14. Strategies for encoding reciprocity in Mawng

Abstract

This chapter provides the first detailed description of the form and use of the three strategies for expressing reciprocity in Mawng, a non-Pama Nyungan language of the Iwaidjan language family (Australia). The only productive strategy is the reciprocal complex construction which has transparently developed from a biclausal reciprocal construction. Other strategies for encoding reciprocity include the use of a highly restricted verbal suffix ‑njili and the use of naturally reciprocal predicates in the unmarked “bare reciprocal construction”. Since there is only one productive way to form reciprocals in Mawng, choice of strategy is not determined by the semantics of an event but is structurally constrained by the constructional combinatorics of the predicate most appropriate to the event.