The following word classes or "part?1'of speech" (Lyons (1968: 270, 317)) may be set up for the description of Diyari and Dhirari:
nominal pronoun determiner verb particle interj ection
Each of these categories is recognized by certain defining characteristics (see below) and membership of them is mutually exclusive. Pronoun,
determiner and particle are closed word classes which consist of a set of words exhaustively listed in the grammar. All other classes are open.
The following sections describe the defining characteristics and membership of each part of speech.
4.1.1 Nominals
Nominals are defined as the category of words which inflect for case according to their relationship to the verb or to other nominals in the clause (see 4.2.4 and 5.1.5). This category subsumes what are traditionally referred to as 'nouns' and 'adjectives', which can be distinguished as sub categories in Diyari:
1) adjectives are an open class which is treated morphologically
in the same way as (singular common) nouns (see 4.2, 4.2.1). They show different syntactic behaviour from nouns:
a) adjectives co-occur with the INCHoative verbalizer - r i ~ - r i
(see 5.1.10.1) whilst nouns do not.
b) within the noun phrase (5.1.1.2) adjectives always follow the
+r\,
noun they modify.
c) adjectives may occur with nouns preceded by any of the nominal determiners (4.4.1). That is, while nouns are sub-categorized for gender, adjectives are not.
d) adjectives are intensified by mala whilst nouns occur with pina (see 5.1.3.3).
There are also semantic differences to be found between the
members of the noun and adjective sub-classes (see Dixon (1972: 39- 40 and 1977b)). I have not yet fully investigated these differences but the semantic content of the adjective sub-class appears to include:
i) value - e.g. Qumu 'good', ma^ap^i 'bad'.
ii) dimension - e.g. payifi 'long, tali', wadu 'short'; pina 'big', waka 'small'; wuIdru 'narrow', mafu 'wide'. iii) most physical properties - e.g. pandra 'ripe, cooked',
kati 'unripe, raw'; madi 'heavy', pawa 'light';
^arkara 'sharp', pani 'blunt'; madu 'sweet', kal dri
'sour, salty'; t i p i 'alive', nari 'dead'.
iv) numbers - e.g. kunu 'one', mandru 'two', parkulu 'three' (see 4.2.9).
2)
(v) colours - there are four basic colour terms (Berlin and Kay (1969)) namely w a f u ’white’, m a r u 'black', maray ’red' and ku^aku^s 'green, yellow'. Some common nouns are occasionally used descriptively (see 5.1.2) as colour specifiers, for example p a r u 'yellow ochre' for 'yellow'.
(vi) physiological characteristics - e.g. palu 'naked', kuQku 'lame'.
Some concepts which we might expect to be expressed as adjectives (see Dixon (1977b))are in fact common nouns in Diyari (see (2) below). They all (except for 'position') occur with the INST case suffix (5.1.5.4) when used predicatively and include:
(i) human propensity - e.g. i.iri 'anger', m u la 'calmness', y a p a 'fear', y u n k a 'sulkiness', w a l k a f a 'sadness'.
(ii) physiological states - e.g. m a w a 'hunger', £ a d i 'thirst', pa I a 'sexual arousal', m u p ^ a 'sickness'.
(iii) some physical properties - e.g. w a l d r a 'heat', k i l p a 'cold'. (iv) position - e.g. tati 'middle', tu^u 'back', widi 'outer'. It is interesting that for expressions of age m a r a 'new' is an
adjective but waruta 'old' is a temporal noun plus the CHARacteristic stem forming affix (see 4.2.2).
nouns are an open class which can be further subdivided into Proper and Common nouns:
a) Proper nouns (an open class) are semantically those nominal words whi'o-h bh-c name of a place or person. They form a separate morphological sub-class of nouns in Diyari since they occur with strikingly different allomorphs
of the case affixes (see 4.2.4) and also show some
differences in the coding of syntactic functions (see 4.2.4.1, 5.1.5). The Proper nouns can be further classified into Place names and Personal names, the former occurring only in LOCative, ALLative and SourCE cases (c.f. spatial location
nominals). The Personal names show a difference in morphological behaviour between Female and Male types (see 4.2.4).
