Aplicaciones en Android para la medición de vibraciones

The  Murrinh  Patha  language  (MP,  also  spelled  Murriny  Patha3_{)  is  spoken  by}  

virtually  all  Aboriginal  people  in  Wadeye,  as  well  as  smaller  numbers  of  

Aboriginal  people  in  other  regional  locations,  giving  it  a  total  speaker  population   of  2500–3000.  This  makes  it  one  of  the  most  vibrant  Australian  Aboriginal   languages,  and  also  one  of  very  few  that  are  still  being  learnt  by  children  as  their   first  language.  

MP  was  for  some  decades  treated  as  a  linguistic  isolate,  until  Green  (2003)   showed  that  it  is  genetically  related  to  the  nearby  (but  non-­‐contiguous)  Ngan’gi   (Reid,  1990).  The  languages  of  the  Daly  region  have  enough  grammatical  

similarities  that  they  have  been  described  as  forming  a  sprachbund  or  “linguistic   area”  (Dixon,  2002),  but  apart  from  Ngan’gi  none  of  the  Daly  languages  have   been  shown  to  have  a  genetic  relationship  with  MP,  so  at  this  point  it  can  only  be   categorized  with  the  rather  miscellaneous  “non-­‐Pama-­‐Nyungan”  languages  of  the   northern  Australian  tropical  fringe  (Evans,  2003).    

Typologically,  MP  is  most  notable  for  its  morphologically  complex,  polysynthetic   verbs.  All  the  arguments  of  a  clause  are  marked  on  the  verb  using  three  series  of   “subject”,  “direct-­‐object”  and  “indirect-­‐object”  pronominal  markers,  along  with   inflections  further  specifying  the  number  of  such  actors,  and  tense/aspect/mood   properties.  Further  complexity  arises  when  adverbial  “endoclitics”  are  

incorporated  into  the  verb,  and  body-­‐part  nominals  are  compounded  with  the   verb  root.  But  perhaps  the  most  complex  dimension  of  the  MP  verb  is  the  

relationship  between  verb  classifier  and  verb  root  morphemes,  both  of  which  are   required  for  most  predicates.  The  following  predicate  involves  a  helping  action   (verb  root),  typically  performed  with  the  hands  (verb  classifier):  

3  _{The  spelling  with  “ny”  is  in  fact  more  consistent  with  the  spelling  system  used  in  this  thesis,  but}   I  follow  the  “nh”  spelling  since  it  is  better  established  both  at  Wadeye  and  in  published  records  –   also  as  “Murrinh-­‐patha”  and  “Murrinhpatha”.  Some  older  records  (e.g.  work  by  Stanner)  use  the   spelling  “Murinbata”.  

(1.3.1)   mem-­‐nintha-­‐manpi=kanam  

  3DU.HANDS.RR(11)-­‐DU.MASC-­‐help=BE(4)SER  

  the  two  men  are  helping  each  other     (MbM,  VSE_3-­‐11)    

The  interaction  of  morphemes  within  the  verb  is  precise  and  highly  codified,  but   the  structure  of  the  sentence  beyond  the  verb  is  quite  the  opposite.  There  are   few  rules  for  word  ordering,  except  that  complex  noun  phrases,  when  they  are   used,  are  left-­‐headed.  But  nominal  elements  are  elided  to  a  very  great  extent,  and   when  included,  are  often  expressed  using  highly  generic  terms.  Murrinh  Patha   has  a  ten-­‐part  noun  classifier  paradigm  (§4.7.1),  but  these  classifiers  are  often   used  alone  as  generic  nouns,  with  the  specific  semantics  of  the  referents  left  to   be  completed  by  context.  In  the  following  transitive  sentence,  the  subject,  a  white   woman  who  has  just  appeared  on  the  scene,  is  specified  only  by  the  ANIM  

“animate”  noun  classifier  ku,  while  the  object,  two  men  who  have  been  carrying  a   piano  since  the  beginning  of  the  narrative,  is  indicated  only  by  a  bound  object   pronominal  /  number  combination  on  the  verb.    

(1.3.2)   yingam-­‐wunku-­‐dala-­‐dala-­‐nintha         ku     dji-­‐kathu-­‐wa     3S.AGGREGATE(25)-­‐3DU.OBJ-­‐block-­‐RDP-­‐DU.MASC  ANIM  DIST-­‐SOURCE-­‐EMPH     that  white  lady  is  blocking  the  two  men   (MM,  2011-­‐09-­‐13,  3-­‐11)    

MP  undoubtedly  has  a  large  vocabulary  for  labelling  the  variety  of  natural   species  in  the  region,  but  for  other  types  of  nouns  and  adjectives,  I  have  the   impression  that  a  small  range  of  lexemes  is  used.  For  example  the  labelling  of   something  as  “good”,  “appropriate”,  “functioning”,  “useful”,  “healthy”  etc.  seems   to  come  down  almost  exclusively  to  the  adjective  patha.  Or  again,  the  labelling  of   “wood”,  “tree”,  “branch”,  “twig”  etc.  is  limited  as  far  as  I  know  to  thay  –  though  to   some  extent  the  noun  classifiers  can  be  used  to  create  more  specific  meanings   from  the  same  noun,  e.g.  thungku  thay  FIRE  +  stick  “firewood”,  tju  thay  WEAPON  +   stick  “fighting  stick”  (Walsh,  1997b).  However  my  proposal  that  MP  uses  a   limited  nominal  vocabulary  is  highly  impressionistic,  and  much  more  study   would  be  required  to  determine  how  it  compares  to  other  languages  in  the   world,  or  other  languages  in  Australia  (cf.  Blake,  1981,  pp.  23–27).  

