Austronesian sound changes (was: Austronesian lexical categories & voice)

On Sunday, May 15, 2005, at 11:45 , Roger Mills wrote:

> Ray Brown wrote:
[snip]
>> ber - and mag- are cognate? The /b/ ~ /m/ alternation is OK - but the
>> /r/ ~ /g/ one is a bit odd. What is their derivation?
>>
> Actually it's the Ml/Indo. /b/ that's odd, but it's standard literary from
> way back.
What I meant is that I have come across this alternation elsewhere, so it
did not seem odd to me. for example Welsh _bore_ (morning) was apparently
_more_ at an earlier date, being derived from a root which also crops up
in english 'morrow', 'morn', German 'Morgen' etc.

> Some peninsular Ml. dialects do have mer- (the "e" is schwa,
> remember),
I did remember   :)

>  Old Ml. (ca. 10th C) and other relatives have mar-.


> The R/G correspondence is very well established (sometimes called the RGH
> Law**) and was formalized almost immediately once real comparative work
> began in the 19th C:  Ml. r, Tag. g, some langs. h, Jav. (and Polynesian)
>  0,
> and it's currently symbolized as *R-- Dempwolff used "gamma", implying
> that
> it was probably a velar fricative of some sort, and a resonant, not a stop
> (since it never occurs with prenasalization).
yes, we are familiar enough with [r] -> [R], and [g] -> [G], so I suppose
it's only reasonable to expect to find examples of the sound change
happening in reverse.

>  Other reflexes include y (and
>> z), l (< r).
>
> So the prefix is now reconstructed as *maR- (some have suggested *ma-R-,
> in
> a system *ma- 'stative', *ma+N- 'active', *ma+R-(uncertain mng., perhaps
> 'habitual/frequentative'??) all verbal, along with *pa- 'causative', *pa+
> N-
> 'agent noun', *pa+R- (various functions, both nominal and verbal).
Interesting - all looks plausible.

> Another correspondence noted early on was the so-called RLD** Law-- Jav.
> r,
> Tag. l, Ml. d --though it's much more complicated than that, and some even
[etc snipped]

Fascinating stuff. Where I can get more info
Ray
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