Re: [tied] Just another word about Austronesian

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...>
wrote:

> It could be, but I strongly suggest a connection with Sanskrit

kapa:lam

> 'skull, pan', and thus a match with the Greek. There does seem to

be a lot

> of irregularity in the IE matches - Latin caput but Germanic

*xaubudam (>

> English head).
>
> The languages of Further India, extending as far as the

Phillippines, are

> full of Sanskrit loans, which are not always immediately

recognisable.

> Dempwolff even included some of them when he reconstructed
> Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, on the (false) assumption that they were

old

> enought to be inherited, or at least to show correspondences as

though they

> were. Shades of the Proto-Algonquian words for whiskey and rifle!
>

Why false (what evidence)?

BTW Bopp thought Austronesian was corrupted Sanskrit.

Searching a book of Austronesian roots, I found

parakul "axe" Isnac
palakol "axe" Tagalog
porakul\ "axe" Aklanon
pan,kulu "large axe" Konjo
pilagis "European axe" Takia
pila-kiavi "axe" Lewo

similar to the well-known loanword

parasu "axe" Sanskrit
pilakku "axe" Babylonian
pelukus "axe" Greek
(balto "axe" Turkish)

note also the similarity with the "half, split, cleave" root *bH/p/m-
r/l-

Oppenheimer makes much of the Austronesian/Mediterranean/Scandinavian
procession axe.

Torsten