Jingulu Grammar, Dictionary and Texts
R. J. Pensalfini, 1997
This dissertation is primarily intended as a thorough description of the Jingulu language of North-Central Australia. The first part describes Jingulu"s phonological, morphological and syntactic structure, illustrating with numerous examples collected by the author in the field in 1995 and 1996, and with a secondary focus on what Jingulu can contribute to an understanding of language from a theoretical perspective. Chapter 1 focuses on the socio-historical context in which the language is spoken, with a lengthy excursus on the state of endangerment of the majority of the world"s languages. Chapter 2 is devoted to Jingulu phonology, with in-depth theoretical discussions of Australian stress systems and of Jingulu"s regressive vowel harmony. Chapter 3 outlines the architecture of the language faculty and the theory of morphology that underlies the description and analyses of the following chapters. Chapter 4 discusses Jingulu syntax, focusing on the question of nonconfigurationality, and includes a syntactic typology of the various types of nonconfigurationality found among the world"s languages. Chapters 5 and 6 are expositions of the morphology of Jingulu nominal and verbal words respectively. The theory outlined in chapter 3 is applied in detail to the complex and apparently bizarre morphological systems of Jingulu, and this complexity is seen to follow from a small number of principles governing how formal features can be spelled out on the surface. Chapter 7 contains 34 glossed and translated texts collected by the author. Throughout the dissertation I have preferred to provide more texts and sentence examples rather than fewer, so that future researchers can test my generalizations, examine the data to find their own, and refute or affirm my analyses.
Part II of the dissertation is a Jingulu to English dictionary with an English to Jingulu word finder. Each Jingulu entry in the dictionary is accompanied by grammatical, morphological and cultural information in addition to an English translation. Most Jingulu entries also include examples of the word used in a sentence. The dictionary is the latest stage in a collaboration that has involved many people over several decades.