Morphology of nouns and adjectives

Stem-forming affixes. There are about a score of affixes in Dyirbal that form nominal stems from nominal roots; some of them also function as affixes to members of other word classes. Some of the affixes are important syntactically – for instance -bila ‘with’ as a type of possessive, and -gara and -maŋgan as coordinators; others merely provide semantic qualification of the noun or adjective they occur with. NPs involving certain of the affixes can make up complete sentences; this is not so in the case of other affixes.

The full functional possibilities of each affix are described below. The section ends with a discussion of the use of bound forms dayi galu, etc. (3.2.3) as nominal affixes.

[1] -ŋa This affix has already been discussed in 3.2.1 and 5.8.3. It is listed as a stem-forming affix, rather than as a case inflection, because [i] it is always optional with nouns; and [ii] it can be followed by other stem-forming affixes, -ɲ;a is generally added only to a nominal referring directly to a particular person or persons – a proper name, or else a noun used in a particular instance as a proper name.