Pluractionality and atelicity in Miriwoong

This paper presents an analysis of the marker -be in Miriwoong, a language of the non-Pama-Nyungan Jarragan family spoken in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. The analysis presented here argues that -be is semantically pluractional. The -be suffix predominantly modifies coverbs, where it functions to derive pluralized situations from coverbs which primarily receive atomic (telic and singular) readings in their unmarked forms. The form is also used to derive a small set of nominals into coverbs, with the same pluractional function. In complex predication these coverbs combine only with a select number of inflecting verbs which categorize for atelicity, namely the stative be/stay inflecting verb. This analysis proposes that the -be suffix in Miriwoong instantiates a productive alternation between morphologically unmarked atomic situations and marked plural situations. The analysis also illustrates that in Miriwoong, temporally pluractional events are necessarily atelic and there are strong links between the semantic categories of pluractionality, telicity and atomicity.