Pronoun Prefixes on Verbs

Learning a new language involves committing many words to memory, regularly. But there are of course many points of grammar that you also need to know in order to construct sentences correctly. If you have already read the post on the polysynthetic nature of languages such as Kunwinjku and Gundjeihmi, you will know that it is necessary to learn parts of words as well as whole words. In this lesson you will learn the most common pronominal prefixes that are used on verbs. This means the word parts that go on the front of a verb that indicate who is the subject or participant relating to the verb. For those of you who subscribe to Karriborlbme Kunwok, a recent word we learnt was kun-bolk 'place' and an example of this noun being incorporated into a verb was this:

ngabolknan

This word consists of four word parts or morphemes:

1. nga- the pronominal prefix that means 'I'
2. -bolk an incorporated noun kun-bolk 'place' (after the noun prefix is stripped)
3. -na the verb to see or look
4. -n the tense marker on the verb indicating non-past (present or future)

In this post we are concerned with word parts as in part 1 above, the pronominal prefixes on verbs.

The pronoun prefixes in the table below will need to be committed to memory. You will also need to know the grammatical concepts of ‘tense’, ‘person’ and ‘number’. The concept of number in English is limited to singular and plural. In Kunwinjku and Gundjeihmi you can also have dual forms i.e. pronoun prefixes that indicate two referents such as 'you and me', 'me and another person (but not you)', 'they 2' and 'you 2'. Note the idea of inclusive and exclusive pronoun prefixes 'we all (but not you the addressee)' and 'we all (including you the addressee)'.

As far as tense is concerned, the only change in tense for pronominal verb prefixes is in the third person:

Kunwinjku:

ka- 'he/she/it' in the non-past tenses becomes ø (zero i.e. nothing) in the past tense.

Gundjeihmi:

ga- he/she/it' in the non-past tenses, but in the past tense it changes to ba-.

Kunwinjku: ka-re 'he/she/it is going, wam 'he/she/it went.

Gundjeihmi: ga-re 'he/she/it is going, ba-wam 'he/she/it went.

Kunwinjku: kabene- 'they 2' becomes bene- in past tense

Gundjeihmi: gabani- 'they 2' becomes bani- in past tense

If you are learning Gundjeihmi, here is the Gundjeihmi table. In Gundjeihmi many initial nasal sounds 'ng' are optional and so this is indicated by brackets e.g. (ng)ani-

If you are learning Kunwinjku, here is the Kunwinjku table:

GUNDJEIHMI prefixes using the verb to go -re as an example:

Present Tense

(ng)a-re I go, I’m going, I will go

(ng)ani-re we two go, we two are going, we two will go

arri-re we (but not you) go, etc

arre you and me go (see [1] below)

gani-re you+me and he/she go (we 3)

garri-re we all go, let’s go (including the addressee)

yi-re you (singular) go, you are going, you will go

(ng)uni-re you two go, you two are going, you two will go

gurri-re (or wurri-re) you all go (more than 2 people)

ga-re he/she is goes, he/she is going, he/she will go

gabani-re they two go, they two are going, they two will go

gabarri-re they (more than 2) go

In the past tense, the verb 'to go' is irregular (or suppletive), just as it is in English go>went. In Bininj Gunwok it is –re > -wam (where the hyphen means that there must be a prefix).

Past Tense

nga-wam I went

ngani-wam we (2 of us) went

ngarri-wam we (3+ but not you) went

ngarr-wam you and I went

gani-wam you+me and him/her went

garri-wam we all went (including the addressee[s])

yi-wam you (singular) went

nguni-wam you two went

ngurri-wam you (3+) went

ba-wam he/she/it went

bani-wam they two went

barri-wam they all (3+) went

A good way to learn these paradigms is to make up cards that you can post up on the wall where you will see them frequently or alternatively, make up pocket cards that you can carry with you and check when you have time.

Bonj

That is all.

Karriwokdjobdjobke

Karri-wok-djob-djob-ke

we (inclusive)-word/language-reduplicate-cut-[transitive verb theme]

'Cutting up words'- learning about Bininj Gunwok verb parts.

Linguists describe Bininj Gunwok (Kunwinjku, Gundjeihmi, Kuninjku, Kune, Kundedjnjenghmi, Mayali) as a ‘polysynthetic language’ because of the way meaning is built up at the word level. Many different word parts are glued together around the root of verbs such that a single word in the language can be a sentence when translated into English. For this reason languages such as Bininj Gunwok are also called ‘agglutinative’ because of the way a string of morphemes (word parts) are 'glued' together to make what can sometimes be very long words.

