Kinds of words and what they do The parts of a sentence

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1. Ganggalida grammar — the key points

This section is short, but useful. It describes some key points of Ganggalida grammar. Much more detail can be found in the later sections.

1.1 Kinds of words and what they do

Every language has several different kinds of words, that perform different tasks. An interesting fact is that languages don’t all work the same way. Here is a quick description of the main kinds of words that Ganggalida has, and what they do. Nouns Nouns are words that can name people, places and things. Examples of nouns in Ganggalida are ngurliwa ‘little girl’, malara ‘sea’ and wanggurdu ‘woman’s younger brother’. There are also nouns that can name events, such as wirrganda ‘dance’, or abstract ideas, like bayi ‘trouble’. Adjectives Adjectives are words that can describe what people, places, events and things are like. Examples of adjectives in Ganggalida are gunyara ‘small’, burdaburda ‘wet’ and yanangarrbanda ‘new’. Determiners Determiners are words that say which person or thing someone is talking about. Examples of determiners in Ganggalida are ngijinda ‘my’ and danda ‘this’. Nouns, adjectives and determiners can be put together into a group of words called a Noun Phrase, such as danda gunyara ngurliwa ‘this little girl’. Pronouns Pronouns can name something that someone has already been talking about, like gilda ‘them’, or they can name something that is clear from context, like nyingga ‘you’ or danda ‘this’. p.3 Comments welcome e.rounduq.edu.au. Please do not cite without permission. Verbs Verbs name the action in the sentence, like jawija ‘run’ or waaja ‘sing’. Clitics Clitics in Ganggalida are a special kind of word. They are introduced in section 1.2.

1.2 The parts of a sentence

This section briefly mentions three features of Ganggalida sentences which can be unfamiliar if you are mainly used to English. They are the Clitic, the endings on words, and the order of the words in the sentence. The main Clitic Almost all Ganggalida sentences have a Clitic, which attaches itself to the end of another word. For example in the sentence in 1 the Clitic ‐ngga attaches itself to the word danggara, meaning ‘man’. 1 Danggara‐ngga thaldija gamarri. ‘The man is standing on the stone.’ In sentence 1 the Clitic expresses information about who is doing the action: ‐ngga tells you that it is just one person or thing doing the action, and it’s not me and it’s not you. The person or thing which does an action is called the Subject, and the Clitic ‐ngga tells you about the Subject. In sentence 2 the Clitic ‐nki attaches itself to the word gurrija, meaning ‘see’. 2 Gurrija‐nki barrunthaya? ‘Did you see me yesterday?’ In sentence 2 the Clitic expresses information about who is doing the action the Subject and who is having the action done to it. The person or thing which is having the action done to it is called the Object. The Clitic ‐nki tells you about the Subject and the Object. It tells you that the Subject is just one person: ‘you’. And it tells you that the Object is just one person: ‘me’. Clitics in Ganggalida can tell you a lot more information too. To find out more about the Clitic, see section 2.5. p.4 Comments welcome e.rounduq.edu.au. Please do not cite without permission. Endings on words In English, endings on words can tell us certain kinds of information, for example, the ending ‐s on dogs tells us that we are talking about more than one dog. In Ganggalida, endings are used to express many kinds of information. For example, the word for ‘stone’ is gamarra, but with a different ending, the word gamarri means ‘on the stone’. You can see the word gamarri in sentence 1. There are many more endings too. To find out more about endings, see section 2. Because endings are important, sentences in this description of Ganggalida grammar will be written with their words divided up into parts, like in 3. The Clitic is shown with ‘=’ before it, and there are short labels for the endings, on the line below the Ganggalida words. To find about more about the short labels for endings, see section 3. 3 Dangga‐ra=ngga thaldij‐a gamarr‐i. man‐ABS=3sgNTR.PRES stand on‐IND stone‐LOC ‘The man is standing on the stone’ The order of words In English, the order of words is very important. There is a big difference between the goanna eats the crab and the crab eats the goanna. It is an interesting fact that in many of the world’s languages, including Ganggalida, the order of words is much less important than in English. An example is sentence 4. 4 Jagarrangu=gadi diyaj‐a warrun‐ki crabABS=TR.PRES3sgS.3sgO eat‐IND goanna‐ERG ‘The goanna eats the crab’ In 4, the words are literally ‘crab eat goanna’, but the sentence means ‘the goanna eats the crab’. In Ganggalida this is possible, because the word warrunki ‘goanna’ has an ending ‐ki which tells you that the goanna is the Subject — it is the one which is doing the action. You can find out much more about Ganggalida sentences in section 3, though to understand section 3, you’ll need to know about word endings first. Endings are discussed in section 2. p.5 Comments welcome e.rounduq.edu.au. Please do not cite without permission.

2. How to make words — stems and endings