Reconstructions

Note

Also Binukid humáy, Kalagan umay, Mamanwa homay, Manobo (Sarangani) omay ‘husked rice’, Palawan Batak omay, Toba Batak eme, Malay imai ‘cooked rice’. Dempwolff posited *imay ‘rice’, but based his reconstruction entirely on Toba Batak eme, Malay imai.

Although PAn *Semay apparently meant ‘cooked rice’, the meaning of PPh *hemay is less certain. Both in northern Luzon and in Sangir of northern Sulawesi, PPh *hemay is reflected in the meaning ‘rice in the field; unhusked rice’, and PPh *ka-hemay-an ‘rice field’ supports a similar gloss for the unaffixed stem.

At the same time, however, a number of languages in the central Philippines agree with Formosan reflexes and with such variant forms in western Indonesia as Toba Batak eme and Malay imai in supporting a gloss ‘cooked rice’. In either case there are competing forms for the meaning in question.

PAn *pajay clearly meant ‘rice in the field; unhusked rice’, and in this sense evidently persisted in PPh. Although reflexes of both *kaen-en and *nasi mean ‘cooked rice’ in widely separated languages, the former set of terms almost certainly developed this sense as a result of convergent change from an original meaning ‘what is eaten’, while some reflexes of the latter probably are borrowings of Malay nasi ‘cooked rice’.