What vs Who

Fri Mar 7 12:08:06 UTC 2003

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.

Hans-Jürgen Sasse
Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
Universität zu Köln
D-50923 Köln