[Gundjeihmi] gabarrire ‘they are going’

[Kunwinjku, Kuninjku, Kune] kabirrire ‘they are going’

gabarri- / kabirri- 'they plural'

-re 'go'

[Gundjeihmi] gabarriyawoihre ‘they are going again’

[Kunwinjku, Kuninjku, Kune] kabirriyawoyhre

gabarri- / kabirri- 'they plural' -yawoyh- / -yawoih- 'again' -re 'go'

OK, let's glue together a few more word parts:

[Kunwinjku, Kuninjku, Kune] ngurriwernhyawoyhwarddemoyhma

[ngurri-wernh-yawoyh-wardde-moyhma-ø]

[‘you.all-properly-again-rock-collect.from.ground-COMMAND’]

‘you all pick up the rocks again carefully’

The -ø symbol at the end of the definition above is not a letter in the language but a linguistic symbol which means 'zero' i.e. nothing on the end. The verb -mang means 'to get' but when you drop off the final nasal sound [ng] -ma then it becomes a command (an imperative).

Here’s a sentence transcribed from a Kune speaker at Korlobidahdah outstation talking about a particular kind of native honey bee which unlike most species of native bees, can give an irritating little nip when the hive is raided:

Ngokkowino ngandjalkuyinmimbayehbayemeninj, ngadjalborrohborrohmeng.

‘Yesterday it [the bees] nearly bit my eyes, I was chasing [it] them away with my hands.'

Don't fret yet. Yes, it's a long word, but in the same way that you can fluently join many words together in an English sentence, so with practice you will be able to join word parts together to make a polysynthetic word in Bininj Gunwok.

When the individual parts of the words are broken up into their smaller units of meaning (or morphemes) it looks like this:

Ngokkowi-no ‘yesterday-its’ (the 'its' means a part of the whole daily cycle)

ngan-djal-kuyin-mim-bayehbaye-meninj

it>me-just-nearly-eye-bite.bite-IRREALIS

ngan- it (as the SUBJECT) acting on me (as the OBJECT). This prefix is pronominal (relating to pronouns, i.e. words in English like I, me, you, he, she, it, they, us, them). Note that this prefix combines two grammatical elements simultaneously i.e. both the subject and the object of the verb.

-djal- ‘just kept the action going’. This is an adverbial prefix on the verb stem. There are many different kinds of adverbial prefixes that can be used in this slot. They give information about the direction, location, immediacy, the manner or quantification of an action and other information about time.

-kuyin- ‘almost, nearly happened but didn’t’. This is another adverbial prefix to the verb as described above for –djal-

mim ‘eye(s)’ (but it also means 'seeds'). This is a noun which has been incorporated into the verbal complex. Linguists call this ‘nominal incorporation’ (nominal means ‘related to nouns’). The kind of nouns which can be incorporated in this way belong to a closed class. This means, you can’t just incorporate any kind of noun into the verb complex, but only those in a limited set. One of the type of nouns which are in this set are body parts and so mim ‘eye(s)’ is acceptable. Note that when this happens, nouns with noun class prefixes drop the prefix when incorporated. Normally the word for eye would be kun-mim (or spelt gun-mim in Gundjeihmi) and so the kun- / gun- is dropped and the stem –mim is what is incorporated into the verbal complex.

bayehbaye ‘to bite [repeatedly]. This is our verb stem which in its base form is -baye but it has been reduplicated according to a formula which produces bayehbaye. This iterative reduplication gives the verb a sense of repetition, that is, there were many bees trying to 'bite and bite' the speaker’s eyes.

-meninj Irrealis suffix. Now we have moved on to the bits glued on the end of the verb. This suffix is of a form which applies only for those verbs which fall into a particular class of which –baye is a member. We will look at verb classes some time in a future lesson post. Suffixes on verbs give information about:

• the tense (the time of an event)
• aspect (temporal view and issues of continuity, or not)
• mood (kinds of speech acts and issues of realisation of an event)

In this case, the irrealis form –bayemeninj means that the biting didn’t actually occur, but nearly did. Irrealis is a linguistic term meaning 'not a real or realised event'. This is also consistent with the –kuyin adverbial prefix ‘nearly’ mentioned above.

bonj

that is all