It is used to indicate motion through or along an object, typically a location.

(One example of a non-Australian language featuring the Perlative Case is Chukchi, which is spoken on the easternmost edge of Russia, so far east that it almost kisses the western coast of Alaska).

Now, I refer to –pa as a variant of the Perlative Case because, in the words of Harvey himself, “it is not possible to determine a meaning for [-pa].” (Bold lettering added for the purpose of the blog.)

However, a more profound reason for this is that the proper Perlative Case Suffix –pwuy is only attached to verbs.

For example:

6.34     antjili ñimpwuy = He went through the gate

antjili = gate

ñimpwuy = he went through

antjili is built from two components:

1. an- is the Body Part Prefix.
2. tjili is a noun which means mouth, gate or lid.

Even if the meaning is gate or lid, the Body Part Prefix is still obligatory. This can be explained by conceptualising the gate and the lid as metaphorical extensions of the mouth.

ñimpwuy is built from two components:

1. ñim is the Realis Conjugation of the highly irregular verb ñim, which means to enter.
2. –pwuy is the Perlative Case Suffix, which in this context translates as through.

The verb ñim has many similar meanings, including to go in, to go through, to come in and to come through.

In addition, it has also acquired the divergent meaning of to wear clothes.

This is because the idea of wearing clothes is considered a European activity, and did not have a verb in pre-contact Warray.

Other verbs that only entered Warray after the initiation of contact with Europeans include:

lam = to shoot, also means to spear or to pierce

pitjipmal = to drive, also means to roll, to squeeze or to twist, perhaps as a reference to the idea of twisting a steering wheel

papum = to ride a horse, which is a unique verb

wark:imal = to work

wark:imal is the only verb that Warray has borrowed from English, and it describes what Harvey refers to as “the most alien of concepts to traditional culture”.

Prefix 17: The 2^nd Person Non-Singular Non-Complete Subject

6.36     wetj:i ñikiriŋuwu kaŋpwuy putawan akayiñun = Take your granddaughter along with you when you go to Darwin

wetj:i = granddaughter

ñikiwiŋuwu = your

kaŋpwuy = take along

putawan = Darwin

akayiñun = when you go

ñikiriŋuwu is built from three components:

1. ñikiriŋ is the 2^nd Person Non-Singular Subject.
2. –u is the Oblique Case Suffix.
3. –wu is the Dative Case Suffix.

If we put all these together, they mean your in the non-singular.

kaŋpwuy is built from two components:

1. kaŋ is the Imperative Conjugation of the verb kaŋi, which means to take. The Imperative Mood is used to indicate commands or instructions.
2. –pwuy is the Perlative Case Suffix, which here translates as along.

akayiñun is built from four components:

1. aka- is the 2^nd Person Non-Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. yiñ is the Irrealis Conjugation of yaŋ, which means to go.
3. –u is the Dative Case Suffix.
4. –n is the Consequential Suffix, which always occurs attached to a Dative Suffix.

Taken together, -u and –n create the Dative Consequential Suffix –un, which in terms of function is identical to a naked Dative Suffix.

The Verbal Dative has a wide array of uses, but in this context we will only discuss one function, which is to indicate Co-Conditionality.

Co-Conditionality means that the events of one clause are dependent on the events in another, or they occur at the same time.  To oversimplify, this means that it takes the role of English when or if.

For example:

6.37     patnattjiyi patnayu = I will tell him when I see him

patnattjiyi = I will tell him

patnayu = when I see him

By itself, patnay means I will see him, but when it takes the Dative Suffix –u, it becomes patnayu, which now means when I see him.

In addition, it is worth remembering that the distinction between when and if is largely a stylistic one.

As a result, this translation is equally valid:

6.38     patnattjiyi patnayu = I will tell him if I see him

In addition, and as previously mentioned, the Dative and Dative-Consequential Suffixes are identical in how they function, even if their origins are disparate.

Therefore, one can also say these two sentences:

6.39     patnattjiyi patnayun = I will tell him when I see him

6.40     patnattjiyi patnayun = I will tell him if I see him

As one might expect, the Dative-Consequential is often used with Potential sentences, and we will return to this concept on at least one occasion in Part 4.

Prefix 18: The 3^rd Person Non-Singular Non-Complete Subject

6.41     wetj:i keraŋantjeriñ litj:i kapalilitpum = The three grandnieces will weave dillybags

wetj:i = grandniece

keraŋantjeriñ = three

litj:i = dillybag

kapalilitpum = they will weave

kapalilitpum is built from three components:

1. kapa- is the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. li- is a reduplication of the 1^st syllable of the 3^rd component.
3. litpum is the Realis Conjugation of the verb litpum, which means to weave or to sew.

A dillybag, for those who do not know, is a small bag, typically woven from plant-based materials such as grass or weeds. These are typically used to store items used in traditional medicine, e.g. dried herbs and berries.

We have reached the topic of Warray numbers.

In Warray, it is possible to count up to five. Observe:

antjeriñ = one

keraŋlul = two

keraŋantjeriñ = three

yelikeraŋlul = four

annepattjeriñ = five

Firstly, the last syllable on the words for two and four is –lul. This is probably the Pair Suffix –lul, which we shall explore later.

Secondly, the form keraŋ can be reduplicated to create keraŋkeraŋ, which means a few.

Finally, the word annepattjeriñ can be analysed as a compound which means one hand.

In Sentences 6.36 and 6.41 we have the word wetj:i; in the former it received the translation granddaughter, while in the latter it received the translation grandniece.

As promised previously, this brings us onto a discussion of the words for the people that we and our siblings bring into the world. We will start with the first generation of descendants, i.e. our children, nieces and nephews.

Our own children:

mamam = son

mamam = daughter

Now, as mentioned earlier, Warray uses the same word for parents and their same-sex siblings. As a result, your mother’s sister is also your mother, and your father’s brother is also your father.

We have witnessed how this principle extends upwards to our grandparents, -uncles and –aunts. Now, we will discuss how this extends downwards to our descendants.

In order to do this, however, we must take into account the sex of the person whose relatives we are discussing. We will start with nieces and nephews, and tackle their grand equivalents separately.

The children of a man’s brother:

mamam = nephew

mamam = niece

The children of a woman’s brother:

tjukuŋ = niece

tjukuŋ = nephew

The children of a man’s sister:

tjukuŋ = nephew

tjukuŋ = niece

The children of a woman’s sister:

mamam = niece

mamam = nephew

As you can tell, none of these words vary depending on the sex of the child, and this is true of the grandnieces and –nephews also.

Our first round of simplifications results in these two lists:

A man’s nieces and nephews:

mamam = a man’s brother’s son

mamam = a man’s brother’s daughter

tjukuŋ = a man’s sister’s son

tjukuŋ = a man’s sister’s daughter 

A woman’s nieces and nephews:

mamam = a woman’s sister’s son

mamam = a woman’s sister’s daughter

tjukuŋ = a woman’s brother’s son

tjukuŋ = a woman’s sister’s daughter

The second round of simplification results thus:

A man’s nieces and nephews:

mamam = a man’s brother’s child

tjukuŋ = a man’s sister’s child

A woman’s nieces and nephews:

mamam = a woman’s sister’s child

tjukuŋ = a woman’s brother’s child

The third and final round of simplification gives us a single list:

mamam = a person’s same-sex sibling’s child

tjukuŋ = a person’s opposite-sex sibling’s child

If fortune smiles upon us, then our children, nieces and nephews will also be blessed with the gift of children. What you will call these depends entirely on whether your son or daughter, niece or nephew is blessed.

To make things easier, we will tackle the grandchildren in isolation. The grandnieces and –nephews will be tackled separately, and afterwards we will bring them all together.

This time, however, it will be Ladies First.

A woman’s grandchildren:

wetj:i = a woman’s daughter’s daughter

wetj:i = a woman’s daughter’s son

tjamuñ = a woman’s son’s daughter

tjamuñ = a woman’s son’s son

A man’s grandchildren:

wetj:i = a man’s son’s daughter

wetj:i = a man’s son’s son

tjamuñ = a man’s daughter’s daughter

tjamuñ = a man’s daughter’s son 

Round 1 Simplification gives us:

A woman’s grandchildren:

wetj:i = a woman’s daughter’s child

tjamuñ = a woman’s son’s child

A man’s grandchildren:

wetj:i = a man’s son’s child

tjamuñ = a man’s daughter’s child

Round 2 Simplification results in this more concise list:

wetj:i = a person’s same-sex child’s child

tjamuñ = a person’s opposite-sex child’s child

Now, bear with me while we discuss the grandnephews and –nieces, because this might take a while.

If you’ve kept up this far, then you will remember that your same-sex sibling’s children are the same as your own children. This also applies to their grandchildren, who likewise are also treated as your own grandchildren.

A woman’s grandnieces are:

wetj:i = a woman’s sister’s daughter’s daughter

wetj:i = a woman’s brother’s son’s daughter

tjamuñ = a woman’s sister’s son’s daughter

tjamuñ = a woman’s brother’s daughter’s daughter

A woman’s grandnephews are:

wetj:i = a woman’s sister’s daughter’s son

wetj:i = a woman’s brother’s son’s son

tjamuñ = a woman’s sister’s son’s son

tjamuñ = a woman’s brother’s daughter’s son

A man’s grandnieces are:

wetj:i = a man’s brother’s son’s daughter

wetj:i = a man’s sister’s daughter’s daughter

tjamuñ = a man’s brother’s daughter’s daughter

tjamuñ = a man’s sister’s son’s daughter

A man’s grandnephews are:

wetj:i = a man’s brother’s son’s son

wetj:i = a man’s sister’s daughter’s son

tjamuñ = a man’s brother’s daughter’s son

tjamuñ = a man’s sister’s son’s son

Round 1 Simplification presents us with:

A woman’s grandnieces are:

wetj:i = a woman’s sibling’s same-sex child’s daughter

tjamuñ = a woman’s sibling’s opposite-sex child’s daughter

A woman’s grandnephews are:

wetj:i = a woman’s sibling’s same-sex child’s son

tjamuñ = a woman’s sibling’s opposite-sex child’s son

A man’s grandnieces are:

wetj:i = a man’s sibling’s same-sex child’s daughter

tjamuñ = a man’s sibling’s opposite-sex child’s daughter

A man’s grandnephews are:

wetj:i = a man’s sibling’s same-sex child’s son

tjamuñ = a man’s sibling’s opposite-sex child’s son 

Round 2 Simplification results in these lists:

A woman’s grandnieces and –nephews are:

wetj:i = a woman’s sibling’s same-sex child’s child

tjamuñ = a woman’s sibling’s opposite-sex child’s child

A man’s grandnieces and –nephews are:

wetj:i = a man’s sibling’s same-sex child’s child

tjamuñ = a man’s sibling’s opposite-sex child’s child

Our final round of simplification results in:

wetj:i = a person’s sibling’s same-sex child’s child

tjamuñ = a person’s sibling’s opposite-sex child’s child

Now is the time to tie this back to the words for grandchildren, which gives us this:

wetj:i = the same-sex child’s child of a person or their sibling

tjamuñ = the opposite-sex child’s child of a person or their sibling

What this means is that, after you take sex into account, the word for grandniece/-nephew is identical to that for grandchild. Basically, if you are a man, then your son’s children are the same as your nephews’ children. Equally, if you are a woman, then your daughter’s children are the same as your nieces’ children.

