Fossilized
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...
affixes abound in
Austronesian languages.
Formosan languages
Li and Tsuchida (2009) lists various fossilized reflexes of
Proto-Austronesian
Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify 3 ...
infixes *-al-, *-aR-, and *-aN- in all major
Formosan languages
The Formosan languages are a geographic grouping comprising the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, all of which are Austronesian. They do not form a single subfamily of Austronesian but rather nine separate subfamilies. The Taiwa ...
as well as
Tagalog and
Javanese. These infixes are not productive in any modern Austronesian language. Their meanings remain elusive, although Li and Tsuchida suggest that *-aN- might mean 'having the sound or quality of', as evidenced in Paiwan and Puyuma. Reid (1994) hypothesizes the meaning of *-aR- to be 'distributive, plural'.
The following table is from Li and Tsuchida (2009:358).
Bikol language
Malcolm Mintz (1992) analyzed fossilized affixes from Marcos de Lisboa's ''Vocabulario de la lengua bicol'', which was compiled between 1609 and 1613. The Marcos de Lisboa dictionary contains many archaic forms of Bikol no longer found in modern spoken
Naga
Naga or NAGA may refer to:
Mythology
* Nāga, a serpentine deity or race in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions
* Naga Kingdom, in the epic ''Mahabharata''
* Phaya Naga, mythical creatures believed to live in the Laotian stretch of the Mekong Riv ...
Bikol.
*a-
*aN-
*ali(N)-, li-, ari(N)-
*alu-, aru-
*ati-
*ba-, baN-, -al-
*ba- + ali(N)-, balik-
*hiN-
*mu-, pu-, -um-
*sa-, sa- + ali(N)-, saN-
*taga-, tagu-
*ta-, taN-
*so-, no-
*-imin-
*kali/qali word forms
According to Blust (2001, 2009), the fossilized morpheme
*kali ~ *qali is used in various Austronesian languages to designate objects having a "sensitive connection with the spirit world."
References
* Blust, Robert A. 2001. "Historical morphology and the spirit world: *qali/kali-prefixes in Austronesian languages." In John Bradshaw and Kenneth L. Rehg (eds.) ''Issues in Austronesian Morphology. A festschrift for Byron W. Bender''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 15–73.
* Blust, Robert A. 2009. ''The Austronesian Languages''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. , .
*Li, Paul Jen-kuei and Shigeru Tsuchida. 2009. "Yet more Proto Austronesian infixes." ''Discovering history through language: papers in honour of Malcolm Ross'', 345–362. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
*Mintz, Malcolm W. 1992. "The fossilised affixes of Bikol." ''Currents in Pacific linguistics: papers on Austronesian languages and ethnolinguistics in honour of George W. Grace'', 265–291. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
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External links
Tagalog *kali/qali wordsAffixes in Formosan languages
Linguistic morphology
Austronesian languages