Reconstructions

Note

Also ‘ĀRE suahi ‘to paddle against wind or current’. Pawley and Pawley (1994:353) reconstructed POc *sua(C)? ‘to scull, row with oar held vertically’, but based this gloss entirely on Central Pacific reflexes. Although this term is glossed ‘to paddle’ in some dictionaries, it is clear that *paluja had that meaning in PAn, and retained it in POc, forcing us to conclude that Proto-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian carried some other sense.

It is likely that ‘to walk backward’ is a secondary development from the meaning ‘to backpaddle’, since retrograde motion in walking has no practical or cultural significance, whereas backpaddling is needed for turning a canoe around when a change of direction is desired. The meaning ‘to tack’ appears to be an innovation in Proto-Polynesian that was borrowed into Rotuman, with tacking possibly linked to the notion of retrograde motion, or at least the absence of forward motion in sailing.

Note that none of the languages cited here reflects *-k directly, but *sua would have given Buli **su, as seen in PMP *duha > lu ‘two’, *banua > pnu ‘village’, *s-ia > si ‘3sg.’, etc., while *-k preserves the preceding vowel, as in PMP *hasek > aso ‘sniff, smell’, *manuk > mani ‘bird’, or *Rebek > opa ‘to fly’.