Reconstructions

Note

Also Kankanaey gáte ‘to have itch, scab mange’, gaté, me-ŋaté ‘itching’, Tagalog katí ‘itch, itchiness; urge or lust for something’, katí, ma-ŋatí ‘to itch, feel itchy, suffer from itchiness’, ma-katí ‘itchy’, Mapun kato ‘an open sore; itchy’, ka-katoh-an ‘be overcome with great itchiness’, Toba Batak gatal ‘itchy’ (< Malay), Sangir katiʔ ‘itch’, ma-katiʔ ‘itchy’, Tae' katiʔ ‘itch’, ma-katiʔ ‘itchy, restless, constantly moving from thing to thing’, Lamaholot gatək ‘itch, feel itchy’.

This comparison illustrates the inherent voicing instability in velar stops, especially the voiced velar stop (Blust 1996a). The weight of the evidence favors *g- in both PAn and PMP, but — as noted by Mills (1975:728) — this was replaced by k- in a number of daughter languages. Although the primary sense of this term, and the only sense that can be attributed to PAn on present evidence, is ‘itch, feel itchy’, it is clear from a number of reflexes in the Philippines and Indonesia that the word also functioned as a double-entendre for sexual lust. Moreover, the reflexes in Aklanon, Iban, Gayō, Karo Batak and perhaps Makassarese suggest that *gatel in the sense of ‘sexually itchy, oversexed’ applied particularly to women, and hence referred to nymphomania in addition to itchiness of the skin.