*wa

This etymon is particularly well attested in Himalayish. Most of the NE Indian Areal Group forms (especially those with -ma as final syllable) look like loans from Tibetan. The root also occurs in Baic. There are several possible explanations for the final -m in certain Himalayish forms (Bantawa, Chamling, Hayu), as well as the nasalization in Bai ɯ̃ ‘nurse; suckle’: (a) they could be due to rhinoglottophilia¹ because of the zero or glottal-stop initial; (b) they could have arisen by assimilatory epenthesis to the initial p- of the following syllable; or (c) they could have been metanalyzed from the initial of the second syllable of the binome *o-ma, which might originally have been borrowed from Tibetan as a unit before being reduced to a single syllable in the new Bantawa/Chamling compounds. The development of *wa > WT o is regular, e.g. *swa TOOTH > WB swâ/WT so; *g-lwat ⪤ *s-lwat LOOSEN / FREE > WB lwat/hlwat ⪤ kywat/khywat/WT glod-pa ⪤ hlod-pa.

This root appears principally in Himalayish and contiguous languages of the NE Indian Areal Group, but also in Bai, so that it must be set up for PTB.