From prefixes to suffixes
Typological change in Northern Australia
Mark Harvey | University of Newcastle
Ian Green | University of Adelaide
Rachel Nordlinger | University of Melbourne
This article provides a counterexample to the commonly held, if unexamined, proposition that morphemes reconstructed as affixes do not change their position with respect to the root. We do not expect to find that a proto-prefix has suffix reflexes, nor that a proto-suffix has prefix reflexes. In this paper we show, through detailed reconstruction, that paradigms of class/case suffixes in a number of Northern Australian languages derive historically from a paradigm of proto-prefixes, through the encliticization and reduction of prefixed demonstratives to nominals. This process has only left a few traces of the demonstrative stems in the synchronic forms.
Keywords: Australian languages, reconstruction, nominal suffixes, diachronic morphology, Mirndi languages, prefixes
Published online: 15 December 2006
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.23.2.04har
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.23.2.04har
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