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Tag: reanalysis

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PMP *inum ‘to drink’

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In this post  I argued that Proto-Eastern Walu-Siwaish (PEWS) innovated *nanum ‘water’, which competed with  PAN *daNum. PEWS *nanum is reflected in all the EWS languages of Taiwan save Paiwan, as well as in all the Kra-Dai branches. A direct reflex is however not to be found in the Malayo-Poynesian languages, where *daNum reigns as ‘water’. In PEWS there existed a denominal verb  *mi-nanum  ‘to get water, to drink’: *mi-N constructions meaning ‘to acquire, get, obtain, collect, N’ are common Actor-Focus verbs in EWS languages. This *mi-nanum is the probable source of the main MP word for ‘to drink’: *inum, *um-inum.

Shortly before PMP, AF *mi-nanum ‘to drink’ underwent syncope of the unstressed middle vowel, much as in pre-MP *paŋudaN ‘pandanus’, giving Tagalog pandán, Malagasy fandrana, Malay pandan, Old Javanese paṇḍan, etc. This gave *mi-nnum. As the noun part of this *mi-N construction was not recognizable anymore, *mi-nnum was reanalyzed as*m-innum, with prefixed m- allomorph of <um> in words beginning in vowels. The internal cluster was then regularized, giving PMP *m-inum ‘to drink’.

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*nanum, an Eastern Walu-Siwaish innovation for ‘water’.

(Up one level to Eastern-Walu-Siwaish)

The PAN word for water was *daNum (Blust, ACD), *D2aNum (Tsuchida 1976), *daɫum (Wolff 2010).  It is well attested all over Taiwan, including on the west coast (Saisiyat, Pazeh, Papora, Favorlang). It evolves regularly into PMP *danum. Barring special circumstances, this word should also evolve regularly into into Eastern Walu-Siwaish (EWS, north and east coasts). Indeed, among EWS languages,

  • Basay (one dialect) lanom ‘water’,
  • Trobiawan zanum ‘water’,
  • Kavalan zanum (in qi-zanum ‘to drink’),
  • Amis radom ‘carry water from the water source’,
  • Paiwan zaɫum ‘water’,

show the expected outcomes.

However, equally widespread in EWS languages are forms reflecting PEWS *nanum:

  • Basay  nanom ‘water’,
  • Kavalan nanum, m-nanum ‘to drink’,
  • Sakizaya nanum ‘water’, mi-nanum ‘to drink’,
  • Amis nanom ‘water’, mi-nanom ‘to drink water’,
  • Puyuma nanum ‘water’ (male, religious),
  • PWMP *ma-nanum ”pour water’

Perhaps *nanum referred specifically to drinking water while *daNum was a general term for ‘water’.

Papora mananu ‘to drink’ (Tsuchida 1982) is unrelated. The form contains man ‘eat, drink’ < *k<um>an, and –anu cannot reflect the PAN word for ‘water’: dom, dum, lom, rom in Papora.

In Kra-Dai, PAN medial *-N- evolves to *l, while *-n- evolves to *n. Compare *aNak ‘child’, Proto-Kra *lak, Proto-Tai *lɯ:k, Proto-Kam-Sui (Ferlus) *la:k 8; *buNum ‘air, weather, sky’, proto-Tai *C̬.lɯm A ‘wind’, Proto-Kam-Sui (Thurgood) *hlwɯm 1, (Ferlus) *(C)l/rəm A. Consequently, all the Kra-Dai words for ‘water’:

  • Proto-Hlai (Ostapirat) *nam C,
  • Proto-Tai *C̬.nam C  (Pittayaporn; ‘C̬’ is a voiced consonant),
  • Proto-Kam-Sui (Ferlus) *n-,
  • Proto-Lakkja *num C (Theraphan)

are cognates of *nanum, not *daNum: *nanum has displaced *daNum in Kra-Dai.

Blust (ACD) treats the *nanum set as an unremarkable part of the *DaNum set. He overlooks the Amis doublet radom ‘carry water’ (from *daNum) vs.  nanom ‘water’ (from *nanum), as well as the similar doublets in Kavalan (zanum/nanum) and Basay (lanom/nanom). He does however reconstruct PWMP *ma-nanum ‘pour water on’ which evidently involves a MP reflex of *nanum rather than of PMP *danum < PAN *daNum.

Interestingly, it appears that the PMP word *um-inum ‘to drink’ was reanalyzed from *mi-nanum ‘get water, drink water’ (here).

Reference

Tsuchida, S. (1982) A Comparative Vocabulary of Austronesian Languages of Sinicized Ethnic Groups in Taiwan, Part I: Western Taiwan. Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, No. 7, University of Tokyo. Tokyo, Japan.