Karri-borlbme Kun-wok

ngaleng

ngaleng

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English Translation
(Kun-balandaken)
she, her
Pronunciation
(Bale ka-yime karri-ngeybun?)

ngal-eng

For those of you who know IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet): [ŋaleŋ]

Sometimes when used in the sense of 'that's the thing I was talking about', the first vowel is lengthened: ngaa-leng (but still spelt ngaleng).

Morphology
(Karri-wokdjobdjobke)

ngal-eng
ngal- is the female noun class prefix

Notes
(Njalenjale)

In Gundjeihmi dialect, this word can also be pronounced aleng (the initial nasal sound is lost).
Ngaleng, like nungka (our previous word), is a free standing pronoun equivalent of the prefix on verbs ka-VERB. In English we have two words for this pronoun, one for grammatical subjects:
She is going.
And one for grammatical objects:
He saw her.
In Kunwinjku and Gundjeihmi ngaleng can be in either role (subject or object).
Ngaleng ka-re. 'She is the one going.'
Ngaleng bi-nang . 'He saw her.' (word order is not always useful in Kunwinjku for working out who is the subject and who is the object, but that's another story).

As for other free-standing pronouns, there is a sense of emphasis when used together with a verb that has the ka-VERB prefix.
Ka-re 'he/she is going'
Ngaleng ka-re 'She's the one [who is] going'.

In addition to being a pronoun, ngaleng can also operate as a demonstrative 'this one, that one (of female noun class)'. When it is used as an indicating word (demonstrative) ngaleng can sometimes lose its female gender marking and can be used to refer to anything (not necessarily female calss things) that was previously mentioned by a speaker.
Ngaleng 'that's the thing now I/we were talking about'.

Usage
(Bale kabirri-yime?)

Birri-djawam ben-wokmayi dja ngaleng keleminj.
They asked her (questions) and she should have answered them, but she was frightened.

A quick word on hyphens. These are not an official part of the Kunwinjku spelling system. They are only used here as an aid to learning. They show the breaks in a word where there are meaningful units (morphemes) such as pronoun prefixes (like ka-, birri-, yi- etc) and noun class prefixes (like ngal-, na-, kun-, man-)

Date
(Balekeno)
15 Jun 2012