Renward Brandstetter

“ There is only one universally distributed IN suffix, viz. -an, -ĕn or -n, which is used both in nominal and verbal derivation. By means of this suffix we are enabled, it is true, to explain one of the phenomena of determination. In § 41 we became acquainted with a root si, “contents”; in Tettum it has the form sin, occurring in isin, “contents”. In the determining n we may recognize the above-mentioned formative -n. This phenomenon is found chiefly in Masaretese and Tettum, which has twenty quite certain cases, but we also meet with it in other languages. Other examples:
Metathesis. ”

“ There is a phonetic law of interchange of vowels as between Karo and Toba (§ 19) , whereby every Karo ě is represented in Toba by o, and thus Karo ěněm, “six”, is onom in Toba. Now the pendant to the Karo ikěl, “to laugh” , is not eṅkol in Toba but eṅkel. But we have no right whatever to assert that this is an exception to the law; on the contrary, the matter stands thus: there was originally a root for to laugh with two variants, kel and kd, whereof the first has been preserved in Karo, the other in Toba. [41]
Determination. ”

“ When in the modern IN languages a derivative is formed from a word-base, the formatives used for that purpose are usually put before the word-base, they are prefixes; thus Sang, possesses nearly a hundred prefixes but only six infixes and five suffixes, and Day. has only one suffix as against a great number of prefixes. Now it is to be presumed that in Original IN, at the time when the monosyllabic roots were used as nuclei for the formation of disyllabic or polysyllabic word-bases, the same principle prevailed. ”

“ Here then we have established a series of Old Jav. roots: kab, kul, kěl, etc. With one single exception the elements by means of which the root is fashioned into a word-base stand, as we presumed in § 12, before the root. The exception is těluń, in which we see an infix -ĕl-. These roots are Old Jav. ; whether they are also Original IN does not appear from our demonstration; in order to answer that question a comparative study would be necessary.
18. Kern's dissertations on the Old Jav. grammar are excellent, but Van der Tuuk's Old Jav. dictionary is in several respects an imperfect work. ”

“ The use of prefixes in fashioning the word-base out of the root is far commoner than that of infixes and suffixes. The number of prefixes is very large and the investigation of them could supply material for many a dissertation. ”

“ Karo
Madurese
79. In the cases of complete reduplication hitherto mentioned the root was set down twice, sound for sound. But we also find cases of reduplication with variation of the vowel. This phenomenon occurs in many languages, but the variation is nowhere found in manifold diversity, and the number of individual cases is nowhere great.
I. Toba has hardly any other type than the variation u : a, and the instances denote a noise or a discordance: ṅumṅam, “ not harmonious ”, suṅsaṅ, “ inverted ”, lumlam, “ confused ”, juljal, “ to contradict oneself ”. ”

“ This homophony of the root, a phenomenon of very frequent occurrence in all IN languages, has repeatedly been used as evidence to prove the inferiority of the Indonesian race as compared with the white one. ”

“ Second root liṅ, “ to look ”: Old Jav. dĕliṅ, “ to look ”, Bis. hiliṅ, “ to look carefully at ”, Mal. kěrliṅ, “ to give a side-long glance ”.
Third root liṅ, “ word, sound ” : Old Jav. liṅ, wěliṅ, “ to speak ”, Gayo liṅ, “ word, sound ”, Karo aliliṅ, “ echo ”.
Homophonies that run through so many languages may be ascribed to Original IN.
59. An homophony deserving of particular notice is to be found among the words of form, to wit that one and the same word is at once a demonstrative pronoun (or, if weakened, an article) and a locative preposition. ”

“ Now here Sund. can be of very good service to us. It possesses a considerable number of monosyllabic roots which actually live in the language, nearly all being interjections, and it also possesses many word-bases derived from those roots. Karo, which we have often cited on other occasions, would be less useful to us here ; it also has a good many living monosyllabic roots, but in most cases no derivatives from them. We need only subtract the roots from the respective Sund. word-bases, and the formatives will appear. ”

