Verbal groups in Australian and Papuan languages: A comparative study

• Identifies characteristic patterns of meaning by surveying verbal groups in forty Australian and Papuan languages. • Variations include construals of time, identification and transitivity roles of participants, exchanges between speakers. • Provides a model for comparing systems and structures across multiple languages. • Indicates deep phylogenetic relations between languages in Australian and Papuan regions. This paper reports a comparative study of features realised in the verbal groups of Australian and Papuan languages. It draws on analyses of whole texts published in forty descriptions of languages distributed across the region, using tools from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which are explained throughout. Methods were designed for cross-linguistic description, using these tools. The texts were analysed for patterns of ideational, interpersonal and textual functions, at the levels of discourse semantics, clauses, word groups and words. For this paper, characteristic variations in verbal groups were identified, and representative texts selected, to display these variations. Findings include complexing of verbs, verbal groups and clauses to realise various ideational functions, that are characteristic of the entire region, often labelled as ‘serial verbs’. Textual functions include realisations of participant identities as pronominal verb affixes and clitics, or as ‘switch reference’ markers distinguishing participant roles in adjacent clauses. Interpersonal functions include realisations of mood, polarity and modal assessments in verbal groups.