Reconstructions

Note

Also Ilokano danʔáw ‘lake, pond’, Tagalog lánaw ‘pool, small lake; lagoon’, Aklanon baeanáw ‘puddle (of water)’, Kadazan Dusun anaw ‘paddyfield, wet ricefield’, Balinese danu, Manggarai rana ‘lake’.

Although PAn *danaw apparently meant ‘lake’, the exact meaning of this term would have depended upon the region of Taiwan that was occupied while Proto-Austronesian remained a single language, since lakes are found in some parts of the island but not in others. The wide but rather scattered distribution of reflexes elsewhere can probably be attributed to the absence of lakes or significant large bodies of fresh water in many of the environments in which Austronesian speakers settled after leaving Taiwan. In some areas a reflex of *danaw came to apply to lagoons (salt water), ponds (permanent but small collections of fresh water), or just puddles (temporary collections of fresh water after rain).

In parts of interior Borneo, where rivers are of major importance but lakes are virtually nonexistent, reflexes of this term were retained but shifted in meaning to refer to muddy areas where rainwater tended to collect but not cover the ground for long; this tendency was carried furthest in Murik where from ‘muddy area, mudpatch’ the meaning developed to ‘muddy’ (still attested in the closely-related Kayan), and then to ‘dirty’. In other areas where lakes occur, but are rare a reflex of *danaw came to refer to a particular lake, and so was preserved only in proper names, as in Mongondow and Manggarai.

The most puzzling distribution is seen in the Oceanic group, where no reflex has been identified so far except in the Central Pacific languages (Rotuman, Fijian, Polynesian), which implies that prior to reaching western Polynesia Austronesian speakers were either in continuous contact with bodies of fresh water that were designated by a reflex of POc *rano, or that they moved through areas that lacked lakes so rapidly that the term was retained in the absence of a referent until arriving in a new environment in which lakes were again encountered.

With root *-naw ‘enclosed body of water’.