Western Malayo-Polynesian Research Articles

Evidence and Models of Linguistic Relations: Subgroups, Linkages, Lexical Innovations, and Borneo

Abstract: Several recent studies place the languages of Borneo into one of two large groups, the Greater North Borneo subgroup and the Barito–Basap linkage. These same studies place both Greater North Borneo and Barito–Basap with the Western Indonesian subgroup, a large subgroup which is claimed to be a primary branch of Malayo-Polynesian. This paper demonstrates that the exclusively lexical evidence used to justify such subgroups is invalid as subgrouping evidence. Instead, it is shown that the languages of Borneo developed a small number of Bornean-only lexical items through contact, borrowing, and early innovations within the first Proto-Malayo-Polynesian-speaking settlers of the island. To support these claims, a detailed description of both the methods of lexical innovation evaluation as well as the types of linguistic relations that such lexical innovations support is undertaken in this paper. A new standard for the use of lexical evidence in subgrouping arguments is established, with wide-ranging implications for not only the classification of Bornean languages but of western Malayo-Polynesian languages in general.

Morphologic, Syntactic, and Phonologic Distance Between Japanese and Altaic, Dravidian, Austronesian, and Korean Languages

The present study measures the resemblances of Japanese with Altaic languages (Turkic; Tungstic; Mongolic; Nivkh); the Dravidian language Tamil; Austronesian languages (Western Malayo-Polynesian; Malayo-Sumbawan; Central Luzon; Central Malayo-Polynesian), and Korean, in an effort to pin down the genealogy of Japanese. Morphologic, syntactic, and phonologic distance are calculated using data from corpora. The chi-square homogeneity test and Euclidean distances are used for statistical analysis. The finding brings to light, morphologically, in the light of preferences of causative/inchoative verb alternation patterning and morphemes that convey the alternation, that Japanese and Korean are close for the most part. Syntactically, Altaics and Tamil convey case via suffixes; case in Austronesian languages is marked by prefixes. Japanese and Korean share a similarity in rendering case with particles. Phonologically, the Tamil and Austronesian languages share a resemblance in the harmony of vowel height. The Korean, Altaic languages, and Austronesian languages show similarities in the harmony of vowel backness. Japanese, the Altaic languages, and the Austronesian language Madurese display vowel-consonant harmony. Pulling these strands together, a conclusion is thus drawn that Japanese is most closely related to Korean.

Semantic typology of voice systems in Western Malayo-Polynesian languages

AbstractWestern Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) languages exhibit inner diversity with regard to voice systems. While some lack verbal morphology encoding voice alternations, others demonstrate so-calledsymmetrical voicealternations. This paper discusses the internal typological grouping within the latter classification of languages, which are further categorized as being either Indonesian-type and Philippine-type. There are, however, certain languages that do not exhibit all the criteria of either category, but do displaysymmetrical voicealternations. These languages can be viewed as having ‘transitional’ features. With a focus on two languages from Indonesia, this paper aims to provide a new semantic perspective for describing one of these transitional features by examining voice alternations and categorizing the languages as having either aderivational voice systemor aninflectional voice system.

Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages ed. by Sonja Riesberg, Asako Shiohara, and Atsuko Utsumi

