Early Descriptions of Pama-Nyungan Ergativity

Abstract

Summary Ergative marking and function are generally adequately described in the grammars of the small minority of the Aboriginal Australian Pama-Nyungan languages made before 1930. Without the benefit of an inherited descriptive framework in which to place foreign ergative morphosyntax, missionary-grammarians engaged a variety of terminology and descriptive practices when explaining foreign ergative structures exhibited by this vast genetic subgroup of languages spoken in an area larger than Europe. Some of the terminology had been previously employed in descriptions of other ergative languages. Other terms were innovated in Australia. The great distances separating missionary-grammarians describing different Pama-Nyungan languages, and the absence of a coordinating body fostering Australian grammatical description, meant that grammars were produced in geographic and intellectual isolation from one another. Regional schools of descriptive influence are however apparent, the strongest of which originates in grammars written by Lutheran missionaries of the ‘Adelaide School’. The synchronic descriptions of Pama-Nyungan languages made by missionary-grammarians in Australia informed the development of linguistics in Europe. There is however, little evidence of the movement of linguistic ideas from Europe back into Australia. The term ‘ergative’ to designate the case marking the agent of a transitive verb and the concept of an absolutive case became established practice in the modern era of Australian grammatical description without recognizing that the same terminology and concept of syntactic case had previously been employed in descriptions of Pama-Nyungan languages written in German. The genesis of the term ‘ergative’ originates in the description of Australian Pama-Nyungan case systems.