Brazil

The paper presents an example of the usefulness of the method of internal reconstruction as applied to synchronic variation in the behaviour of postpositions and verb prefixes in Nadëb. These variations are interpreted as stages in a diachronic process of syntactic change, which appears still to be continuing in the language, and which provides an explanation for the presence of some of the many verb prefixes in an OSV language. An attempt is made to suggest a possible future course of this process.