ACD UNDER *siam  PPH 'nine'

NOTE
  This is a particularly clear innovation that replaced PAn *Siwa, PMP *siwa ‘nine’ in the immediate common ancestor of all Philippine languages. Complicating the use of this innovation for subgrouping purposes is its occurrence in the non-Philippine languages of Sabah. As noted in Blust (1998a, 2010a), the languages of Sabah almost certainly subgroup with languages to their south, but were subject to a period of intense contact during the period of the Greater Central Philippine expansion into adjacent portions of Borneo and Sulawesi. Other innovations in the word for ‘nine’ are more puzzling, as with reflexes of *siaw in Maranao, Tiruray, and the Manobo languages of Mindanao, and all Philippine languages (Sangiric, Minahasan, Gorontalic) of northern Sulawesi. 

Blust, ———. 1998a.The position of the languages of Sabah. In Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista, ed., Pagtanáw: Essays on language in honor of Teodoro A. Llamzon: 29-52. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines.

Blust, ———. 2010a.The Greater North Borneo hypothesis. OL 49: 44-118.]