Which MATter matters in PATtern borrowing? The direction of case syncretisms
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Which MATter matters in PATtern borrowing? The direction of case syncretisms Felicity Meakins1 Jane Simpson1
· Samantha Disbray1
·
Received: 18 August 2018 / Accepted: 26 May 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This study addresses the question of which case-marker (i.e. MATter) is privileged in case realignment (i.e. PATtern borrowing) by examining two mixed varieties in northern Australia, which have borrowed either a locative or allative case marker, but not both, from a traditional Australian language. In Gurindji Kriol, the Gurindji locative case suffix has been borrowed and generalised to functions marked by the allative in Gurindji, whereas in Wumpurrarni English, realignment has occurred in the opposite direction, with the borrowed Warumungu allative suffix spreading to functions marked by the locative in Warumungu. In both cases, the development of a single marker of spatial relations has most likely occurred as the result of contact with Kriol, which has one preposition langa that marks all spatial relations, whether static or movement-orientated. The question of why the locative has been extended in one situation, and the allative in another is addressed in this paper. Keywords Case syncretism · Language contact · Australian languages
1 Introduction This paper presents two situations in northern Australia where case markers have been borrowed, but are not used in the same way as in their source languages. This paper was presented at the Ngumpin-Yapa workshop in Brisbane (10–11 August 2017) and the Matter Borrowing vs Pattern Borrowing in Morphology workshop at the Societas Linguistica Europaea conference in Zürich (10–13 September 2017). We are grateful for feedback from Matthew Baerman, Francesco Gardani, Mary Laughren, David Nash and Eva Schultze-Berndt. The work was funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (Project ID: CE140100041).
B F. Meakins
[email protected]
1
ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, School of Languages and Cultures, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
F. Meakins et al.
Fig. 1 Location of Gurindji and Warumungu in relation to other languages in northern Australia. Gurindji Kriol is spoken by Gurindji, Bilinarra and Ngarinyman people and Wumpurrarni English is spoken by Warumungu people in Tennant Creek. Kriol is spoken across much of northern Australia (Map: Brenda Thornley 2017)
Wumpurrarni English, a contact variety spoken in Tennant Creek (see Fig. 1), uses the Warumungu (Pama-Nyungan, Indeterminate)1 allative case suffix for all spatial domains including static location in intransitive clauses where Warumungu uses the locative/ergative case suffix, as introduced in (1) and discussed in Sect. 3. Conversely, Gurindji Kriol, a mixed language spoken at Kalkaringi, uses the Gurindji (PamaNyungan, Ngumpin-Yapa) locative case suffix for all spatial domains including goal marking where Gurindji uses the allative case suffix, see (2) and Sect. 4. (In all examples, Gurindji or Warumung
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