Reconstructions

Note

Also Old Javanese palatuk ‘woodpecker’. All trisyllabic reflexes are assumed to show the effects of haplology. Alternatively, the Formosan and western Indonesian forms might be taken to support *balaCuk, and the additional syllable in the Philippine forms attributed to a still unjustified affix *-al-. Despite the problem of justifying an analysis *b-al-alaCuk, this solution would offer some advantages, since the alternative chosen here creates a canonically anomalous quadrisyllable. It is possible that *balalaCuk contains a *bala- variant of the *qali-, *kali- prefix. Whatever the history of the first two syllables, it seems clear that the last syllable of this item is the root *-Cuk ‘knock, pound, beat’.