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
Cited by
Cited by 8 other publications
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Evans, Nicholas, Alice Gaby & Rachel Nordlinger
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Harvey, Mark
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Australian Journal of Linguistics 32:3 ► pp. 327 ff.
Harvey, Mark
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In The Language of Hunter-Gatherers,
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Harvey, Mark & Brett Baker
2020. Epenthetic prefixation in Alawa and Marra.
Australian Journal of Linguistics 40:3 ► pp. 273 ff.
Harvey, Mark & Robert Mailhammer
2017. Reconstructing remote relationships.
Diachronica 34:4 ► pp. 470 ff.
Nordlinger, Rachel
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In Language Description Informed by Theory [Studies in Language Companion Series, 147],
► pp. 263 ff.
Osgarby, David
2018. Reconstructing Proto-Mirndi Verbal Morphology: From Particles and Clitics to Prefixes.
Australian Journal of Linguistics 38:2 ► pp. 223 ff.
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