Reconstructions

Note

Also Sangir buḷaeŋ ‘gold’; buḷaeŋ maŋudaʔ ‘pale gold’; buḷaeŋ maghuraŋ ‘dark gold’, Tontemboan wulan ‘gold’, Buginese bulaeŋ ‘gold’, Makassarese bulaeŋ ‘gold; as a term of address = dear’, Manggarai buláeŋ ‘gold; nobility’, Rembong buláeŋ ‘gold’, Buruese eblawan ‘gold’.

This highly contentious etymology presents several problems. First, the forms in Sangir, between northern Sulawesi and the Philippines, and in Manggarai and Rembong of western Flores in the Lesser Sundas appear to be borrowed from Buginese or Makassarese. Moreover, as a result of the Spanish presence in northern Taiwan (1626-1642) several loanwords from Spanish and from Philippine languages entered Kavalan, and it is possible that berawan is one of these. Second, evidence from both Philippine languages and Ngaju Dayak suggests that *bulaw-an is derived by affixation from a stem that did not mean ‘gold’. Third, Thao ma-bulaw ‘ripe (of fruits, vegetables, grains), golden, yellow-orange’ is clearly related, but cannot be native, since *b normally > f. It probably is a loanword from Bunun (Northern), although current lexicographic resources for Bunun do not allow us to determine this with certainty, and no attested Bunun dialect preserves *l as a liquid. However, since a reflex of *bulaw-an is also attested in Taiwan (Kavalan berawan ‘gold’), it appears likely that this form was found in PAn.

The complete absence of the simple stem in most languages that contain a reflex of *bulaw-an suggests that the latter is a loanword, borrowed in isolation from the morphological paradigm in which it was created. On the other hand, a number of the forms cited here have undergone regular sound changes, or distinctive semantic changes, and do not appear to be recent loans (Kelabit belawan, Bare'e wuyawa, Tae' bulaan, various forms in the central Moluccas). Also, it is possible that *bulawan was a trisyllabic stem which was reanalyzed as containing the suffix *-an (but if so it is necessary to hypothesize convergent reanalyses in various Philippine languages and in Ngaju Dayak.

The matter thus remains in limbo. In any case, even if the distribution of this term is in part a product of diffusion it is clear that reflexes of *bulaw-an must have been borrowed much earlier than forms of Malay emas ‘gold’, which are transparent loans in a number of the languages of Indonesia Appendix A). Finally, the agreement in semantic structure between Sulawesian forms such as Mongondow tagin bulawan and Tae' punti bulaan with Malay pisaŋ emas (all lit. ‘golden banana’) may be a calque, but is perhaps more likely the reflex of an older term *punti bulawan.