Reviewed by: Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages ed. by Sonja Riesberg, Asako Shiohara, and Atsuko Utsumi Dejan Matić Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages. Ed. by Sonja Riesberg, Asako Shiohara, and Atsuko Utsumi. (Studies in diversity linguistics 21). Berlin: Language Science, 2018. Pp. iv, 428. ISBN 9783961101092. $56 (Hb). There has been in the past decade a surge of interest in the investigation of the relationship between discourse and grammar in lesser-known languages, but the number of publications devoted to this topic is still negligible in comparison to those dealing with well-researched national languages. Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages, edited by Sonja Riesberg, Asako Shiohara, and Atsuko Utsumi, is a welcome addition to the slowly growing body of literature on the subject.1 The focus is on Western Malayo-Polynesian, with a number of chapters devoted to two ‘big’ languages, Tagalog and different varieties of Malay, but other Austronesian groups are represented as well, including Formosan, Central Malayo-Polynesian, and Oceanic. [End Page 726] The volume is divided into three parts, which focus on three aspects of what is traditionally subsumed under information structure: the form of NPs and reference tracking, the impact of information structure on syntax, and the relationship of information structure and prosody. The first part consists of four chapters that deal with the influence of such factors as givenness, familiarity, referential persistence, animacy, stance, engagement, and so forth on the selection of the forms of NPs. Rik De Busser’s contribution investigates the mechanisms of establishing referential cohesion in oral narratives and Bible translations in Bunun (Formosan), testing formal (word class), semantic (NP meaning), and discourse-pragmatic parameters (position in the text, relationship with coreferential expressions, etc.). ‘Stance, categorisation, and information structure in Malay’, by František Kratochvíl, Nur Izdihar Binte Ismail, and Diyana Hamzah, is devoted to referent tracking in Singapore Malay, based on the investigation of controlled discourse. There appears to be a split between animate and inanimate referents, such that the former but not the latter can be subject to the so-called strong epistemic stance, which seems to boil down to familiarity. This has repercussions for the ways referents are encoded and tracked in discourse. The only factor that seems to be stronger than stance is the persistence of a referent in subsequent discourse. The following chapter, written by Stefan Schnell, focuses on the meaning and use of demonstratives in Vera’a (Oceanic, Vanuatu). It is argued that the meaning of Vera’a demonstratives cannot be defined along spatial coordinates, such that other, endo- and exophoric, functions are derived from this purported core meaning. Instead, Schnell shows that demonstratives are interactional, in the sense that they are used to manage the attention states of the interlocutors. Their primary meanings are procedural and can be circumscribed as ‘you do not attend to this’ (speaker-oriented demonstratives), ‘you and I attend to this’ (addressee-oriented), and ‘I do not attend to this’ (distal). Major discourse effects derived from these procedural meanings are switch of the focus of attention (speaker-oriented) and maintaining and reinforcing the existing focus of attention (addressee-oriented), while distals are used when joint attention is not relevant. The chapter by Asako Shiohara and Anthony Jukes tackles the use of articles, demonstratives, and possessive NPs to encode different types of referential statuses in the Manado variety of Malay, showing that articles/demonstratives are used for situational and anaphoric reference, while possessive NPs indicate association with the larger shared situation. Six chapters in the second part of the book deal with the notions of topic, focus, and contrast and their influence on clause syntax in Austronesian, focusing mostly on voice, word order, and left dislocation. In the opening chapter, I Wayan Arka and I Nyomang Sedeng provide a general overview of information-structural phenomena in the Sembiran dialect of Balinese, focusing on NP encoding, word order, and voice. The authors rely on a set of predefined information-structural categories based on different combinations of values for...

Sex Differentiable Terms in Languages of Flores Island: A Comparative Review

Sex differentiable terms are lexemes that distinguish sex or gender among both humans and nonhuman animals. Focused linguistically and ethnographically on the island of Flores and neighboring islands in eastern Indonesia, the main topic is sex differentiable terms for animals and how these form distinct patterns in different languages. A pattern whereby nonhuman animals are sexually distinguished mainly by two pairs of terms is identified both for the Ngadha-Lio languages of central Flores and for Lamaholot, spoken in the extreme eastern parts of the island and on neighboring islands to the east. Different patterns are found in Sikkanese (spoken in the region intervening between central Flores and Lamaholot), among Manggarai-speakers in western Flores, and on the island of Sumba. In varying degrees, these correspond to the system of sex differentiables employed in Western Malayo-Polynesian languages like Javanese and Malay. Concerning Central Malayo-Polynesian languages spoken within one part of eastern Indonesia, this comparative study contributes to a discussion of a possible original Malayo-Polynesian pattern of sex differentiable classification and a consideration of how central and eastern Florenese patterns may have developed.

The Western Malayo-Polynesian Problem

Since the 1970s, Austronesian higher-order subgrouping has often included a Western Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) node within the larger Malayo-Polyne- sian (MP) group. WMP includes all Malayo-Polynesian languages except for those in Central and Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, although today it is generally not accepted as a valid subgroup. This paper critically assesses WMP, using both linguistic and archaeological evidence. In conclusion, it is claimed that WMP is indeed invalid, and that in its place several primary branches of Malayo-Polynesian are recognized (Western Indonesian, Sumatran, Celebic, South Sulawesi, Chamorro, Palauan, and Moken), plus Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian and Philippines, which may represent either a collection of several yet unnamed primary branches or an innovation-defined linkage. Additionally, it is argued that the 6,750 Proto-WMP reconstructions in the Austronesian comparative dictionary must be reevaluated, where appropriate, as Proto-MP reconstructions.

