Abstract
In this chapter, I provide a descriptive overview of quantification in Warlpiri, a Pama-Nyungan language spoken by approximately 3,000 people in central Australia. Warlpiri’s quantificational system is of particular interest due to the fact that a number of Warlpiri A-quantifiers are interpreted as taking nominal scope; that is, as D-quantifiers. Conversely, a number of Warlpiri D-quantifiers are interpreted as modifying the VP or event; that is, as A-quantifiers. I show that Warlpiri has a relatively large inventory of D-quantifiers, many of which are morphologically complex. This challenges standard assumptions of quantifiers as a typically monomorphemic lexical category, and sheds light on the relevant compositional properties of Warlpiri quantifiers.
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Notes
- 1.
The data in this paper primarily comes from my own fieldwork on the Ngaliya (southern/central) dialect of Warlpiri in Yuendumu, NT, Australia (2012–2013). The data in this paper generally reflects the way Warlpiri is currently being spoken in Yuendumu, and may therefore differ from earlier accounts of the language as language change has occurred and contact with English speakers has increased. A secondary source of data for this paper is a 2000 draft of the Warlpiri Dictionary Project, compiled from data collected by Ken Hale, Robert Hoogenraad, Mary Laughren, David Nash, Jane Simpson, Paddy Patrick Jangala, and many others.
- 2.
I use a Warlpiri orthography initially developed by missionaries and used by many other linguists working on Warlpiri. Abbreviations used in this paper include 1 ‘first person,’ 2 ‘second person,’ 3 ‘third person,’ ALL ‘allative,’ AUX ‘auxiliary,’ CARD ‘cardinality,’ COMP ‘complementizer,’ COP ‘copula,’ DAT ‘dative,’ DEM ‘demonstrative,’ DIM ‘diminutive,’ DIREC ‘directional,’ DU ‘dual,’ ELAT ‘elative,’ EMPH ‘emphatic,’ ERG ‘ergative,’ EXCL ‘exclusive,’ INCL ‘inclusive,’ IRR ‘irrealis,’ KIN.SUFFIX ‘kinship suffix,’ LOC ‘locative,’ NEG ‘negation,’ NOMIN ‘nominalizer,’ NPST ‘nonpast,’ NSUBJ ‘nonsubject,’ PART ‘particle,’ PL ‘plural,’ PRES ‘present,’ Q ‘interrogative particle,’ PST ‘past,’ SG ‘singular,’ SPEC ‘specific,’ SUBJ ‘subject,’ and TOP ‘topic.’
- 3.
- 4.
Note that the use of the term Warlpiri rampaku ‘light Warlpiri’ in Yuendumu does not refer to the mixed language Light Warlpiri (called Warlpiri rampaku or Lajamanu style), which is spoken approximately 600 kilometers north of Yuendumu in Lajamanu. For an overview of Light Warlpiri, see O’Shannessy (2005).
- 5.
The scope of -wangu ‘NEG’ is constrained to the nominal that it combines with. Warlpiri speakers express sentential negation with the morphemes kula, nati ( < English not), and nuu ( < English no): (9) Kula=lu yapa yanu-rnu.
NEG=3PL.SUBJ person go.PST-DIREC
‘It’s not the case that the people came.’ (10) Nuu=lu=jarrangku watiya-rla nyangu.
NEG=3PL.SUBJ=1DU.NSUBJ tree-LOC see.PST
‘They didn’t see us two in the tree.’
These morphemes precede the second-position auxiliary and agreement enclitic(s). Nati and nuu differ from kula in several ways, including their ability to occur in negative imperatives. See Laughren (2002) for a discussion and analysis of Warlpiri sentential negation.
- 6.
A limited number of nouns can be reduplicated to express plurality, e.g., kurdu-kurdu (child-child) ‘children.’
- 7.
