Bipartite structure

[Jess Tauber]

Re Randy's post (and by the way, thanks!)- this is interesting. A spread of
construction types might provide a better base for musings about the
grammaticalization/lexicalization chains leading up to them, much as in
genetics where as spread of mutations allows one to zero in on the archetype.

It would be interesting to see whether such a spread of types has any
relation to the patterning of constituent order in North America.
Instrument-left bipartitism has its greatest flowering near the verb-initial
zone in the Northwest- the farther you go away the fewer prefixes there tend
to be. What's left tends to be quite lexicalized. Those interesting
spatial-distributive suffixes in Muskogean are possibly the remnants of a
suffixal location/pathway system (and the prefixes- what is the relation to
bodypart systems?). More please! And thanks!

Jess Tauber
zylogy at aol.com