Clamor Schürmann's Barngarla grammar The high-quality paperback edition of this book is available for purchase online: https://shop.adelaide.edu.au/ Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann Published in Adelaide by University of Adelaide Press The University of Adelaide Level 14, 115 Grenfell Street South Australia 5005 press@adelaide.edu.au www.adelaide.edu.au/press The University of Adelaide Press publishes externally refereed scholarly books by staff of the University of Adelaide. It aims to maximise access to the University's best research by publishing works through the internet as free downloads and for sale as high quality printed volumes. © 2015 Mark Clendon This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-ndl4.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. 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For the full Cataloguing-in-Publication data please contact the National Library of Australia: cip@nla.gov.au ISBN (paperback) 978-1-925261-10-3 ISBN (ebook: pdf) 978-1-925261-11-0 ISBN (ebook: epub) 978-1-925261-12-7 ISBN (ebook: kindle) 978-1-925261-13-4 Project coordinator: Julia Keller Book design: Zoe Stokes Cover design: Emma Spoehr Cover image: George French Angas, Australia, 1822-1886, Port Lincoln.from Winters Hill, 1845, Adelaide, watercolour on paper, 24.6 x 34.l cm, B eq uest of] Angas Johnson 1902, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 0.621 Paperback printed by Griffin Press, South Australia vii Contents Frontispiece: Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann v Abbreviations used in glossing sentence examples & in the text xi Preface xiii Map: The northern and western Thura-Yura languages xv 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Barngarla in geographical context 1.2 Clamor Schürmann 1.3 Barngarla documentation 1.4 Procedure 2 Writing Barngarla sounds 13 2.1 Consonants 2.2 Rhotics 2.3 Vowels 2.4 Sandhi 3 Pronouns 21 3.1 Pronoun forms 3.2 Case alignment 4 Intransitive verbs 37 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Present-tense verbs 4.3 Pronoun suffixes 4.4 Other tenses, aspects & moods viii Clamor Schürmann’s Barngarla grammar 5 Transitive verbs 55 5.1 Present tense 5.2 The 3 sg ergative short-form pronoun 5.3 Other tenses, aspects & moods 6 Harry Crawford's Barngarla verbs 67 7 Suffixes on nouns 71 7.1 Markedness 7.2 Plural & dual 7.3 Ergative & locative 7.4 Possessive, allative & purposive 7.5 Other grammatical suffixes 8 Other suffixes 93 8.1 Grammatical endings 8.2 Discourse-pragmatic markers 8.3 Derivational/relativising 9 Demonstrative & interrogative pronouns 107 9.1 This and that 9.2 Here and there 9.3 Who? What? 9.4 Which? Where? How? 10 Verbal derivational affixes 113 10.1 Continuous derivation 10.2 Intransitive verbalisers with stative meaning 10.3 Inchoative 10.4 Reflexive & reciprocal verbs 10.5 Middle verbs 10.6 Present participles ix Mark Clendon 10.7 Causative 10.8 Benefactive & applicative 11 Non-finite verbs 149 11.1 Infinitives 11.2 Gerunds 11.3 Other forms 12 Putting words together 159 12.1 Using pronouns 12.2 Verbless sentences 12.3 Existential verbs 12.4 Body-part nouns 12.5 Complex predication 12.6 Negation 13 Prospect 171 Appendix: The name Barngarla 173 References 175 xi Abbreviations used in glossing sentence examples & in the text xiii Preface This commentary on the grammatical introduction to Pastor Clamor Schürmann's Vocabulary of the Parnkalla language of 1844 is designed primarily for educators and other people who may wish to re-present its interpretations in ways more accessible to non-linguists, and more suited to pedagogical practice. It should be seen as one of a number of starting-points for language-reclamation endeavours in Barngarla, and is framed as a component in a Barngarla reclamation project undertaken by the University of Adelaide, and supported by the Commonwealth of Australia. 1 Grammar is the acoustic-auditory code we use to signal. Language has evolved over the last 1.5 million years at least, and our signals are infinitely varied and extraordinarily complex. 2 Grammar, therefore, could be likened to a mathematical geometry of human cognition. This means that grammar is complex, and Australian languages are as complex as any. Being complex signalling systems, with emotion and culture overlying their geometry, no language is inherently easy for adults to learn; nor is it possible to describe them simply in any interesting detail. While I have tried to make this commentary accessible, it inevitably includes material that is more involved than many non-linguists will wish to take on board at a first reading. It has not been my intention to avoid or skim over difficult or unfamiliar areas of Barngarla grammar, for to do so would be to show scant respect both to Schürmann and to the language itself. I am indebted to Jane Simpson of the Australian National University for providing me with a copy of Schürmann’s vocabulary in an electronic file. This searchable version of the Barngarla vocabulary enabled a more comprehensive appreciation of the language than would have been otherwise achieved. And I am 1 Grant no. 1001592-1000002338: Online Learning Space: Barngarla Language . Awarded under the Indigenous Languages Support-New Media initiative within the Attorney General's Department of the Ministry for the Arts; Ghil'ad Zuckermann Chief Investigator. 2 On the antiquity of language see Dediu & Levinson (2013). xiv Clamor Schürmann’s Barngarla grammar most especially indebted to Luise Hercus for making available her notes on Kuyani, recorded from the last full speaker of that language, and which constitute the most thorough modern documentation we have of any Thura-Yura language. Mark Clendon Adelaide, July 2015 The northern and western Thura-Yura languages