Harvey, M.Green, I.Nordlinger, R.2007-07-102007-07-102006Diachronica: international journal for historical linguistics, 2006; 23(2):289-3110176-42251569-9714http://hdl.handle.net/2440/36032© Copyright 2006 John Benjamins.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.enAustralian languagesdiachronic morphologyMirndi languagesnominal suffixesprefixesreconstructionJournal article002006283310.1075/dia.23.2.04har2-s2.0-3384654762851335