Noun phrase constituency in Australian languages: A typological study

Abstract

This article examines whether Australian languages generally lack clear noun phrase structures, as has sometimes been argued in the literature. We break up the notion of NP constituency into a set of concrete typological parameters, and analyse these across a sample of 100 languages, representing a significant portion of diversity on the Australian continent. We show that there is little evidence to support general ideas about the absence of NP structures, and we argue that it makes more sense to typologize languages on the basis of where and how they allow "classic" NP construal, and how this fits into the broader range of construals in the nominal domain.

Typologizing nominal expressions: the noun phrase and beyond

“…With regard to discontinuous nominal expressions, the availability of this construal type may be interpreted as evidence against syntactic unithood, since a contiguous nominal expression can be seen as splitting apart, not moving as one. At the same time, as already pointed out, the availability of discontinuous construal does not necessarily need to be interpreted as precluding the existence of phrasal (i.e., contiguous) nominal units in the same language (e.g., Croft 2007;Louagie and Verstraete 2016;McGregor 1997a;Schultze-Berndt and Simard 2012). Substitution by pro-forms is known to be not a very helpful criterion as units of various sizes can be substituted, while in other languages, pro-forms are used quite sparingly.…”

“…Many analyses go one step further and regard the availability of discontinuous structures as evidence against constituency overall (e.g., Jelinek 1984;Laughren 1989). However, studies like McGregor (1997a), Croft (2007), Schultze-Berndt and Simard (2012), and Louagie and Verstraete (2016) argue that discontinuity can also be treated as a separate construal type, without needing to posit a complete absence of phrasal structure for the language system as a whole. In doing so, it is crucial to delimit 'real' discontinuity from the manifold cases in which the nominals do not in fact form a functional unit along the lines discussed in Section 2.1.…”

“…One and the same adjective can also be used in different functional roles: in (15b), the adjective different functions as epithet, attributing "very different personality traits to Gemma than to Nicola" (Davidse and Breban 2019: 351), while in (15c), different functions as secondary determiner, conveying the grammatical meaning of noncoreferentiality; "the combination of the indefinite article a and different specifies 9 Other Australian languages that have been analyzed in terms of functional templates are for instance Martuthunira (Dench 1994), Kayardild (Evans 1995) and Gaagudju (Harvey 2002), all of which show many-to-many mappings of word class and function. In fact, even though Australian languages actually exhibit different degrees of rigidity in their class-function mappings in nominal expressions, it is the pervasive flexibility of some that has received most attention in the literature (see Louagie and Verstraete 2016;Louagie 2020: 151-156, 208-209).…”

“…Krasnoukhova (2012; see also this issue) argues that many South-American languages belong to the last category, i.e., where we see a mix of structures: they have both integral and non-integral NPs (in Rijkhoff's sense), often depending on the type of modifier, and with structural and pragmatic motivations for using non-integral NPs. Louagie and Verstraete (2016), building on work by McGregor (1989McGregor ( , 1990McGregor ( , 1997a, Croft (2007), Schultze-Berndt and Simard (2012) and others, show that the nominal domain in many Australian languages should be analyzed as involving a range of structures. Finally, also evidence from diachronic work suggests that we are not dealing with a dichotomy, but that syntactic rigidity and complexity may increase or decrease in piecemeal fashion (Carlier and Combettes 2015;Freek Van de Velde 2009;Himmelmann 1997; Mark Van de Velde this issue; Reinöhl 2016a).…”

The Status of Determining Elements in Australian Languages

“…A first criterion is whether the elements under scrutiny are in a position 2 The term 'noun phrase' or NP is used throughout this paper in a general, loose sense, and not in a strictly syntactic sense (as not all nominal groups in all Australian languages can be characterised as noun phrases, strictly speaking). The syntactic status of nominal expressions in Australian languages is discussed in more detail in Louagie & Verstraete (2016), which uses the same sample as this study.…”