Reconstructions

Note

Also Tboli ubi ‘tuber plant similar to the sweet potato, commonly known as "camote", Bintulu uɓey ‘tuber, yam’, uɓey kazew ‘cassava’, Buruese obi-t ‘yam’, Soboyo ofe ‘kind of yam’, Rotuman ʔuhi ‘yam’. One of the basic MP root crops, the yam was carried by Austronesian speakers from island Southeast Asia into the Pacific as far east as Hawaii. No reflexes of *qubi have yet been found in Taiwan, and there is consequently no linguistic evidence that the plant was domesticated by Austronesian speakers prior to MP times.

The thematic consonant in Cebuano ubih-an ‘yam patch’ indicates an etymon *qubih, but this is contradicted by Itbayaten ovi ‘yam’. Finally, reflexes of *qubi have been extended to several tuberous plants of South American origin which were introduced into Southeast Asia by the Portuguese and Spanish. These include the sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, and the manioc, cassava or tapioca, Manihot utilissima.

The collocation *qubi kahiw can be reconstructed with the meaning ‘cassava’, although there is no evidence that cassava was known in PWMP times. There appear to be three possible explanations for this contradiction: 1. reflexes of *qubi kahiw are borrowings from Malay, 2. a collocation *qubi kahiw was found in PWMP, but had some other meaning (e.g. ‘type of yam’) which was systematically replaced by the meaning ‘cassava’ once the later was introduced, and 3. the collocation itself is a product of convergent innovation after the introduction of cassava, much like the widespread Algonkian cognates meaning ‘gun’ and ‘whiskey’ (Bloomfield 1946).