Word classes in Australian languages

This chapter discusses word classes in Australian languages, covering the large Pama-Nyungan family as well as several smaller families. Australian languages are often described as generally lacking a noun-adjective distinction. This is true for part of the languages: they have a flexible class of nominals that can function both referentially and attributively. Other languages, however, have a distinct adjective class, which in some languages is both morphologically and distributionally defined, and in others only distributionally (e.g. by their position in the NP). Verbs, by contrast, are generally a clearly distinct class on morphosyntactic grounds, with minor morphological overlap with other parts of speech. In fact, several northern languages have two verbal word classes, viz. inflecting verbs and uninflecting verbs, which serve different predicational (and other) functions. Manner adverbs, finally, are also a distinct word class in most languages, although they may show morphological similarities with nominals (e.g. case marking) or verbs (e.g. TAM marking). Only some languages have lexemes that are flexible between adverbial and adjectival functions.