Reconstructions

Note

For Palawano Revel-Macdonald (1979:178) gives forms of ‘one-LIG’ with nasal place assimilation before an initial obstruent, but with unambiguous velar nasal before sonorant consonants (sä-m-puluq ‘10’, sä-ŋ-gatus ‘100’, but sä-ŋ-ribu ‘1,000’, sä-ŋ-laksaq ‘1,000,000’. According to Kähler (1961), Simalur uses the ligature ŋa only when multiplying 6, 7 or 8 times a power of ten; when other numerals serve as the multiplier there is zero linkage. For Nias Sundermann (1905) gives fulu ‘10’ (in plural: ŋa-fulu). This somewhat obscure remark is clarified by dua ŋa otu ‘200’, where Nias ŋa is clearly the multiplicative ligature.

According to Stevens (1968), Madurese reflects *ŋa only in 7-9 x 10n (70, 80, 90, 700, 800, 900, 7,000, 8,000, 9,000, etc.). Sneddon (1975:108) notes that in Tondano ‘10’, ‘100’, and ‘1,000’ all take the prefix ma- (ma-puluʔ, ma-atus, ma-riwu) but that higher multiples of ‘10’, ‘100’, and ‘1,000’ take the multiplicative ligature ŋa (rua ŋa-puluʔ, təlu ŋa-atus ‘300’, siow ŋa-riwu ‘900’, etc.). For Motu Lister-Turner and Clark (1954) give ahui ‘ten. Used in counting after the first ten, as rua ahui, twenty’. Motu regularly loses *ŋ (*haŋin > lai ‘wind’, *taŋis > tai ‘cry, howl’, etc.), as does Gabadi/Abadi. For further discussion of this grammatical morpheme see Blust (2012).