Now, I could delete the above lists, since they same thing but with more words, but I won’t. These lists are essentially my working out, and should, I would imagine, assist your understanding also.

With this out of the way, let us proceed to the final set of Subject Prefixes.  

Part 4: The Potential Prefixes:

Prefix 19: The 1^st Person Singular Potential Subject

6.42     waŋ kuluñtji amala katnan = I have not seen the rainbow serpent

waŋ = animal

kuluñtji = rainbow

amala = not

katnan = I saw

The word waŋ ostensibly means animal, and after a specific animal has been introduced, e.g. the waŋ kuluñtji, or rainbow serpent, in all future instances it will be referred to exclusively as waŋ.

In addition, waŋ is also used in a number of other compounds:

waŋ anpitpit:u = cattle (lit. red animal)

waŋ ankutjik:u = buffalo (lit. black animal)

waŋ antum = bullet (lit. animal eye)

amala is a general negation word, which means no, not and anything in between. As we proceed through Part 4, this word will become our bosom companion.

katnan is built from two components:

1. kat- is the 1^st Person Singular Potential Subject Prefix.
2. nan is the Irrealis Conjugation of the verb nay, which means to see or to look. (In contrast to many other languages, the Warray verb for to see is completely regular.)

Prefix 20: The 1^st Person Dual Inclusive Potential Subject

6.43     wirinnanak manmawirinpun pin amala kanmanuwi = The two of us, you and I, can only sing songs, we cannot dance

wirinnanak = only songs

manmawirinpun = the two of us, you and I, can sing

pin = but

amala = not

kanmanuwi = the two of us, you and I, can dance

wirinnanak is built from two components:

1. wirin is a noun which means song or corroboree.
2. –nanak is a suffix which means only or enough. As one can deduce, its function is to indicate that the situation is limited to the word to which it is suffixed. It can only be attached to nouns, and never to a verb.

Another example of –nanak in action is:

6.44     ŋiri ŋuñuwu laliñnanak kapepe = Your dog only kills goannas

ŋiri = dog

ŋuñuwu = your

laliñnanak = only goannas

kapepe = bites

Now, back to our analysis of Sentence 6.43:

A corroboree is the general term for a traditional type of tribal gathering wherein people would dance and sing together, or sometimes engage in fighting. Unfortunately, it may be that all knowledge of traditional Warray dance styles is lost forever. However, we can infer from linguistic evidence that men and women spent at least a significant portion of the time dancing separately. This is because there are different words to describe their dancing styles.

The women’s dancing style is known as malak, and has two verb forms, malakpum and malakli, which have the same meaning.

Men’s dancing, on the other hand, carried the verb nuwal, which also means to kick.

manmawirinpun is built from two components:

1. manma- is the 1^st Person Dual Inclusive Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. wirinpun is the Irrealis Conjugation of the verb wirinpum, which means to sing.

The verb wirinpum itself appears to be built from two of its own components. These are:

1. wirin, a noun which means song, which we have already met.
2. pum, a verb which means to hit, to kill or to fight.

It is worth noting that pum appears as a compound in many verbs whose semantic meaning is not directly related to hitting, fighting or killing.

pin is a Warray particle whose meaning and function both appear to be an exact equivalent of the English word but.

kanmanuwi is built from two components:

1. kanma- is the 1^st Person Dual Inclusive Potential Subject Prefix.
2. nuwi is the Non-Complete Potential Conjugation of the verb nuwal, which means to kick or to engage in the male form of dancing.

Prefix 21: The 1^st Person Plural Potential Subject

6.45     tjipiñ antjeriñpayaŋ nentu amala kalilen = We did not shoot the horses last year

tjipiñ = year

antjeriñpayaŋ = last

nentu = horse

amala = not

kalilen = we shot

antjeriñpayaŋ built from three components:

1. an- is the Body Part Class Prefix, although here it acts more like a General Classifier.
2. tjeriñpa is an adjective which means other or another. I am behooved to point out that tjeriñpa always occurs preceded by an-.
3. –yaŋ is the Ablative, or Origin, Suffix.

Considered all together, antjeriñpayaŋ is an adjective which means last, but it only occurs in relation to temporal expressions (i.e. expressions of time, e.g. tjipiñ antjeriñpayaŋ, which means last year.

If you want to refer to the something non-temporal that is last, then you use the word lurayaŋ, whose components are:

1. lura, a Locational word which means behind.
2. The Ablative or Origin Suffix –yaŋ.

Naturally, the existence of a word for last strongly implies the existence of a word for first. In this aspect, Warray does not disappoint.

In order to create this word, you simply replace lura with the locational word yuŋay, which means in front of.

Therefore, yuŋayyaŋ means from the front, or foremost, which is the closest equivalent to a word meaning first.

Although its system of Cardinal Numbers goes up to 5, Warray does not possess any Ordinal Numbers.

Ordinal Numbers are the forms of numbers used when describing the order of placement of things.

(In English, the Ordinal Numbers are first, second, third and so on and so forth.)

Last, but not least, is our verb kalilen, which is built from two components:

1. kali- is the 1^st Person Plural Potential Subject Prefix.
2. len is the Irrealis Conjugation of the highly irregular verb lam, which means not only to shoot, but also to pierce, to spear and to scratch.

Prefix 22: The 1sgS>2sgO Potential Portmanteau

6.46     wañlak kuñ kariñlepmal = I thought I might have knocked you over today

wañlak = today

kuñ = I thought I did that when in fact I did not

kariñlepmal = I might have knocked you over

kuñ is the Warray Mistaken Opinion Particle. Its presence indicates that what happened is different to what the speaker previously believed.

In this sentence, where the verb is in the Potential, it expresses that the speaker was highly uncertain about whether he or she knocked the listener over.

The Particle kuñ can occur in any sentence regardless as to whether the sentence is Complete, Non-Complete or Potential.

kariñlepmal is built from two components:

1. kariñ- is the 1^st Person Singular Subject > 2^nd Person Singular Object Potential Portmanteau Prefix.
2. lepmal is the Irrealis Conjugation of the verb lepmal, which means to knock over.

In most situations, kuñ is translated as I thought that… or I believed that….

In other contexts, it can be translated as mistakenly, such as in this example:

6.47     wek kuñ kattirimpun pin amala akutjkutj = I was mistakenly trying to light a fire, but no, (the wood) was wet

wek = fire

kuñ = mistakenly

kattirimpun = I was trying to light

pin = but

amala = no

akutjkutj = wet

Here, kuñ indicates that speaker was of the mistaken belief that the wood could be set alight.

Prefix 23: The 1sgS>2nsgO Potential Portmantea

6.48     kuttjari amala karitjpe = It was a good thing that I did not bite all of you

kuttjari = it was a good thing

amala = not

karitjpe = I bit all of you

kuttjari is the Warray Approval Particle. As the name implies, it indicates that the speaker approves of the state of affairs by the sentence.

karitjpe is built from two components:

1. karitj- is the 1^st Person Singular Subject > 2^nd Person Non-Singular Object Portmanteau Prefix.
2. pe is the Irrealis Conjugation of the irregular verb pe, which means to bite.

Of course, kuttjari does not indicate the reason why the speaker approves of the situation. This needs to be deduced from context. For example:

6.49     kuttjari paluk:aŋi wek kanunnun tjetpam amutek kapararak:an = Fortunately for us, they lit a big grass fire, which is burning and lighting up (the sky)

kuttjari = fortunately for us

paluk:aŋi = they lit

wek = fire

kanunnun = it is burning

tjetpam = grass

amutek = big

kapararak:an = it is shining

If this is all the information presented to us, then it lies on us, the listeners, to discern a reason as to why this fire is considered a positive development.

One reason is that they are engaged in the practice of scrub clearance that is a necessary part of responsible forest management. By periodically burning patches of forest and grassland, you ensure that the smaller twigs and sticks are burnt away. This means that when a natural forest fire does occur, the overall damage is limited in scope. When too much dead wood is allowed to accumulate on the forest floor, it increases the risk that the topsoil itself will be burnt away, making it impossible for anything to grow.

On another note, it could simply be that the fire allows the speaker to navigate his or her local surroundings.

Prefix 24: The 1plS >2ndO Potential Portmanteau

6.50     ampayaŋ atjim ñek amala paninimitjnan? = Where do you come from, we do not know you

ampayaŋ = from where

atjim = you all come

ñek = I

amala = not

paninimitjnan = we might know you

ampayaŋ is built from two components:

1. ampa means where, and it is one of the six Warray Interrogatives.
2. –yaŋ is the Ablative (or Origin) Suffix.

atjim is built from two components:

1. a- is the 2^nd Person Non-Singular Complete Subject Prefix.
2. tjim is the Realis Conjugation of the irregular verb tjim, which means to come.

Last, but not least, we have paninimitjnan. It will no doubt shock and surprise you to learn that this is also built from two components:

1. panini- is the 1^st Person Plural Subject > 2^nd Person Object Portmanteau Prefix.
2. mitjnan is the Irrealis Conjugation of the verb mitjnay, which means to know.

Warray has six Interrogatives, or Question Words. These all have direct English equivalents:

1. epiŋ = who
2. ŋiñaŋ = what thing
3. yiliñ = how
4. ampa = where
5. ampawayin = when
6. ampaampa = how much / how many

The Interrogative epiŋ can be used for either humans or domestic dogs. For all other animals, you use ŋiñaŋ.

Examples of epiŋ include:

6.51     epiŋ akala? = Who is he?

6.52     epiŋ alkala? = Who is she?

However, while these sentences are grammatical, Warray favours a different strategy. It is, in fact, more common to phrase the same questions like this:

6.53     ampayaŋ akala tjim? = Where does he come from?

6.54     ampayaŋ alkala tjim = Where does she come from?

An extension of this strategy is the word for nobody, whose literal meaning is:

amala ampayaŋ = not from anywhere (lit. not from where)

What will probably jump out at you is that the Singular forms are identical. There is evidence which implies that the 2^nd Person Singular form was at one point the expected *kanan-, but we can assume that, over time, this was simplified into its present form kan-.

In spite of their identical form, however, I shall analyse the two meanings of kan- separately. This is in order to provide greater scope with which to explore more of the grammar.

