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A variety of explanations have been offered for the observed cross-linguistic preponderance of suffixes over prefixes. Many are couched in terms of synchronic advantages, such as the cognitive simplicity of cross-category harmony between syntax and morphology, and preferences for processing the lexical meaning in stems before the grammatical material in affixes. But hypotheses about functional advantages cannot constitute explanations in themselves without accounts of the mechanisms by which the advantages are translated into grammatical structure. Here it is shown that the numerous exceptions to such hypotheses can be explained when the individual histories of the affixes are considered, including both their sources and the steps by which they develop.
head-final structures in both language comprehension and production. Given the incremental nature of language processing, a word with a preceding head can be integrated into the structure immediately and need not to be stored temporarily in working
money Gen In the head-final VP, the word order is variable (7a, b). In the head-initial NP (7c, d), the word order is rigid, just as in English. Note, by the way, that ‘scrambling’ is not so much language specific than phrase-structure specific. Head-final
-final phrase structure. We have seen that, as in many other Tupían languages, the lower region of the Tuparí clause obeys rigid head-final structure. However, the highest layer – instantiated by the second position clause-typing particles – is head-initial. The
