Ngumpin-Yapa languages

Abstract Ngumpin-Yapa languages (Pama-Nyungan) are spoken in central Australia. The best documented languages are Warlpiri and Gurindji. Ngumpin-Yapa languages are agglutinating, exhibiting only suffixes and enclitics. Core arguments are both case-marked and cross-referenced by pronominal clitics which mark person and number features and are generally registered on a second position auxiliary. Nominals pattern according to an ergative-absolutive system and bound pronouns according to a nominative-accusative system. A complex predicate structure is present in all Ngumpin-Yapa languages but shows considerable diversity across this language family. A number of structural features of Ngumpin-Yapa languages have been influential in the formal syntactic literature, for example the identified properties of non-configurationality: (i) pragmatically determined word order, (ii) the possibility of discontinuous NPs, and (iii) null anaphora (i.e. the common omission of NPs coupled with the compulsory presence of bound pronouns). Ngumpin-Yapa languages have also played an important role in the language contact literature, particularly in our understanding of how mixed languages develop.