Evans, Nicholas (1994). Kayardild. In Cliff Goddard & Anna Wierzbicka (Eds.), Semantic and lexical universals: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 203-228). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.25.12eva
Kayardild is an Australian language spoken in the South Wellesley Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria by a population traditionally numbering
around 120 people. Most of the proposed primitives find unproblematic translations into the language. The problems that arise can be divided into problems of combinability and problems of exuberance. Viewed from another angle, these two types of problem underscore the distinction between semantic and lexical universalis: the Kayardild evidence suggests that all the primitives considered in this volume are semantic universals, but that some fail to be lexical universals. In a case like THINK or DO there exist many Kayardild words that contain the relevant semantic component, supporting the claim that they are semantically universal, but they have not been lexicalised in a pure form. The case of putative universals expressible only as senses of gramemes is directly comparable: WANT and COULD are required in the explication of certain gramemes, but are not available in a pure form as lexemes. Yet only when a meaning is lexicalised does it become fully available for translation, which requires the ability to combine freely. Conversely, it may not be until one attempts translation that a particular lexical gap is even noticed, since all the commonest configurations involving a particular semantic primitive may be lexicalised — Kayardild, for example, has ‘do this’, ‘do that’, ‘do well’, ‘do badly’, ‘do what’, ‘do like someone else’ and so forth. By lexicalising all the regularly used combinations, a language can in some cases get by perfectly well without lexical exponents of the primitives themselves.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
