*b > -k-: A Berawan sound change for the ages

Berawan, an Austronesian language spoken in northern Sarawak, Malaysian
 Borneo, is one of several languages in central and western Borneo that have unusually
innovative phonologies. Not only are these phonologies rich in number of changes,
and the effect they sometimes have on concealing cognation (e.g., Malay bǝruaŋ
and Long Terawan Berawan kǝbiŋ ‘the Malayan sun bear: Ursus malayanus’ are
cognate), but the search for theoretically-supported motivations for some changes
leads nowhere. One of these changes in all dialects of Berawan is *b > k in
intervocalic position, a change that is abundantly attested, and therefore not in question as
a valid transition from an earlier to a later state of the language. A basic question is
whether this was a one-step change, or a telescoping of several phonetically more
‘natural’ changes, and while it can be resolved into a two-step change, this hardly
relieves our sense of theoretical angst, since so far as the evidence allows us to
infer, these changes were *b > g in intervocalic position, followed by intervocalic
devoicing of g from two historically distinct sources. Attempts so far to show that
this change involved other intermediate steps have yet to be successful.