Ngan’gityemerr: a language of the Daly River region, Northern Territory of Australia

Ngan'gityemerri is the name of a language spoken in twovarieties named Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri. Thislanguage is spoken near the western coast of Australia’sNorthern Territory by about 150 people.This is a technical reference grammar, rather than a 2ndlanguage learning resource, written for an audience oflinguists. It treats Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri asa single grammar, but draws explicit attention to thoseareas where they differ.Ngan'gityemerri is a non-PamaNyungan language with highlevels of morphological complexity. It has a rich system ofabout 16 noun classes; a sound system atypical of Australiain having a 3-way obstruent contrast; and a verb complexbuilt up through the pairing of an inflecting auxiliary verbwith a non-inflecting verb stem (or coverb).This study aims to provide a broad treatment of most areasof Ngan'gityemerri, so it includes substantial chapters onits phonology, and nominal and verbal morphology. However,as this is a language in which the verb is where the actionis, that broad treatment is countered with more detailedexploration of two of the verb’s most interesting aspects:the incorporation of body part terms into the verbalcomplex; and the semantics of auxiliary verbs.This grammar is theoretically eclectic, drawing on whatevergrammatical tools best achieve the aim of describingNgan’gityemerri. It is written in straightforward languageand contains a large number of natural language exampleswill best allow the reader to judge the accuracy andinternal consistency of the description.

• ISBN: 978-3-8628-8100-0
• Editorial: LINCOM EUROPA GmbH
• Encuadernacion: Rústica
• Páginas: 468
• Fecha Publicación: 01/01/2012
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés