Aboriginal Languages Australia

The Analysis fields comprise:

—prefix ('pfx': crimson)

—derivational suffix 1 to 6 ('DFX', 'dx2' etc, the last three often omitted: shades of blue)

—tense ('TNS': royal blue)

—bound pronouns ('PN N': purple; 'PN A': pink; '(N)P pst': mauve)

—suffix 1 to 3 ('sfx1': orange; 's2': light brown; 's3': dark brown)

 

These fields were introduced to increase the probability of finding word matches by reducing complex words to word stems with affixes separated off. English too has word stems and affixes as can be seen exemplified in the word ‘hope’:

—hope

—hop-ing

—hop-ed

—hope-less

—hope-less-ness

—hope-ful(ly)

 

Amplifying words using affixes occurs a great deal more in Australian languages than in English. In the case of verbs, suffixes take the place of tense marker words in English (will, did), as well as some adverbs; and in the case of nouns, suffixes are used to indicate cases (subject, object, possessive and others), roles carried out in English by word order and prepositions.

 

An Australian indigenous word commonly has a stem with one to five or more additional endings or suffixes attached to it. The analysis fields in the Bayala databases attempt to isolate the suffixes in the DFX (blue) and sfx (red-brown) columns, the numerous columns enabling them to be presented in the order in which they occurred in the original word.

 

For verbs, it is common to have a tense marker for future or past, which often follows some other suffixes. And some languages have ‘bound pronouns’ following the tense marker, to show who is doing the action, and to whom. Normally the subject pronoun (marked PN N: pronoun nominative) comes before the object pronoun (PN A: pronoun accusative), but where the subject pronoun follows the object pronoun, it features in the (nominative) pronoun post field (marked (N)P pst) as in the case of the first example in Fig. 3.12.