Linguistics

This paper examines theoretical analyses of vowel harmony in the light of data from Warlpiri, a language of Central Australia. Modern analyses account for vowel harmony in terms of a constraint requiring feature agreement within a particular domain (e.g. Backovic, 2000; Lombardi, 1996). These analyses predict that exclusively suffixing languages should exhibit only rightwards harmonies. They also predict that all disharmonic sequences within a particular domain should be equally disfavoured. Warlpiri is of interest for two reasons. Firstly it is an exclusively suffixing language, but it shows both leftwards and rightwards harmonies. Secondly, it permits one disharmonic sequence within the lexicon, but not its converse. We show that the leftwards harmony is not an exception to the predictions of modern analyses, as it is morphologically and not phonologically motivated. However, we show that agreement constraints cannot account for the evidently related harmony constraints on the structure of the lexicon in Warlpiri. Rather, these must be accounted for by constraints against specific disharmonic sequences. Under this 'anti-disagreement' analysis the structure of the lexicon follows from the grammar.

Kaytetye is one of the few Australian languages for which pre-stopping is contrastive for nasals. This paper provides the first quantitative data on the phonetic realization of contrastive pre-stopping for any Australian language. It also provides data on the hitherto unreported non-contrastive pre-stopping of laterals in Kaytetye. The findings demonstrate that contrastive nasal pre-stopping and non-contrastive lateral prestopping differ on three parameters: (a) the conditioning on the distribution of plain vs. pre-stopped realizations; (b) the comparative overall durations of pre-stopped realizations compared to plain realizations; and (c) the duration of pre-stopping.

Like many Australian languages, Wubuy (aka Nunggubuyu) uses four contrastive coronal stops. The phonological basis of this contrast is not well understood, as it is not known to what extent phonological primitives are grounded in the phonetic do-main. We introduce a ...

' Coverb constructions ue found in many languages of northern Australia, including Warlpiri {where they arc commonly called 'preverb' constructions), as well as many languages of the Ethic-Semitic family (e.g. Amharic: Amberbcr: this volume), Kurdish, Persian (Megerdoomian 2001, Folli et al. :wo5), and many languages of Papua New Guinea and South America. ' It is unclear whether there are languages which permit only coindexation. The well-known serialising languages of West Africa such as Twi may be of this type, but we lack sufficient information to be certain. Com p lex p redicate formation (10) jag=nga-0-bayngarli chew.briefly= r SG.S-3sG.0-BITE.PC 'I chewed it briefl y.' (rr) buny=nga-0-bayngarli suck= ISG.S-3SG.0-BJTE.PC 'I was sucking on something.' (12) gil=nga-lini crawl= r SG. S-GO.PC 'I was crawling along.' (13) jarlarla = nga-lini walk.around= I SG.S-GO.PC 'I went for a walk.' ' 3 The 'be' verb has two meanings in Wagiman. One is to signal stativity, the other to signal atelicity (section 2.7). In (54), it signals atelicity. '• Wilson translates this sentence as 'They broke its wing by spearing', but 'spear' is a separ ate verb r,, while the verb used here, du-, centrally refers to cuttin g , not speuin g .

There has been extensive research on precolonial and postcolonial diffusions in Australia, but little research concerning the limits on diffusionsomething that is central to advancing analysis of diffusional processes. There is evidence that persistent and systematic limits can be reconstructed for some diffusions in precolonial Australia, and that colonization favored diffusion, altering limits. Precolonial limits and postcolonial changes are modeled using social network theory; weak ties favor diffusion, while strong ties do not. Precolonial limits on diffusion correlate with fewer weak ties; colonization increased the proportion of weak ties, favoring diffusion. 1. Introduction. Diffusion has been a significant theme in analyses of a number of domains of indigenous culture in Australia, both precolonial and postcolonial:

