From prefixes to suffixes

Typological change in Northern Australia

Bibliographic Data

ID9375443
AuthorsMark Harvey (0000-0001-9901-9921, Newcastle University), Ian Green (0000-0001-7130-6195, The University of Adelaide), Rachel Nordlinger (0000-0003-4126-8022, The University of Melbourne)
Year2006
Volume23
Issue2
Pages289-311
Publication date2006-12-15
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiachronica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0176-4225 • E-ISSN: 1569-9714
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/dia.23.2.04har
OpenAlexW2045809205
LanguageEN
Citations received9

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

Demonstrative · Genitive case · Linguistics · Morpheme · Noun · Prefix · Proposition · Root (linguistics · Suffix · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · Computer Science · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy

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