Makasar

Makasar is an Austronesian language belonging to the South Sulawesi subgroup within the large Western-Malayo Polynesian family. It is spoken by about two million people in the province of South Sulawesi in Indonesia, and is the second largest language on the island of Sulawesi (behind Bugis, with about three million speakers). The phonology is notable for the large number of geminate and pre-glottalised consonant sequences, while the morphology is characterised by highly productive affixation and pervasive encliticisation of pronominal and aspectual elements. The language has a literary tradition including detailed local histories (Cummings 2002), and over the centuries has been represented orthographically in many ways: with two indigenous Indic or aksara-based scripts, a system based on Arabic script, and a variety of Romanised conventions. From at least the early 18th century Macassan sailors travelled regularly to northern Australia to collect and process trepang or sea cucumber (Macknight 1976), and many loanwords passed into Aboriginal languages of the northern part of Australia (Evans 1992, 1997).

Problematic Protoforms: Some “Hidden” Indic Loans in Western Malayo-Polynesian Languages

This paper (re)examines a number of phonologically regular lexical reconstructions assigned to different Austronesian protolanguages. I will postulate a number of alternative scenarios involving early borrowing from Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. The loanwords proposed here encompass the domains of metallurgy and weaponry, structures and construction techniques, and other objects of practical use. While most of the data in this paper are linguistic, evidence from philology, archaeology, and archaeobotany is occasionally invoked as a control mechanism for lexical reconstruction. Doing so adds a novel dimension to our understanding of language contact and the nature of early Austronesian speech communities. Attention is also given to the geographical distribution and phonological integration of “Indic” loans in Austronesian-speaking Maritime Southeast Asia.

Distinguishing already from Perfect Aspect: A Case Study of Javanese wis

English already and the perfect aspect are both acceptable in many of the same environments. For example, both can express the recent past, an experiential reading, or a result. In investigating the semantics of a marker with these properties in an understudied language, it is easy to categorize such a marker as either notion. The auxiliary wis in Javanese (Western Malayo-Polynesian) is a case in point: different grammars, typological studies, dissertations, and journal articles on Javanese have glossed wis as expressing already , a (present) perfect, a past tense, or a perfective. However, the semantics of Javanese wis has not been formally studied. In this paper, we first identify several cross-linguistic properties that distinguish already from the perfect aspect. Using these diagnostics, we then propose that Javanese wis cannot be analyzed as a perfect aspect. Instead, wis is a focus operator that presupposes that the focus is a maximal element among a set of ordered alternatives, following Krifka’s recent analysis of English already .

Symmetrical Voice and Applicative Alternations: Evidence from Totoli

This paper proposes an analysis of the system of voice and applicative alternations in Totoli, a language spoken on Sulawesi in Indonesia. This system appears to be unique among Western Malayo-Polynesian languages (at least the ones reasonably well known to date). Its uniqueness is due to a particularly intricate interplay of (symmetrical) voice and applicative functions marked by a set of affixes that are clearly cognate with voice marking affixes in Philippine-type languages. In trying to tease apart the functions of the different constructions making up the system, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the commonalities and differences between symmetrical voice and applicative alternations. It also discusses variation in the use of voice-related morphology, thus providing a rather rare glimpse into the ongoing change of a western Austronesian voice system.

