Just as they say “The snake is the swallowing creature”, so they also say, as we shall there see: “The snake, it is sleeping”. Here, too, the fundamental meaning has generally faded away, and the whole thing means no more than: “The snake is sleeping”.
III. We have already met with a verbal WB, buah, which has become a formative. Later on we shall come across an adjective or adverb, pura, that has had the same fate. The causative formative pa- is identical with the causal conjunction pa. And so on.
36. The IN verb possesses formatives to express, above all, the three genera, active, causative and passive; and that condition of things must be styled Common IN. In the Bis. Riddle about the Ship, in Starr's Collection of Riddles: “ It runs with its back ” = Runs goes + on + its + back = nagalakat nagahayaṅ, naga- is an active formative. In the Tarakan Story of the Tailed Man: “You made me go” = You made + go me = dudu palakaw daka, pa- is a causative formative. In the Talautese Cursing of the Fowl: “It shall be borne in mind” = papaghiana, -ana is a passive formative.
37. It happens not infrequently that verbal formatives have different meanings in different languages. We will mention some of these cases:
I. The prefix ma- sometimes forms causative, sometimes accusative,* sometimes neutral, and sometimes passive, verbs. Examples:
Day.: ma-haban, “to make sick”
Day.: ma-haga, “to guard”
Day.: ma-lelak, “to bloom”
Bont.: ma-oto, “to be cooked”.
The WB's are haban, “ sick ”, lelak, “ flower ”, etc. — We can comprehend these shiftings of meaning, if we assume that the neutral signification, as in malelak, “ to bloom ”, was the original one. One can very well understand a transition from the neutral meaning to the active and causative
* [I.e. transitive]