Introduction   10  

On  the  other  hand,  the  paradigm  of  personal  pronouns  in  Murrinh  Patha  is  highly   specific.  Grammatical  number  distinguishes  singular,  dual,  paucal  and  plural,   with  an  added  masculine/feminine  gender  distinction  in  most  categories  (with   the  “feminine”  category  also  covering  groups  of  mixed  gender).  There  is  also  a   distinction  between  first-­‐person  exclusive  and  inclusive  forms  (as  is  typical  for   Australian  languages),  but  more  unusually,  there  are  distinct  dual  and  paucal   forms  for  groups  of  people  who  are  related  to  one  another  as  classificatory   siblings.  This  brings  the  total  size  of  the  person/gender/number/siblinghood   pronominal  paradigm  up  to  28  (Street,  1987,  pp.  80,  99).  

MP  has  a  simple  four-­‐vowel  system,  while  the  consonant  inventory  is  fairly   simple  in  terms  of  manners  of  articulation,  though  there  are  a  large  number   contrastive  places  of  articulation:  bilabial,  dental,  alveolar,  retroflex,  palatal  and   velar.  Syllable  structure  is  fairly  simple  (CV,  CVC  or  occasionally  CVCC),  but   stress  patterns  on  polysynthetic  verbs  are  complex  enough  that  they  have  so  far   eluded  analysis.    

1.3.1  Existing  studies  of  Murrinh  Patha  

The  degree  of  grammatical  documentation  currently  available  for  MP  is   moderate  –  far  from  “undocumented”,  but  with  thorough  description  still   wanting  for  some  core  elements.  The  earliest  general  study  is  by  the  missionary   Father  Flynn  (1950),  which  is  superseded  by  Walsh’s  (1976)  PhD  thesis.  Street’s   “Introduction  to  the  language  and  culture”  (1987)  provides  a  selective  sketch,   and  Chapter  6  of  Blythe’s  (2009)  thesis  is  a  grammatical  sketch  focusing  on   denotation.  About  a  dozen  further  articles  and  book  chapters  describe  various   aspects  of  MP  grammar,  including  phonology  and  phonetics  (Butcher,  2004;   Street  &  Mollinjin,  1981),  verb  morphology  (Forshaw,  2011;  Nordlinger,  n.d.,   2010;  Nordlinger  &  Caudal,  2012;  Seiss  &  Nordlinger,  2010;  Walsh,  1987,  

1996a),  nominal  predicates  (Walsh,  1996b)  and  noun  classifiers  (Walsh,  1997b).   Blythe  has  published  a  series  of  studies  showing  how  various  grammatical  

structures,  especially  person  reference  and  kinship,  emerge  in  discursive  

interaction  (Blythe,  forthcoming,  2009,  2010a,  2010b,  2010c,  2013),  and  there  is   currently  a  substantial  project  underway  investigating  language  acquisition   (Forshaw,  2013;  Kelly,  Wigglesworth,  Nordlinger,  &  Blythe,  2014).  There  is  a   bidirectional  dictionary  compiled  by  Street  (2012),  with  approximately  2300   headwords  on  the  MP  →  English  side,  and  Seiss  (2011,  2012)  has  developed  a   computational  morphology  analyser.  

When  I  started  writing  this  thesis  I  did  not  foresee  that  my  work  would  include   much  grammatical  description  of  “traditional”  Murrinh  Patha  as  spoken  by  older   people  at  Wadeye.  I  assumed  that  the  descriptions  found  in  the  literature  

mentioned  above  would  be  sufficient,  and  these  could  simply  be  referenced  and   summarized  as  a  point  of  comparison  for  the  speech  of  kardu  kigay.  I  did  not   realize  at  that  point  how  much  grammatical  detail  is  needed  to  analyse  variation   and  change.  Variation  and  change  happen  through  incremental  modification  of   fine  details,  with  forms  of  speech  that  are  not  used  by  some  speakers  being  used   by  others,  or  graduating  over  time  from  being  “incorrect”  to  marginally  

acceptable  to  quite  normal.  Such  marginal  phenomena  are  reported  only  in  the   most  detailed  grammatical  descriptions.  Furthermore,  an  understanding  of  how   the  internal  dynamics  of  a  language  facilitates  change  and  variation  also  requires   very  detailed  description:  for  example,  an  understanding  of  how  the  sound  /k/   becomes  lenited  to  [x]  requires  quite  a  detailed  description  of  how  /k/  is  

“normally”  pronounced  in  the  first  place;  or  again,  an  understanding  of  how  verb   suffixes  are  shifting  their  phonological  form  and  sequential  order  requires   detailed  knowledge  of  their  earlier  form(s)  and  order(s).  

It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  thesis  contains  two  substantial  chapters  (§5  and  §8)   that  discuss  traditional  MP  in  some  detail,  focusing  on  phonology  and  verb   morphosyntax  respectively.  However,  even  with  these  chapters  in  place,  there   are  still  some  points  in  the  discussion  of  kigay’s  speech  where  open-­‐ended   questions  remain  as  to  how  much  a  certain  feature  is  new,  or  whether  it  has   simply  not  been  documented  in  the  traditional  language.  Some  of  these  questions  

Introduction   12  

will  only  be  resolved  once  we  have  very  detailed  descriptions  of  traditional  MP   available;  some  will  probably  never  be  resolved.