Reconstructions

Note

Also Old Javanese buka ‘beginning; sunrise’, Javanese bukak ‘open(ed); uncovered’; bukak-an ‘open (as a door); uncovered (as a pan)’, Gorontalo hueʔe ‘opened (as a parcel)’, Bare'e buka ‘break the Moslem fast’, Mandar buka ‘break the Moslem fast by taking food between sunset and sunrise’ (loan from Buginese or Makassarese), Wolio boŋka ‘to break, to open’, Bimanese buŋka ‘break the Moslem fast’, Rembong buka ‘to start up a rice paddy’, Lonwolwol buka ‘to try to clear (ground)’. All OC languages reflect *puke rather than *puka, with an idiosyncratic change. The semantic evolution of *buka suggests that although this term is the translation equivalent of English ‘open’ it differed conceptually in at least one important respect. The unmarked sense of ‘to open’ in English, as in most Indo-European languages, involves the removal or setting aside of a structure which blocks access into a three-dimensional bounded space (e.g. the doorway or window of a house, the opening of a box or other container, the mouth).

By contrast, reflexes of *buka in Austronesian languages often mean ‘open’ in the sense of ‘uncover’, ‘expose’ or ‘disclose’. This semantic disconformity is reminiscent of the difference of ‘conceptual focus’ seen in comparing location terms such as ‘in, inside’ in Indo-European and Austronesian languages (Blust 1997), where the former make implicit reference to a three-dimensional bounded space, and the latter to a planar surface. Thus in Austronesian languages one ‘opens’ (unfurls) a flag, one ‘opens’ (removes) one's clothing, or one ‘opens’ (uncovers) an earth oven, and the act of opening primarily makes something come into view or become visible to the observer rather than allowing access into a three-dimensional bounded space for an active agent. The extension of this term to the use of switches (for electric lights) and the like follows paths of change that are also found outside Austronesian (e.g. in Chinese ).