Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/310

 298 III. Through word-formation. Alongside of the Old Javanese ndya we find an Old Jav. ndi and a Toba dia, with the same meaning; accordingly ndya is analysable into the three elements n + di + a. I have dealt with such combinations of words of form in previous monographs. 192. Through the process of word-abbreviation (§§ 274 seqq.) initials arise which would not otherwise be possible in the languages in question. Examples: I. In Tontemboan k is pronounced c when an i comes before it, either in a word or in a sentence, but in no other case. Thus from the two elements raqi + ka comes the negative raqica. This is often abbreviated into ca, and then the initial c is allowed to remain unchanged even if there is no i before it, as several passages prove. Thus in Schwarz-Texts, p. 61, 1. 17, we find: " He said: He does not catch " = kuanao : ca maindo. II. In conformity with the law of the mediæ (§ 155, III) an initial media must become a continuant in Tontemboan. But in proper names abbreviated as explained in § 276 the media persists, as in Biraq, abbreviated from Imbiraṅ, a personal name. The Medial. 193. In the interior of the IN WB, which is mostly disyllabic, thus between the two vowels of it, we meet either with no consonant, or one, or two, but rarely three. 194. Of the cases where there is no consonant, or only one, between the two vowels, there is nothing more to be said. 195. Among the cases where two consonants occur between the two vowels, two types in particular are frequent, the Lintah-type and the Taptap-type. Both are to be ascribed to Original IN. I. The Lintah-type. In almost all the IN languages the combination of nasal + cognate explosive is permitted medially. Thus, for example, the word lintah, "leech", recurs, with n + t, in nearly all the IN languages.