Prefix 25: The 2^nd Person Singular Potential Subject

6.55     amala kantjatjapulmal = You never used to smoke

amala = never

kantjatjapulmal = you used to smoke

kantjatjapulmal is built from three components:

1. kan- is the 2^nd Person Singular Potential Subject Prefix.
2. tja is a Reduplication of the 1^st syllable of the next component.
3. tjapulmal is the Irrealis Conjugation of the verb tjapulmal, which means to smoke.

In case you are wondering, the Warray word for tobacco is ŋuk.

So far in this grammar, we have seen several instances wherein a verb undergoes some form of Reduplication. But how does it work, and in what circumstances is it utilised?

With a polysyllabic verb, such as tjapulmal, only the first syllable is reduplicated.

With a monosyllabic verb, the entire verb is reduplicated. One example is with pil, which is the Irrealis conjugation of the irregular verb pil, which means to drink:

6.56     amala kanpilpil = You never used to drink

Now, what do sentences 6.55 and 6.56 have in common, except for the speaker’s dismay or surprise at the speaker’s changing habits?

Both sentences are examples of the Past Negative Habitual, i.e. a habit which did not apply in the past.

Other uses of Reduplication, which we may return to later, include the Present Progressive and the Present Positive Habitual (also known as the Gnomic).

Prefix 26: The 2^nd Person Non-Singular Potential Subject

6.57     witjiñ wakmiwu amala kanakoriñ = It broke on its own. You did not break it.

witjiñ = it broke

wakmiwu = on its own

amala = not

kanakoriñ = you broke it

witjiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the verb witjiñ, which means to break. It is preceded by the 3^rd Person Singular Complete Subject Suffix, which is blank.

kanakoriñ is built from two components:

1. kana- is the 2^nd Person Non-Singular Potential Subject Prefix.
2. koriñ is the Irrealis Conjugation of the verb kori, which means to break something.

The primary difference between the verbs witjiñ and kori is that the former refers to the act of a thing itself breaking, while the latter refers to the act of breaking something else.

wakmiwu is a particle which indicates that the subject is acting on their own. In the above example, it indicates that the thing which broke did so of its own accord.

In English, wakmiwu can be translates as alone, by oneself or on one’s own. For example:

6.58     ñek wakmiwu patniniwiñ = I am sitting by myself

ñek = I

wakmiwu = by myself

patniniwiñ = I am sitting 

In addition, this sentence contains another example of Reduplication.

patniniwiñ is built from three components:

1. pat- is the 1^st Person Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. ni- is the Reduplication of the first syllable of the next component.
3. niwiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the irregular verb ni, which means to sit, to stay and also to squat.

In this case, Reduplication is used to indicate the Present Progressive, which indicates that the activity is still in motion at the exact moment of speech utterance.

With polysyllabic verbs, Reduplication with the function of indicating the Present Progressive occurs almost exclusively with the 1^st Person Singular.

Prefix 27: The 3^rd Person Singular Potential Subject

6.59     wik katurutmal amala kanpulukni = If there is a storm then she will not be able to cross

wik = rain

katurutmal= if there is a storm

amala = not

kanpulukni = she will be able to cross

katurutmal is built from two components:

1. ka- is the 3^rd Person Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. turutmal is the Irrealis Conjugation of the verb turutmal, which means to thunder or to storm.

kanpulukni is built from two components:

1. kan- is the 3^rd Person Singular Potential Subject Prefix.
2. pulukni is the Irrealis form of the verb pulukni, which means to go across or to cross over.

Another verb that means to go across is pulukyaŋ, and the verb for to come across is puluktjim.

Warray has a class of verbs that describe meteorological activity, and typically they can only occur alongside a single or limited number of nouns.

turutmal, which means to thunder or to storm, can only occur alongside the noun wik, which means water or rain.

There are only 5 Meterological Verbs, so we shall briefly showcase the remaining 4:

i) mirmal

Warray possesses a total of three verbs which translate as to shine. These are melaŋpum, matmatmal and mirmal.

However, mirmal is the only one of these three that can be used with the sun. For example

6.60     miral kamirmirmal = The sun is shining

miral = sun

kamirmirmal = is shining

In addition, mirmal can also occur with Object prefixes, for example:

6.61     miral pankatummirmirmal = The sun is shining in my eyes

pankatummirmirmal is built from 5 components:

1. pan- is the 1^st Person Singular Object Prefix.
2. ka- is the 3^rd Person Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
3. tum- is a noun which means eye, and is incorporated into the verb itself.
4. mir is the Reduplication of the 1^st syllable of the next component.
5. mirmal is the Irrealis Conjugation of mirmal.

ii) tjumal

tjumal is another verb that can only be used with miral, and it means to go down.

With other nouns, the verb tjultjaŋ, which can also be used with miral.

iii) marmal

The verb marmal can only occur with the noun pulem, which means lightning. For example:

6.62     pulem kamarmal = There is some lightning

pulem = lightning

kamarmal = it is lightning / lightning is happening

iv) pukpukmal

This verb means to blow, and it only occurs alongside the noun matj, which means wind. For example:

6.63     matj kapukpukmal = The wind is blowing

However, the normal way to describe the coming of the wind is actually:

6.64     matj katjimin = The wind is coming

This tangent about the weather will no doubt please my British readers immensely.

(West Futuna-Aniwa, which we explored in the previous chapter, has individual names for around twenty prominent winds that buffet the island of West Futuna. I initially wanted to include thus but, in the end, I did not find the space to include it.)

This brings us to our last, but by no means least, prefix:

Prefix 28: The 3^rd Person Non-Singular Potential Subject

6.65     pulpulyaŋ anwik punnuy papitpittjiñ amalayaŋ kanpateretpuyin = Their skin has gone red and is burning from fever, not because they scratched it

pulpulyaŋ = because of fever

anwik = skin

punnuy = is burning them

papitpittjiñ = they have gone red

amalayaŋ = not because of

kanpateretpuyin = they have scratched themselves

pulpul is built from two components:

1. pulpul is a noun which means sickness (although for some reason it also means mother).
2. –yaŋ is the Ablative or Origin Suffix, which means because of in both its occurrences in this sentence.

anwik is a noun which means skin, and is built from two components:

1. an- is the Body Part Prefix.
2. wik is the noun, which means water.

Now, the more engaged among you may have noticed that the noun wik also means water.

This may lead you to wonder whether there is a relationship between these two nouns, i.e. whether skin is considered a form of body water.

These two meanings of (-)wik are historically unrelated. If the historical reconstruction is correct, then in an earlier form of the language, the word for water was *wak and the word for skin was *ŋanwik.

(Indeed, when I first studied the language, I was also confused by this, since I expected that if anwik did refer to body water, then it would mean blood. Learning that this is merely a coincidence did settle my confusion.

In addition, the Warray word for blood is kuratj.)

punnuy is built from two components:

1. pun- is the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Object Prefix.
2. nuy is the Realis Conjugation of the verb nuy, which means to burn, and can apply equally to fires and non-fire objects.

The small phrase anwik punnuy means something like the skin is burning them, but in English the preferred translation is their skin is burning.

papitpittjiñ is built from three components:

1. pa- is the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Complete Subject Prefix.
2. pitpit is the verbally incorporated form of the adjective anpitpit:u, which means red.
3. –tjiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the Adjectival Inchoative Suffix –tjiñ which more broadly means to become or to turn.

amalayaŋ is built from the components amala and –yaŋ, both of whom will, if you have read the entire chapter so far, constitute your bosom companions.

Last, but the opposite of least, is our showcase verb kanpateretpuyin, which is built from three components:

1. kanpa- is the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Potential Subject Prefix.
2. teretpu is an abbreviated form of the verb teretpum, which means to scratch.
3. –yin is the Irrealis Conjugation of the Reflexive Suffix -yiñ, which indicates that the subject is doing the action to themselves.

Now, you may be wondering why it is that teretpum becomes teretpu when the Reflexive Suffix is attached to it. This, quite handily, leads us to a discussion of Warray verbs, and onto Part 5.

Part 5: Warray Verb Conjugations:

The idea of a language with multiple regular verb conjugations is not a new one. Indeed the Yindjibarndi language, which we explored in Chapter 1, has four.

Warray doubles this, with eight regular conjugations. (Furthermore, whereas Yindjibarndi possesses only a single irregular verb, Warray possesses no fewer than 17. This figure was calculated by scrolling down the Warray-English verb section of the dictionary and counting them as I saw them.)

These conjugations are differentiated by their final syllable, which Harvey, in his grammar, delineates via hyphen, a practise wherein I chose not to participate.

As you can see, these are identical save for the fact that one set begins with the 13^th letter of the English alphabet while the other omits it.

Verb Conjugations 1 and 2 are the only ones which differentiate between the Imperative and the Non-Complete Potential. For the other 6 Conjugations, these two are identical.

It is worth noting that the vast majority of verbs belong to Conjugation 1. Based on a list given by Harvey, Warray contains 104 verbs that belong to Conjugation 1.

In each section, we will explore some of the functions of each conjugation. For this particular section, we will list the various functions of the Non-Complete Potential.

However, before we do this, it is worth pointing out that, based on my perusal, all instances of the Non-Complete Potential have a Potential Subject Prefix.

1. Conditionals

A Counterfactual Conditional basically refers to a “what if…” situation, whether it be in the past or the future, e.g. “what would you do if this happened?”.

In Warray, Past Conditionals can only take Potential Subject Prefixes, because they are counterfactual, which means that they refer to something that does not exist in reality.

Our example:

6.66     kanpulmi kak:wuyun wañ kantjiwun = She might get angry if you say that.

kanpulmi = she might get angry

kak:wuyun = after that

wañ = like that

kantjiwun = if you say it

kanpulmi is built from two components:

1. kan- is the 3^rd Person Singular Potential Subject Prefix.
2. pulmi is the Non-Complete Potential conjugation of the verb pulmal, which means to become angry.

By itself, kanpulmi can mean either she might get angry or she will get angry, depending on the woman in question.

Although it is not relevant here, Future Conditionals can take either Potential or Non-Complete Subject Prefixes, since reality has yet to decide their truth. The difference between the two is equivalent to the difference between an English ‘if’ or ‘when’ sentence respectively, with the former indicating an overall lower level of probability.

3. Past / Non-Past Distinction in the Negative

Earlier, we mentioned how the choice of a Complete or Non-Complete Subject Prefix is used to create a Past / Non-Past Distinction with Active Verbs and a Future / Non-Future Distinction with Stative Verbs.

This may have lead you to wonder how you tell make a Tense Distinction when the Subject Prefix is in the Potential, which is always the case when the verb is negative.

With –mal and –al verbs, conjugations with a Potential Prefix demonstrate a Past / Non-Past distinction regardless as to whether they are Stative or Active.

Our Stative example here is ñalmal, which means either to feel tired or to be tired.

