Ang Liwanag ng Pantig na „si‟: An Analysis of a Potential Petrified Tagalog Affix Michael Wilson I. Rosero Linguistics 213 1. Austronesian Root Theory In his Austronesian root theory, Blust (1988) establishes 231 Austronesian „roots‟, which with two exceptions have the shape CVC and all but one of which occur in the final syllable (Nothofer, 1991). The elements preceding these roots are called „formatives‟. According to Blust (1988), they are to be treated as a semantically vacuous class and “they cannot be considered fossilized prefixes”. Zorc (1990) reconstructs additional 94 radicals 1 , five of which are marked as occurring in initial syllable. However, according to Nothofer (1991), it is unfortunate because Zorc does not present any supporting evidence. In his review of Blust (1988), Nothofer (1991) argues, that radicals occur not only in syllable-final position but they can also be mono- and disyllabic, having shapers such as CV and V(N)(C)V. The aforementioned studies on „roots‟ use the following criteria for establishing radicals: Blust (1988) in Nothofer (1991): A root candidate (i.e. any meaning-associated phonological sequence that can be isolated by recurrent association within a single language or across languages) will be regarded as a root only if attested in at least four etymological independent morphemes. More precisely, a root is defined here as a root candidate that meets either of the following conditions: a) a root candidate must occur in at least one morpheme reconstructed on the Proto-Western Malayo Polynesian, Proto-Malayo- Polynesian, or Proto-Austronesian levels [i.e. must appear in cognate sets that permit the reconstruction on one of these levels – BN] … and at the same time in three or more etymologically independent morphemes [so-called „morpheme isolates‟ – BN], even if the latter are confined to a single language or a close-knit subgroup, b) the root must show a distribution over subgroups comparable to that in reconstructed words under condition a), but need not appear in any reconstructed morpheme. Zorc (1990) in Nothofer (1991) demonstrates a way of establishing „roots‟. 1 Nothofer (1991) used „radicals‟ as opposed to „roots‟ (Blust, 1988) and Zorc (1991). They are used interchangeably in this study.