No Proper nouns, because of their inherent definiteness (see 5.1.7.3), can co-occur with a nominal determiner (4.4.1). They are only very infrequently found modified by adjectives
(see above).
b) Common nouns comprise a large open class of items which occur in the various possible case roles (see 5.1.5). These nouns may be accompanied by a nominal determiner (4.4.1) indicating definiteness and certain deictic categories. Most may be
(optionally) marked for number by the DUAL and PLURAL stem forming affixes (4.2.2). Other affixes such as PROPrietive (4.2.2, 5.1.6.4) are found with this nominal sub-class. Common nouns refer to those concepts listed above (page 9*> (i) to iv)) and also:
(i) inaminate natural things, such as the elements, celestial bodies, meteorological phenomena and geographical forms e.g. papa ’water’, mada 'stone', p i r a 'moon', d i t ^ i 'sun', t a l a r a 'rain', pul ^uru 'mud', pupaj,a 'shade'.
(ii) directions, including cardinal points - e.g. £ i n a n k a r a 'north', k u n a n k a r i 'south', y a n t a k a r a 'west', £ i r i w a 'east', warapapt^u 'left-hand', p u p a r i 'right-hand'.
(iii) human beings and socio-cultural relationships - e.g. kana ’Aboriginal person’, £ari 'uninitiated youth', Qapiri ’father', pinaru 'old man, head man'.
(iv) artefacts and physical evidence of human habitation - e.g. kira 'boomerang', wana 'digging stick', pura
'camp', paXip 'path, track'.
y
(v) language and noises - e.g. yawara 'word, language, message', wima 'corroboree, song', kanpu 'boom', par;u
'echo' (see 5.1.10.2).
(vi) supernatural beings and spirits - e.g. muramura 'culture hero', mupara 'soul', yawuI a 'spirit' (see 5.1.6.2) .
3) location nominals are the third group of nominal words inflecting for case. This class is found only in LOCative, ALLative and SourCE functions (see 5.1.5.5, 5.1.5.6, 5.1.5.7), with the
uninflected stem being the LOC case form (see 4.2.4,2). The location nominals can be subdivided on the basis of differences in
morphological behaviour (see 4.2.7) into an open class of Temporals, comprising Nominals with time reference, such as waru 'long ago', and Spatials, a closed class with two members nipki-'here' and naka 'there' (see 4.2.7).
The following diagram illustrates this sub-categorization of the nominal class in Diyari:
Nominal
Adj ectives Location^Nominals Nouns
Spatial
Temporal Proper nouns Common nouns
Personal Place
Female Male
4.1.2 Pronouns
Pronouns are a closed class of words which inflect for case and are
specified by person and number. In the first person dual and plural there
is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive reference (see 4.3.2). There is also a set of special relationship pronouns with a defective
paradigm - they are found only in the dual absolutive (see 4.2.1). The
other pronouns differ in their declension from common nouns in that they
show a ’split case system’ (Silverstein (1976)) which is nominative-
accusative in the non-singular and has three-way marking (for S, A and 0 functions (see 4.2.4, 5.1.5)) in the singular (see 4.3.2).
4.1.3 Determiners
These are defined by their ability to co-occur with the diectic
suffixes -ka TOKEN and -para THERE (see 4.4.2). They may be sub-categorized
into two type's:
constituents of noun phrases (see 5.1.1.2) agreeing with the noun with which they are construed in:
(i) case - see 4.4.1 and 5.1.5.
(ii) number - singular, dual or plural (4.4.1).
(iii) gender - feminine or non-feminine, in the singular only (4.4.1).
The case paradigm for nominal determiners is in some respects similar to that of pronouns (4.1.2, 4.3.2) and, in fact, a noun phrase consisting of just a nominal determiner in Diyari is translated into English as a third person pronoun (see 5.1.1.2).
