The semantics and pragmatics of composite mood marking: The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia

Abstract

This paper investigates a system of composite mood marking in the non-PamaNyungan languages of northern Australia, which generally mark modal meanings through combinations of prefixes and suffixes of the finite verb. The analysis focuses on the category of irrealis, which is typically marked with a specific prefix, and covers both meanings of counterfactuality (when combined with a past tense suffix) and of potentiality (when combined with non-past tense suffixes). The central problem in describing this category, as with irrealis categories more generally, is how to reconcile the feature of non-actualization found in the counterfactual uses with the feature of potentiality found in all other uses (including the counterfactual one). On the basis of the formal systematics of prefix-suffix combinations, as well as the internal semantic structure of counterfactual constructions, it is shown that non-actualization can be derived from past potentiality by general Gricean principles. In addition, this analysis suggests that some exceptional non-Pama-Nyungan systems that do not have an irrealis prefix can be diachronically related to the basic system with an irrealis prefix. The analysis proposed has implications for the more general typology of irrealis categories and for their relation with negation.