Grammar
East-central Tasmanian is used for illustration, unless otherwise indicated.
- Nouns
There is no evidence of plurality or gender. The nominal particle may have marked the end of a noun phrase.
| Eastern Tas. | Western Tas. | |
|---|---|---|
| woman | lowa-na | nowa-leā |
| hand | rī-na | ri-leā |
| kangaroo | tara-na | tara-leā |
Possession was indicated by dropping the nominal particle:
- wurrawa lowa-na 'the wife of the deceased'
- Postpositions
Postpositions, or perhaps case endings, include le/li 'behind', ra 'without', to/ta (change in direction):
There is also an adverbial suffix -re in lene-re 'backwards'.
- lunamea ta 'to my house', nee-to 'to you'
- Adjectives
Adjectives follow the noun, and some end in -ne (pāwine 'small') or -ak (mawbak 'black', tunak 'cold').
- Pronouns
Only singular personal pronouns are known: mī-na 'I', nī-na 'you', nara 's/he'. (In Northeast Tas, these are mi-na, ni-na, nara.) These form possessive suffixes: loa-mi 'my woman'. Pronouns might be incorporated in the verb: tiena-mia-pe 'give me!'.
Demonstrative pronouns are wa/we 'this' and ni/ne 'that': Riena narra wa 'this is my hand'.
- Numerals
marra(wa) 'one', pʲa(wa) 'two'.
- Verbs
The negative particle is noia
- noia meahteang meena neeto linah
- 'I won't give you any water'
- (not give I to-you water)
In Southeast Tas., suffixes -gara/-gera and -gana/-gena appear on verbs. Their meaning is unknown:
- nunug(e)ra 'to wash', tiagarra 'to keep', nugara 'to drink'
- longana 'to sleep', poenghana 'to laugh', winganah 'to touch'
Read more about this topic: Tasmanian Languages
Famous quotes containing the word grammar:
“The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“Grammar is a tricky, inconsistent thing. Being the backbone of speech and writing, it should, we think, be eminently logical, make perfect sense, like the human skeleton. But, of course, the skeleton is arbitrary, too. Why twelve pairs of ribs rather than eleven or thirteen? Why thirty-two teeth? It has something to do with evolution and functionalism—but only sometimes, not always. So there are aspects of grammar that make good, logical sense, and others that do not.”
—John Simon (b. 1925)
“Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)