Opinion and Comment: Response to Review by John Bentley

Opinion and CommentResponse to Review by John Bentley Ann Kumar My book, Globalizing the Prehistory of Japan: Language, Genes and Civilization, assembles evidence from a number of independent disciplines: archaeology, rice genetics, dental and cranial studies, human DNA, and linguistics. This evidence can be made to cohere in only one possible way, by one single coordinating explanation: that there was a major Javanese contribution to Yayoi civilization. John Bentley has kindly reviewed one of the seven chapters and briefly addressed another in his JJS review (Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 154–61). Here is my response. First, rice genetics. Bentley claims that I used “outdated” research which is superceded by that of Roger Blench.1 But unlike my sources, Blench’s article is about not genetics but vocabulary relating to rice. And it does not deal with Indonesia or Indonesian languages at all. Ironically, Blench actually provides further support for my position, concluding that most Japonic terms had no external cognates in the languages he surveyed and postulating an “unknown” source involving migrants who had fully established wetfield rice (pp. 44–45). Javanese, perhaps? Second, my chapter on linguistics. Bentley writes: “Why not use another branch of Austronesian, such as the Formosan languages, as they are geographically closer to Japan?” (p. 159). This is equivalent to suggesting that someone making a study of, say, English loanwords in Chinese should use the Slavic languages instead, as they are geographically closer to China. As I make clear throughout the book, I am arguing solely for a Javanese infl uence, not an Austronesian (or even a Western Malayo-Polynesian) one. Bentley challenges a small number of the 41 pairs of CVCVC cognates presented, not enough to affect the statistical analysis of the evidence (which [End Page 513] was done within a Bayesian framework). He claims that “we already know” that some items have a different derivation which (as Galileo might have agreed) is an assertion, not an argument. For one pair, he takes a different approach: “A perfect match such as OV matur ‘to present, offer, tell or report to a person of higher rank’ and OJ matur- ‘to give s.t. [some thing] to a person of high rank/God’ begs for greater scrutiny” (p. 160). Consulting P. J. Zoetmulder’s Old Javanese- English Dictionary, Bentley proclaims: “we find that the form is actually OV hatur- or atur-. There are variations of this such as makātur-atur or mahaturhatur. Kumar’s matur is a ghost” (p. 160). In fact, as anyone slightly acquainted with Old Javanese knows, matur is a common word. A quick dictionary search produced the following: wonten paŋ alasan prapta matur iŋ sri pramiswari: A paŋalasan [title of royal retainer] arrived to speak to the queen (Kidung Sunda)2 subhaktya matura ŋ swarājya maŋ aran ri Lĕŋ kapura: With great devotion I offer my own kingdom called Lĕŋ kapura [with –a suffix] (Arjunawijaya)3 And Zoetmulder has many more examples from other texts.4 So this perfect match remains. And there are others. Bentley’s attempt to guess morphosyntax from the dictionary also went astray. Thus, he writes “anamar . . . is likely a morphologically altered form of samar ‘indistinct, vaguely visible’” (p. 160). Zoetmulder’s Old Javanese grammar makes it clear this is simply samar with the common a- plus nasalization prefix.5 Bentley opines: “A more disconcerting fact is that most languages in the subgroup with Javanese have gunuŋ ‘mountain,’ suggesting that wukir may be a loan from another language” (p. 160). Gunuŋ, to the best of expert knowledge,6 occurs only in Malay, and Alexander Adelaar has shown the Malayic subgroup does not include Javanese.7 In fact, as is well known, Javanese [End Page 514] cannot be placed within any subgroup of Western Malayo-Polynesian.8 So there is (again) no reason to prefer to use some language other than Javanese. Bentley’s speculation that wukir is a loan—from a language which, like the putative subgroup, is unnamed—is unsupported by any evidence. Wukir is part of the substantial percentage of the Javanese lexicon not found elsewhere. And even if it were a loan in Javanese, it could still have been borrowed from...

Austronesian and theoretical linguistics (review)

Reviewed by: Austronesian and theoretical linguistics Paul Kroeger Austronesian and theoretical linguistics. Ed. by Raphael Mercado, Eric Potsdam, and Lisa de Mena Travis. (Linguistics today 167.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. Pp. vii, 379. ISBN 9789027255501. $158 (Hb). Theoretical phonologists have always used a considerable amount of Austronesian data, particularly in connection with work on nasality and reduplication. During the first several decades of the generative era, however, the formal syntax community paid far less attention to Austronesian than the size, typological variety, and geographical extent of the family would seem to warrant. Two significant events helped to amend this situation. One was the publication of Guilfoyle, Hung, & Travis 1992, the first credible attempt within the principles-and-parameters framework to deal with nondemoting, Philippine-type voice systems. The other was the formation, in 1994, of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association (AFLA). The papers in this volume represent a selection of those presented at the 14th annual AFLA conference, held in May of 2007 at McGill University. From among the thirty papers and eleven posters presented at the conference, the editors chose five phonology and twelve syntax papers for publication. These papers offer a representative sample of the issues of current interest within Austronesian formal linguistics. The sample of languages is fairly well balanced among Oceanic, Formosan, and Western Malayo-Polynesian; Malagasy and Tagalog are represented, but do not dominate the line-up as they have in some previous AFLA conferences. This is a handsome and well-edited volume, and the papers are generally well written and full of interesting data. But in my mind, what makes these papers so valuable is that they are written by formalists who are also language experts. The discussions of theoretical issues are based on detailed knowledge of the languages being discussed. One recurring topic of discussion in recent years has been how to reconcile the surface word-order properties of various Austronesian languages with the universal underlying structure posited by Kayne’s (1994) antisymmetry hypothesis, and with Cinque’s (1999, 2005) proposals concerning the universal ordering of adverbial elements and adjectives. The challenge is particularly acute with regard to certain verb-initial members of the family.1 Diane Massam, in ‘Deriving inverse order: The issue of arguments’ (271–96), addresses both the order of arguments (relative to the verb and to each other) and the order of adverbial elements in Niuean. She summarizes her earlier analysis of VSO order as resulting from remnant VP-movement. She then considers the ordering of adverbial particles, which is (approximately) the reverse of the underlying order posited by Cinque. It has been claimed that inverse ordering of adverbials correlates with verb-initial order, and that this correlation can be accounted for by assuming that adverbs arrive in their surface position by ‘roll-up movement’. Massam supports this view, but points out that in Niuean, this analysis runs into technical difficulties under normal assumptions about the underlying (merged) positions of internal arguments. She argues that in Niuean, all arguments must merge outside the VP, as specifiers of functional heads. [End Page 206] Similar issues are addressed by Elizabeth Pearce, in ‘Possession syntax in Unua DPs’ (141–62). The inventory of possessive constructions in Unua is not as complex as in some other Oceanic languages, but there is a syntactically significant contrast between direct and indirect possession, correlating roughly with alienable versus inalienable possession but not fully predictable on semantic grounds. Pearce argues for the very plausible claim that direct possessor nouns subcategorize for a possessor DP, which is a complement of N, whereas possessors of indirect possessor nouns are adjuncts and occupy a higher syntactic position. She also argues for iterative phrasal movement (‘roll-up’) as a way of accounting for the mirror-image ordering of adjectives and other elements within the DP, relative to Cinque’s model. But for Unua, this analysis works best under the assumption that all complements actually merge in specifier positions. Mara Frascarelli, in ‘Intonation, information structure and the derivation of inverse VO languages’ (81–102), analyzes the prosodic and information structures of recorded sentences in Tagalog and Malagasy, and argues that the results obtained support the vP...

