Bardi verb morphology : a transformational analysis

The Bardi Aboriginal language is spoken by some three hundred and sixty people located primarily at Derby, Sunday Island and Lombadina in the Kimberley division of North-western Australia. It is characterised, as with many Australian Aboriginal languages, by a complex system of verbal affixing. The twenty-two sets of affixes which, with free forms, may be constituents of the verb produce an amazingly complex variety of verbal forms many of which can stand alone as complete sentences. Such highly agglutinative languages present considerable difficulties in analysis and description, as a linear listing of verb constituents becomes extremely confusing in its intricacy. Further problems arise concerning the inter-relations of the affixes and the wider relations between verb morphology and syntax