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Question 3 - Doubling in Caterpillar Country (11
marks)
Arrernte is an Australian Aboriginal language, spoken mainly in the centre of the
country in and around Alice Springs. It is one of the largest Aboriginal languages,
spoken by both adults and children and taught in schools such as the Yipirinya1
School in Alice Springs. When written, Arrernte uses the same alphabet we use for
English. Some combinations of letters signal special sounds, in the same way that
English 'th' represents a sound that is not a combination of the 't' and 'h' sounds. For
example, 'rr' represents the single sound of a rolled r and 'th' indicates a t-like sound
with the tongue further forward, touching the back of the upper teeth.
Use the (slightly simplified) examples of Arrernte verbs in the following table to
answer the questions below, writing your answers in the answer sheet.
Arrernte
atherreme
atherreke
atherreperreme
English gloss
'is laughing'
'was laughing'
'keeps laughing'
Arrernte
areme
areke
arelpareme
English gloss
'is looking'
'was looking'
'starts to look'
atheme
atheke
athelpatheme
'is grinding'
'was grinding'
'starts to grind'
atakeme
atakepakeme
atelpatakeme
'demolish’
'keeps demolishing'
'starts to demolish’
mpwareme
mpwareke
mpwarepareme
athelpatheme
'is making'
'was making'
'keeps making'
'starts to make'
untheme
unthepuntheme
unthepuntheke
'is going along'
'keeps going along'
'kept going along'
3.1 (1 mark) What meaning is expressed by the ending -eme or -eke?
3.2 (3 marks) Arrernte speakers show that an action is frequent ('keeps on doing X')
by adding an extra element (‘affix’) to the verb and by doubling selected vowels and
consonants in the word’s basic form (its ‘stem’). State the rule as clearly as you can;
make sure you specify how the affix and the stem’s parts are arranged within a word.
3.3 (3 marks) Speakers also show that an action is commencing (‘starts to do X’) by
adding an affix and repeating selected vowels and consonants of the stem. State the
rule as clearly as you can.
3.4 (1 mark) Which 'commencing' verb in the above list needs a slight addition to the
rule?
3.5 (3 marks) Here are three new words in Arrernte: arlkweme 'is eating', kwerneme
'is swallowing', itirreme 'is thinking'. How would you say the following?
(a)
was eating
(ii)
kept swallowing
(iii)
starts to think
1
Yipirinya is the Arrernte word for 'caterpillar', the symbol of the of the Arrernte people of Alice
Springs.
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answer blank
Question 3 Doubling in Caterpillar Country (11 marks)
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
a.
b.
c.
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Answers and marks
Question 3 Doubling in Caterpillar Country (11 marks)
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
2
3
Tense – past (eke) or present (eme).
Accept ‘Time past/present’; just ‘tense’ or ‘past/present’ or
‘present/imperfect’
½ for ‘is/was’, ‘is/has been’
1: Stem2 first
Accept: ‘add ep after the stem’; a formula ‘stem + ep + ...)
½ for just mentioning stem
1: Add ‘ep’
1: Then add a copy of the stem2’s last vowel and consonant
Accept: ... the stem’s last syllable; repeat; ‘add ... again’; ‘doubled’; ½
for any hint of repetition, e.g. ‘the last two/three letters’, ‘the first
syllable is knocked off if there are two syllables’
1: Stem2 last
Accept formula ‘... + elp + stem’
1: Start with a copy of the stem’s first consonant (and any vowel before
it).
Accept: ‘repeat’, ‘add ... again’; ½ for ‘first syllable’, ‘first half’
1: Then ‘elp’, before the stem.
mpwelpempwareme ‘starts to make’
Accept either Arrernte or English or both.
1/2: for ‘mpwareme’ or ‘make’
a. arlkweke
b. kwerneperneke
c. itelpitirreme
1
3
3
1
@13
Instead of ‘stem’, accept ‘present participle’, ‘root’ or ‘standard form’.
½ for any answer where just one phoneme or character is wrong, extra or missing.
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Teacher tips
This question is about morphology – word structure – so the first thing to do is to go
through all the Arrernte words looking for morphemes – the meaningful parts that
they’re made up of. For instance, the first word atherreme obviously consists of a
stem followed by a suffix when you compare it with atherreke. Exactly where the
boundary lies is less clear at this stage – it could be atherr|eme or atherre|me – so
when you’re marking boundaries, it’s a good idea to use a pencil! At least be
consistent.
The process of going through all the words marking boundaries in this way is a good
way to become aware of patterns that aren’t immediately obvious. You’ll notice, for
example, that every word ends in either eme or eke, so you can mark these off and
focus on the rest of the word (which is helpful, because that’s where the main
problems lie).
