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Abstract
This chapter explores nominal grammar resources in Pitjantjatjara, an Indigenous language of Australia's Western Desert. Data for the description comes primarily from recordings of oral discourse. The description takes a discourse semantic perspective on ideational and textual resources in nominal grammar. Options are described for construing entities by naming, pronaming, classifying, describing, numbering, determining and qualifying. From text examples, a distinctive configuration of meaning options emerges that is characteristic of this language.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The often-cited interpretation of demonstrative proximity as ‘near speaker’, ‘near addressee’ and ‘not near either’ does not appear relevant in Pitjantjatjara.
2 Further subclassification in post-colonial specialized registers may require a ‘diglossic’ language switch to English, e.g., Pitjantjatjara Council-nguru executive tjuta.
3 ‘In the ‘identifying’ mode, the possession takes the form of a relationship between two entities’ (Halliday and Matthiessen Citation2014, 295).
4 For example, Dixon (Citation1980, 238) claims that ‘there is absolutely no evidence for a genetic connection between Australian languages and anything outside the continent’.