Austronesian & Japanese

[Ross Clark (FOA LING)]

-----Original Message-----
From: potetjp [mailto:POTETJP at wanadoo.fr]
Sent: Friday, 4 August 2000 10:17 p.m.
To: AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS
Subject: Austronesian & Japanese


In Marquesan the term _uta_ means "dirge sung by a seated choir", and the
term _mauta'a_ "song announcing a visitor".
Source pp. 67-69 in
KELKEL, Manfred (1981)
_A la découverte de la musique polynésienne traditionnelle_
Paris: Publications Orientalistes de France. INALCO. 2 rue de Lille. 75007
PARIS. FRANCE.
Do you think these Marquesan terms are cognates of Japanese _uta_ "poem,
song"?

 Jean-Paul G. POTET. B. P. 46. 92114 CLICHY CEDEX. FRANCE.

It seems unlikely. Marquesan /uta/ is probably related to Tahitian /'utee/,
Rarotongan /'uutee/ for a kind of song or chant, maybe Hawaiian /'uukeekee/
"jew's harp", and Hawaiian /'ukee/ "swing, sway" or "thud, tick, rap, tap"
may offer some possibilities of extra-musical origins for these terms. But I
don't know of any cognates outside East Polynesian. I can't find /mauta'a/
either in Dordillon's dictionary or in McLean's recent survey of Polynesian
music, but the analysis *ma-uta-'a looks improbable. More likely is a
relation to /mau/ "feast".

Connections between Japanese and Austronesian would either be by common
ancestry or by borrowing. In the former case we ought to expect genuine
cognates to be reasonably widely distributed with AN. In the latter, we
ought to expect to find connections where diffusion is most likely. I know
of no evidence for direct connections between Japan and east Polynesia.
Still one finds such words in the writings of Japanese amateur enthusiasts
for an Austronesian connection. Perhaps they would rather be related to
Tahitians than to those "savages" in Taiwan that they so recently ruled...

Ross Clark