Re: USAGE: Words for "boredom"

In a message dated 06/18/02 3:43:39 PM, romilly@EGL.NET writes:

<< Does your dictionary give a proto-form?  I was trying to puzzle it out,

working backwards-- (*ma- frozen adj./stative prefix; **nata or *Nata) but

then noticed the final long _a:_.  That could mean that the root is

*ta( )a, with two frozen prefixes, *ma-Na- (both attested elsewhere).   Now

it's true that lots of consonants get lost in Hawaiian, but generally PN

long vowels derive from a lost *?, so PN **ta?a '....?'-- which could

correspond nicely with e.g. Malay tahan 'endure, last' (cf. tak bisa tahan

"(I) can't stand (it)", or tertahan "unbearable") which indeed descends from

PAN *taqan glossed approx. as in Malay (the *q is one of the vaunted

"laryngeals", probably an uvular stop, as attested in Taiwanese langs.). >>

    Oddly enough, it does not; they're usually pretty good about that.  The
missing consonant could be *? or *h, since all glottals were lost, but why do
the other two have to be frozen prefixes?  Anyway, in a reference section I'm
looking at in another dictionary, though, they're saying that they
reconstruct some long vowels as just double vowels, the example they give
being:

Maori: taaura
Hawaiian: ka:ula
From PEP: taaula

So maybe the last vowel could be reconstructed as long...?  Doesn't seem
likely.  I don't know.  I know very little about historical polynesian.  :)

-David

"fawiT, Gug&g, tSagZil-a-Gariz, waj min DidZejsat wazid..."
"Soft, driven, slow and mad, like some new language..."
                    -Jim Morrison