Genetic affinities between the Yami tribe people of Orchid Island and the Philippine Islanders of the Batanes archipelago

BackgroundYami and Ivatan islanders are Austronesian speakers from Orchid Island and the Batanes archipelago that are located between Taiwan and the Philippines. The paternal genealogies of the Yami tribe from 1962 monograph of Wei and Liu were compared with our dataset of non-recombining Y (NRY) chromosomes from the corresponding families. Then mitochondrial DNA polymorphism was also analyzed to determine the matrilineal relationships between Yami, Ivatan, and other East Asian populations.ResultsThe family relationships inferred from the NRY Phylogeny suggested a low number of paternal founders and agreed with the genealogy of Wei and Liu (P < 0.01). Except for one Y short tandem repeat lineage (Y-STR), seen in two unrelated Yami families, no other Y-STR lineages were shared between villages, whereas mtDNA haplotypes were indiscriminately distributed throughout Orchid Island.The genetic affinity seen between Yami and Taiwanese aborigines or between Ivatan and the Philippine people was closer than that between Yami and Ivatan, suggesting that the Orchid islanders were colonized separately by their nearest neighbors and bred in isolation. However a northward gene flow to Orchid Island from the Philippines was suspected as Yami and Ivatan peoples both speak Western Malayo-Polynesian languages which are not spoken in Taiwan. Actually, only very little gene flow was observed between Yami and Ivatan or between Yami and the Philippines as indicated by the sharing of mtDNA haplogroup B4a1a4 and one O1a1* Y-STR lineage.ConclusionsThe NRY and mtDNA genetic information among Yami tribe peoples fitted well the patrilocal society model proposed by Wei and Liu. In this proposal, there were likely few genetic exchanges among Yami and the Philippine people. Trading activities may have contributed to the diffusion of Malayo-Polynesian languages among them.Finally, artifacts dating 4,000 YBP, found on Orchid Island and indicating association with the Out of Taiwan hypothesis might be related to a pioneering stage of settlement, as most dating estimates inferred from DNA variation in our data set ranged between 100-3,000 YBP.

Malagasy clefts from a Western Malayo-Polynesian perspective: Commentary on the paper by Hans-Martin Gärtner

This commentary primarily addresses Gärtner’s critique of the “pseudo-cleft” analysis for Malagasy. First, it is shown that this analysis is almost certainly correct for focus constructions in three other Western Malayo-Polynesian languages. Next, it is shown that certain unexpected semantic patterns observed in Malagasy (including the potential for strong quantifiers to occur within the focused predicate phrase, and the non-entailment of exhaustivity) hold in these other languages as well. Thus, the semantic arguments against the pseudo-cleft analysis for Malagasy are not conclusive. Finally, on the basis of comparative evidence from Tagalog, it is suggested that the structure of adjunct-focus in Malagasy may actually be quite different from that of subject-focus, even though both constructions must satisfy the same morphological constraints.

