Abstract
The aim of this paper is to integrate newly discovered modal categories and their respective paradigms in Amurdak, a non-Pama-Nyungan language belonging to the Iwaidjan language family, within the verb system of Amurdak and with a partial historical reconstruction of the verb system of Proto-Iwaidjan. The key challenge is to account for the heavy innovation of Amurdak in the area of modal categories, on the foundations of inherited material. In a first pass at this problem this paper will first provide a morphological analysis of the new data and then link them comparatively to other Iwaidjan languages, pointing out anchor points as well as current problems. The main point the paper wants to make is that, although Amurdak displays striking innovations with respect to other Iwaidjan languages" especially some of the categories presented here -, there are substantial links, which put Amurdak closer to the core of the Iwaidjan language family than previously assumed. There are at least three major connections between language documentation and linguistic theory that this paper highlights.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 4: 7-8 December 2013, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London |
| Publisher | SOAS |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
| Event | Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory - Duration: 7 Dec 2013 → … |
Conference
| Conference | Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory |
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| Period | 7/12/13 → … |