Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/133

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ESSAY II
121

Note II. — Old Jav. has a verb amah, " to hand over, to give, to give rise to an emotion ". Now the above Old Mlg. ame (which is given by Houtman) is for amah + i, with e for a + (h) + i like reni < ra + ina (§§ 24 and 93), to which is superadded the operation of the Mlg. phonetic law: " An h of other languages is not represented in Mlg.". Beside Old Mlg. ame Modern Mlg. (Hova) exhibits an ume, " to give, to give rise to an emotion ", which we have to explain as umah + i. It is true that neither in Old Jav. nor elsewhere, so far as I know, is there any such word as umah, but such a form is possible, as is shown by the parallel that in Old Jav. ajar, " to impart to ", is accompanied by a synonymous ujar. — As a consequence of its contraction ume is accentuated on the final syllable.

Note III. — Houtman's editors in the " Collection des ouvrages anciens concernant Madagascar " are of opinion that Old Mlg. ame is merely misspelt, the " orthographic vraie " being ume. But we have shown that the form ame is a possible one, and the word occurs in Houtman eight times in all, and each time spelt with an a. It would really be strange if that author had made precisely the same mistake in spelling eight times over, and in doing so had managed to hit on something sensible as well.

157. The causative formative pa-. Philippines, Nabaloi: pabunu, " to cause to be killed ", word-base bunu — Celebes, Bug. : padara, " to allow to bleed " — Borneo, Tar. : pakalap, " to make possible " — Java, Sund.: pasih, " to give ", word-base sih, "favour " — Sumatra, Angkola : pauli, "' to beautify " — Northern Border, Form.: pakiol, " to sharpen " — Eastern Border, Laoranese: padeta, "to elevate" — South- Western Border, Mentaway : pakom, " to give food to ", word-base kom," to eat ".

158. The case also occurs of one and the same word-base joined to the same formative running through many languages, so that one can declare the whole formation to be Common IN: Such a case is minum, from the word-base inum, "to drink ".