*p   

*pajiS enemy

Note:   Also Favorlang/Babuza azjies ‘enemy.’

*paNiŋ door

*paqeju gall, gall bladder

Note:   This variant is confined to Formosan languages, but these belong to several geographically separated primary branches of the family, so its antiquity is guaranteed. It appears likely that PAn had both *paqeju and *qapeju, and that only the latter survived in PMP. This comparison was first noted in print by Tsuchida (1976:224).

*pataS tattoo

*pedel to wring out, as water from wet clothes

*peSiq squeeze out juice; squirt out

*pi- causative of location

*piad dish, plate

Note:   Possibly a loan distribution.

*pu- causative of motion

*puja navel, umbilical cord

*pujek navel, umbilical cord

Note:   Also Tsou pucku, Bunun pusuq, Proto-Rukai *pəkə, Favorlang/Babuza pollol, Siraya poucol, Kavalan busel ‘navel’. For reasons that remain obscure, there is an extraordinary amount of variation in phonetically similar forms meaning ‘navel’ throughout the AN language family. Both *puja and *pujek can be posited in PAn, but phonologically incompatible forms that begin with *pu- occur in a number of other Formosan languages. This word was replaced in PMP by *pusej.

*pukaw₁ night-blindness, nyctalopia

*punuq brain, marrow

Note:   There is a longstanding tradition, going back at least as far as Tsuchida (1976:172), in which this widely-reflected term in Formosan languages is regarded as cognate with Central Philippine forms such as Tagalog púnoʔ ‘chief, leader, head’, the connection being made through the meaning ‘head’. However, the comparative evidence does not support this interpretation at all. First, the meaning ‘head’ in association with Tagalog púnoʔ is found only in a figurative sense, never a literal sense. Tagalog púnoʔ and similar forms in other Central Philippine languages clearly reflect PMP *puqun ‘base of a tree, foundation; beginning, source, origin’, a meaning that is applied to high-status social roles in several parts of the Austronesian world (e.g. the mother’s brother in both northern Sumatra and much of the Lesser Sundas where matrilateral cross cousin marriage is the culturally favored norm, founder of a longhouse among the Iban, spiritual leader among the Badui sect of Sundanese speakers in west Java). That púnoʔ ‘chief, leader, head’ is a metathesized form of *puqun is clear from Tagalog púnoʔ ‘beginning, source, origin; base; tree’.

*puNi whiteness

Note:   This term was replaced in PMP by *ma-putiq.

*puSaN twice