The 'buga' puzzle

MURUWARI WORDS

Lynette Oates has produced a comprehensive introduction to Muruwari, a language group straddling the NSW-Qld border south of Cunnamulla and north of Bourke, Brewarrina and Lightning Ridge. The reference is:

Oates, Lynette Frances. 1988. The Muruwari language. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.

It includes over 1100 sentences and verbs for which Oates has provided a grammatical analysis. Unsurprisingly, for such a large body of work, there are some puzzles and mysteries for the general enquirer looking into the language as presented by Oates. Here is one of them, with Oates’s analysis below:

kuntarl wuluwi-pu pinathini puka-ma-yu-na

dog-ABS   bark+PR-3sg   hear+PR   3sg-DAT-VBS-1sg-LCL

I hear a dog barking.

gundarl	wuluwibu	binaDini	bugamayuna
dog-ABS	bark+PR-3sg	hear+PR	3sg-DAT-VBS-1sg-LCL

This can be further broken down:

gundarl	wulu	wi	bu	bina	Dini	buga	ma	yu	na
dog-ABS	bark	+PR	-3sg	hear	+PR	3sg-DAT	-VBS	-1sg	-LCL

In the ‘Bayala databases’ bayaladatabases.blogspot.com this has been respelt as shown above, together with a revised translation:

gundarl	wulu	wi	bu	bina	Dini	buga	ma	yu	na
dog	woof	repeat	he	hear		BARK	make	did	there

The following explanation of the components is offered for the non-specialist.

gundarl          dog-ABS

This shows that ‘gundarl’ means ‘dog’. ‘ABS’ means ‘absolutive’, which in turn shows that the word is a noun and that it has no ending, or suffix. In this respect Australian indigenous languages are gratifyingly simple. If no suffix is needed, then it is omitted. Word order is not particularly important, but at the same time words do not occur in a capricious jumble. An ending would be needed on dog in the case of such a sentence as ‘dog man bite’, which might be equally presented as ‘bite man dog’ or  ‘man dog bite’, in order to show who is doing the biting. Such a suffix ends in ‘-u’ in Muruwari, 

usually -ngGu, or just -u, as in:

gundarlu        yidaA  ngaNa

dog      bite did me

The dog bit me.

But in the case of the sentence being lookied at here, ‘I hear a dog barking’, as no-one or thing other than the  dog could be doing the barking, the sentence is said to be ‘intransitive’, and no suffix is needed. This no-suffix condition is called ‘absolutive’. When there is a question as to who or what is doing whatever, a suffix is needed to show the 'do-er'. Such a suffix is referred to as ‘ergative’. In fact the ergative suffix is nothing more than a ‘flag’ to mark who is doing the action when there is a doubt.

wulu-wi-bu    bark+PR-3sg

‘wulu’ means ‘to bark as a dog’, but in the Bayala databases the word ‘woof’ is used to distinguish it from ‘bark on a tree’—for which ‘bark’ is retained.

‘-wi’: Oates has marked this as 'PR', for ‘present tense’, and so it is. But it is more. In Australian indigenous languages, suffixes after verb stems give additional information, and -wi, in Muruwari, indicates generally an idea about ‘reversal’ or ‘going back’ and the like; and also about ‘recurring’ or ‘repeating’. In this case of  the dog, you can think of -wi as signifying ‘woofing’ going on, as dogs are inclined to do.

‘-bu’ is a common pronoun ending, third-person singular, signifying ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’. In Australian indigenous languages generally only the one pronoun form is used, unlike the case of the three found in English.

So ‘wulu-wi-bu’ means ‘woof-repeat-he’ when reduced to the basic ideas.

binaDini         hear+PR

In reality, in Muruwari, ‘bina’ means ‘ear’ and ‘Dini’ means ‘stand’. ‘ear-stand’. Imagine a dog with its ears pricked up. It is ‘hearing’ or ‘listening’. So that is what ‘binaDini’ means: ‘hear’ or ‘listen’; and it is in the present tense, as Oates has indicated.

Now comes the puzzle:

bugamayuna            3sg-DAT-VBS-1sg-LCL

Oates has given a complex explanation, and she might well be right. But if she is, the sentence does not make much sense. Her analysis:

3sg-DAT-VBS-1sg-LCL

might be translated as:

3sg-DAT	-VBS	-1sg	-LCL
him-for	verbed	I	place

This would mean the whole sentence would read:

dog      barking he       hear     him-for / verbed / I / place

which is supposed to mean: ‘I hear a dog barking.’ It just does not seem to fit. 

So what could this last component, ‘bugamayuna, really be? Well, here is a suggestion.

Oates provided over 100 examples of the use of pidgin, or basically English words, incorporated into Muruwari everyday speech, such as the following three:

"pulaayinkin"	BULAYINGIN =	"blanket (Eng.)"	BLANKET	Oates [:372:23] [MRWI]
"wanti-ma"	WANDI-ma =	"to want"	WANT  :	Oates [:132:24] [MRWI]
"parta"	BARDA =	"butter (Eng.)"	BUTTER  :	Oates [:374:5] [MRWI]

Given the sentence in which 'buga' occurs, perhaps the ‘buga’ in ‘buga-ma-yu-na’ might be ‘bark’: ‘buga’, ‘bark’—why not? No more far fetched than the other pidgin examples.

And if so, what of the three suffixes attached to this stem: ‘-ma-yu-na’?

• ‘-ma’ is a suffix fairly widespread in NSW languages meaning ‘make’ or ‘do’, sometimes attached to nouns to make them into verbs, as suggested by Oates’s ‘VBS’, for ‘verbaliser’.

• ‘-yu’ is indeed the first-person bound pronoun ‘I’ as indicated by Oates’s ‘-1sg’ — but perhaps not in this instance. What if a simple transcription error had been made, and the suffix were in fact ‘-ya’ instead? This suffix occurs innumerable times in the Murawari record compiled by Oates, and is referred to as ‘declarative’ when attached to a verb stem. It cannot be readily translated, but it might be considered as meaning ‘in fact’ or ‘as a matter of fact’: hence the term 'declarative'.

• ‘-na’, the final suffix, when attached to a verb, commonly has an idea of ‘place’. It can be translated as ‘here’ or ‘there’. This suffix is commonly written ‘-ni’ or ‘-na’; and when it is ‘-ni’ it might more possibly suggest ‘here in the present’, while ‘-na’ might correspondingly more likely denote ‘there in the past’.

Australian indigenous languages can be succinct and subtle in this use of verbal suffixes.

So, instead of Oates’s:

3sg-DAT	-VBS	-1sg	-LCL
him-for	verbed	I	place

for ‘buga-ma-yu-na’, the real interpretation might instead be:

buga	ma	ya	na
BARK	make	(in fact) did	there

which sounds more plausible. And the whole sentence would be as shown earlier:

gundarl	wulu	wi	bu	bina	Dini	buga	ma	yu	na
dog	woof	repeat	he	hear		BARK	make	did	there

or ‘The dog barked; (I did) hear; bark did (it) there’, which more or less corresponds to the original translation of ‘I hear a dog barking’.