A 2000 draft of the Warlpiri Dictionary Project notes that -wati was a relatively new addition to the Warlpiri lexicon at the time and was not recorded prior to the 1970s; -wati now is used nearly as frequently as -patu.
- 8.
Disambiguating this sentence to mean ‘Three people went’ can be accomplished by including the cardinality suffix -pala on marnkurrpa ‘three.’ I will describe this later in Sect. 2.1.1.
- 9.
- 10.
I have a strong intuition that the scalar implicature exists based on how puta is used in conversation. However, I have not yet done tests to confirm its existence, e.g., seeing if the implicature can be cancelled (‘The man cut some of the grass…in fact, he cut all of it!’).
- 11.
This use of puta is sometimes translated into English by Warlpiri consultants as ‘almost,’ despite the fact that it does not have the same interpretation as English almost. For instance, compare the interpretation of English almost in (11) to Warlpiri puta in (47):
(46) John almost shot the kangaroo.
-
(1)
‘John shot at the kangaroo and missed.’
-
(2)
*‘John shot at the kangaroo and hit it, but it survived.’
I suspect that this difference in interpretation stems from the fact that Warlpiri verbs like pakarni ‘hit.NPST’ and luwarni ‘shoot.NPST’ are also used to mean ‘kill.’ Under a reading in which these verbs are interpreted as ‘kill,’ the use of puta is felicitous even if the object has been hit or shot, as long as it survives.
-
(1)
- 12.
I thank Mary Laughren for pointing this usage out to me.
- 13.
When muku modifies an absolutive argument, speakers have a strong preference for the absolutive argument to be of a relatively large number. I suspect that this may be due to the fact that speakers prefer to provide precise numbers in contexts involving smaller amounts (e.g., The man shot three kangaroos), as opposed to using muku in these contexts.
- 14.
This ambiguity can only arise for non-human absolutive arguments, since agreement for human arguments is obligatory.
- 15.
I thank Mary Laughren for pointing out this dialectal fact to me.
- 16.
This use of -nyayirni parallels its interpretation in combination with other lexical items. This suffix combines with all nominals; it has a ‘prototypical’ reading in combination with referential nominals as in (16), and an intensification reading in combination with “adjectival” nominals as in (16):
(80)warna-nyayirni
snake-AUG
‘a real snake,’ i.e., very venomous
(81) wiri-nyayirni
big-AUG
‘very big’
See Bowler (2015) for a descriptive overview of the Warlpiri evaluative morphology system.
- 17.
See Bowler (2014) for an analysis of the Warlpiri coordinator manu, which I gloss here as ‘and’ for simplicity.
- 18.
In Bowler (2016), I provide a descriptive overview of comparatives in Warlpiri and propose that the use of these implicit comparative constructions arises in part from a lack of degrees in Warlpiri’s semantic ontology.
- 19.
Unlike English existential constructions, Warlpiri existential constructions permit proper names:
(113) *There is Napaljarri at the school. (114) Napaljarri palka kuurlu-rla.
Napaljarri presence school-LOC
‘Napaljarri is at the school.’
- 20.
I thank Mary Laughren for suggesting these examples. I note also that speakers can use the preverb muku ‘completely’/‘all,’ rather than jarnku(jarnku) ‘each,’ in (134). However, this does not enforce a strictly distributive reading.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Mary Laughren for her very thorough and insightful comments on an early draft of this chapter, as well as Ed Keenan and David Nash. I would also like to thank Cecilia Alfonso, Gloria Morales, and Wendy Baarda in Yuendumu. Finally, my deepest thanks go to my Warlpiri consultants Nancy Napurrurla Oldfield, Alma Nungarrayi Granites, Otto Jungarrayi Sims, Erica Napurrurla Ross, and Tess Napaljarri Ross. This research was funded in part by NSF GRFP grant DGE-1144087. All remaining errors are my own.
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Bowler, M. (2017). Quantification in Warlpiri. In: Paperno, D., Keenan, E. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 97. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44330-0_19
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