Language typology and universal grammar: a commentary on the paper by Eric Potsdam

This paper is a critical review and discussion of a novel approach to deriving typological universals directly from UG based principles and parameters. (See Potsdam, 2009), this issue.) It points out the pluses and minuses of such a research program and provides additional examples from Western Malayo-Polynesian languages (Indonesian and Batak), which illustrate the issues involved in extending the approach to a larger number of languages.

Yet More on the Position of the Languages of Eastern Indonesia and East Timor

The line dividing the Austronesian languages into Western Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) is drawn east of Sulawesi and through the middle of Sumbawa. A number of phonological or semantic changes are claimed as forming the basis of this distinction, as well as the typological profile of the languages to the east being different from those to the west, and a number of lexical items being attested only east of the line. We examine the phonological and semantic innovations, as well as the erratic morphological ones, showing that none of them define the CEMP line, but indicate that (a) the Central Malayo-Polynesian (CMP)–area languages do not convincingly meet the criteria commonly accepted for a subgroup or even a linkage, (b) some of the WMP-area languages exhibit more of the same features found in at least some of the CMP-area languages than do others, and (c) many of the traits ascribed to the CMP- or CEMP-area languages can be found in more conservative WMP-area or Formosan languages as well.

Bahasa Indonesia: A window on parameters

Bahasa Indonesian (BI) presents an interesting puzzle for researchers who posit a single parameter to distinguish Western Malayo-Polynesian languages like Malagasy and Tagalog (M/T) from European languages like English, French, German and Italian (E/F/G/I). BI shares some properties with the M/T, others with E/F/G/I, and other properties seem to vary between the two language types. This paper proposes that there is a single parameter that distinguishes M/T from E/F/G/I. BI, however, chooses different values of the parameter depending on the syntactic domain. The VP domain has the E/F/G/I value of the parameter, the CP domain has the M/T value of the parameter, while the IP domain varies between the two settings.

The History of Faunal Terms in Austronesian Languages

This paper offers an overview of reconstructed faunal terms primarily at the Proto-Austronesian, Proto--Malayo-Polynesian, and Proto--Western MalayoPolynesian levels, with some additional reconstructions at lower levels in the Austronesian family tree. The basic division is into domesticated vs. nondomesticated animals, and within the latter category there is a further breakdown into mammals (22 terms), birds (29 terms), reptiles and amphibians (14 terms), creepy-crawly creatures (68 terms), fish (97 terms), and marine invertebrates (41 terms), for a total of 277 etyma, most of which represent protolanguages spoken no later than about 4000 B. P. Among the more important new insights reported here is the discovery that the PMP word for 'bird' (* manu-manuk) almost certainly was derived from the word for 'chicken' (* manuk) by reduplication, a development that is fundamentally at odds with the life-form encoding sequence proposed by Cecil H. Brown (Language and living things: Uniformities in folk classificati on and naming, Rutgers University Press, 1984). INTRODUCTION The concept of semantic fields or domains has a fairly long history in linguistics, particularly in connection with reconstruction. Saussure (1959) credits the Celticist Adolphe Pictet with pioneering the concept of linguistic paleontology in his book, Les origines Indo-Europeennes (1859-1863), a work that makes implicit use of semantic domains. Much the same tradition in Indo European linguistics is seen in the more recent work of Benveniste (1973). More recently, Pawley and Ross (1994) have applied the label to subsets of the lexicon that exhibit semantic coherence either as a synchronic system of reference or in terms of historical change, or both. This paper is concerned with the history of faunal terms in Austronesian (AN) languages. Because faunal terminologies form a substantial portion of the lexicon, the discussions that follow will be relatively terse. The basic division is into domesticated vs. nondomesticated animals and in each of these divisions reconstructions will be made primarily at the Proto-Austronesian (PAN), Proto--Malayo-Polynesian (PMP), and Proto--Westem Malayo-Polynesian (PWMP) levels, although some additional reconstructions are made for Proto-Philippines (PPH), Proto--Central--Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (PCEMP), and Proto-Oceanic (POc). Western Malayo-Polynesian may not constitute a subgroup distinct from Malayo-Polynesian, and where a cognate set is widespread in Western Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) languages it may in fact be evidence for a PMP etymon. Reconstructions are drawn from Blust (in progress), and more recent research. A number of reconstructions for fauna in Dempwolff (1934-1938) have had to be discarded either because th e distributional evidence suggests that they were relatively late innovations in western Indonesia (*badak 'rhinoceros', *buru[UNKEYBORDABLE SYMBOL] 'bird', *tikus 'rat', *tupay 'squirrel' = 'tree shrew'), or more rarely because the etymology itself is defective (*ba[n]uy 'eagle'). As just noted, most of the data to which attention is drawn here are from non-Oceanic languages. There are several reasons for this choice. First, Proto-Oceanic had few mammal terms in relation to earlier AN protolanguages that were spoken west of the Wallace Line, where a far richer mammalian fauna exists than is true of either eastern Indonesia or the islands of the Pacific. Second, two domains of Oceanic faunal terms have already been covered with considerable thoroughness: birds (Clark 1994), and marine invertebrates (Pawley 1996). Moreover, Geraghty (1994) has done a virtually exhaustive job of documenting fish names in Proto--Central Pacific. This leaves some room for comments on fish names in Proto-Oceanic, and I have taken advantage of this opportunity in a few cases. I have not attempted to be thoroughgoing in filling this gap, however, because it presumably will be filled in the series of volumes initiated by Ross, Pawley, and Osmond (1998). …

