Sila[ ]

[Roger Mills]

Waruno Mahdi wrote:

> > Paul Geraghty and I are looking for possible cognates of Fijian /silaa/
> > 'Job's tears, Coix lachryma-jobi', which has also taken on the meaning
>
> The formally PMP form, with numerous attested reflexes in WMP and CMP
> languages of Indonesia, seems to be *qa[n]zel[a]i,  but the *z calls for
> caution, suggesting possible post-PMP horizontal propagation. In other
> words, this is a post-factum reconstruction on the base of what a
> somewhat mixed process of inheriting and borrowing has left behind,
> and must not necessarily be an accurate representation of the original
> form.

Quite so.  As I noted in my diss., "Heyne [_Nuttige Planten van Indonesië_]
shows cognate forms distributed all over Indonesia, reflecting either *z- or
*d-, meaning either 'Job's tears' or 'maize'."

So, Fiji silaa and Anejom nadej might perhaps well prove to be
> ultimately related after all.
>
> The reflexes I have (Mahdi 1994:471 n. 113) are:
> WMP:
> Malay h at nj@lay, Sundanese hanj at li, Old Javanese jah at li,
> Madurese jhAnglE(h), Balinese jali-jali, Ngaju j at lEy.
> CMP:
> Roti dele, Haruku sale.
> (@ = schwa, A = v-rotated, E = epsilon)
>
> That's all I have.
>
We can probably add Bugis _war&lle_ (&=schwa), Makassar _biralle_, Sa'dan
(Tae') _dalle_ all 'maize'. (The reflexes of *Z/z are not entirely clear in
Bug/Mak.)  Somewhere in my notes I have Mori _osole_ for either Job's Tears,
or else the kernels/seeds thereof strung as beads (sorry to say, my notes
are in chaos after 10 years of storage/house building).

Jonker 1932 has Leti _teli_ 'millet', and cites Kisar _keli_ id.-- if
cognate, these rather clearly reflect *Z-, not *z (cf. Let. talla 'road',
utna 'rain', Kis. kalla, okon; good exs. for *z however are rare though it
seems > Let. d/r).  Rinnooy's 1886 Kisar list lacks "keli", but does have
_kaleuki_ 'maize', which may be ("deformed") /kale/ (<**tale)  plus the
local pronuciation of Bug. /ugi?/ 'Buginese', indicating importation via
South Sulawesi (??--speculative, of course!).

Roger Mills