Nominal determiners mark the referent of the noun phrase in which they occur as definite and are employed in the topicalization strategy described at 5.1.7.3 below.
b) predicate determiners - provide adverbial specification of the predicate of the clause in which they occur (5.1.3.3). They are a closed set with two members y a r u - 'like that' and y a n i -
'1ike this' (4.4.2).
4.1.4 Verbs
Verbs are defined as the class of words which obligatorily take one of a set of verb-final inflections (4.5.5, 4.5.7.1.1, 4.5.7.1.2). In main clauses, these inflections mark tense or mood (4.5.7.1.1). The verb class is sub-divided into two groups:
(a) main verbs - these are open lexical class described at 4.5.3 below. Main verbs may occur with one or more of the stem forming (or
groups on the basis of their morphological and syntactic behaviour (see 4.5.3) into Intransitive, Transitive and
Di-Transitive types. The former two types are further divided into ten classes using certain morphological and syntactic criteria (see 4.5.3.1, 4.5.3.2).
(b) non-main verbs - these are a closed class of Auxiliary verbs which always follow main verbs in the verb complex (5.1.1.1). In Diyari the occurrence of AUX verbs is optional but in Dhirari a distinction must be drawn between pufi- which is obligatory
(4.5.7.1) and other optional Auxiliaries (4.5.7.2).
Non-main verbs do not occur with any of the stem forming affixes (4.5.4), are not found in IMPLicated clauses (4.5.7.1.2, 5.2.1) and are semantically quite different to main verbs (see 4.5.1).
4.1.5 Particles
Particles comprise a closed word class whose members are never inflected (5.5). They occur only with one or more of the clitics (see 5.4). Their syntax and semantics is discussed at 5.5 below.
4.1.6 Interjections
Interjections are a closed class of words which can comprise a whole utterance by themselves. They are never inflected and are not syntactically
integrated with other linguistic material, being set off by a pause. Two interjections are unusual in that they disobey a phonotactic constraint (3.3) on all other Diyari words, namely that words must begin
afu 'hello! ' - a common greeting
ay i 'hey! ' - a call for attention
There is a third interjection which disobeys this phonotactic constraint and also contains a glottal stop found nowhere else in the language (apart
from a marginal occurrence in the indigenous songs - see Appendix B ) . It is
"I-
a?ayi - 'no, that's not correct!'
(usually said whilst shaking the head).
The assignment of stress (3.6) for these three words is interesting. Both
afu and ayi are stressed on the first vowel, that is [ 'atu] and [ * Ai ] while
a?ayi has stress on the vowels either side of the glottal stop, that is
[
1
A?1
Ai ],The other interjections which I have recorded are:
kapawu kaparawu kawu pan i kawuwana pur u may i wa J^a yakayayi
'Look out!' - an expression of imminent danger. 'Come here!', 'Hurry up!'
'Yes!' (examples at (1;72), (1;106) Appendix A) 'No! '
'That's correct!' - an expression of approval for something just said.
'Hey!' - an expression of surprise or fear.
'Well then!', 'Alright!' - (see 1;92), (1;105) and (1;134)). 'Just a minute!' (see (1;24)),„
'Hooray!', 'Oh my goodness' - an expression of excitement (note that an exclamation like yakay(ayi) is found in many Australian languages with this meaning (Dixon (1972: 18)).
Qap^aIu Qiiya I a
pana o r OanapaI a
'Good job! '
'What a pity!', ’Poor thing* - an expression of pity on hearing bad news, for example, that someone has died. 'Oh yes!', 'Is that so' - an expression of interest in
what someone else is saying.
For extra emphasis an interjection jjiay be repeated a number of times. So, for example, when pressed for an explanation of the corroboree songs
(Appendix B) immediately after he had sung them, Leslie Russel would say a! wa^a! just hold on a minute!".