Reevaluating two schwa-initial reconstructions in Proto‐ and Pre‐Proto‐Austronesian numerals with some help from Kra‐Dai

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21757053
AutoresAlexander D Smith (0000-0002-3489-4298, Fudan University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Volumen26
Número4
Páginas673-694
Fecha de publicación2025-10-06
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLanguage and Linguistics 語言暨語言學 (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1606-822X • E-ISSN: 2309-5067
EditorialJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/lali.00245.smi
OpenAlexW4412949249
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas18

Proto-Austronesian numeral reconstruction typically includes the reconstructions *əsa ‘one’ and *ənəm ‘six’. These lexemes are noteworthy because they contain the only examples of schwa in word-initial position in a Proto-Austronesian reconstruction as presented in the Austronesian Comparative Dictionary . In this study, both *əsa and *ənəm are critically evaluated with the hypothesis that Proto-Austronesian descended from an ancestor which did not, in fact, contain schwa-initial words and that these examples arose through historical processes that involve the deletion of a word-initial *h which was present in pre-Proto-Austronesian. Evidence from Kra-Dai suggests that this is true for *ənəm ‘six’, where Kra-Dai evidence suggests Proto-Kra-Dai *xənəm ‘six’. In the development of Proto-Austronesian, *x reduced to *h followed by deletion in Proto-Austronesian. Furthermore, it is shown that the putative reconstruction *əsa ‘one’ relies on evidence from an entry in Ferrell’s (1982) Paiwan dictionary, which, under closer inspection, turns out to not be a valid Paiwan word. This, in turn, means that *əsa cannot be reconstructed to Proto-Austronesian due to a lack of Formosan evidence but must instead be a Proto-Malayo-Polynesian innovation. The only well-attested Proto-Austronesian reconstruction for ‘one’ is the doublet pair *isa/*asa

Numeral system · Schwa · Speech recognition · Computer Science · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence

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