Ambonese & CM languages

[Waruno Mahdi]

Margeret,

thanks for the update on the linguistic vriety on Ambon island. I'm
sorry I couldn't be at 9ICAL. Hope you all had a fruitful gettogether
and it was a great success.

I guess I had Jim Collin's demonstration of indigenous substratum
influence in the "reversed" nominal possessive construction with
_pung_ (_punya_) in Ambon Malay in the back of my mind. Jim used
the situation in Asilulu to demonstrate his point. But you are
right about there being and having been several local languages on
Ambon.

As for the direct Central Moluccan etymon of Portuguese _ailanto_,
it will probably be difficult to pinpoint it to a single language.

Aloha,  Waruno