[Lingtyp] case suffix is "homonymous" with personal pronoun form

[Harold Koch]

I discuss the relevant changes mentioned by Claire and Peter in:
Koch, Harold. Forthcoming. Morphological change in Australian languages. In Peter Arkadiev and Franz Rainer (eds), Oxford handbook of historical morphology. Oxford University Press. Ch. 38
--as one of the kinds of morphological change attested in Australian languages.
Here’s the relevant section:

38.6.4.4 3rd person pronouns as determiners
In another kind of noun modification 3rd person pronouns may act as determiners, indicating the identifiable status of the noun (Louagie and Verstraete 2015). They lose their independently referring sense and function as definite articles. In this function they typically occur at the margins of a noun phrase.

38.6.4.5 3rd person pronouns as case markers
It was probably this function which led to the reanalysis of truncated case-marked 3sg pronouns as case markers in some Karnic languages. Table 38.14 shows a partial paradigm of the 3sg (originally feminine) pronoun alongside the equivalent case enclitics, which occur NP-finally in Wangkumara (Garlali) (McDonald and Wurm 1979: 22, 28). This historic pronoun has three uses: as a free-form 3sg, usually bearing distance-marking enclitics and serving as a demonstrative; as an enclitic cross-referencing 3sg pronoun; and as a case-marking enclitic, as seen in (13). See Koch (2015: 295-296) for a similar development in Diyari, where the former case-inflected pronouns are treated as suffixes marking gender as well as case. (The dr in nhandru is a trill-released stop, whose phonemic status (as distinct from /t/) is not certain.)

Table 38.14: Wangkumara 3sg pronoun and nominal case clitics

3sg
Nominal case
Nom
nhani
=ani
Erg
nhandru
=andru
acc
nhanha
=anha

(13)      bakarranyi=ani nhani=yi gatyi-gali=ani
            boomerang-nom 3sg.nom=here break-past=3sg.nom
            ‘This boomerang is broken.’ (Wangkumara (Karnic; McDonald and Wurm 1979: 42)

Koch, Harold. 2015. Morphological reconstruction. In: Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 286-307. London: Routledge.
Louagie, Dana, and Jean-Christophe Verstraete. 2015. Personal pronouns with determining functions in Australian languages. Studies in Language 39. 159-198.
McDonald, Maryalyce, and Stephen A. Wurm. 1979. Basic Materials in Waŋkumara (Galali): Grammar, sentences and vocabulary. Canberra: Australian National University.

Dr Harold Koch
School of Literatures Languages and Linguistics
Australian National University
harold.koch at anu.edu.au
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> On Behalf Of Peter Austin via Lingtyp
Sent: Saturday, 28 March 2026 8:56 AM
To: Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] case suffix is "homonymous" with personal pronoun form

Christian

The language you're looking for is Wangkumarra where case markers are diachronically derived from suffixed pronouns and show a gender contrast as well. It's one of very few Australian languages with tripartite case for A, P, S (see McDonald & Wurm 1979, Pacific Linguistics). Paradigms are in my handout from a talk in Paris in 2024 (http://peterkaustin.com/docs/teaching/2024-09-05_Flagging.pdf).

Best wishes

Peter

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Subject: [Lingtyp] case suffix is "homonymous" with personal pronoun form

Dear colleagues,

I dimly remember that in one or more languages of Australia, case suffixes look like forms of a pronoun declined for the case in question.

Could someone with relevant expertise or a better memory than me please help me out? Name of the language(s) in question would be sufficient; a reference would be even better.

Thanks in advance,

Christian

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