The Numeral Confix i- -(e)n

The Numeral Confix *i- -(e)n David Mead Abstract In his 1981 paper on Austronesian numerals, Otto Dahl adduced evidence from Paiwan, Ma'anyan, and Malagasy for positing a numeral confix meaning 'so and so many days', which he reconstructed as *(ma)ka- -(a)N. In this squib, I discuss the evidence for reconstructing another numeral confix of the same meaning but having the form *i- -(e)n. As far as I know, reflexes of this other numeral confix are limited to the Bali-Sasak languages and five language groups of Sulawesi. This distribution suggests that *i- -(e)n was a local innovation within Western Malayo-Polynesian. 1. *itelun AND HIGHER FORMS. I begin with the evidence for reconstructing a temporal adverb of the form *itelun. This form referred to a period of time, 'in three days', or—if one believes the ancients were more likely to have counted the number of nights passing by—perhaps rather 'after three nights'. Both possibilities are reflected in the glosses for present-day forms supplied by my sources, which I have not attempted to harmonize. As one may note, in many cases another morpheme is present that disambiguates time in the past from time in the future. Owing to the considerable variability of this additional element, however, no such morpheme can be reconstructed at the same level as *itelun. SALUAN Balantak: r-itulun 'three days ago', itulun 'three days hence' TOMINI-TOLITOLI Dondo/Tialo: itoun-aa 'three days ago', me-itoun 'three days hence' Totoli: ko-itolom 'three days ago', itolom 'three days hence' KAILI-PAMONA Napu: na-italu 'three days hence' Moma: na-itolu 'three days hence' Pamona (Sigi dialect): itolu 'three days ago', ne-itolu 'three days hence' WOTU-WOLIO Wolio: na-italu 'third day from now' [End Page 167] SOUTHEASTERN CELEBIC Tolaki: wingi itolu 'memorial evening three days after death' (wingi = 'night') Padoe: itolu 'three nights' Mori Bawah: itolu 'after three nights' Moronene: n-itolu 'three days ago', itolu 'in three days' Muna: n-etolu-mo 'three days ago', na-etolu 'in three days' BALI-SASAK Balinese: itelun 'three days ago', buin telun 'in three days' (buin = 'again, yet to come') Present-day Kaili-Pamona, Wotu-Wolio, and Southeastern Celebic languages have for the most part lost final consonants, including all nasals; however, the reconstruction of final *-n is solidly based on the tomini-tolitoli, Balantak, and Balinese forms, in which languages final consonants were retained. Were this all, *itelun would make for a run-of-the-mill reconstruction, with perhaps its only notable feature being the distribution of its reflexes, which is highly skewed toward the island of Sulawesi. Other facets, however, make this an interesting case in historical reconstruction. First, there is clearly both a semantic and formal connection between *itelun 'period of three days' and the well-known Proto-Austronesian reconstruction *telu 'three', by which we may consider the temporal adverb to be a complex form to be parsed as *i-telu-n. Although the *-n suffix is reminiscent of some kind of genitive marker or ligature, all present-day languages suggest that *itelun was an independent form, and was not required to be followed by a morpheme meaning 'day' or 'night'. Balinese presents an interesting case in this respect, having preserved the form itelun 'three days ago' next to paraphrastic expressions like di petang dina 'four days ago' and the such. For that matter, in Balinese, itelun also contrasts formally with telung, the regular form of the numeral 'three' used before nouns or classifiers. In present-day Tolaki, itolu is preserved only in the expression wingi itolu 'memorial evening three days after death', where not only does wingi 'night' precede itolu, but it furthermore appears that the phrase did not originally mean 'three nights' but rather 'the night of the third (day)'. Although paraphrastic constuctions are used in Mori Bawah to express 'after one night' and 'after two nights', respectively, asa wongi and rua wongi, the equivalent expression for 'after three nights' is simply itolu, not *itolu wongi. Similar observations can be made, as far as I know, for all the other languages given above that reflect *itelun. Second, as mentioned at the beginning, *itelun did...

