*u   

*uka₂ negative existential: there is none

Note:   Also Saisiyat okak, Tsou ukʔa, Saaroa ukaʔa ‘not exist’.

*umaS to pickle, preserve meat or fish

*uŋay ritually sacrificed monkey?

Note:   This is an intriguing comparison. PAn *luCuŋ clearly referred to the Formosan rock monkey, the only species of monkey on the island, leaving *uŋay without a clear referent. Since Puyuma has reflexes of both terms, and distinguishes uŋay as a monkey killed at an annual (headhunting) festival, it seems likely that some such distinction between the ordinary term for the animal and a ritual term for monkeys that perhaps were ritually sacrificed in connection with headhunting was made in PAn. The initial palatal glide in Atayal and Taokas is initially puzzling, but many Taokas nouns have a non-etymological y- or yV- (usually ya-), as in yabali < *bali ‘wind’, yabatu < *batu ‘stone’, yatiat < *tiaN ‘belly, abdomen’, or yautat ~ yottat < *quzaN ‘rain’, and this may have been an article. The palatal onset of the Atayal form is more difficult to explain, but this word could be a loan from the now-extinct Taokas.

*uSa go