If you know a bit about morphology you’ll already know about prefixes and suffixes,
and how they’re added to stems, so while you’re marking off morpheme boundaries
you’ll recognise the stems; in fact, the way the data is laid out draws your attention to
the stems.
The challenge is to see the patterns in the morphology and how they match up with
the various patterns in the translations. For example, take the third word:
atherreperreme, ‘keeps laughing'. In comparison with the first word, atherreme, you
might think this has three parts: atherr|eperr|eme, where atherr means ‘laugh’ and
eperr means ‘keeps’; but when you look at the other words meaning ‘keep ...’, you
don’t find eperr:
1. atak|epak|eme
2. mpwar|epar|eme
3. unth|epunth|eme.
What do all these words have in common (apart from eme, which isn’t relevant)?
Most obviously, they all contain ep, but the bit after ep varies from word to word.
Why? When you lay the words out systematically like this, it’s obvious that the bit
after ep is a copy of the end of the stem: err after atherr, ak after atak, and so on. This
is the key to the whole problem: the patterns involve a doubling of part of the stem.
(This is generally called ‘reduplication’ in linguistics, and although you don’t need to
know the term, it’s helpful to know that it’s a common pattern in morphology.)
Having got this far, the next question is: what, exactly, is doubled? In all the ‘keep’
words, it’s the stem’s last vowel plus consonant. You may think of that as the stem’s
last syllable, though it’s an odd kind of syllable because syllables usually include the
consonant before the vowel; so the safest formulation won’t refer to syllables, but to
consonants and vowels: the repeated bit is the stem’s last vowel and consonant.
To summarise what you’ve found for ‘keeps’, build a formula like this:
Stem + ep + last vowel and consonant of stem + eme/eke
Incidentally, this rule makes it clear that the e in eme or eke belongs to the suffix, not
to the stem; if it had belonged to the stem then it would have been the bit that was
doubled.
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Now collect all the words meaning ‘start’:
1. ar|elpar|eme
2. ath|elpath|eme
3. at|elpatak|eme
4. mpw|elpempwar|eme
Here the shared material is elp, so separate that from the rest:
1. ar|elp|ar|eme
2. ath|elp|ath|eme
3. at|elp|atak|eme
4. mpw|elp|empwar|eme
What about the other bits? Once again, one bit is a copy of part of the other. You can’t
tell in the first two examples which is the original and which is the copy, but the third
example at|elp|atak|eme is very clear: the stem is what follows elp, and the bit before
elp is a copy of the start of the stem. (Who knows – maybe this relates to the fact that
these words mean ‘start’.) The fourth example is more complicated because of the e
which has been added to the stem mpwar, but it shows the same pattern of copying the
first part of the stem (mpw) before elp.
Once again, you have to think more precisely about what ‘the start’ means. You could
say it’s the first syllable (though you have to make sure, once again, that syllables
include the following consonant); and that would work for examples 1-3. But it would
be odd to treat mpw as a syllable, so it’s probably safer not to mention syllables in this
case. Instead, you could say it’s the stem’s first consonant, plus any vowel before it.
Once again, it’s helpful to summarise with a formula:
First consonant of stem, with any preceding vowel + elp + Stem + eme/eke
Now that you understand how Arrernte works, you can answer the questions easily.
3.1. Here you really need to talk about past and present tense, but you have to make
do with whatever terminology you know. As you can see from the marking scheme,
the markers were pretty accommodating.
3.2. This is asking for a pithy summary of the rule for ‘keep’, and by far the best way
to state the rule is to use a formula such as the one I offered above. Prose is a very
poor substitute.
3.3. As in 3.2, this one is asking for the rule for ‘starts’, so give the formula above.
3.4. This is about the word mpw|elp|empwar|eme, which we noticed above as a bit
tricky because of the added e in empwar. Why do you think that was added? Well, try
saying it without the e! The easiest way to tweak the rule is to say that elp changes to
elpe before a consonant.
3.5. To answer this question you just need to apply the little grammar that you’ve built
for this part of Arrernte:
(a) was eating: arlkw|eme means 'is eating', so the stem is arlkw. You know that ‘was
... ing’ is signalled by eke, so you combine the two to get arkw|eke. (The dividing
mark is of course optional.)
(b) kept swallowing: kwerneme means 'is swallowing', so ‘swallow’ is kwern.
Remember that in Arrernte, rn is a symbol for a single consonant sound, so the last
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consonant is actually rn. Applying the ‘keep’ formula gives: kwern + ep + ern + eke
(with eke signalling past tense).
(c) starts to think: itirreme means 'is thinking', so ‘think’ is itirr, and by your formula
for ‘start’ you get: it +elp + itirr + eme.
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