Inflectional Verb Morphology


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Main Clause Verb Inflections

All verbs in Jiwarli must have an inflectional suffix - the verb root cannot occur uninflected. Jiwarli main clause verb inflections express tense (ie. when in time the action/state described occurs), aspect (ie. how an action occurs - is it continuous, complete or incomplete?) and mood, which reflects the speaker’s attitude (ie. whether something might, must, or could occur). There are six main clause verb inflections:

  • usitative expresses a situation that occurred habitually in the past, akin to English ‘used to.’
  • past expresses a situation which occurred in the past or recent past.
  • present expresses a situation occurring at the time of speaking, a current habitual situation, generic situations (ie. a ‘timeless truth’ such as ‘lions roar’), and immediate future situations.
  • future expresses a situation which is expected to occur some time later than the moment of speaking or the immediate future.
  • imperative is used to give a command.
  • irrealis expresses a situation which although possible, did not actually occur.

However, it is not the case that each of these inflections are represented by only one suffix. In Jiwarli, like most Australian Aboriginal languages, all verbs belong to one of a series of conjugations. You must simply learn which conjugation each verb belongs to. The importance of knowing the conjugations lies in the fact that the suffixes for each inflection, eg. ‘present’, vary depending on the conjugation the verb belongs to. The table below shows the Jiwarli main clause verb inflections:

Jiwarli Main Clause Verb Inflections

Inflection

Conjugation 1

Conjugation 2

Conjugation 3

Conjugation 4

Conjugation 5

Usitative

-laartu

-rraartu

-artu

-artu

-artu†

Past

-rninyja

-rninyja

-nyja

-nyja

-nyja

Present

-nha

-nha

-inha*

-nha

-a†

Future

-lka

-rrka

-ira*

-ra

-ra

Imperative

-nma

-nma

-ma

-ma

-ma

Irrealis

-nmararni

-nmararni

-mararni

-mararni

-mararni

* If the verb root ends in ‘a’, this suffix changes that final ‘a’ to ‘i’.

† If the verb root ends in ‘i’, this suffix changes that final ‘i’ to ‘a’.

Although membership in a particular conjugation seems apparently random, historically, there was probably some obvious connection, or shared feature of all the verbs in a particular conjugation. Dixon (1980 — see bibliography) contends that at one stage, all the verbs of one conjugation ended in the same letter, and there was only one suffix for each inflection, and it applied to all verbs. Over time, the boundary between the verb root and the suffix became blurred, and phonological (ie. sound) changes occurred, resulting eventually in the apparently random conjugations and variety of suffixes that we see today. This is just one of a number of theories and possibilities.






Dependent Clause Verb Inflections

The only inflection that distinguishes all 5 conjugations is the ‘purposive same subject (SS)’. This is a dependent clause verb inflection. A dependent clause indicates that the clause is dependent on the main clause — the tense of the dependent clause is relative to that of the main clause and the action in the depenedent clause is dependent on that in the main clause. Jiwarli uses a system known as switch reference, in which different suffixes are used to indicate whether the subject of the dependent clause is the same subject (SS) or a different subject (DS) to that of the main clause. The dependent clause inflections are explained below, and note that imperfective, perfective and purposive all have 2 sets of inflections, one for same subject and one for different subject.

  • imperfective marks a dependent clause which gives information about the noun phrase of the main clause, or the temporal and logical coniditions that hold in the main clause. When an imperfective dependent clause gives information about a noun of the main clause, as well as the SS or DS marker, the verb will also carry the nominal case marker of that noun, to show agreement.
  • perfective is similar to imperfective, except that the event described in the dependent clause is already completed when the situation of the main clause is occurring.
  • purposive marks a dependent clause which describes a situation that is the intended purpose of the action in the main clause.
  • intentive marks a situation which the agent intends to occur, but the likelihood of the situation actually occurring is less than that of purposive, or less immediate.
  • might marks a situation that the speaker believes might occur, and if it does occur will have very negative consequences.

Jiwarli Dependent Clause Verb Inflections

Inflection

Conjugation 1

Conjugation 2

Conjugation 3

Conjugation 4

Conjugation 5

ImperfSS

-rnu

-rnu

-nhu

-ngu

-nhu

ImperfDS

-niya

-niya

-iniya*

-niya

-ya

PerfSS

-rninyjalu

-rninyjalu

-nyjalu

-nyjalu

-nyjalu

PerfDS

-rnynjaparnti

-rninyjaparnti

-nyjaparnti

-nyjaparnti

-nyjaparnti

PurpSS

-ru

-rru

-yi

-ngku

-rra

PurpDS

-lpuka

-rrpuka

-puka

-puka

-puka

Intentive

-lkarri(ngu)

-rrkari(ngu)

-irrari(ngu)*

-rarri(ngu)

-rarri(ngu)

Might

-lkangu

-rrkangu

-irangu*

-rangu

-rangu

* If the verb root ends in ‘a’, this suffix changes that final ‘a’ to ‘i’.

( ) Parentheses around and item indicate that it is an optional part of the suffix.