Mismatch: word class: noun/verb
Kayardild shows an apparent shift in morphological word class in its noun inflection. A typical noun paradigm is given below:
|
mala- 'sea'
|
|
| NOM | mala-a |
| LOC | mala-ya |
| ABL | mala-na |
| PROP | mala-wuru |
| OBL | mala-ntha |
| ALL | mala-r |
| GEN | mala-karra |
| ASSOC | mala-nurru |
| ORIG | mala-wan- |
| PRIV | mala-warri |
| CONS | mala-ngarrba |
| INS | mala-nguni |
| UTIL | mala-marra |
| VALL | mala-kiiwa-tha |
| VDAT | mala-maru-tha |
| VTRANS | mala-marii-ja |
| VABL | mala-wula-tha (or ‑wula‑a‑ja) |
| VEVIT | mala-waalu-tha (or ‑waala‑i‑ja) |
| VDON | mala-wu-ja |
| VPURP | mala-jani(i)-ja |
What is of note is the last seven cases, which Evans (1995) terms 'verbal cases'. Morphologically, the case endings are verbal, and covary with the tense, mood and polarity marking found on the main verb (Evans 1995: 163):
Tense| ngada | warra‑jarra | dathin‑kiiwa‑tharra | ngilirr‑iiwa‑tharr |
| I | go-PST | that-VALL-PST | cave‑VALL-PST |
| ‘I went to that cave.' | |||
| ngada | warra‑ju | dathin‑kiiwa‑thu | ngilirr‑iiwa‑thu |
| I | go‑POT | that‑VALL‑POT | cave‑VALL‑POT |
| ‘I will go to that cave.' | |||
| ngada | warra‑nangku | dathin‑kiiwa‑nangku | ngilirr‑iiwa‑nangku |
| I | go‑NEG.POT | that‑VALL‑NEG.POT | cave‑VALL‑NEG.POT |
| ‘I will not go to that cave.' | |||
| ngada | warra‑ju | dathin‑kiring‑ku | ngilirr‑iring‑ku |
| I | go‑POT | that‑ALL‑MPROP | cave‑ALL‑MPROP |
| ‘I will go to that cave.' | |||
|
active
|
|||
| warrngal-du | mibul-ula-tha | ngijin-ji | rila-th |
| wind-NOM | sleep-VABL-ACT | 1SG-MLOC | wake-ACT |
| ‘The wind woke me up from sleep.' | |||
|
middle
|
|||
| ngada | mibul-ula-a-ja | warrngal-iiwa-tha | rila-a-j |
| I | sleep-VABL-MID-ACT | wind-VALL-ACT | wake-MID-ACT |
| ‘I was woken up from sleep by the wind.' | |||
In addition, nouns in a verbal case may themselves be nominalized.
Thus, morphologically, nouns in the verbal cases are verbs, and one may wonder whether it might not be better to treat them as verbs (specifically, as serial verbs) or as deverbal nouns. Evans argues strongly that they are, synchronically, genuine inflectional case forms:
'...verbal cases are neither serial verbs with prefixed objects, nor derived nouns. They resemble normal cases in their phrasal scope, concord, complete productivity, and [...] in their range of meanings; they form part of the case frames for some verbs (e.g. 'give'), and can be assigned as cases on demoted agents by voice alternations.'
Etymologically, the verbal cases have two sources (Evans 1995: 165):
(1) Free verb forms:
| case | corresponding verb |
| VDAT | maru-tha 'put' |
| VTRANS | marii-ja 'be put'1 |
| VABL | bula-tha 'pull off, remove' |
| VEVIT | waalu-tha 'drive away' |
| VDON | wuu-ja 'give, put' |
| VPURP | jani-ja 'look for' |
(2) Denominal verb derivation: the verbal allative is based on the locative -kiya2 plus the inchoative suffix -watha (literally 'becoming at').
Some of the case suffixes in Kayardild (locative, proprietive, ablative, oblique and allative) are used to mark tense/mood values; in this function, Evans (1995) refers to them as 'modal case' (see chapter 10). These correlate with the tense/mood values marked on verbs, with the proviso that (i) a single modal case may subsume multpiple verbal tense/mood values, and (ii) the correlation is only a default one, and modal case marking may operate independent of the tense/mood of the verb. Although both verbal case and modal case involve the mixing of nominal and verbal properties, we do regard the latter as mismatch in the relevant sense: marking tense/mood is simply one of the various functions of these case suffixes (see also Nordlinger and Sadler 2004).
Notes
1 Morphologically, this is the middle form of the verbal dative. However, Evans (1995) construes it as a separate case, distinct from the regularly derived middle form of the verbal dative
2 This is the underlying form of the locative ending which is realized as -ya in the paradigm for 'sea' given above.
References
Evans, Nicholas. 1995. A grammar of Kayardild . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Nordlinger, Rachel and Louisa Sadler. Nominal tense in crosslinguistic perspective. Language 80. 776-806.