6.67     amala apitjitjiŋmi kanñalmi = The water whistle duck not tired

6.68     amala apitjitjiŋmi kanñalmi = The water whistle duck will not be tired

6.69     amala apitjitjiŋmi kanñalmal = The water whistle duck was not tired

Based on my cursory research, apitjitjiŋmi refers to the species Dendrocygna arcuata australis, which is also known by the colloquial name Wandering whistle duck.

The adjective wandering probably refers to the fact that is found not only in Australia but also in the Philippines, Borneo, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands.

As you can tell, the Past Tense (in 6.69) takes the Irrealis conjugation, while the Present or Future Tense (6.67 and 6.68 respectively) take the Non-Complete Potential.

For our active verb, we will use nikpal, which means to put up, to build or to erect.

(There are several verbs which end in the suffix –pal, and these function identical to the –mal Class, but with a /p/ as oppose to an /m/.)

6.70     amala wili alkaway kannikpi = The catfish is not building a house

6.71     amala wili alkaway kannikpi = The catfish will not build a house

6.72     amala wili alkaway kannikpal = The catfish did not build a house

wili = house

alkaway = catfish

In order to focus on the grammar, each verb will take the 3^rd Person Singular or Non-Singular Subject Prefix. This will reduce the number of moving parts which one needs to consider.

In addition, it also allows me to include the names of many Australian animals as possible. This is made easier by Harvey’s grammar, which even includes many of their Latin names, thereby increasing the ease of research.

As you can see, the sole difference between these two conjugations is in the Realis, where they take the suffixes –m and –y respectively.

If you count the verbs ending in –pum, then Conjugation 3 is the second largest, with 37 entries.

In this section, we will discuss the various functions of the Irrealis.

1. The Desiderative

A Desiderative verb is created by adding the Dative Suffix to an Irrealis Verb. It is similar to the English verb ‘to want’, but only when the desire in question is either impossible or very difficult to obtain.

For example:

6.73     wutjayi neyimpaŋkiñ kapwokpunu = The possum wants to whip the sea turtle

wutjayi = possum

neyimpaŋkiñ = the sea turtle

kapwokpunu = wants to whip

wutjayi is the Ergative Declension of the noun wutja, which means possum. In this sentence, this indicates that it is the possum who wants to whip the sea turtle, as oppose to the other way round.

There are two words in Warray which translate as sea turtle, and, according to Harvey, these refer to three species between them.

neyimpaŋkiñ refers to Eretmochelys imbricata and Chelonia mydas.

Eretmochelys imbricate is also known as the Hawksbill sea turtle, and enjoys a worldwide distribution.

This particular turtle has two subspecies. These are Eretmochelys imbricata imbricata, which is found in the Atlantic; and Eretmochelys imbricata bissa, which is found in the Indo-Pacific, and will be exactly this to which Warray is referring.

Chelonia mydas, on the other hand, refers to an equally widespread turtle whose colloquial names include the green turtle, the green sea turtle, the black turtle, the black sea turtle or the Pacific green turtle. Conversely, this one does not appear to have any subspecies, and is also considered endangered, although not highly so.

wumpalin, meanwhile, refers to Carettochelys insculpta. This species enjoys a more limited range, ranging as far north as southern Papua New Guinea and as far south as northern Australia.

In English it is known as, among other things, the pig-nosed turtle, the pitted-shell turtle or the Fly River turtle.

kapwokpunu is built from three components:

1. ka- is the 3^rd Person Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix.
2. pwokpun is the Irrealis Conjugation of pwokpum, which means to flog or to whip. (All verbs ending in –pum behave identically to those ending in –m).
3. –u is the Dative Case Suffix, which here means want to.

Another thing about Desiderative Verbs is that they can only take Potential or Non-Complete Subject Prefixes. The former is used to indicate a complete event, while the latter is used to indicate a non-complete event.

2. The Positive Hortative

A Hortative is, essentially, a 1^st Person Non-Singular Suggestion. In English, these are made using the word let’s.

In Warray, the only Subject prefixes used for Hortatives are ma- and i-. Respectively, these are the 1^st Person Dual Inclusive and 1^st Person Dual Complete Subject Prefixes.

For example:

6.74     manan = Let’s see / Let the two of us, you and I, see

6.75     inan = Let’s see / Let all of us see

nan is the Irrealis conjugation of the verb nay, which means to see.

In addition, one can also include the 3^rd Person Non-Singular Object Prefix pun-, which gives us:

6.76     mapunnan = Let’s see them / Let the two of us, you and I, see them

6.77     ipunnan = Let’s see them / Let all of us see them

Now, it is worth remembering that pun- is the only Object Prefix that can occur in a Hortative (except, of course, when you are time traveling or engaged in an out-of-body experience). This is because a Hortative is always a 1^st Person Inclusive, which is explicit with ma- and implicit with i-.

Of course, one might wonder why the Hortatives take Complete Subject Prefixes, even though they refer to situations that are intrinsically not complete. The same is true of Imperatives, which also only take Complete Prefixes. This is due to historical development for which we do not have the time.

Now, what happens if we swap the Irrealis with the Realis?

We get:

6.78     mapunna = The two of us, you and I, saw them

6.79     ipunna = All of us saw them

As you can see, by doing this, we turn a Hortative into a Past Tense verb. We will explore the Realis in greater detail in the next section.

When it comes to the Irrealis and the Imperative, Conjugations 3-6 are identical in respect to the suffix they use. Indeed, it may have been the case that before Warray’s untimely death, these 4 Conjugations may have been in the process of convergence.

The Realis suffix category is used to indicate perfective events and 1^st Person non-complete Intentionals. The term “Perfective”, meanwhile, simply refers to an event which is complete. Meanwhile, the Imperfective refers to the opposite, i.e. an event which is incomplete or still in process.

In practice, the Realis and Imperfective do not act in opposition to each other. Instead, they actually complement each other where the latter describes a situation in process, and the former indicates the end point of the aforementioned situation. For example:

6.80     kark kak mukayiniñ wuliñ = The olive python finished the wax that it was showing off

kark = olive python

kak = wax

mukayiniñ = it was showing

wuliñ = it finished

The word kark refers to the olive python, but it does not refer to the species that is called parkuñtyi in the Yindjibarndi language studied in Chapter 1, but the two are related.

The olive python has two subspecies, which have the following Latin names:

kark = Liasis olivaceus olivaceus

parkuñtyi = Liasis olivaceus barroni (Yindjibarndi)

(Remember: The species of snake are related; the languages are not).

Warray has two words for wax, which differ depending on the material wherefrom it is made. kak refers to wax which is made from the root of the ironwood tree, while pottjok refers to wax which is made from regular beeswax.

mukayiniñ is the Imperfective conjugation of the verb mukayiñ, which means to show off.

wuliñ is the Realis conjugation of the verb wulal, which means to finish

In addition, this opposites attract energy can be used in another way. The Imperfective is used to set the scene, while the Realis is used to indicate the appearance of a new situation. Observe:

6.81     kalp:u tjun mawiñkaniñ pupallik nay apulaŋu ŋalniwiñ wikyaŋ = The black kangaroo was turning the woomera over in the creek, when it saw a crocodile it jumped out of the water

kalp:u = black kangaroo

tjun = woomera

mawiñkaniñ = was turning something over

pupallik = in the creek

nay = it saw it

apulaŋu = crocodile

ŋalniwiñ = it jumped out 

wikyaŋ = of the water

In Warray, there are several distinct words for kangaroo. Or, more accurately, the Warray language has several conceptions of the kangaroo, each with its own unrelated word.  These are:

kalp:u = black kangaroo

tjaniñ = kangaroo

purun = doe kangaroo

tjokot = kangaroo rat

In addition, if we expand the scope to encompass the wider category of wallaroo, we can also include these words:

pulak = agile wallaby

tayunu = pademelon wallaby

toriya = rock wallaby 

A tjun, or woomera, is an Aboriginal spear-thrower, which acts as an extension of the arm and is used to increase the range of a spear.

mawiñkaniñ is the Imperfective Conjugation of mawiñkaŋi, which means to roll or to turn something or someone (else) over.

If you’re rolling or turning yourself over, the verb you want is mawiñyaŋ, which I assume conjugates in an identical fashion to the Irregular verb yaŋ, which means to go.

pupallik is the Locative Case Declension of pupal, which means creek.

nay is the Realis Conjugation of the verb nay, which means to see, and since it has neither Subject or Object Prefix, it now means it saw it.

The Warray language recognises two conceptions of the crocodile. apulaŋu means saltwater crocodile while anmaymak:u means freshwater crocodile.

ŋalniwiñ is the Realis Conjugation of the verb ŋalni, which means, among other things, to get up, to get out, to come up, to come out, to come off and to escape.

The reason for this unexpected conjugation is that it ends in the Irregular verb ni, which means to sit.

wikyaŋ is the Ablative Case Declension of wik, which means water.

Here is the sentence once again in order to explore the wider grammatical purpose of this sentence:

6.81     kalp:u tjun mawiñkaniñ pupallik nay apulaŋu ŋalniwiñ wikyaŋ = The black kangaroo was turning the woomera over in the creek, when it saw a crocodile it jumped out of the water

In this sentence we have one Imperfective verb and two Realis verbs.

The Imperfective Verb is mawiñkaniñ, which means it is turning it over.

The first Realis Verb is nay, which means it saw it.

As mentioned previously, the Imperfective verb sets the scene, i.e. what the actor is doing. Then, the Realis verb indicates a new and sudden development.

The result of this complementary contrast is that nay now carries the meaning of when it saw it. As a result, the Dative Suffix is no longer obligatory, meaning that nayu would, in this case, be ungrammatical.

(On an unrelated tangent, the noun apulaŋu is almost identical to the verb apulanu, which is built from three components:

1. The 2^nd Person Non-Singular Complete Subject Suffix a-.
2. pulan, which is the Irrealis Conjugation of the verb pulam, which means to make or to cure.
3. The Dative Suffix –u.

As a result, apulanu roughly translates as when all of you cure him/her/it.)

In the last section, we will briefly discuss the Imperative Mood.

In respect to their forms relative not only to each other but also to their six main siblings, Conjugations 7 and 8 are the most divergent. Of course, it is worth bearing in mind that Conjugation 7 also possesses the Imperfective form –ñiñ.

The function of the Imperative is to give orders or commands. This is, I feel, quite easy to understand, and shan’t take up too much time.

With Positive Imperatives, the 2^nd Person Singular Subject is unmarked, while the 2^nd Person Non-Singular Subject Prefix is pa-.

(With Negative Imperatives, you attach the correct Potential Subject Prefix.)

For example:

6.82     wuli = Piss!

6.83     pawuli = All of you, piss!

wuli belongs to Verb Conjugation Class 7. It can mean not only to piss but also to rain.

kuttjaŋ, meanwhile, belongs to Verb Conjugation Class 8, giving us:

6.84     kuttjañ = Wake up!

