What vs Who

[David Gil]

Hans-Jürgen Sasse wrote:

> Indonesian might be an interesting case as well. The basic form apa
> "what" is prefixed by
> what is etymologically the so-called personal article (si, cf. Tagalog
> si Huan "Juan") to yield siapa "who". Other derivations of apa are
> meng-apa "do what" and ber-apa "how much/many", both using regular
> derivational machinery.

Since Hans-Jürgen brought up Indonesian. I thought I should add that the
si- in siapa "who" is at least partly transparent also from a synchronic
perspective, since it occurs in Indonesian too as a personal marker in
front of names.  However, whereas siapa is written as a single word,
expressions like si Hans would be written as separate words.  This
suggests that the si- in siapa "who" may have undegone a certain amount
of lexicalization.

In colloquial varieties of Malay and Indonesian there are often a
considerable number of WH words derived from apa "what" and exhibiting
varying degrees of transparency; these forms differ considerably from one
dialect to another.  In general, it is probably the case that most
speakers of Malay / Indonesian are aware of the derivation of siapa from
si- plus apa; certainly much more so than speakers of English with
respect to the common wh- in what, who, etc.

--
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Inselstrasse 22, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-9952321
Fax: 49-341-9952119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
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