Sit right down the back: Serialized posture verbs in Ngan'gityemerri and other Northern Australian languages

Abstract

Cross-linguistically the development of continuous aspect marking from posture verbs is well attested. The extension of posture or stance verbs ('sit', 'stand', 'lie') to markers of progressive or continuous aspect has been documented in a wide literature. Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1993) and Heine and Reh (1984), for example, note this type of grammaticalization for African languages. Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994) not the frequency of progressive forms that derive from locative elements, and also observe that 'sit' can serve as a grammaticalization source for habituals.In many parts of Australia there are languages in which there are constructions involving stance verbs working with another verb, in what appear to be single predicate constructions. Semantically the contribution to the predicate of these stance verbs is more of an aspectual nature than a lexical one. In other words these stance verbs are, at least to some extent, bleached of posture/stance meanings, and typically convey 'continuous', or 'progressive' aspect. Constructions of these types are reasonably common in Australia's Pama-Nyungan languages.