6.85     pakuttjañ = All of you, wake up!

With both Positive and Negative Imperatives, the Object Prefixes are the same as with any other conjugation.

These examples will all use yakwu: the Imperative form of yakwuy, which means to lie.

The Positive Imperative forms are:

6.86     panyakwu = Lie to me!

6.87     panpayakwu = All of you, lie to me! 

6.88     inyakwu = Lie to us!

6.89     inpayakwu = All of you, lie to us!

6.90     yakwu = Lie to him!

6.91     payakwu = All of you, lie to her!

6.92     punyakwu = Lie to them!

6.93     punpayakwu = All of you, lie to them!

Meanwhile, the Negative Imperative forms are:

6.94     amala kanpanyakwu = Do not lie to me!

6.95     amala kanapanyakwu = All of you, do not lie to me!

6.96     amala kaninyakwu = Do not lie to us!

6.97     amala kanainyakwu = All of you, do not lie to us!

6.98     amala kanyakwu = Do not lie to her!

6.99     amala kanayakwu = All of you, do not lie to him!

6.100   amala kanpunyakwu = Do not lie to them!

6.101   amala kanapunyakwu = All of you, do not lie to them!

I won’t dissect any of these sentences further. If, by some miracle, you’ve understood everything I have tried to impart thus far, then you will already know how they should break down. If, as is more likely the case, you’ve barely retained anything, then one more probably won’t help.

More importantly, however, I do not feel particularly inclined to do so.

It has been mentioned a few times, whether implicitly or explicitly, that Warray possesses a significant number of irregular verbs.

Naturally, we lack the time to include all of these in this chapter. Instead, we will content ourselves with two whose meanings are rather similar. These are

kiyakli = to sweat

kiyakpuk = to feel sweaty

With both verbs, the Imperative form is identical to the Irrealis form.

For old times, sake I have decided to include one example sentence that includes both.

6.102   kakpankek kiyakliliñ kiyakpuk = The eel was feeling sweaty when it sweated

kakpankek = snail

kiyakliliñ = was feeling sweaty

kiyakpuk = when it sweated

Typically, the Simple Past Tense of to sweat is sweat, with sweated sounding somewhat archaic to mine own ears. I chose it for stylistic reasons.

Indeed, I know from my more general research that there is an old pattern that justifies this decision.

In English, the following verbs once had completely regular Simple Past Conjugations, for example:

hit became hitted;

cut became cutted; and

put became putted

All these verbs are fairly frequent in English, and the more often they were uttered, it eventually became easier to omit the final syllable, especially as there is little difference between /t/ and /d/ anyway. As a result, it came to be that:

hit becomes hit;

cut becomes cut; and

put becomes put.

Anyway, this is the end of our main discussion of Warray. We will now turn to my overall thoughts on the language, and finish with Schleicher’s Fable, which I hope you shall soon be able to recite from heart.

What do I think about Warray as a whole?

I appreciate the Portmanteau Prefixes, although compared to some other languages, Warray has comparatively few. Indeed, the Portmanteau Prefix appears to be an areal feature in Northern Australia, as we will explore in greater detail in our next chapter, where we discuss the Wardaman language, which is not related to Warray. 

The most distinguishing feature, in my opinion, is the consistent appearance of asymmetry across all aspects of the language. With pronouns, only the 1^st Person makes a distinction between Dual and Plural. Furthermore, only the 1^st Person Dual makes a distinction between the Inclusive and Exclusive.

With verbs, we have 8 regular Conjugation Classes. Across most of these Conjugation Classes, the Imperfective is the same, potentially indicating a trend towards convergence.

Meanwhile, with some Conjugation Classes, the Infinitive or Base form is also the Realis, while with others, it is identical to the Irrealis.

At this point, I naturally feel obliged to mention the caveat that my knowledge of the Warray Verbal System is far from complete, and may contain more errors than is typical for even my own ramblings.

In addition, this chapter also served as an introduction into the topic of Aboriginal Social Organisation. This will hopefully reappear in later chapters, giving us insights into other forms of hunter-gatherer living and social arrangements.

On a related tangent, it was while writing this chapter that I decided, going forward, to always bring up the language’s family-related dialogue, at least as long as it is included in the literature I can access.

My first reason for this is that it provides another point of comparison across the 60 languages in this series.

My second is that it is an easy way to incorporate words from this language into everyday life, should you be in that way inclined.

Now, I have mentioned that our next language in the canon will be Wardaman, which is also spoken in the Northern Territory of Australia. This remains true, but it will not be the next blog post.

Instead, I have decided that after every six principal chapters I shall include 3 Interlude chapters. These Interlude chapters will be shorter, and will cover two languages each.

In these Interlude chapters, I will explore one short story from each language. These will originate from the language’s mythological cycle, except in those instances where one is not available.

An Interlude chapter will consist of: the story in the original language, my own translation (which will differ from the original author’s translation), a few notes on the grammar (akin to our analyses of Schleicher’s Fable), and lastly my thoughts on the story itself.

You should understand what I mean when we see one of these for ourselves.

Are you sitting comfortably? You are? Good.

Today’s story is Schleicher’s Fable, also known as:

The Sheep and the Horses:

1. On a hill, a sheep that had no wool saw some horses: one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load and one carrying a man quickly.

2. The sheep said to the horses: “My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses.”

3. The horses said: “Listen sheep our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool.”

4. Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

nentu waŋ anturk:u

1. waŋ amala mitjayiwu punnay nentu kirilik: antjeriñ pamuñ akunkun yurmayim, antjeriñ tup:u amutek wukmayim, antjeriñ nal wukmayim kiyakyiwu. 

2. waŋ nentuwu puntjiyi: “antwuy pankatjipum patnayu: nalyi nentu inpitjipmalañ.” 

3. nentu patjiyi: “waŋ ŋa! antwuy inkatjipum palinayu: nal, tjatpula, mitja waŋu kalilitpun anmewelu amalmal akalawu. amala waŋ mitja kankakaŋi.” 

4. kak:wuy nayu, waŋ wuppum kolallik 

Notes:

1. Warray does not have a word for sheep. However, there pre-existed a pattern whereby I could create a new one. Observe:

waŋ ankutjik:u = buffalo (lit. black animal)

waŋ anpitpit:u = cattle (lit. red animal)

Based on this template, I created the neologism:

waŋ anturk:u = sheep (lit. white animal)

Indeed, now that we have established waŋ anturk:u as an element in our story, it will henceforth be referred to simply as waŋ.

2. In this iteration, I changed the title so that this time round, it now means the horses and the sheep. Why did I do this?

The only reason I can give is that it just feels right.

3. The term amala mitjayiwu literally means not with hair. The word for hair is mitja. It probably won’t surprise you to find out that a language without a word for sheep also lacks a word for wool.

4. punnay means it saw them, and it indicates that the sheep saw several horses.

5. There was no word in Warray for wagon, so I replaced it with pamuñ, which means canoe.

6. yurmayim is the Imperfective conjugation of the verb yurmi, which means to pull. This conjugates like the irregular verb mi, which means to get, to grab or to pick up.

wukmayim operates along the same principles.

mi conjugates according to this pattern:

Imperative:      may

Realis:             mi

Irrealis:            mañ

Imperfective:   mayim

7. Another word missing in Warray was load. I replaced this with tup:u, which means basket. If we assume that this tale is meant to take place at the time when Indo-European was still spoken, circa 3000 BC, then this is probably what the horse was carrying.

8. I could not locate a word meaning fast or quick, and my hunch is that it was a victim of the surviving speakers’ forgetfulness. To get around this, I used the word kiyakyiwu, which is the Comitative Case Declension of kiyak, which means sweat.

Thus, kiyakyiwu means with sweat, and implies that the horse is probably going quite fast, since it is sweating.

9. tjiyi is the Realis Conjugation of the irregular verb tjiyi, which means, among other things, to say, to do, to call, to promise, to mean or to believe.

Here is the conjugation table:

Imperative:      tji

Realis: tjiyi     

Irrealis:            tjiñ

Imperfectve:    tjuŋutjiñ 

10. antwuy pankatjipum literally means the heart hurts me. The verb tjipum specifically means to hurt someone.

11. The sentence nalyi nentu inpitjipmalañ means something along the lines of: the man is driving the horses.

However, the point of interest is the verb inpitjipmalañ, which is built of two parts:

1. in-, which is the 2^nd Person Plural Object Suffix.
2. pitjipmalañ, which is the Imperfective conjugation of pitjipmal, which means to drive.

Now, why did I opt for in- as oppose to the 3^rd Person Plural Object Suffix pun-?

When you translate it back into English, the full sentence means the man is driving you, the horses. Stylistically, I feel as though it makes the sheep sound like more of a sarcastic arsehole. It may be that this is just my own interpretation of the story; after six translations I have had greater chance to think about this than most.

Also, verb pitjipmal also means to squeeze, to twist and to rub together. These other interpretations of the verb help augment the idea that the man is treating his horses roughly.

12. Warray was absent a word for master. I replaced this with tjatpula, which means old man, and carries the connotation of village elder.

13. I could not find a word for warm, and I did not want to use the adjective awalak, which means hot, because it did not feel right. Also, based on the idea that wearing clothes is still treated by the language as an imported European idea, the idea that he would even want a warm garment seemed a tad silly.

Therefore, I chose to use the adjective amalmal, which means soft.

14. wuppum is the Realis conjugation of the verb wuppum, which means to clear off or to run away.

Sources:

Mark Harvey, Ngoni Waray Amungal-Yang: The Waray Language from Adelaide River (Australia: Australian National University 1986)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warray_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawoyn_language

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1958.60.1.02a00070

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelumbo_nucifera

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-tailed_nightjar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tawny_frogmouth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_barn_owl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barking_owl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandering_whistling_duck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawksbill_sea_turtle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_sea_turtle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig-nosed_turtle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_python

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woomera_(spear-thrower)

Comparison Time: Warray and Tundra Nenets

For those of you who have followed this blog for a while, neither of these languages, especially the latter, require an introduction. For the benefit of new readers, I will briefly explain who each of these languages are.

The Warray language went extinct around the year 2000. During its lifetime it was spoken in the region surrounding the Adelaide River in the Northern Territory. It belonged to the Guwinyguan branch of the Arnhem language family. Further exploration of the language is available in these previous posts:

Warray/Warao Comparison and Warray Verbs

Tundra Nenets, on the other hand, is still alive, with approximately 22,000 speakers. It is spoken in Northern Siberia, roughly opposite the island of Novaya Zemlya, where the Soviets tested many of their hydrogen bombs. Tundra Nenets belongs to the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic language family, and is therefore a distant cousin of several European languages, the most well known of which are Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian. Further exploration of Tundra Nenets is available here:

TN/French and Moody Nenets and others.

