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Dyirbal language
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==Taboo== There used to be in place a highly complex ''[[taboo]]'' system in Dyirbal culture. A speaker was completely forbidden from speaking with his/her mother-in-law, child-in-law, father's sister's child or mother's brother's child, and from approaching or looking directly at these people.<ref name="Dixon1972">{{cite book |last=Dixon |first=R. M. W. |year=1972 |title=The Dyirbal language of north Queensland |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}</ref> Speakers were forbidden from speaking with their [[cross-cousin]]s of the opposite sex due to the fact that those relatives were of the section from which an individual must marry, but were too close of kin to choose as a spouse so the avoidance might have been on the grounds of indicating anyone sexually unavailable.<ref name="Dixon1972"/> Furthermore, because marriage typically took place a generation above or below, the cross-cousin of the opposite sex often is a potential mother-in-law or father-in-law.<ref name="Dixon, R. M. W. 1989">{{cite journal |last=Dixon |first=R. M. W. |year=1989 |title=The Dyirbal kinship system |journal=Oceania |volume=59 |issue=4 |pages=245–268}}</ref> In addition, when within hearing range of taboo relatives a person was required to use a specialized and complex form of the language with essentially the same [[phonemes]] and [[grammar]], but with a [[lexicon]] that shared no words with the standard language except for four lexical items referring to grandparents on the mother and father's side.<ref name="Dixon, R. M. W. 1990">{{cite journal |last=Dixon |first=R. M. W. |year=1990 |title=The origin of "mother-in-law vocabulary" in two Australian languages |journal=Anthropological Linguistics |volume=32 |issue=1-2 |pages=1–56}}</ref> The taboo relationship was reciprocal. Thus, an individual was not allowed to speak with one's own mother-in-law and it was equally taboo for the mother-in-law to speak to her son-in-law.<ref name="Dixon1972"/> This relationship also prevailed among both genders such that a daughter-in-law was forbidden to speak to directly or approach her father-in-law and vice versa. This taboo existed, but less strongly enforced, between members of the same sex such that a male individual ought to have used the respectful style of speech in the presence of his father-in-law, but the father-in-law could decide whether or not to use the everyday style of speech or the respectful style in the presence of his son-in-law.<ref name="Dixon1972"/> The specialized and complex form of the language, the Dyalŋuy, was used in the presence of the taboo relatives whereas a form referred to in most dialects as Guwal was used in all other circumstances.<ref name="Dixon1972"/> The Dyalŋuy had one quarter of the amount of lexical items as the everyday language which reduced the semantic content in actual communication in the presence of a taboo relative.<ref>{{cite book |last=Silverstein |first=M. |year=1976 |chapter=Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description |editor-first1=K. H. |editor-last1=Basso |editor-first2=H. A. |editor-last2=Selby |title=Meaning in Anthropology |pages=11–55 |location=Albuquerque |publisher=University of New Mexico Press}}</ref> For example, in Dyalŋuy the verb 'to ask' is {{lang|dbl|baŋarrmba-l}}. In Guwal, 'to ask' is {{lang|dbl|ŋanba-l}}, 'to invite someone over' is {{lang|dbl|yumba-l}}, 'to invite someone to accompany one' is {{lang|dbl|bunma-l}} and 'to keep asking after having already been told' is {{lang|dbl|gunji-y}}. There are no correspondences to the other 3 verbs of Guwal in Dyalŋuy.<ref name="Dixon, R. M. W. 1990"/> To get around this limitation, Dyirbal speakers use many syntactic and semantic tricks to make do with a minimal vocabulary which reveals a lot to linguists about the semantic nature of Dyirbal. For example, Guwal makes use of lexical [[causative]]s, such as {{lang|dbl|bana-}} {{gloss|break.{{gcl|TR}}}} and {{lang|dbl|gaynyja-}} {{gloss|break.{{gcl|NTR}}}}. This is similar to English "He broke the glass" (transitive) vs. "The glass broke." (intransitive). Since Dyirbal has fewer lexemes, a morpheme {{lang|dbl|-rri-}} is used as an intransitive derivational suffix. Thus the Dyalŋuy equivalents of the two words above were transitive {{lang|dbl|yuwa}} and intransitive {{lang|dbl|yuwa-rri-}}.<ref>{{cite book |last=Dixon |first=R. M. W. |year=2000 |chapter=A Typology of Causatives: Form, Syntax, and Meaning |editor-first1=Dixon |editor-last1=R. M. W. |editor-last2=Aikhenvald |editor-first2=Alexendra Y. |title=Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=39–40}}</ref> The lexical items found in Dyalŋuy were mainly derived from three sources: "borrowings from the everyday register of neighbouring dialects or languages, the creation of new [Dyalŋuy] forms by phonological deformation of lexemes from the language's own everyday style, and the borrowing of terms that were already in the [Dyalŋuy] style of a neighboring language or dialect".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Evans |first=N. |year=2003 |title=Context, culture, and structuration in the languages of Australia |journal=Annual Review of Anthropology |volume=32 |pages=13–40}}</ref> An example of borrowing between dialects is the word for sun in the Yidin and Ngadyan dialects. In Yidin, the Guwal style word for sun is [buŋan], and this same word was also the Dyalŋuy style of the word for sun in the Ngadyan dialect.<ref name="Dixon1972"/> It is hypothesized that children of Dyirbal tribes were expected to acquire the Dyalŋuy speech style years following their acquisition of the everyday speech style from their cross cousins who would speak in Dyalŋuy in their presence. By the onset of puberty, the child probably spoke Dyalŋuy fluently and was able to use it in the appropriate contexts.<ref name="Dixon, R. M. W. 1989"/> This phenomenon, commonly called [[mother-in-law languages]], was common in indigenous Australian languages. It existed until about 1930, when the taboo system fell out of use.
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