SOME AUSTRONESIANMAVERICK PROTOFORMSWITH CULTURE- HISTORICALIMPLICATIONS- 1 WARUNO MAHDI Noting the increasing weight given to exclusively shared innovations as subgrouping criteria, this paper investigates distortions that may occur throughinclusion of nonauthenticlexical innovations(which it termsmaver- icks) and correlatesexamples of such nonauthenticinnovations with datable archaeologicaland historiographicdata. Protoformsfor 'iron' are found to be nonauthentic,their distribution sug- gesting the Sulu-Sangirarea as an importantdispersal center, and agreeing with historiographicand linguistic evidence for considerablePhilippine and Malay borrowinginto Formosanlanguages. XBuJa-lawau 'clove' and Xsalaka 'silver' are connected with the Malay spice trade since 200 B.c.; Xpirak'sil- ver' and X(a)mas 'gold' with Funan overlordship in the third and fourth centuries A.D., whereby an identification of the location of protohistoric Yavadvipa is made. Linguistic evidence on sorghum and millet suggests dispersal in the Philippine-Indonesia'areabetween 1500 and 700 B.C.,being contemporanouswith the transmissionof XbuLauan'gold'. Data for rice are found to agree with Bellwood, although they suggest that it was a highland ratherthan lowland crop in the Philippine-Indonesiaarea. The dispersal of Xparijand Xparigi?'ditch around stone fortification' suggests dispersal of the late megalithic from Sulu-Sangirto West Indone- sia, implying an Indonesianorigin for the megalithic of South and Northeast India. Linguistic evidence is proposed for a Southeast China origin for the Austronesian double canoe, for Austronesianparticipation in development of the 'ship of the dead' cult in Indochina,and for an Austronesianintroduc- tion of high-seas shipping to India. A "substratumtrail" tracing the migra- tion route to Oceania is investigated. Forms for 'person' throw light upon the relationshipbetween mongoloid and australoidAustronesians, suggest- ing that Proto-Austronesianwas spoken by australoids. Nonreplacementinnovations are found to be unreliable as subgrouping criteria,and it is concludedthat the methodsof "exclusivelyshared innovations" and "treatmentas dialect chain"should be mutuallyexclusive approachesto subgroupingproblems. Because all subgroupingmethods are susceptible to distortion, the authoradvocates inclusion of all available methods, in spite of the disparatiesto be expected. 1. PRELIMINARY NOTES. When Dempwolff (1938) crowned his monu- mental work on Austronesian (henceforth An) historical phonology with the Oceanic Linguistics,Volume 33, no. 1 (June 1994) ? by University of Hawaii Press. All rights reserved. 168 OCEANICLINGUISTICS, VOL. 33, NO. 1 publicationof his corpusof An protoforms,he includedamong these a few recon- structionsthat he explicitlymarked as beingnot authenticPAn.2 These weresome earlyborrowings, typically from Sanskritor Chinese,displaying a distributionof cognatesin An languagesthat exhibited sound correspondences similar to those of reflexes of authenticprotoforms. To distinguish them from authentic An protoforms,which are conventionallymarked as reconstructionsby an asterisk (*), the "false"ormaverickprotoforms-as I shallcall them-were identifiedby a raisedmultiplication sign (x).3 In the discussionthat follows, I shall also be deal- ing with uncertaincases, for which I shallplace the multiplicationsign in a circle (?) to indicatethat the protoformis perhapsa maverick. It may be arguedthat maverickprotoform is something of a contradictionin terms. However, with regard to directly inherited reflexes in daughtersof a mesolanguage in which it initially appeared,a maverickis essentially quite a normalprotoform. When no externalevidence for borrowingfrom anotherlan- guage family is given, it only reveals its "maverick"nature when internalcog- nate forms exhibit a distributionthat implies greatertime depth thanis histori- cally credible, an irregularpattern of sound correspondences,or some other peculiarity,such as when, for example, it is the result of propagationthrough contact influence within the language family, or parallel borrowing into lan- guages of the family from an outside source that is no longer identifiable.Be- cause irregular sound correspondences can also be observed in reflexes of authenticprotoforms, excluding mavericksfrom the protoformswould create unsurmountabledifficulties in marginalor ambiguouscases. For example, Mly karbaw, Tob horbo, Lpg kibaw, OJav kabo 'carabao' permit the reconstruction of the seemingly authentic "Javano-Sumatranic" protoform *koRbau.4However, a comparison of cognate forms in Austro- asiatic languages reveals, first of all, that the protoformis probably an early borrowingfrom East Austroasiaticand thus a maverick,and, second, that the present Chamic cognates (Cam