Now why are we comparing these two languages, speakers of whom have probably never been aware of the existence of the other?

Well, despite the near certainty that the two have never touched, they happen to share a very interesting feature: The Subject-Object Affix.

What is a Subject-Object Affix, I hear you cry out.

Well, the Affix part is fairly simple. It refers to any combination of consonants and vowels that is attached to a word in order to add further meaning. The most well-known, and probably common forms of Affix are the Prefix, which comes at the start of a word, and the Suffix, which comes at the end.

More obscure examples include the Infix, which goes inside a word; and the Circumfix, which has parts which go at both he beginning and end of a word.

The Subject-Object part, meanwhile, refers to the fact that it tells the listener not only who did the action, but also to whom they did it.

As we will explore below, Warray makes relatively limited use of the Subject-Object Prefix, while Tundra Nenets has a substantially more developed Subject-Object Suffix system.

First, we shall explore how these features manifest themselves in Warray, followed by a focus on its counterpart in Tundra Nenets, and we shall finish with a direct sentence comparison.

(The Tundra Nenets hail from a long tradition of reindeer herders, and many continue to follow this lifestyle to the present day. This may help to explain why, despite the relatively large geographical area over which the language is spoken, dialectical differences are very few.)

Section 1: Warray

Before we discuss the Subject-Object Prefixes, we will first explore Subject and Object Prefixes in turn, which should hopefully give you a good foundation to the rest of the exploration.

Just like any other language, Warray has pronouns. However, these are not used in most simple sentences. Instead, there is a system of Subject and Object Prefixes which one attaches to the beginning of the verb. Here is a table: (Note that this is a simplified version of the table that appears in Mark Harvey’s Grammar)

In Warray, there are two semantic classes of verbs. These are the Stative, which describe states of beings, and the Active, which describe actions.

For Stative verbs, the Complete/Non-Complete distinction produces a division between the Future and Non-Future Tenses.

An example of a Stative Verb is ngantitepmal, which means to be thirsty. In the below sentences we will use the Realis conjugation of ngantitepminj.

1st Person Plural:

manmangantitepminj = We will be thirsty

mangantitepminj = We are thirsty / We were thirsty

3rd Person Singular:

ngantitepminj = He or she will be thirsty

kangantitepminj = He or she is thirsty / He or she was thirsty

In addition to the Subject Prefixes, we also have the Object Prefixes, which are much simpler.

For Active verbs, the Complete/Non-Complete Subject Pronoun Division leads to a Past/Non-Past distinction.

Here we will study the verb pemal, which means to shake, and whose Realis Conjugation is peminj.

2nd Person Singular Subject with 1st Person Plural Object:

pananpeminj = You shook me

panankapeminj = You are shaking me / You will shake me

1st Person Singular Subject with 3rd Person Plural Object:

atpunpeminj / atputpeminj = I shook them

patpunpeminj / patputpeminj = I am shaking them / I will shake them

In Warray, Subject and Object Prefixes follow a certain order, which is as follows:

1st Person Subject – Object – 2nd Person Subject – ka- – pa- – kan-

I am afraid that this is something that you will need to memorise. If anyone can come up with a trick that helps people to remember it, I would be interested to hear it.

Hopefully, this should give you a sufficient background understanding of how Subject and Object Prefixes function.

(Warray is a member of the Guwinyguan branch of the Arnhem Land Language family, which is represented in purple on the map. The white spaces represent the Pama-Nyungan languages, the grep spaces the other non-Pama-Nyungan languages, and the other colours represent the other branches of the Arnhem Land family.)

Section 2: The Warray Subject-Object Prefixes

In a limited number of circumstances, Warray offers a single prefix which encodes both the Subject and Object of the verb. These cannot be broken down into smaller components. They are as follows:

The Realis conjugation of tumtjitmal is tumtjitminj, which means to be jealous of someone.

parinjtumtjitminj = I will be jealous of you

arinjtumtjitminj = I am jealous of you / I was jealous of you

punminj is the Realis conjugation of punmal, which means to bury:

inipunminj = We buried you (all)

paninipunminj = We are burying you (all) / We will bury you (all)

Naturally, there is more to the Warray Subject-Object Prefix than what we have discussed here, though in the interests of time we will briefly end it here in order to introduce the second language under investigation.

(Two Forest Nenets women take a walk through the woods. Forest and Tundra Nenets are considered either as sister languages or dialects of the same language. Ultimately, despite the relationship between the two languages, they share low mutual intelligibility. If I find any comprehensive information on this language then we many well explore it in a later issue.)

Section 3: The Tundra Nenets Subject-Object Suffix

Before we begin, it bears pointing out that Tundra Nenets does not lack for Subject-Object Suffixes. However, for the purposes of your sanity, we will only discuss the Imperative Mood Suffixes, although most other suffix tables tend to follow the same pattern.

The Imperative Mood is used for giving commands, e.g. do this! or do that!

Here are some examples of these suffixes in action, all of which are built using the verb ləx^onako, which means to talk:

s’iqm’i ləx^onakor’ih = Talk to me, both of you!

s’id^on’ih ləx^onakoxəyudaq = Do talk to the both of us, all of you!

s’id^onaq ləx^onakon^oq = You there, talk to us!

s’iqm’i is the Tundra Nenets word for me.

s’id^on’ih and s’id^onaq both translate into English as we; the former refers specifically to two people and the latter refers to three or more people.

-r’ih is the 2nd Person Dual Subject > Singular Object Suffix, which refers to a command for two people to act on a single object.

-xəyudaq is the 2nd Person Plural Subject > Dual Object Suffix, which refers to a command for more than three people to act on two objects.

-n^oq is the 2nd Person Singular Subject > Plural Object Suffix, which refers to a command for exactly one person to do something to three or more objects.

The main thing worth noting here is that Tundra Nenets has a Singular-Dual-Plural distinction, whereas Warray possesses a Singular-Plural distinction. (There is some evidence that Warray may have once had a similarly, if not more, developed Dual distinction. However, Mark Harvey reports that many of the Warray had forgotten their original language, and thus much of the language will likely never be known.)

Now that we have explored each language individually, now it is time to compare and contrast these two languages directly.

(The Adelaide River is home to the jumping crocodile, which seem happy to jump up for the pleasure of tourist and their cameras. Let’s hope that the organisers keep them well fed.)

Section 4:

In this section, we will analyse a number of sentences, and how they are different across our two languages. I would wager that this is the first time that anyone has ever compared and contrasted these two languages, and therefore you shall see history unfold before your very eyes.

English: Carry her through the gate alone! / Carry him through the gate alone!

Warray: ngantiwulmapwuy antjim

Tundra Nenets: s’it’a n’ow^ona n’ūp’iwad^o

First of all, neither Warray nor Tundra Nenets possesses a distinct word meaning gate.

In Warray, we have antjim, which means mouth.

The Tundra Nenets word n’o means door. Interestingly, the Tundra Nenets word for mouth is the rather similar n’ah.

ngantiwulmapwuy is built from two components. The first is ngnatiwulma, which is the Imperative form of ngantiwulmal, which means to carry.

In contrast to Tundra Nenets, the Warray Imperative Prefixes are rather simple. The Object Prefixes are the same as those discussed above.

Meanwhile, if you are ordering a single person, you do not add a prefix. In you are commanding more than one person, one adds the prefix pa-.

Therefore, if I wanted to command several people to carry one person, I would instead utter pangantiwulma, and I f I wished to change who was/were being carried, the above mentioned prefix order would once again apply.

As a result, ngantiwulma takes zero suffixes, which means that it refers to a Single Subject acting on a Single Third-Person Object. Without further context, this 3rd Person Object could translate into English as he, she or it.

In contrast to Tundra Nenets, Warray actually does possess a distinction between he and she, these words being akala and alkala respectively. However, in a simple sentence such as this, it is not necessary to include them, and therefore the distinction no longer applies here.

-pwuy is the Perlative Suffix, which is used to indicate motion either along or through a place.

Now for the Tundra Nenets sentence:

s’it’a is the 3rd Person Singular Accusative, thus it means both him or her.

Attached to n’o is the Perlative Suffix -mən’a, which takes the reduced form -w^ona when it occurs after a vowel. (Note, in the publicly available grammar this is referred to as the „Prolative“ as oppose to the „Perlative“.)

n’ūp’iwad^o is formed from  n’ūp’iwa, which means to carry, and –d^o, which refers to a single person acting on a single object.

Across the world, the Perlative case is a rare feature, appearing predominantly, though not exclusively, in Australian Aboriginal languages as well as those found in the far north of America, e.g. Inuktitut and Eurasia, e.g.  Chukchi.

(A map displaying all of the languages, both past and present, spoken within the northernmost point of the Northern Territory. This is not only the most linguistically diverse part of Aboriginal Australia, possessing a greater variety of language families than the rest of the continent, but one of the most linguistically diverse places in the entire world. This is coupled with the fact that it lies not far away from Papua New Guinea, the single most linguistically diverse place in the world by far.)

In conclusion, I hope that you have enjoyed reading of a comparison between two languages whom no one would have ever thought to compare. Naturally, we have barely begun to scratch the surface of either language, and I encourage you all to explore them at your own leisure. What I rarely, if ever, mention is that almost to every resource that I use was publicly available, at least at the time when I downloaded it.

For our next exploration, I feel that it is time to return to Papua New Guinea, an island roughly twice the size of the author’s native Great Britain, but with more than 800 indigenous languages, more than any other single country on Earth.

In a previous article I discussed a particularly interesting feature of the Manambu language, in particular how the word for testicles can also mean under. There is little to no doubt that I can probably find another feature worthy of discussion. Until then,

Same Wilf-Time!

Same Wilf-Channel!

Sources:

Irina Nikolaeva, A grammar of Tundra Nenets (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH 2014)

Mark Harvey, Ngoni Waray Amungal-Yang: The Waray Language from Adelaide River (Australian National University 1986)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warray_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tundra_Nenets_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macro-Gunwinyguan_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Nenets_language

Google Images

8’s a Crowd: Verb Conjugations in Warray

In a previous article, we explored compared and contrasted the Warao language of South America with the Warray language of North-West Australia. In that article, I mentioned that the latter contains eight regular verb conjugations, (alongside a number or irregular and semi-regular verbs).

In this article, we will discuss a number of these in some detail. First, however, it is time to look at a number of colour-coded tables. (The numbers I have assigned arbitrarily to each conjugation.)

The 1st and 2nd Conjugations differentiate themselves in the sense that they possess a separate non-complete Potential form. For all the other Conjugations, it is identical to the Imperative form.

The non-complete Potential is quite difficult to explain, as it does not appear very often in the sources consulted. The first part, the non-complete, typically expressed via the Subject Prefixes, refers to incomplete actions.

