Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

Gragg’s statistics, based on a corpus of Old Babylonian materials from Nippur is equally
convincing (note that some of Gragg’s numbers are approximate).
Postposition Infix Co-occurrences
-ße 3 / -ßi- 700 142 35
-ta / -ta- 380 100 29
-da / -da- 170 430 26
Gragg emphasizes that, with the exception of clauses that include a verb of motion, the
postposition and its etymologically corresponding infix almost never occur in the same
clause.
Although further research into the distribution of postpositions and their
etymologically related infixes is needed, I would guess that, excluding verbs of motion,
the postposition regularly occurs with definite lexical noun phrases, the infix when the
lexical noun is pronominalized and the *bi-√ prefix when the relevant adverbial argument
is indefinite. This would make the *bi-√ prefix the unmarked term in the system of
dimensional infixes, a system that is organized on the basis of oppositions of source (-ta)
and goal (-ße 3), which coincides with the semantic field that I would associate with the
*bi-√ prefix. The plausibility of *bi-√ as the unmarked dimensional infix follows quite
naturally from its role as a low source applicative when it is immediately preceded by an
inalienable noun. We can presumably juxtapose the importance of the source argument in
the Sumerian low source applicative in BNBV inal across a number of distinct lexical
classes: (i) verbs of perception include an indefinite noun in a raised possessor
construction (with the experienced object as the raised possessor of an inalienable noun
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