Reconstructions

Note

Also Numfor kābus ‘taboo; tree branch or anything else placed on fruit tree or other object by its owner in order to make others afraid to approach the marked object lest ill fortune befall them’, Arosi puna ‘sacred, taboo’, puna apuro ‘a place taboo (puna) to the avenger of blood to which he comes decked in his ornaments; anyone else going there is puna from returning (apuro) alive, and is killed’. Since *t > k is regular the Numfor word initially appears to support Proto-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian *tambus, but the long vowel is unexplained, and the final consonant fails to agree with the absence of a final consonant in the Yamdena and Fordata words.

This is one of the key cultural terms in the POc lexicon, designating a type of social control that was enforced by supernatural sanctions. Because of the nature of the sanctions the term itself often came to mean ‘sacred’ or ‘holy’. However, it evidently was also used either alone or in suffixed form as a general dehortative. It is unclear how POc *tabu differed in meaning from POc *pali, which continued PAn *paliSi ‘taboo, ritual restriction; purifying rite’.