The Potential, meanwhile, is used to build negative sentences, as well as obligation, desire, attempted actions and future possibilities. It is one of the most complex aspects of this language.

The Realis Conjugation, which takes the same form as the verb stem in half of the conjugations, refers to a situation which is known to be real.

The Irrealis, in direct contrast, refers to situations that are yet to be actualised, i.e. one that is not known to have occurred.

The Imperative is used to indicate commands from one person to another.

The Imperfective, is used when a situation is ongoing, habitual or repeated, i.e. it is not viewed as a complete whole.

You may be wondering whether these are distributed equally, or whether some are more common than others. Based on initial observations, Conjugation 1, or -m-al, seems to predominate, encompassing over 90 verbs.

We will now dissect a number of sentences containing verbs that belong to the above conjugations.

Sentence 1: (Conjugation 3)

English: We will fight the cormorant in the ashes

Warray: palipum mawa loralik

palipum is composed of two parts. The first is pali, which is the 1st Person Plural Non-Complete Subject Prefix. Independent pronouns do exist in the Warray language, though they usually tend to appear when they attach to certain suffixes, as we will explore below.

pum, meanwhile, is the Realis conjugation of pum, which means to hit, to fight and to kill. It is also used to create a number of compound verbs, for example we have karay-pum, which means to tease or to laugh at, lar-pum, meaning to stop and lit-pum, meaning to sew or to weave, among others.

mawa means cormorant, or more specifically the Little Pied Cormorant, whose Latin name is Microcarbo melanoleucos.

loralik is the Locative Declension of lora, which means ashes or dust.

(Microcarbo melanoleucos, or the Little Pied Cormorant, which can be found across most of Australia, as well as New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Malaysia. It has three commonly recognised subspecies, whose ranges are comparatively more restricted.)

Sentence 2: (Conjugation 8)

English: Don’t go looking for the Brown Tree Snake with her!

Warray: amala kanpatjang alkalayiwu anatlitjiimukuu! 

The first word, amala, is a Negation Particle, which simply means that it makes the following sentence negative, i.e. it serves the same function as do words such as no and not.

kanpatjang comes into being through the union of kan and patjang. The latter is the Imperative Conjugation of patjang, which means to look for, or to search for.

This brings us to a discussion of the Imperative Mood, which is one of the simpler aspects of Warray. For Positive Imperatives, the Singular takes no prefixes, and the plural takes the prefix pa.

Negative Imperatives, however, require the use of the Negation Particle, amala, and the Potential Personal Prefixes. The 2nd Person Singular form, kan, is seen above, while the 2nd Person Plural form is kana. Both these components are necessary.

(Interestingly, kan is also the 3rd Person Singular Potential Subject Prefix, though the 3rd Person Plural equivalent is kanpa. In total, there are 30 Subject Prefixes, and these are the only two that are identical.)

alkalayiwu is the combination of alkala and –yiwu. The latter is the Comitative Suffix, which, in most circumstances, translates to the English preposition with.

(You could also use it to translate the blog name, i.e. Ngoni Wilfyiwu.)

alkala is the 3rd Person Singular Female Pronoun, or she, in common parlance. However, unlike its English equivalent, it is composed of two parts. The first is al-, the Human Female Classifier Prefix, and the second is kala, which seems to be a unisex 3rd Person Singular Pronoun, though I have not seen it occur independently

In case you are wondering, there is also a Male Human Classifier Prefix, a-, which gives a-kala, or he.

anatlitjiimukuu means brown tree snake, which is pictured below. In Warray, nouns do not possess Singular or Plural forms. Instead, this would be demarcated via the use of an Object Prefix, which we shall explore below.

(Boiga irregularis, also known as the Brown Tree Snake, engaging in its characteristic S-pose. It is found across the northern coast of Australia, Papua New Guinea and parts of Indonesia. Due to increased aircraft use, it has travelled to a number of islands, including Guam, Hawai’i and Okinawa, where it is considered an invasive species.)

Sentence 3: (Conjugation 5)

English: Sometimes, the pair of grass whistle ducks would hunt us

Warray: tjirpiyuklul inkapukaaninj

tjirpiyuklul means the pair of grass whistle ducks. The first part, tjirpiyuk, refers to the grass whistle duck, while the second parts is the Pair Suffix -lul, which, when attached to any noun, indicates that the noun to which it refers to is one of a pair (though some other meanings are possible.

inkapukaaninj, meanwhile, is built from  pukaaninj, which is the Imperfective Conjugation of pukaangi, which means to hunt. Our first suffix, in- is the 1st Person Plural Object Suffix. The second, ka– is the 3rd Person Singular Non-Complete Subject Suffix.

Though you might expect it to be the case that the Subject Prefix typically precedes the Object Prefix, the actual Prefix order goes something like this:

1stS – Obj – 2ndS – ka – pa – kan

In addition, as we will explore below, there are a number of Prefixes which encode both the 1st Person Subject and a number of 2nd Person Objects.

(Dendrocygna eytoni, or the Grass Whistle Duck, which is found in northern, eastern and central Australia, along with parts of New Guinea. However, it only breeds in Australia.)

Sentence 4: (Conjugations 2 & 1)

English: They are jealous because we brought all of you up

Warray:  ininjilinj katjiyang patumtjitminj

ininjilinj means we brought all you up or we will bring you up. It is composed from two parts. The first is njilinj, which is the Realis Conjugation of njilal, meaning to bring up.

The second part is the prefix ini, which encodes three separate aspects at once. First of all, this is a Complete Suffix; the Second is the 1st Person Plural Subject; and the third is the 2nd Person Object, both Singular and Plural.

katjiyang means therefore or thus. It is derived from katji and yang.

katji is defined as the Non-Proximate Demonstrative Pronoun, which roughly translates to that.

-yang, meanwhile, is the Origin Suffix, which, as the name implies, indicates the origin of something.

Thus, taken altogether, katjiyang translates approximately to something along the lines of originating from (the fact) that.

patumtjitminj means either they were jealous or they are jealous. It is compsed of tumtjitminj, which is the Realis Conjugation of tumtjitmal, which means to be jealous or to become jealous, and pa- is the 3rd Person Plural Complete Subject Prefix.

In this sentence, we also witness an interesting quirk of Warray grammar, which relates to how the language expresses Tense.

To summarise, the Warray language differentiates between two classes of verbs: the Stative, which relates to emotions and other states of mind/body; and Active Verbs, which refer to actions.

In Warray, grammatical Tense is indicated through the use of the Complete or Non-Complete Subject Prefixes, and how they interact with the aforementioned Verb Classes. (This applies to positive sentences, negative sentences use the Potential Subject Prefixes, which, as touched upon earlier, are a separate kettle of fish).

For Stative verbs, the Non-Complete Prefixes indicate the Future Tense, and the Complete prefixes indicate the Non-Future Tense.

For Active verbs, conversely, the Non-Complete indicates the Past Tense, while the Complete prefixes indicate the Non-Past tense.

There is one variation in this pattern, which we will explore below.

(A party tourists exploring the Adelaide River, where you can get within biting distance of the majestic crocodile. Whether the tour boat searches for crocodiles to feed, or whether this crocodile is in fact operating, of its own volition, as a toll booth, is a question for another day.)

Sentence 5: (Conjugation 6)

In this section we will discuss the Inchoatives, which are used to indicate the process of becoming. With a number of exceptions, the form -tjinj is attached to adjectives while -nayinj is attached to nouns. Though they are suffixes, they are the equivalent to Stative verbs.

English: You have become tall / You were tall 

Warray: apuruyutjinj

The Warray word has three components. The main one is puruyu, which means either long or tall.

Attached to this is the Suffix -tjinj, which is the Realis Conjugation of the Adjectival Inchoative -tjinj.

Before this, we have the 2nd Person Plural Complete Subject Prefix a-.

Typically, the combination of a Complete Subject Prefix and a Stative verb will result in the Future Tense. Here, this combination results in the Past Tense, which is how an Active verb behaves.

Here are the Non-Complete versions for the above sentence.

Warray: akapuruyutjinj

English: You are getting tall / You will be tall

In the above Warray Sentence, a- has been replaced with aka-, which is the 2nd Person Plural Non-Complete Subject Prefix. Simply by replacing the former with the latter, we have completely changed the Tense of the sentence.

There is one adjective, however, which takes -nayinj.

English: He has become a man

Warray: amuteknayinj

Here, we see the Male Human Classifier a-; the adjective mutek, which means big; and -nayinj, the Realis Conjugation of -nayinj, which is typically the Noun Inchoative.

Thus, taken as a whole, amutek refers to a specifically human male type of bigness. As a result, this translation of the Warray is perfectly valid:

He has become big

On the other hand, there also exists a distinctly human female variety of bigness, which can be interpreted in a number of ways.

English: She has become big / She has become a woman / She has become pregnant

Warray: almuteknayinj

The only grammatical difference in this sentence is that a- has been replaced with its female equivalent of al-, and the result of this is that the concept of male bigness has been replaced with the concept of female bigness, which, as we see here, has a number of potential interpretations.

Furthermore, almutek could also act as the Warray equivalent to the English word pregnant. I say this because Warray does not have a separate word for pregnant.

This means, ultimately, that if you don’t like the idea of referring to pregnancy as a form of female bigness, then it might be time to find another language to study.

(The flag for the Northern Territory, within whose boundaries the Warray language was spoken. A number of tribes from this region had maintained extensive sea contacts with parts of what is now Indonesia for around 5 centuries prior to European colonisation.)

This has been our introduction to the Warray language from northern Australia, and I hope that it was an interesting one, whether because or in spite of the jargon-heavy nature of this post, even by my standards.

Naturally, I was not able to provide examples for all 8 of the regular conjugations, which I had expected. Initially, I had planned to include one of the irregular conjugations; in the end I spoke about bigness instead. Maybe we will explore a number of these in future, since there are a number of other fascinating quirks of Warray which, sadly, failed to make the cut.

In our next blog post, we will voyage eastwards to the coast of the neighbouring state of Queensland, where we shall acquaint ourselves with the Yidiñ language, whose speakers display a prefer words with an even number of syllables. Until then,

Same Wilf-time!

Same Wilf-Channel!

Sources:

Mark Harvey, Ngoni Waray Amungal-Yang: The Waray Language from Adelaide River (Australian National University 1989)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Territory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchoative_verb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperfective_aspect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_pied_cormorant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_tree_snake

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumed_whistling_duck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warray_language

Google Images

Comparison: Warao vs. Warray

In the first of what will hopefully become a semi-regular series, I will compare two languages who share nothing more than confusingly similar names. By this, I mean that the names of the languages will differ by rarely more than three letters.

