Reconstructions

Note

Also Saisiyat (Taai) pinan-abaL-an (apparently reshaped on the model of amiʃ ‘north’: pinan-amiʃ-an-an ‘north wind’), Casiguran Dumagat balát ‘strong wind from the west (from the mountains, considered a bad wind which blows in stormy weather)’, Mentawai barä ‘west, west wind’, Proto-Sangiric *baRet ‘west wind’, Mongondow wagat ‘rainy season’, Wolio bara ‘west, west monsoon’, Rembong barak ‘west wind’, Erai harak ‘west, west wind’, Soboyo bara ‘north’. There is no doubt that this term referred to the west monsoon of island Southeast Asia and portions of western Melanesia, in contradistinction to the east monsoon, *timuR (q.v.).

Apart from a few anomalous glosses (Kavalan balat, Manobo (Western Bukidnon) evaǥat) the references to cardinal directions in the reflexes are consistent with a west wind centered very near the Equator. In Amis (23 degrees n. latitude) this is described as a ‘south’ wind, throughout most of the Philippines (5-18 degrees n. latitude) it is described as a ‘south’ or ‘southwest’ wind, in most of the languages of Indonesia (5 degrees n. latitude to 10 degrees s. latitude) it is described as a ‘west’ wind, and in Merina, the standard dialect of Malagasy (23 degrees s. latitude) the meaning is ‘north’ (presumably a secondary semantic development after the Malagasy migration from southeast Borneo).

In the western Pacific the orientation of the west monsoon to the north-south axis appears to be somewhat different. The languages of the Admiralty Islands (all within 2 degrees s. latitude) and a number of those in southeastern Papua (roughly 10 degrees s. latitude) refer to the west monsoon as a ‘northwest’ wind, whereas the languages of both western and eastern Indonesia at corresponding latitudes refer to it as a ‘west’ wind. Further east, beyond the reach of the monsoon, the term survives as the name of a strong storm wind without reference to cardinal direction.