Lexical Evidence for Early Contact between Indonesian Languages and Japanese

Lexical Evidence for Early Contact between Indonesian Languages and Japanese Ann Kumar and Phil Rose Abstract Forty-one pairs of words with CVCVC structure selected from Old Japanese and Old Javanese dictionaries are presented. It is claimed that these are the result of borrowing into an antecedent of Old Japanese from an Indonesian source. Semantic relationships are discussed, and sound correspondences are specified within a discussion of the segmental phonology and phonotactics of the two languages. The agreement in phonological form is shown to be extensive, applying in some cases to up to five segments in each word pair, and to also make sense, given the phonotactic restrictions of the recipient language. The semantic agreement is often also of comparably high specificity, showing moreover a further level of structure in its partial resolution into semantic fields, including some that resonate with nonlinguistic findings related to ritual and rice cultivation in the Yayoi period of early Japanese history. The amount of agreement in semantic and phonological form is shown statistically to be greater than chance. The argument is further strengthened by several additional independent levels of agreement in the data that are discussed within a Bayesian framework. The phonological correspondences map unidirectionally from Old Javanese to Old Japanese, and a search for cognates in all Austronesian languages covered by the major comparative dictionaries reveals that the lexical items are localized to the Indonesian subarea of Malayo-Polynesian. This points to one or more Indonesian languages as the source of the borrowings. The agreement between semantic and archaeological evidence on material and spiritual culture dates the contact to the Yayoi period. The semantic evidence further suggests that, contrary to the received view, important Yayoi innovations are likely to have been introduced into Japan from the south, and not from China or Korea as usually supposed. 1. Introduction1 1.1 Aim. We wish in this paper to present some linguistic data that are indicative of an early interaction between Japanese and one or more of the so-called "Western Malayo-Polynesian" languages, most probably of Indonesian origin. 1.2 Background. Nonlinguistic evidence from rice genetics and rituals relating to kingship (Kumar 1992), and from biological anthropology and mitochondrial [End Page 219] DNA (Kumar 1998), has provided considerable support for a Western Malayo-Polynesian, and most probably specifically Indonesian, influence on early Japan. The first author has suggested that this took place in the Yayoi period (early centuries B.C. and A.D.). An attempt was therefore made to find out whether any linguistic evidence also existed to support this hypothesis. It was assumed that if such evidence existed, it would, of course, be locatable in historical varieties of Japanese, and in some Western Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) languages. The results of the investigation showed that there was indeed lexical influence, and this is described in detail below. We first present background information on the two languages we compared—Old Japanese and Old Javanese—and give reasons why the latter was selected as our WMP language. Next we describe the procedure we used to compare lexical material in Old Japanese and Old Javanese. We then present and discuss the results. The second author also addresses the question of whether the high degree of phonological and semantic similarity demonstrated can be shown probabilistically to be indicative of nonfortuitous, bona-fide borrowing. Attempts to link Japanese genetically with other languages abound. We would like to emphasize that we make no claim in this paper for genetic relationship. 2. Languages Compared 2.1 Old Japanese. The history of Japanese is divided into a number of different periods. The first, Proto-Japanese, may be dated to the period 300-400 B.C. to 300-400 A.D., a time span corresponding to the Yayoi culture, possibly continuing into the succeeding Kofun period. It is generally agreed that Old Japanese is the language of the oldest extant written records and of eighth-century Nara literary works such as the Kojiki and Man'yōshū, but scholars differ as to when it ends. Some scholars consider Old Japanese to go up to the tenth century at the latest, while Miller (1967:37-39) distinguishes a "late Old Japanese" that includes...