362 MATHEWS — LANGUAGE OF SOME TRIBES [December 6, 



The Loritya Tribe. 



This tribe is located on both sides of the boundary between West- 

 ern AustraHa and South AustraUa. Its territory is approximately 

 from Blyth range northerly to Lake Macdonald, including the Tom- 

 kinson and Petermann ranges, and reaching into Western Australia 

 a considerable distance. It also extends into South Australia to the 

 Musgrave ranges, Lake Amadeus, and the Ehrenberg ranges. 



The grammatical structure of the Loritya language is substan- 

 tially the same as that of the Perth natives on the Swan river. The 

 nouns, pronouns, verbs and other parts of speech are declined in 

 an analogous manner, and some words of their vocabularies are 

 almost identical. The Loritya grammar is also the same in principle 

 as that of the Arranda language, reported by me in the Proceedings 

 (see page 322). 



Nouns. 



Nouns have number, gender and case. 



Number. — There are the singular, dual and plural numbers, which 

 are declined by postfixes ; thus, kalaia, an emu ; kalaiatara, a pair of 

 emus ; kalaiakura, several or many emus. 



Gender. — Sex in the human family is distinguished by different 

 words, as : patu, a man ; kunka, a woman. For the lower animals, 

 gender is indicated by the addition of the word manti for males and 

 yakura .for females. The ordinary native terms for " father " and 

 " mother " are often employed for the same purpose. 



Case. — Examples of the nominative, causative, genitive, and in- 

 strumental will be given, but there are likewise forms for the dative 

 and ablative. The accusative is generally the same as the nomi- 

 native. 



The nominative indicates anything at rest and is without flexion, 

 as : patu, a man ; kunka, a woman ; wonna, a yamstick. 



Causative : This is used for any action described in a transitive 

 verb, and takes the suffix nku, as : paturku warn pungu, a man a 

 rock-wallaby killed. 



The instrumental case takes the same suffix as the causative, as : 

 kunkanku inalingi wonnanku pungu, a woman a porcupine with a 

 yamstick killed 



