Numbers yet again - Re: New Book from SIL PNG

[Richard Parker]

>>From the volumes I have at hand, the first data collected by Lean himself
>..... he also missed
>a number of accessible sources of data available in his time, probably
>because he was working alone without help/input from linguists.
   
  With which I fully concur. 
   
  Sorry, put that differently:
   
  By God, I sympathise.
   
  I am advertising myself as a complete linguistic ignoramus on this forum only because I would very much appreciate help from genuine linguists, particularly on grammar and the very basics:
   
  - accepted progressions of consonant changes - l seems to change to r (lua/rua) but where does d come into that chain?
   
  - How do you judge whether the change has happened because the speakers have been in place a very long time, or if they've passed it onto descendants who changed as they went further afield?
   
  - affixes/suffixes/infixes - I can't tell whether these are significant or not. ie around here, in Visaya, sige-na (1+ -na) means ok NA (demonstrative?). 
   
  Wa- (prefix) means, in Visaya, quite definitely, NO, but it may have been something entirely different further back along the chain.
 
Do -ba, -pa, -to, -si and -ka mean 'and' or + or 1? 
  If so, what do ba-, pa-, to-, si- and ka- mean?
   
  If there's anyone out there who is a trained linguist and would kindly volunteer to receive and answer such idiotic basic questions, I would be very grateful.
   
  In spite of this rant, I do very much thank those who have contacted me via private email, and have been very helpful indeed.
  
regards
  Richard
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