Arunta noun roots are generally short, often simple open monosyllables, e.g.
ga“rabbit”va“part”
Compounding is head final, hence
gavaga-varabbit-part “part of a rabbit”
Plurals are formed by reduplication, e.g.
gagaga~garabbit~PL“rabbits”vavava~vapart~PL“parts”gavagavaga-va~gavarabbit-part~PL “rabbit parts”
However, if reduplication results in words of more than three syllables, the last is often elided, hence
gavagaga-va~garabbit-part~PL “rabbit parts”
Collective nouns are formed with the suffix -i, which phonologically forms a diphthong when following a vowel
gaiga-irabbit-COLL “colony of rabbits”vaiva-ipart-COLL “group of parts”gavaiga-va-irabbit-part- COLL “collection of rabbit parts”
These pluralise in the usual way
gaigaiga-i~gairabbit-COLL~PL “rabbit colonies”vaivaiva-i~vaipart-COLL~PL “groups of parts”gavaigaga-va-i~ga rabbit-part- COLL~PL “collections of rabbit parts”
However, when the collective suffix is applied to a word that is already plural, this indicates that the members of the group are considered to form a unified whole, as in
gavagaiga-va~ga-irabbit-part~PL- COLL “collection of undetached rabbit parts”
Because of the preponderance of monosyllabic roots in Arunta, the idea of “the parts of a thing considered as a whole” is often used suppletively to refer to the thing itself, hence
gavagai“rabbit”