Reconstructions

Note

Also Isneg mag-tamán ‘to inter, to bury’, Lun Dayeh tinem-en ‘will be buried’. As a concrete noun *CaNem seems to have meant ‘grave’, as shown by reflexes in Kavalan, Ilokano, Itawis, Lun Dayeh, Kelabit, Kayan, Murik, and Balinese (morphological derivatives in Toba Batak and Tuvaluan suggest that the base alone is now primarily a verb or abstract noun in these languages). As a verb both ‘to plant’ and ‘to bury’ are widespread in Malayo-Polynesian languages, and evidently co-occurred in PMP. However, it should be noted that PMP *mula also meant ‘to plant’. Although this observation might be taken as evidence to favor the gloss ‘to bury’ for PMP *tanem, the glosses of reflexes suggest that this form referred especially to the planting (and transplanting) of rice, while PMP *mula referred to the planting of other cultigens.

All Cristobal-Malaitan forms cited here are listed under ano ‘earth’ (< PMP *taneq) in the individual dictionaries, but the thematic consonant –m strongly suggests that they derive from *tanem; in a number of other Oceanic languages it is unclear whether bases of the shape tano reflect *taneq ‘earth, soil’, or *tanem ‘to bury, plant’, and it is likely that the two forms became derivationally related in the thinking of many speakers. Proto-Oceanic *tanom underwent an irregular change to Proto-Polynesian *tanu, with the innovative vowel then passed on to its descendants. A similar irregular change is seen in Muna tanu ‘bury’, but this agreement is treated as a convergent irregularity rather than evidence for a doublet *tanum.