“ Thus in the Philippine languages we meet with a sort of extension and subdivision of the vowel resulting in the production of roots of four sounds, with two interior vowels. The IN languages have a root gĕm, “to shut, to clench the fist, to seize” "; in Jav. it exists as a monosyllabic word-base gĕm, Karo has siṅgĕm,. “to fit closely” , but Bis. has goom [37] , “to shut the mouth” . — In Sund. and Gayo there are interjections beginning with a mute and a liquid, e.g. Sund. ”

“ From the Old Jav. word-base pupuh, “ to beat ”, comes a passive kapupuh, but the active is amupuh; the active of the word-base pet, “ to seek ”, is met. Now in accordance with what has been said in § 47 we find in roots variations of the initial consonant exhibiting a similar change: e.g., Karo has the variation puk : muk, in the word-bases ripuk, “ to crumble ”, and mumuk, “ worm-eaten ”. ”

“ As he is not aiming at the production of a vocabulary of roots, he cannot reasonably be required to enumerate every individual case ; he need only produce as many examples as may be necessary on each occasion to give the reader a true insight into the matter in hand. ”

“ A considerable number of word-bases recur in very many IN languages with absolute phonetic concordance, that is to say with the same root and the same formative'. — At this juncture we must interpolate a phonetic law of Iloko: Original IN ĕ appears in Iloko as e, and when this e is in the penultimate syllable, the next following consonant is doubled. ”

“ Thus on p. 5 he correlates the Sanskrit priya with the Common IN pilih. The first word means “beloved, worthy”, the second “to choose, to select out of a number of things” , in Mkb. also “to lift up from the ground”. Now Bopp says, quite arbitrarily, that pilih is based upon an older form plih, an i having been inserted to facilitate pronunciation: and this plih he then identifies with the Sanskrit root prī. — By the side of this IN pilih, however, are found Karo kulih, " to appropriate to oneself ", Mal. olih, “to acquire”, and Old Jav. ulih, “to get” . ”

“ Several IN languages have an objection to final consonants, and therefore either discard them or else add on a vowel to them. The latter occurs in Mlg. and Mak. Thus Original IN and Old Jav., etc., anak, Mai. anaq [58] “child”, appears in Mlg. as anaka. Accordingly, the dictionaries of such languages contain many trisyllabic word-bases.
Homophony.
100. Homophony is as rare in the complete word -base as it is common in the root. That is due to the fact that the formatives which create word-bases from roots are very numerous. ”

“ III. Examples of infixes that run through several languages: kuman, “ to eat ”, is not only Day. but also Sampit, Tonsea, and Bulu; Mal. kĕras, “ hard ” — beside Old Jav. kas, “ hard ” — is also Old Jav. and Gayo, and in conformity with the laws stated in § 19 the Toba horas is identical with it.
IV. All the six formatives mentioned under I. and II. have other functions as well. They occur, the one in one language, another in another, as means for forming out of word-bases actual living derivatives, mostly in great numbers, e.g., -um- in Old Jav. serves to form the aorist. ”

“ Now such a combination of sounds as this we style a root.
3. These roots and these word-bases are the theme of the present dissertation. Our first task will be to extract the root from the word-base; then we must describe the root; thirdly, we have to show how word-bases are formed from roots; our fourth and last duty will be to delineate the characteristics of the word-base.
4. IN linguistic formations are less compressed and more transparent than Indo-European ones; some living IN languages are archaic to a degree far surpassing that of any modern IE language, even the Lithuanian. ”

“ That is the case here, for the present writer has in the course of years compiled for himself complete root dictionaries in MS. of the principal IN languages.
8. A third requirement for a work like the present is that the material should not be merely raked together out of dictionaries and grammars by the wooden processes of the amateur, but be vivified by the study of texts. This will be particularly necessary in Section IV, where we deal with the functions of the word-base. ”

“ Accordingly such substantival word-bases need no further formative; but the verbs and adjectives thereto belonging do. Thus in Day. handaṅ is “redness” ; “red” is bahandaṅ ; and “to make red” is pahandaṅ. In Mlg. lemi is “mildness”, malemi, “mild” . In Old Jav. lara is “sickness”, malara, “sick”; Old Jav. example, Wrttasañcaya, edited by Kern, strophe 45, 3 : saṅ nitya maweh lara-unĕṅ = “Who always causes love- sickness”. As these word-bases are substantives, they of course require the substantival construction. As mentioned in § 72, w is a genitive preposition, and thus in Mlg. ”

