Reconstructions

Note

Also Halia kivi ‘generic term for waders, esp. Pluvialis fulva [Pacific Golden Plover]’, Tongan kiu ‘sea bird; it has long legs and runs very fast; to run fast (like a kiu), to scurry, dash off, or hurry along’, Niue kiu ‘a bird, the plover’, Futunan kiu ‘a bird: sea lark (‘alouette de mer’), with red feet, black back and white breast’, Tikopia kiu ‘Bristle-thighed curlew, Numenius tahitiensis’.

Clark (2011) assigns *kiwiwi ‘sandpiper sp.’ to ‘Proto-Western Oceanic’, and dissociates it from Proto-Polynesian *kiu ~ *kiwi ‘shore bird taxon including Pluvialis and Numenius’. Instead, I see Polynesian kiwi forms as reflecting *kiwiwi with haplology, parallel to the pattern seen in Oceanic reflexes of *kilala ‘to know (a person), recognize, be acquainted with’, and Polynesian kiu forms as products of sporadic apocope with resyllabification of *-w. This word probably was imitative of the cry of these shore birds, and divergent attempts to better imitate their calls may well have given rise to forms such as PPn *kiu, and Tubetube kiwikiwiwi.