Reconstructions

Note

Also Isneg uddí ‘last, hindmost’, Bontok oddí ‘back legs of an animal; last in a series’, Hanunóo uríʔ ‘state or position of being last, final late’, Buli pulī ‘yonder, over there’, Numfor pur ‘last, furthest behind’. The reduplication in Maranao ori ori ‘last to come, one at the end of the line’, Samoan muli muli ‘follow, be done afterwards; last’ and some other languages probably is convergent, as is the assimilation of the last vowel in Loniu muʔu tun ‘stern of a canoe’, Duke of York muru ‘to follow behind, afterwards; the back; the last’.

The number of instances of *h in this form is somewhat unclear. Tagalog, Bikol, Manobo (Western Bukidnon) and Tausug appear to reflect *h-, but Bisayan reflexes (which show epenthetic vowels inserted after the regular syncope of shwa) suggest that these forms may involve metathesis of earlier *urhí (> hurí). The presence of final /h/ is suggested by suffixed forms in Aklanon, but is contradicted by Itbayaten and Cebuano.

The most interesting feature of this form undoubtedly is its meaning, which cannot be captured by any single, readily available semantic category of English. Perhaps the most basic and concrete sense of *udehi and its derivatives is ‘behind, coming after or later; be last’. In this sense it (like the demonstrative pronouns *-Cu, *-na, *-ni, etc.) has both a spatial and a temporal reference.

In its temporal sense *udehi referred not only to posteriority in sequence, but to future time in general (cf. Malay kemudian hari, and semantically similar reflexes in Wolio, Sika, Kei, Tuvaluan and Maori). This usage is striking, since the spatial imagery of the future in Indo-European languages typically places it before, not behind the observer.

Two other concrete senses of *udehi that are widely reflected are ‘stern/rudder of a boat’ (reflexes in Kelabit, Malay, Kambera, various languages of western Melanesia, and Hawaiian), and ‘youngest child’ ( = ‘one who comes last’, with reflexes in Isneg, Ifugaw, Kambera, Rotinese, Yamdena and Maori).

A number of other meanings appear to be confined to CEMP languages, and it is assumed that these are semantic innovations rather than retentions that have been lost in all non-CEMP languages. These include: 1. the meaning ‘west’, attested in Rotinese of the Lesser Sundas, and in such Polynesian languages as Rennellese and Anuta, 2. ‘young’, reflected in Rotinese, Selaru, Tongan, Niue, Samoan and Hawaiian, 3. ‘outside’, reflected in Yamdena, Fordata, Gedaged, Nggela and Arosi, and 4. ‘heel’, reflected in Lau, Rennellese and Kapingamarangi. Of these four innovative meanings the last appears to have arisen in POc or some descendant thereof. Although it is not attested in strictly cognate forms, it appears safe to infer that POc *m-uri qaqe, *m-uri waqe meant ‘heel’. The second semantic innovation evidently is an extension of the PMP sense ‘youngest child’, and requires no further comment. The last two innovated meanings are best treated together, as they appear to reflect a broader symbolism of directionality.

Terms for the cardinal directions cannot be reconstructed for any early Austronesian proto-language, but the symbolic association of *udehi with the west is understandable through the sense ‘later; the future’. In many Austronesian-speaking societies (and, indeed, many traditional societies in general) the east is associated with life and the west with death, a transparent symbolism deriving from the daily course of the sun. If PMP *ma-udehi was used in the sense of ‘west’ it seems likely that this usage was figurative or symbolic (in some ritual sense) rather than literal, given the other, more basic senses of the term. The cultural context of such symbolism remains unclear.

Finally, the semantic evolution from ‘behind, later’ to ‘outside’ in a number of languages is puzzling, and can be compared to the development *babaw ‘above’ to ‘outside’ in other languages. Paths of semantic change such as these suggest that the underlying system of spatial relations in Austronesian languages is fundamentally different from that in Indo-European languages, even though one-to-one category matches such as *babaw = ‘above’ can easily be made (cf. Blust (1997)).