Pre-stopping is a widespread and usually non-contrastive phenomenon in Australian languages. Contrastive pre-stopping is rare and materials on it are limited. Based partly on original phonetic data, this paper provides evidence that Arabana, a language of northern South Australia, has contrastive pre-stopping of both laterals and nasals. Current analyses of pre-stopping, both contrastive and non-contrastive, model pre-stopped sequences as complex segments, and relate their diachrony to perceptual motivations favouring the enhancement in the discrimination of place oppositions. We provide evidence that pre-stopped sequences in Arabana are best analyzed as heterosyllabic clusters, and that their diachrony centrally involves perceptual motivations favouring the augmentation of phonologically strong constituents, specifically stressed syllables. *The authors would like to thank a referee and the audience at the 17th Australian Languages Workshop at Marysville Victoria, 2-4 March 2018, for comments on previous versions of this paper. Special thanks go to Amber McKinney and Alessandra Hayward for the preparation of stimuli material, to Michael Carne, Chunyang Xiao, Juqiang Chen for all their hard work in preparing and coding the datasets, and to Siva Kalyan for data processing. Jane Simpson also thanks John McEntee for many years of fascinating discussion of pre-stopping in the neighbouring Thura-Yura languages.

A field-based ultrasound and acoustic study of Iwaidja, an endangered Australian Aboriginal language, investigates the phonetic identity of nonnasal velar consonants in intervocalic position, where past work has proposed a [+continuant] vs. [−continuant] phonemic contrast. We analyze the putative contrast within a continuous phonetic space, defined by both acoustic and articulatory parameters, and find gradient variation: from more consonantal realizations, such as [ɰ], to more vocalic realizations, such as [a]. The distribution of realizations across lexical items and speakers does not support the proposed phonemic contrast. This case illustrates how lenition that is both phonetically gradient and variable across speakers and words can give the illusion of a contextually restricted phonemic contrast.*

Arabana has a three-way rhotic phoneme contrast: /r/ (alveolar trill) vs /ɾ/ (alveolar tap) vs /ɻ/ (retroflex continuant). The rhotic contrasts are prosodically restricted in Arabana. The triple contrast only appears following the tonic vowel, which is the first vowel. In other onset positions /ɻ/ is contrastive, but there is no /r/ vs /ɾ/ contrast. There is no contrast in coda positions. We undertook the first-ever production study of Arabana rhotics. Recorded audio materials were independently coded in PRAAT by two trained transcribers. We found the following allophony: /r/ [r, ɾ, ɹ]; /ɾ/ [ɾ, ɹ], /ɻ/ [ɻ]. The /r/ vs /ɾ/ contrast is thus negatively determined, /r/ permits [r] realizations, but /ɾ/ does not. The commonest realization of both /r/ and /ɾ/ is [ɹ]. The phoneme in neutralized coda position is /r/. The high degree of overlap in realizations between /r/ and /ɾ/ accords with reported perception difficulties.

Native speech perception is generally assumed to be highly efficient and accurate. Very little research has, however, directly examined the limitations of native perception, especially for contrasts that are only minimally differentiated acoustically and articulatorily. Here, we demonstrate that native speech perception may indeed be more difficult than is often assumed, where phonemes are highly similar, and we address the nature and extremes of consonant perception. We present two studies of native and non-native (English) perception of the acoustically and articulatorily similar four-way coronal stop contrast /t ʈ t ̪ ȶ/ (apicoalveolar, apico-retroflex, lamino-dental, lamino-alveopalatal) of Wubuy, an indigenous language of Australia. The results show that all listeners find contrasts involving /ȶ/ easy to discriminate, but that, for both groups, contrasts involving /t ʈ t ̪/ are much harder. Where the two groups differ, the results largely reflect native language (Wubuy vs English) attunement as predicted by the Perceptual Assimilation Model [1, 2, 3]. We also observe striking perceptual asymmetries in the native listeners' perception of contrasts involving the latter three stops, likely due to the differences in input frequency. Such asymmetries have not previously been observed in adults, and we propose a novel Natural Referent Consonant Hypothesis to account for the results.

The phonological category "retroflex" is found in many Indo-Aryan languages; however, it has not been clearly established which acoustic characteristics reliably differentiate retroflexes from other coronals. This study investigates the acoustic phonetic properties of Punjabi retroflex /ʈ/ and dental /ʈ̪/ in word-medial and word-initial contexts across /i e a o u/, and in word-final context across /i a u/. Formant transitions, closure and release durations, and spectral moments of release bursts are compared in 2280 stop tokens produced by 30 speakers. Although burst spectral measures and formant transitions do not consistently differentiate retroflexes from dentals in some vowel contexts, stop release duration, and total stop duration reliably differentiate Punjabi retroflex and dental stops across all word contexts and vocalic environments. These results suggest that Punjabi coronal place contrasts are signaled by the complex interaction of temporal and spectral cues.

