Reconstructions

Note

Dempwolff (1934-38) reconstructed *bataŋ ‘trunk, stalk, stick’, but the glosses in attested languages suggest a far richer and more nuanced set of meanings. In its most literal sense PMP *bataŋ evidently referred to the trunk of a tree, whether standing or fallen, or to the corresponding lighter structure in a woody or non-woody plant (the stem or stalk). From this botanical sense the meaning ‘body’ was derived by extension to the world of animals, in much the same way that English refers to the main portion of the human body as the ‘trunk’. Because of its shape the meaning ‘tree trunk’ apparently was also used as a numeral classifier for cylindrical objects, although contact influence from Malaycannot be ruled out as an explanation for the attested distribution of *bataŋ in this sense.

Several additional meanings can be assigned to Proto-Western Malayo-Polynesian or to lower-order proto-languages. Some of these may have been present in PMP, but cannot be retrieved from the available lexicographical resources for CEMP languages, which in general are less numerous and less detailed than sources for the demographically more important languages of western Indonesia and the Philippines. These additional meanings include ‘corpse’, ‘bridge of the nose’, ‘most important or preeminent thing’, ‘main course of a river’, ‘mushroom or bracket fungus that grows on tree trunks or decaying logs’, and possibly ‘bridge’. Rather than treating some or all of these meanings as evidence for homophonous bases, it seems clear that they all derive from the notion of ‘trunk’. Just as *bataŋ ‘body’ represents an extension of a botanical structure to a living human or animal, so *bataŋ ‘corpse’ represents an extension of the notion ‘fallen tree, log’ to a dead human or animal.

Similarly, the meaning ‘body’ was extended to the notion ‘self’, and the concrete meaning ‘trunk’ to the abstract sense ‘most important or preeminent thing’ (the central element in a tree being the trunk, from which the branches sprout). Reflexes of *bataŋ ‘bridge of the nose’ are confined to languages of the southern Philippines, Borneo (including Malagasy), and Malay , but are consistent in comparing the ridge or upper line of the nose to a tree trunk (the literal sense of a log bridge across a river can be included if we are allowed to compare Old Javanese wataŋan ‘tree trunk (as bridge)’, with reflexes of *bataŋ ‘bridge’ in several languages of the Lesser Sundas). In the absence of further evidence the agreement of Simalur bataŋ pinaŋ ‘a weaving model or design’ with Mongondow bataŋan ‘shape, figure, model’ cannot be be further clarified.

Perhaps the most striking metaphorical usage of *bataŋ is its application to the main course of a river, which can be seen as the ‘trunk’, from which the tributary ‘branches’ spring (although the directionality of movement is opposite in the two domains, since tributary streams flow into the ‘trunk’ rather than growing out from it). Finally, a number of WMP reflexes of *bataŋ refer to mushrooms or other types of fungi, and where sufficient information is available these appear to be types of saprophytes that grow either on the trunks of living trees, or perhaps more commonly, on decaying logs.

By contrast with *bataŋ, with which it is possible to associate a number of distinct but interrelated glosses, reflexes of *bataŋ-an are highly disparate. For PPh it appears possible to posit *bataŋ-an ‘floor girders of a house’, but no gloss can be assigned to earlier forms of this affixed word.