[An-lang] etymology of Malayic "kasi" ('give')

[Waruno Mahdi]

With regard to word-final laryngeals & glottals, the situation in 
Malay dialects of Indonesia of the last two or three centuries is 
somewhat complicated. But first of all one must differentiate 
alternation of (1) final glottal stop with zero, and that of (2) 
final laryngeal aspiration and zero.

(1) some Malayic languages and/or dialects are known to add an 
automatic final glottal after wordfinal vowels (e.g. Jakartan, 
Banjarese, a.o).
As a result of dialect mixture or interdialectal borrowing or 
influence, this led to irregular final glottal in dialects which do 
not atomatically postglottalize final vowls..
Thus standard indonesian Malay has _datuk_ where Old Malay had regular _datu_;
or one finds the doublets _Dayak_ (hinterland population in 
Kalimantan) and _daya_ for 'south' (in _barat daya_ 'south west').

(2) in Malay vernaculars spoken particularly in Java of the 19th and 
20th centuries, an _h_ frequently appeared after worf-final vowel 
particularly in vernacular Malay as spoke by Sino-Indonesians and 
Dutch. This also effected the Indonesian Malay spoken by indigenous 
Indonesians. A notorious example is the word _tempoh_ 'time' in the 
Indonesian Proclamation of Independence of 1945 as written by 
Sukarno. The word originates from Creol Portugues _tempo_ (apparently 
via Indies-Dutch) and is still spelled _tempo_ (without _h_) in 
modern standard Indonesian.
Hance, the cognate doublets _kasi_ / _kasih_ '1 love, 2 give' do not 
represent an exceptional case.

Aloha,
Waruno
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