This paper examines how the patterning of place names may suggest comparatively greater or lesser time‐depths of association between particular languages and particular areas. Phonological patterning is of comparatively limited use, as languages in most areas of Australia show a high degree of surface phonological similarity. Regular morphological and semantic pattemings are also of comparatively limited use. Multi‐lingualism/‐lectalism is reported from throughout Australia, and meaningful place names commonly appear in variants from two or three different language varieties. On the other hand, irregular morphological and semantic pattemings, which are not uncommon in place names, appear to provide a good indication of comparatively greater time‐depths of association between a particular language and a particular area of land.

This article provides a counterexample to the commonly held, if unexamined, proposition that morphemes reconstructed as affixes do not change their position with respect to the root. We do not expect to find that a proto-prefix has suffix reflexes, nor that a proto-suffix has prefix reflexes. In this paper we show, through detailed reconstruction, that paradigms of class/case suffixes in a number of Northern Australian languages derive historically from a paradigm of proto-prefixes, through the encliticization and reduction of prefixed demonstratives to nominals. This process has only left a few traces of the demonstrative stems in the synchronic forms.

The impersonal experiencer construction is well known among the Papuan languages of New Guinea, regularly appearing in typological descriptions (Foley 1986; Foley 2000). This has two regular features: an idiomatic nominal as a possible subject and an experiencer formally coded as an object. In one particular Trans New Guinea language, Yagaria of Eastern Highlands, this is true only on the surface; other parts of the grammar reveal this experiencer to be a subject like any other. There is some evidence this mismatch of behaviour and form derives from an earlier stage of the language where the experiencers were unequivocal objects. This development from object to non-nominative subject meets the suggestion of Cole et al. (1980). There is, however, a significant difference from the instances previously described. This is the presence of noun-verb complex predicates. This has allowed the idiomatic nominal to be reanalysed as part of the predicate and lose its subjecthood. Thus this was not just a change in grammatical relations: the erstwhile transitive clause was reanalysed as intransitive and the experiencer, the only argument, as subject. Both these noun-verb complexes and the impersonals themselves are modelled in the formal syntactic framework of Lexical Functional Grammar (Bresnan 2001).

The languages of Timor, Alor and Pantar (TAP) are notable for their object agreement prefixes. Previously, this has been highlighted because this exists largely without subject agreement (a rare pattern crosslinguistically; Klamer 2014, Siewierska 2011) and the proliferation of different prefix series and the semantics they express (Fedden et al 2014, 2013, Kratochvíl 2011, inter alia). One particular feature has not raised much comment, despite its rarity and difficulties it raises for syntactic theory (Chumakina & Bond 2016): object agreement is only obligatory for a lexical class of transitive verbs.
This is particularly unfortunate since classes defined in the same way are a feature of many Trans-New-Guinea (TNG) languages, the prefixing class labelled object verbs, even being reconstructed to the protolanguage (Suter 2012). They exist in a number of non-contiguous groups of families: Dani; Ok and Anim; Kainantu-Goroka and Finisterre-Huon. These languages have dealt with this uninflectability in different ways, through support verbs, that resemble auxiliaries, or free object pronouns. What they all share are cognate agreement prefixes based on the TNG pronominals (see Suter 2012 cf: Ross 2005). The TAP languages also look to have object verbs defined by prefixes that may well be derived from these same pronominals.
This connection between the TNG and TAP is especially significant since the pattern is crosslinguistically rare. This implies that it is unlikely to have been caused by chance. This provides important extra evidence of TNG-TAP interconnectedness. Moreover, it is a serious question whether these lexical verb classes would likely be diffused and apply to the whole transitive verbal lexicon of TAP (conjugation classes are not likely to be recombinantly borrowed; Panov 2015, Koutsoukos 2016, or even Robbeets 2015, 2017). This may leave inheritance as the most probable explanation for why object verbs are found in both TAP and TNG. This would then add to the growing evidence for the TNG descent of TAP.