kapacw,Jry kabaw,Rgl kubaw)probably result from another, independent borrowing from the same source (Mahdi 1988: 367-370).5 The Malay reflex, in turn,was spreadby Malay-speakingseafarers throughoutthe Malay Archipelago,generating a secondarydistribution of cog- nates answeringto Xkarabauas their effective protoform.6 As this example shows, mavericksmay be of external(XkaRbau) or internal (Xkarabau)origin. In the lattercase, the "mesoform"that, like the Malay reflex in the above example, generates a secondary distributionof cognate forms, could also reflect an authenticprotoform. For example, Mly urut 'follow (in row), massage', reflecting PAn *SuRu[Ct]7(for example Ami mi-sorot,Tag hugot,Nga ohot,Bal huhut,MlgMe otra, Fji uru-uru),has apparentlyinitiated a secondarydistribution of cognates having as effective protoformXurut (for ex- ample, Jav, Nga urut,Bal hurut,MlgMe orotra).8 To avoid transgressionsagainst methodological soundness, it is stipulated here that protoformwill refer to a (typically reconstructed,and thus putative) SOMEAUSTRONESIAN MAVERICK PROTOFORMS-I 169 precursorfrom which a distributionof observed and apparentlycognate forms is assumed to have been generatedby inheritanceand/or by borrowing.Corre- spondingly, the term reflexwill be used in a sense that does not preclude bor- rowing. Actually, this is the de facto meaningthese termshave had all along in Austronesianlinguistics, because the share of borrowingsin the databaseun- derlying the existing corpus of reconstructionsis probablyvery much greater than generally appreciated. It is well known that words denoting items of culture or having some significantconnection to culturedevelopment are much more often borrowed from language to language than words of the so-called basic vocabulary.The likelihood that a protoformthat is such a "cultureword" may turnout to be a maverickis thereforemuch higher than one that is in the "basic"range of vo- cabulary.These same "culturewords" in the corpusof protoformsare however of particularinterest to the historianand anthropologist,for quite obvious rea- sons. In view of the distortionsto be expected when maverickprotoforms not identifiedas such are employedin historicaland anthropologicalinvestigations, and because historiansand anthropologistsare not typically also linguists ca- pable of making the necessary distinctions,particular responsibility lies with linguists in this matter. On the otherhand, mavericks in the corpusof protoformsneed not representa nuisance,or serve as nastypitfalls for the unsuspectingreconstructionist. When duly detectedby the waryand discerning eye, they mayprovide invaluable insight into early ethniccontacts and routesof earlydispersals and tradecontacts. More importantfor the linguist, they may also help expose early language contacts, distinguish genealogicallanguage groupings from regionallanguage affiliations resultingfrom convergence, and identify various lexical strata.This is particularly importantin Austronesianlinguistics, because it is concernedwith languagesof peoples who exhibitan intenselydeveloped inclination for migrationsover long distances,in which closely relatedisolects may end up as far apartas Malagasy and Maanyan,or Hawaiianand Maori. This could not fail to give rise to numer- ous stratain the vocabularyof Austronesianlanguages (see Capell 1943, Zorc 1974), runningacross boundariesof genealogical language groups with their distinct inheritedvocabularies. The ubiquityof such stratain the Austronesian family demandsmuch caution, for example,in the implementationof the method of subgroupingby ExclusivelyShared Innovations, which is very susceptible to distortionby cross-linkingstrata and convergencefeatures. In this paperI provide illustrationsof the variousforms in which mavericks may manifestthemselves, as well as variousways in which the study of maver- icks may contributeto a betterunderstanding of ethnohistoricalprocesses. My main concern will be, however, to demonstratethe crucial importanceof de- tecting mavericksin Austronesianhistorical linguistics, because of the uncom- mon complexity and uniquelyhigh rate of recurrenceof internalcontacts over the whole distributionarea, and during the entirehistory of this languagefamily. 170 OCEANICLINGUISTICS, VOL. 33, NO. 1 Modern knowledge in the historical linguistics of Austronesianand other languages sheds new light on some otherwise relatively well-known historio- graphic data. New results obtainedin this way, placed into relation with data on maverickprotoforms, make it possible to date variouslinguistic and ethno- cultural processes of prehistoricaland protohistoricaltimes, as I shall try to demonstratein several cases below. Another importantaspect of mavericksis the problem of nonauthenticAn "protophonemes."Mavericks