Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/322

310 languages, and which we cannot ascribe to Original IN either. The word for " brain " in some of the languages is utĕk, in others untĕk; "to pursue" is usir and uṅsir in Old Javanese. Now there are in the IN languages a great number of very commonly used prefixes and suffixes containing nasals, and it is from these that the nasal has forced its way into the interior of the WB by means of the principle of the repetition of sounds. From the Old Jav. WB usir, for example, comes the active aṅusir or maṅusir, and from this aṅ- or maṅ- the ṅ has been projected into the variant form uṅsir of the WB.

235. Repetition of sounds is also found in IE, and IE research avails itself of the same explanations that have been applied above to IN: see (inter alia) Zauner, " Altspanisches Elementarbuch ", § 78.

236. Metathesis is a phenomenon of very frequent occurrence in IN ; it turns up in all sorts of forms, either sporadically or in regular series.

237. The following are the sorts that occur most frequently :

I. The vowels of the two syllables of the WB change places. Original IN, and likewise Malay, etc., ikur, "tail", is pronounced ukir in some other languages; thus in some dialects of Madagascar: uhi < ukir.

II. The consonants of the first half of the word change places. Original IN, and likewise Old Jav., etc., waluh, "pumpkin", appears in Bugis as lawo.

III. The consonants of the second half of the word change places. Original IN r2atus, "hundred", appears in several languages as rasut.

IV. Two interior consonants change places. Toba purti < Sanskrit putrī, "daughter".

238. Tontemboan possesses a peculiar, optional kind of metathesis, which will be illustrated by the following example. In the Story of the Poor Woman and her Grandchild, Schwarz-Texts, pp. 107 seqq., we find on p. 110, 1. 5: "Why should we respect?" = What the cause-for-respect = sapa ĕn ipĕsiriq.