In alphabetical order, our first language is Warao, a language isolate spoken by around 33,000 in the Orinoco Delta of north-eastern Venezuela, alongside smaller communities in the nearby countries of Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname. (If you would like a more concise introduction for the Warao language, feel free to watch the video in the source link. It was this same video that initially introduced me to the language.)

Currently, Warao has no known linguistic relatives, with one possible exception, this being the Timucua language. Aside from any grammatical features, the main problem with any link between these two is that Timucua was spoken in northern Florida, which no further sister languages in between, whether via land or across the Gulf of Mexico.

Furthermore, the language went extinct during the second half of the 18th century. Despite this, there is a wealth of information on the language, most of which comes from the work of Franciscan Missionary Francisco Pareja.

(The area wherein Warao is spoken.)

Warray was an Arnhem-language spoken in and around the Adelaide river in the Northern Territory of Australia. It went extinct somewhere around the turn of the 20th century.

In the language grammar I used, the language name is spelt Waray. I chose the above spelling with two /r/’s in order to make the two languages more distinct.

In addition, my original plan was to compare Warao to the Waray language of the Philippines. This changed after I found the Warray grammar which I reference in the source list. In truth, I had been unaware of the language’s (former) existence.

Also, by establishing this spelling convention at the earliest possible time, I allow myself more freedom to one day compare Waray and Warray.

For full disclosure, I may have been hasty in choosing this comparison, in the sense that I could have done further research before committing myself to this topic. Nevertheless, I have committed myself to this endeavour, and will persevere.

(The Warray language belongs to the Guwinyguan branch of the Arnhem language family, which is shaded in purple in the above diagram. Grey indicates other Non-Pama-Nyungan languages, white indicates the Pama-Nyungan language family, while the other colours refer to other branches of the Arnhem family.)

Sentence 1.

English: A snake bit me

Warao: ma huba abuae / huba mabuae

Warray: tjun panpe

ma is the 1st Person Object Pronoun, which translates as me. It can occur as both an Independent Pronoun, and also as the prefix m- or ma-, the form which it takes in the second version of the sentence.

huba means snake. Based on what information I could find, there seems to be only one word for snake in Warao. This is not the case in Warray, as we shall explore.

abuae means bit. To build this short word, we start with the root verb abu, which means to bite.

Our first Suffix, -a, is defined as the Punctual Aspect, which defines the event as one that took place in a single instant. This aspect is typically defined as a Semelfactive, or an aspect that relays the flow of time in the form of a verb stem.

Our second suffix, -e, is simply the Past Tense Suffix.

A literal translation:

ma huba abuae / huba abuae = me snake bit / snake me.bit

(A traditional open-sided Warao hut on stilts. The Warao were one of the tribes encountered by the explorer Alonso de Ojeda, who travelled with (in)famous explorer Christopher Columbus. Upon seeing structures similar to those pictured above, he named the village and the surrounding area Little Venice or, Venezuela, in his native Spanish. This is, as far as can be told, the origin for the name of the modern country.)

Despite how different these two sentences look at a superficial level, structurally they share a number of similarities. Let us explore.

tjun means Children’s Python, though there does exist a generic word for snake, which is pelam.

panpeminj is a a four-part word which, taken together, translates to bit.me. 

We begin with the verb root pe, which means to bite, to which we add a single prefix.

This prefix is pan-, which is the First Person Singular Object Prefix, which translates to me. As far as I can discern, Warray does not seem to possess any independent Object Pronouns.

In Warray,  there are 8 separate regular verb conjugations, not all of them we will be able to discuss in this article. The verb pe belongs to the simplest of these conjugations, in that it takes the fewest suffixes. It is also an Active verb, as oppose to a Stative verb, a distinction whose importance we shall discuss shortly.

Unlike most Warray verbs, the Realis conjugation for pe is the same as the infinitive. By this, it does not take any suffixes for the Realis Mood.

The Realis Mood is used to indicate that the sentence is a statement of fact. This mood exists in English, where does not require any particular marking (i.e. a normal sentence).

However, to fully explain this sentence, I must draw your attention to a prefix that does not exist, namely the 3rd Person Singular Complete Subject.

Although Warray does possess independent Subject Pronouns, these are not mandatory in every sentence due to the presence of the Subject Prefixes, which precede the Object Prefixes whenever they occur.

For each person, there are three categories of Subject Prefix, the Complete, the Non-Complete and the Potential (though we will only explore the first two.)

One thing that Warray lacks, as far as I can see, are regular Tense markers. It is for this reason that the Subject Prefixes come into their own.

In an Active verb, the choice between a Complete or a Non-Complete distinction is equal to a Past/Non-Past distinction. Because we are using the Complete Suffix, the sentence takes place in the Past.

If we were to replace this with the Non-Complete Suffix, -ka, then the sentence takes place in either the Present or the Future. For example:

tjun pankape = the Children‘ Python bites me / the Children’s Python will bite me

A word-for-word translation:

tjun panpe = Children’s-Python me-bit 

As is the case in Warao, the Warray pronoun is prefixed to the verb. However, the difference here is that in Warao, this prefixation is optional, whereas Warray provides no alternative.

(Antaresia childreni, also known as the Children’s Python. Although it is named after British Zoologist John George Children, it is arguably one of the most appropriate snakes to buy as a pet for one’s children. It does not produce venom and is, in terms of diet, relatively undemanding compared to other species.)

Sentence 2.

English: I run through the forest / I will run through the forest

Warao: inabeya ine hayate / inabeya hayateine

Warray: marelik patliliminjpwuy

In this example, we will see a greater convergence between the grammars of these two languages. Let us begin, as before, with the Warao sentence.

inabeya is the Allative Case Declension of inabe, which means forest. 

The Allative Case Suffix, -ya, in Warao is used to indicate movement either towards or through a place.

ine is the 1st Person Singular Subject, or I.

hayate is the Non-Past Tense inflection of haya, which means to run.

-te is the Non-Past Tense Suffix, which means that it can indicate either the Present or Future Tense.

-ine, which appears in the second Warao sentence above, is the 1st Person Singular Subject Suffix.

In Warao, a Subject Pronoun can take the form of either a Suffix or an Independent Word, though you can’t have both in the same sentence together.

Furthermore, you may have noticed across both sentences that the Word Order in Warao seems to be Object-Subject-Verb (at least when all three occur as independent words). This is no stylistic choice, as Warao possess the least common (default) word order in the world, behind only Object-Verb-Subject. Between them, these two word orders comprise approximately 1% of the world’s languages.

(Two Warao men engaged in building a traditional canoe. The name Warao itself even means „boat people“ after their deep connection with the water.)

marelik is the Locative Case Declension of mare, which means forest or jungle.

The Locative Case, as the name suggests, indicates location.

patliliminjpwuy is a word with much to unpack.

First, we start with lili-m-inj, which is the Realis Conjugation of lili-m-al, which means to run. It is accompanied by one prefix and one suffix.

pat- is the 1st Person Singular Non-Complete Subject Prefix. In the presence of an Active Verb, it refers to the Non-Past Tense, i.e. it can refer to either the Present or Future Tense.

-pwuy, meanwhile is the Perlative Case Suffix, which only attaches to verbs.

The Perlative Case refers to movement along, through or across the noun to which it is attached. Because this suffix is attached instead to the verb, the noun therefore requires the Locative Case Suffix.

The Perlative is among the rarest of cases. It only appears in a number of Australian languages, Inuktitut and the Aymara language of South America. It was also present in the now extinct Tocharian Branch of the Indo-European family.

(A stretch along the Adelaide River, highlighting the tenor of forest through which the Warray would run. It bears pointing out that Warray is not a language of the Outback.)

Sentence 3.

English: We have three sisters 

Warao: rakoi dihanamo (oko) ha

Warray: alwulkan kerangantjerinj palikakangi

In Warao, the hand signal for the number 3 involves the forefinger, middle finger and ring finger. This is because, according the grammar, the „group of fingers that gets together with ease“, and thus does not experience the „natural resistance to cluster observed in the distal units: the thumb and the forefinger“.

I felt it was of crucial importance that you know the Warao hand gesture for this particular number.

The Warao word for three is dihanamo.

rakoi means sister in the Singular. Due to the presence of dihanamo, it does not take the Plural Suffix -tuma, which it would if there were an indeterminate number of sisters.

oko is the 1st Person Plural Pronoun, i.e. we. It is included in brackets since it is not always mandatory to include, e.g. if it comes after a question.

In Warao, there are only two grammatical numbers, the Singular and the Plural.

ha, meanwhile, is the Copula. It is used to link between the subject of a sentence and a complement, e.g. an adjective. The equivalent in English would be the word is.

(The Warao people and their boats in action.)

alwulkan means sister, and is the Feminine Declension of wulkan, which means sibling.

The Warray language has two Human Class markers, Masculine and Feminine, and only occur on nouns that refer to humans. The word for brother is awulkan.

kerangantjerinj means three.

palikakangi is composed of three components.

kangi is the Realis Conjugation of kangi, which means to take, though here it means to have, and is preceded by two prefixes.

The first of these prefixes is pali-, which is the 1st Person Plural Non-Complete Subject Prefix, a close approximant to the English we.

It is worth noting that Warray Subject Pronouns also exist as independent words, though they are only used under other conditions.

Warray, like Warao, also has a distinction between the Singular and the Plural. In addition, it also distinguishes the 1st Person Dual Inclusive, i.e. the speaker and the listener. However, this is the only instance of either the Dual Number or the Inclusive/Exclusive Dichotomy within the Subject Prefixes.

The second prefix ka-, is merely a Reduplication of the first syllable of kangi. The function of reduplication in Warray is a complex one, made even more complicated by Language Death, a phenomenon in its own right.

(A Jumping Crocodile in Adelaide River. In Warray, anmaymak:u means freshwater crocodile and apulangu means saltwater crocodile.)

In conclusion, I hope that this was an interesting introduction to and comparison between two languages with confusingly similar names, otherwise separated by thousands of mile of ocean and, sadly, the mortal coil. If either of these languages fascinated you, I more than encourage you to do your own further research.

As mentioned earlier, this format of comparing languages whose names only differ by a single letter or two is one to which I plan to return in the future, though it won’t become too regular a feature.

Naturally, I do intend to delve into further detail on both of these languages, though time will tell how this will be done.

In our next installment, we will discuss pronouns in the Unua language of Malekula Island, Vanuatu, and how they are more specific than their English counterparts. Until then,

Same Wilf-time!

Same Wilf-channel!

Sources:

Andrés Romero-Figeroa, A Reference Grammar of Warao, (München: LINCOM GmbH 2003) 2nd printing

Mark Harvey, Ngoni Waray Amungal-Yang: The Waray Language from North Adelaide River (Australia: Australian National University 1986)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warray_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warao_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semelfactive

http://www.whatsnakeisthat.com.au/category/region/nt/north-nt/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_python

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macro-Gunwinyguan_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warao_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlative_case