Dorogoj Aleksandr,
> Do you relay on direct ethnographical observations or this assertion
is just a
> logical consequence from your lexical data? 3 my different sources
indicate both
> rice and millet as 'gaoshan' cereals but always first rice (the only
exception
> from one article: Bunun prefer millet whereas some other folks prefer
rice),
> plus taro is mentioned. BTW some tribes cultivate DRY rice. I think
it should be
> considered as a strong sign of archaics.
>
> I can't find information which kinds of millet are spread in Taiwan.
Can you
> help?
I know that paiwan lumay is panicum crusgalli, but that's all I can
tell you at the moment, I don't have all my sources at home.
Na samom dele, ty mozhesh' mne soobschit' tvoi istochniki ? Trudno
naiti vse nuzhnye statii tomu, kto ne specialist po arxeologiu. Ja
priobrel svoje znanie arxeologii chitaja obschie uchebniki,
naznachennye na shirokuju publiku, i nikogda ne pereshel k chtenju
serjeznyx trudov.
>
> > just checking my dictionary of Paiwan : they are two words
> > for rice, one of which is loaned from japanese; the other is paday,
> > (cognate with malay padi), that designates grains of rice, not the
food.
> > If you just look now the entry for millet, you will find twenty
> > different words for different species of millet, whether it is
cooked
> > or not etc.
>
> Anyway this is an amazing fact (even if we were sure that millet was
the primary
> crop)! All this 20 words are independent, not cognates?
Well, I can just copy some of these :
generic term for millet : vaqu
barnyard millet : lumay
gutinous millet (ka)palang
millet beer : sezang, vawa
miscellanea : (ka)udja-udjar, kurits, Li-tequts (tequts = "wide-eyed"),
Lu-lala, La-iLim-an, la-ragar-an, ma-ka-dripung, pa-ngudra-ngudral,
qaLuvu-Luvu, qmudru-mudru, qili, qudji-djil, ravang, sadrupu,
sa-eleng-eleng, sa-ladruq, tjamekul, tjivaLut-an
Of course, if you count the different forms in which they can appear,
there are much more. Some of these forms can be verbalized.
Besides, note that these words are not easy to etymologize. They are in
general no adjectives, describing the color or the form of the plant.
These are in part surely loanwords from other AN languages of TW, but
certainly not from chinese or japanese.
Now, I can't really tell you which of those forms are really ancient
because I don't have dictionary of other languages of TW at home. Wait
till next week for more information.
> How many words for millet has Chinese (had AC)?
The two kinds of millet that were used in old China are, according to
my sources, Setarica Italica and panicum miliceum. s. i. is tsik <
b/tsyk. It was the "totem cereal" of the Zhou people. Their mythical
ancestor was huwX tsik < a/go? b/tsyk. "Prince Millet".
Then, p. m. was probably hwa < a/goj, which is a very simple a caracter
meaning nowadays just the generic "crop".
the glutinous variety for p. m. was called syoX < b/hla? (or maybe, a
less straightforward reconstruction proposed by Sagart, b/s-ta?).
mejX < a/mij? also a simple caracter meaning "rice" in modern chinese,
was a generic term for grain.
There were other words, but it will take me some time to find out
precisely. I have to look it up in the book of odes that is full of
peasant's song. The problem is to know then which kind of cereal is
designated.
>
> > In some cases, words for cooked millet can be used also for
> > cooked rice.
>
> The opposite situation is excluded?
Well, difficult to know, I would have to ask native speakers of paiwan
to know precisely the meaning of these terms.
>
> >
> > One could argue that AN people in Taiwan, once settled took millet
as
> > their main crop, and thus out of necessity created a varied
vocabulary.
> > A good thing to test this is to look whether the words for millet
are
> > innovated in AN languages in Taiwan or whether they are
reconstructible
> > to PAN. I have to check many dictionaries before I can give a better
> > answer to this question.
>
> Indeed, the question must be cleared up, no matter what hypotheses we
support.
> Please, make an analogous investigation for taro and yam. Look, AN
people from
In paiwan, yam is /djuba/, i has only one word. There are much more
words for taro : vasa, aradj, drauru, vala, qali-drudru, pinengsi and
Li-muqaw. However, note that none of these is cognate with the rukai
generic word /tai/. I shall look closer next week. As for oceania, I
don't have Dempwolff at home, I have to read it in the library, which
is not convenient.
>
Guillaume