The Semantics and Pragmatics of Irrealis Mood in Nyulnyulan Languages

Headnote

The languages of the small Nyulnyulan family of the far northwest of Western Australia all exhibit a grammatical category traditionally dubbed irrealis. In this paper we describe the grammatical expression of this category, and its range of meanings and uses. It is argued that these can be accounted for as contextual senses or pragmatic inferences based on a single encoded core meaning, that the referent situation is construed by the speaker as unrealized. This semantic component remains invariant across all uses of the category, and is not defeasible. Contra claims by some investigators, the realis-irrealis mood contrast is fundamental, and encapsulates a viable conceptual contrast between real and unreal events; epistemic and deontic notions of probability, necessity, desirability, and the like are secondary pragmatic inferences. The irrealis is thus a modal category that can grammaticalize in human languages; indeed, it is a communicatively useful category. We explicate the nature of the conceptual contrast between the construed real and unreal. It is further argued that the notion of scope is essential to an understanding of the irrealis, and its interaction with other mode-like categories. Finally, we situate the Nyulnyulan irrealis in the wider cross-linguistic context of irrealis.

1. INTRODUCTION.1 In this paper we investigate irrealis mood in the Nyulnyulan languages of the Dampier Land peninsula and adjoining parts of the Kimberley region in the far northwest of Western Australia. As in many non-Pama-Nyungan languages, in all Nyulnyulan languages-with the possible exception of Yawuru-tense distinctions are made in the irrealis. Correspondingly, irrealis categories are marked by the combination of prefixes indicating mood and a suffix indicating tense (see Verstraete 2005, 2006; Lazard 2006).2 This is illustrated by examples (1) and (2), where the irrealis prefix -la- cooccurs with the past tense suffix -na, as well as with a marked form of the nominative pronominal prefix.

(1) Marlu wi-la-rr-arli-na kinya mayi, marlu.3 warrwa

not 3:NOM:iRR-iRR-AUG-eat-PST this food not

'They didn't eat it.' (McGregor 1994:25)

(2) Milarra oo-la-rli-na-ngayoo joorroo-nim. bardi

almost 3:MiN:NOM:FUT/iRR-iRR-eat-PST-i:MiN:ACC snake-ERG

'The snake almost bit me.' (Aklif 1991a)

The Nyulnyulan languages constitute a separate family of non-Pama-Nyungan languages, within which approximately ten languages are distinguished (McGregor 1988, 2004:40-42). These fall into two groups (Stokes and McGregor 2003): Western Nyulnyulan (Nyulnyul, Bardi, Jawi, Jabirrjabirr, Nimanburru, and perhaps...