The deprivative: Evidence from Australian languages

Within Australian languages, nominal modification is widely found (e. g. Dench & Evans, 1988; Dixon, 2002; Nordlinger, 1998; Simpson, in press). We contend a crosslinguistic criteria for an underlooked nominal modifier, the DEPRIVATIVE, based on evidence from five Australian languages. These are Yankunytjatjara (Goddard, 1983), Gooniyandi (McGregor, 1990), Wanyjirra (Senge, 2015), Yuwaalaraay and Gamilaraay (Giacon, 2014).

Despite being identified in at least these individual languages, the deprivative has received little recognition in existing studies of negation strategies in Australian languages (e. g. Dixon, 2002, p. 81; Phillips, in press). Nose (2006) offers some recognition of the deprivative in a broader discussion of case, but there is a paucity of dedicated study in comparison to other established types of nominal negation. Hence, our study is the first to comparatively analyse the DEPRIVATIVE. From our initial analysis, we propose the following formal criteria -

Minimal syntactic criteria:

a) A nominal modifier (i.e. a morpheme that can modify nominals). Not to the exclusion of modifying items other than nominals.

Minimal semantic criteria:

a) Has the function LACK - denotes absence the nominal referent it is modifying (for example: [food-DEPRIV] encodes the absence of food) and;

b) Has the function  REASON - indicates that LACK motivates the actions denoted by the main verb (for example: [food-DEPRIV] in a construction in which the main verb is [die] encodes death due to the absence of food).

Similar nominal modifiers encoding LACK exist and have been subject to some study: the privative (Phillips, in press; Saulwick, 1996), caritive (Kozhanov, 2019; Oskolskaya et al., 2020; Rudnitskaya, 2020) and absessive (Hamari, 2011; Miestamo et al., 2015). However, the DEPRIVATIVE is unique in also encoding REASON, and has received little to no comparative attention.

Drawing our data primarily from reference grammars, we seek to semantically and syntactically distinguish the deprivative from other established linguistic categories, particularly those in nominal negation. After establishing a robust comparative definition, we will conduct a survey, including languages within and outside of Australia, with a focus on language families that are known to have caritive, absessive, privative or related nominal categories, in order to compare and contrast those categories. We aim for this work to facilitate future comparative study of this under-examined linguistic category, and inform the broader typological understanding of nominal negation.

Keywords: deprivative, negation, Australia, morphosyntax, typology

References

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