Reconstructions

Note

Also Ilokano dakkél ‘big, large; great’, dakkél ‘to grow, grow up, become large’, Isneg dakkál ‘great, large, big’, manakkál ‘to increase, said of water’, Casiguran Dumagat dikkél ‘big, large; much’, Kankanaey dak-daké ‘great, large, big; high, lofty, tall; wide, capacious, immense’, Bikol dakúlaʔ ‘big, large, great, gross’, Hanunóo daká ‘large, big, great; broad, wide, expansive; tall’, daká ‘grow, increase in size, expand, grow up’, Palawan Batak dakúlaʔ ‘big, large’, Waray-Waray , Cebuano dakúʔ ‘big, great’, Mansaka dakoraʔ ‘large, big’, Manobo (Western Bukidnon) dekelaʔ ‘big’, Tiruray dakel ‘big’, ke-dakel-on ‘a large supply of something’, Maranao dakolaʔ ‘large, big, main, great’, Tausug dakulaʔ ‘great, large, big, huge (referring to objects, people, projects, etc., but not emotions or feelings)’.

This is one of the most distinctive innovations defining the Philippine subgroup, as it is an item of basic vocabulary that appears to have replaced *Raya ‘big, large, great’. Despite its general regularity there are a surprising number of irregular reflexes of this form, including unexplained gemination of *k in several northern Philippine languages, loss of *-l in Kankanaey and replacement of *l by glottal stop in Cebuano Reflexes of *dakelaq are confined to members of the Greater Central Philippine group and appear to be derivatives of *dakel, although the actual morphological relationship is obscure in most languages. Chamorro dankolo ‘big, large, great, huge’ shows a general similarity to this word, but multiple irregularities show that if it is not a chance resemblance it must be borrowed from a Philippine source.