“ Now alongside of these roots of two sounds there always run roots of three, which have therefore another consonant after the vowel. Beside the above-mentioned root li Karo has a root lih, “to appropriate to oneself” ; beside ju Sund. has jul in tujul, “to point, to direct a letter to someone” ; beside jd in Old Jav. ipi, “to sleep”, there is pit in ipit, “to talk in one's sleep”. Through many languages there runs a root kas alongside of ka, “to open, to release” , and the like ”

“ Root- variation is a complex subject in IN research and will yet afford matter for many an academic thesis. But. at the same time there is no other field of study that holds out such alluring temptations to the constructive fancy as this one does, and the utmost caution is therefore to be observed in approaching it. An identification has been suggested between the roots of the Old Jav. ”

“ Such caution, however, will above all else imply that we must first study each of the two groups, the Austroasiatic and the IN, exhaustively by itself before we proceed to a comparison of the two. Further, Austroasiatic and Austronesian parted from one another, in some remote prehistoric age. ”

“ Old Jav. luh, “ tear ” Bagobo luha, “ tear ”
Old Jav. buṅ, “ shoot ” Common IN buṅa, “ flower ”.
Toba pus, call to frighten away cats Day. pusa, “ cat ”.
Coalescence of Formatives with the Root to form the
Word-base.
85. The most important linguistic means whereby word-bases are fashioned from roots consists in the indissoluble union of a formative with the root, so that they solidify into a new entity. These formatives are put before, into, or after the root; they are prefixes, infixes, or suffixes. ”

“ Toba: sar, “ a rushing sound ”.
Mai.: sar, sir, sur, “ a rushing sound ”.
Day.: sar, “ rustling ”, sur, “hissing”.
Jav. : sěr, “ whirring ”.
Bĕsĕmah: sar, “ hissing, as when water falls on fire ”.
Gayo: sur, exclamation when one sees a suddenly appearing ray of light.
Sund. : ser, exclamation of sudden anger.
The following examples illustrate the use of these interjections in the sentence:
Day.: sindä mamaṅkih, sar basila = “ (When one) but once deals a cut (at it) , ‘ sar ’ (the wood) is split ”. Gayo: sur itĕgudne luju e = “ ‘ Sur ’, he pulled out his (=e) knife ”. ”

“ Fifthly, though not an absolute necessity, it will be a great convenience for our enquiry if we introduce the idea of the Original Indonesian mother-tongue as an auxiliary factor. Of this Original IN two features are of especial importance to our enquiry, viz., the phonetic system and the general type of words.
I. The phonetic system of Original IN : [10]
The ě is the rapidly pronounced, indeterminate vowel, styled after the Jav. manner "pěpět"; q represents the hamzah, the glottal stop; many scholars, e.g. ”

“ Bug. pipiq, " to pinch": root pit. — Mal. apit, Gayo spit, "to pinch". — Law: Every IN final explosive appears in Bug. as hamzah.
Bug. pědděṅ, "to close the eyes": root děm. — Old Jav. iděm, Karo pěděm. — Laws: Every IN final nasal appears in Bug as ṅ. — After the pěpět in the penultimate, that is the accentuated, syllable the consonant is doubled; see also sěssěq below.
Bug. wukaq, " to open, to unfold " (intrans.) : root kar. — Old Jav. wěkar, " to open", Bal. sěkar, "flower". — Law: IN final r appears in Bug. as hamzah, but remains unaltered when a suffix is added, hence Bug. ”

“ I. Original IN final diphthongs become simple vowels in Karo: e.g., uy becomes i; thus Original IN, and Old Jav., Formosan, etc., apuy becomes Karo api. We need only mention this one case, the change of uy into i, for the rest do not happen to occur in our monograph.
II. Original IN final media becomes tenuis in Karo. Original IN lawĕd, " sea ", Bis. lawod, [21] is sounded lawĕt in Karo.
21. Now follow some series of Karo words, from which in each case the root can be deduced :
tiṅkah, " step ", laṅkah, " step " : root kah.
teguh, " firm ", paṅguh, " hard wood " : root guh. ”