Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- In Memoriam
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Language Change and Diversity at the Crossroads of Historical Linguistics, Language Documentation, and Linguistic Typology
- 2 Using the Acoustic Correlates of Voice Quality as Explanations for the Changes in the Descriptions of Xinkan Glottalized Consonants
- 3 Variation and Change in the Distribution of *-(V)n and *-(V)w in Kaqchikel
- 4 Origins of Metathesis in Batsbi, Part II: Intransitive Verbs
- 5 Some Remarks on Etymological Opacity in Austronesian Languages
- 6 The Relationship between Aquitanian and Basque: Achievements and Challenges of the Comparative Method in a Context of Poor Documentation
- 7 Evidence, New and Old, Against the Late *k(’) > *ch(’) Areal Shift Hypothesis
- 8 Are All Language Isolates Equal? The Case of Mapudungun
- 9 The Historical Linguistics and Archaeology of Ancient North America: “A Linguistic Look” at the Hopewell
- 10 The Lenguas de Bolivia Project: Background and Further Prospects
- 11 The Typology of Grammatical Relations in Tuparian Languages with Special Focus on Akuntsú
- 12 Meskwaki (Algonquian) Evidence against Basic Word Order and Configurational Models of Argument Roles
- 13 The Syntax of Alignment: An Emergentist Typology
- Subject and Scholar Index
- Languages and Linguistic Families Index
5 - Some Remarks on Etymological Opacity in Austronesian Languages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: aN Invalid Date NaN
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- In Memoriam
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Language Change and Diversity at the Crossroads of Historical Linguistics, Language Documentation, and Linguistic Typology
- 2 Using the Acoustic Correlates of Voice Quality as Explanations for the Changes in the Descriptions of Xinkan Glottalized Consonants
- 3 Variation and Change in the Distribution of *-(V)n and *-(V)w in Kaqchikel
- 4 Origins of Metathesis in Batsbi, Part II: Intransitive Verbs
- 5 Some Remarks on Etymological Opacity in Austronesian Languages
- 6 The Relationship between Aquitanian and Basque: Achievements and Challenges of the Comparative Method in a Context of Poor Documentation
- 7 Evidence, New and Old, Against the Late *k(’) > *ch(’) Areal Shift Hypothesis
- 8 Are All Language Isolates Equal? The Case of Mapudungun
- 9 The Historical Linguistics and Archaeology of Ancient North America: “A Linguistic Look” at the Hopewell
- 10 The Lenguas de Bolivia Project: Background and Further Prospects
- 11 The Typology of Grammatical Relations in Tuparian Languages with Special Focus on Akuntsú
- 12 Meskwaki (Algonquian) Evidence against Basic Word Order and Configurational Models of Argument Roles
- 13 The Syntax of Alignment: An Emergentist Typology
- Subject and Scholar Index
- Languages and Linguistic Families Index
Summary
Introduction
Every historical linguist is aware that extreme sound change can conceal the cognation of linguistic forms. Favorite examples in Indo-European often include Armenian, as with Latin trēs, Armenian erek “three.” With over 1,200 languages and many more dialects (Simons and Fennig 2020) the Austronesian (AN) language family offers many comparisons that are as well-disguised as those cited by Indo-Europeanists for Armenian. One of many possible examples that can be chosen from the Austronesian Comparative Dictionary, or ACD (Blust and Trussel ongoing) is Tsou (south-central Taiwan) cronə, Rennellese (Polynesian outlier, Solomon Islands) aga “path, way, road,” which can be shown to be cognate, but only after much work. The stages in demonstrating this relationship can be laid out as follows:
Comparison 1: Tsou cronə: Rennellese aga “path, way, road”
I. Proto-Austronesian
(PAN) to Tsou PAN *zalan > (1, 2) Proto-Tsouic (PT) *calánə > (3) clánə > (4) cránə > (5) Tsou cronə “path, way, road” (Tsuchida 1976: 223).
(1) PAN *d (voiced alveolar stop) and *z (voiced palatal affricate) merged as PT *c: PAN *dapaN > PT cápalə > Tsou caphə “sole of the foot,” *q<um>uzaN > PT *m-ucáNə > Tsou məchə “to rain.”
(2) Echo vowels were added after final consonants in Proto-Tsouic, but the echo vowel for *-aC is schwa: PAN *bəRas > PT *və́rasə > Tsou fərsə “husked rice,” *qayam > PT *Ɂažámə > Tsou zomə “bird.”
(3) Unstressed penultimate vowels were lost in Tsou: PAN *bulaN > PT *vuláɬə > Tsou frohə “moon, month,” PAN *daNum > PT *caɬúmu > Tsou chumu “water.”
(4) PAN *l became Tsou /r/: PAN *paliSi > PT *palíSi > Tsou prisi-a “taboo,” PAN *saləŋ > PT *salə́ŋə > Tsou sroŋə “pine tree.”
(5) Stressed *a became Tsou /o/: PAN *Cau > PT *cau > Tsou cou “person, human being,” PAN *qayam > PT *Ɂayámə > zomə “bird.”
II. PAN to Rennellese
PAN *zalan > (1) Proto-Oceanic (POC) *salan > (2) Proto-Central Pacific (PCP) sala > (3) Proto-Polynesian (PPN) *hala > (4,5) Rennellese aga “path, way, road.”
(1)PAN *z > POC *s: PAN *zaRum > POC *saRum “needle,” PAN *quzaN > POC *qusan “rain.”
(2) PAN *-C > PCP zero: PAN *laŋiC > PCP *laŋi “sky,” PAN *ənəm > PCP *ono “six.”
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- Information
- Language Change and Linguistic DiversityStudies in Honour of Lyle Campbell, pp. 87 - 104Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2022