Reconstructions

Note

Also Itbayaten rivo thousand; om-rivo ‘one thousand’, rivo-rivo-en ‘by the thousands’, Ilokano ríbo ‘thousand’, sa-ŋa-ríbo ‘one thousand’, Agta (Central Cagayan) mə-hibo, Agta (Dupaningan) ma-ríbu ‘one thousand’ (< Ilokano), Isneg ma-ríbu ‘one thousand’, Itawis ma-ríhu ‘thousand’, Bontok líbo ‘a unit of one thousand’, Manobo (Western Bukidnon) libu ‘thousand’, Mansaka libo ‘unit of thousand’, sa-n-libo ‘1,000’, Binukid libu ‘thousand’, libu-libu-en ‘thousands; countless number’, Tombonuwo oribu, Bisaya sə-ribu, Kenyah (Long Dunin) se-ribu, Kayan (Uma Bawang) ji libuʔ, Kiput ma-libo, Bintulu sə-ribuʔ, Melanau Dalat sə-ribu ‘one thousand’, Proto-South Sulawesi *riwu ‘hundred thousand (perhaps < Malay ribu)’, Wolio rewu ‘thousand’, sa-rewu ‘one thousand’, Muna riwu ‘thousand’, Bimanese sa-rivu ‘one thousand’, Kambera riu ‘thousand’, ha-riu ‘one thousand’.

Based on Tagalog libo, Toba Batak ribu, Javanese ewu, Malay, Ngaju Dayak ribu, Malagasy a-rivu ‘thousand’ Dempwolff (1938) posited *ribu ‘thousand’. However, this reconstruction was problematic from the start, since the Tagalog, Ngaju Dayak and Malagasy words are almost certain loans from Malay. As the matter is pursued in greater depth with more languages the history of this word becomes even more perplexing, as nearly all reflexes in both the Philippines and Indonesia appear to be Malay loans, yet a few languages have forms that cannot be explained in this way, pointing instead to *Ribu. This is clearly true of Maranao in the southern Philippines, and of the Berawan languages in Sarawak, both of which reflect PMP *R as g in this word. It also appears to be true of the Kenyah dialects (including Penan), which normally lose *R word-initially. Many other forms are ambiguous: e.g. is Ilokano ríbo ‘thousand’ native, or is it a Malay loanword that has acquired native affixation in the form sa-ŋa-ríbo ‘one thousand’? All in all it seems best to assume that PMP had a word *Ribu ‘thousand’ that was lost or replaced in Proto-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, but preserved in many languages of western Indonesia and the Philippines, only to be replaced in time by Malay ribu, presumably as a consequence of the dominant role of Malay in pan-archipelagic trade over the past two millennia. In this respect it stands in sharp contrast to reflexes of *Ratus ‘hundred’, which appear to be native in most languages, including those that have an apparently borrowed form of *Ribu.