Reconstructions

Note

Also Buruese afi-h ‘press, clamp’. With root *-pit ‘press, squeeze together; narrow’. Dempwolff (1934-38) included Sa'a äpi ‘hold under the arm, hold close to the body’, Tongan ʔapiʔapi ‘crowded or crammed’, and Samoan apiapi ‘narrow’, apit-ia ‘be wedged in, be confined’ as reflexes of *ha(m)pit ‘hold together’, but I regard these as non-cognate.

In addition to their general verbal meanings, reflexes of PWMP *hapit have two recurrent nominal senses: 1. the members of a wedding party who flank (‘squeeze in’) the bride or groom at the wedding ceremony, and 2. a part of the indigenous backstrap loom. The distribution of forms with the former meaning is limited to two known languages (Bahasa Indonesia, Makassarese), and probably is due to borrowing. Reflexes of *hapit which refer to a part of the backstrap loom are, however, more widespread (Karo Batak, Sundanese, Balinese, Sasak, Tae'), and are less likely to be products of diffusion.

More difficult is the problem of achieving an exact gloss: with reference to the loom PWMP *hapit evidently designated a structure consisting of two wooden slats between which the warp threads were pinched. Judging from the glosses in Sundanese and Tae', this structure extended across the lap of a seated weaver, and was bound at its ends by thongs which extended around her padded hips so as to control the desired tension on the warp threads.