Nominal marking on verbs: Some Australian cases

Abstract

In Indo-European languages examples can be found of case marking on verbs as with the accusative on the Latin supine expressing purpose with verbs of motion. In Australian languages case marking on verbs is very common. Most examples can be found in subordinate clauses where, for instance, the dative marks purpose or the local cases express time (‘after’, ‘while’, ‘before’). In some languages case marking on the verb of a subordinate clause signals whether the subject is the same as or different from the subject of the governing clause. The case marking is often added to forms of the verb inflected for tense or aspect, but when the case marking is added these inflections develop into derivational, nominalising suffixes.

Australian languages often exhibit what has been called insubordination, a process whereby subordinate verbs become independent verbs. Where case-marked subordinate verbs become independent, this results in new markers for tense and aspect that ultimately have their roots in case markers.