Reevaluating two schwa-initial reconstructions in Proto‑ and Pre‑Proto‑Austronesian numerals with some help from Kra‑Dai

Abstract Proto-Austronesian numeral reconstruction typically includes the reconstructions *əsa ‘one’ and *ənəm ‘six’. These lexemes are noteworthy because they contain the only examples of schwa in word-initial position in a Proto-Austronesian reconstruction as presented in the Austronesian Comparative Dictionary . In this study, both *əsa and *ənəm are critically evaluated with the hypothesis that Proto-Austronesian descended from an ancestor which did not, in fact, contain schwa-initial words and that these examples arose through historical processes that involve the deletion of a word-initial *h which was present in pre-Proto-Austronesian. Evidence from Kra-Dai suggests that this is true for *ənəm ‘six’, where Kra-Dai evidence suggests Proto-Kra-Dai *xənəm ‘six’. In the development of Proto-Austronesian, *x reduced to *h followed by deletion in Proto-Austronesian. Furthermore, it is shown that the putative reconstruction *əsa ‘one’ relies on evidence from an entry in Ferrell’s (1982) Paiwan dictionary, which, under closer inspection, turns out to not be a valid Paiwan word. This, in turn, means that *əsa cannot be reconstructed to Proto-Austronesian due to a lack of Formosan evidence but must instead be a Proto-Malayo-Polynesian innovation. The only well-attested Proto-Austronesian reconstruction for ‘one’ is the doublet pair *isa/*asa.