Proto-Oceanic (abbr. ''POc'') is a

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattes ...

that

historical linguists Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Oceanic is a descendant of the Proto-Austronesian language (PAN), the common ancestor of the Austronesian languages. Proto-Oceanic was probably spoken around the late 3rd millennium BCE in the Bismarck Archipelago, east of

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

. Archaeologists and linguists currently agree that its community more or less coincides with the Lapita culture.

Linguistic characteristics

The methodology of

comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...

, together with the relative homogeneity of Oceanic languages, make it possible to reconstruct with reasonable certainty the principal linguistic properties of their common ancestor, Proto-Oceanic. Like all scientific hypotheses, these reconstructions must be understood as obviously reflecting the state of science at a particular moment in time; the detail of these reconstructions is still the object of much discussion among Oceanicist scholars.

Phonology

The phonology of POc can be reconstructed with reasonable certainty. Proto-Oceanic had five vowels: *i, *e, *a, *o, *u, with no length contrast. Twenty-three consonants are reconstructed. When the conventional transcription of a protophoneme differs from its value in the

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...

, the latter is indicated: Based on evidence from the Southern Oceanic and Micronesian languages,

Lynch Lynch may refer to: Places Australia * Lynch Island, South Orkney Islands, Antarctica * Lynch Point, Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica * Lynch's Crater, Queensland, Australia England * River Lynch, Hertfordshire * The Lynch, an island in the Rive ...

(2003) proposes that the bilabial series may have been phonetically realized as palatalized: .

Basic word order

Many Oceanic languages of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of ...

, the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...

, and

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, ...

are SVO, or verb-medial, languages. SOV, or verb-final, word order is considered to be typologically unusual for Austronesian languages, and is only found in some Oceanic languages of New Guinea and to a more limited extent, the Solomon Islands. This is because SOV word order is very common in some non-Austronesian Papuan languages in contact with Oceanic languages. In turn, most Polynesian languages, and several languages of New Caledonia, have the VSO word order. Whether Proto-Oceanic had SVO or VSO is still debatable.

Lexicon

Since the mid-1990s, reconstructing the

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word (), neuter of () meaning 'of or fo ...

of Proto-Oceanic has been the object of the ''Oceanic Lexicon Project'', by scholars

Andrew Pawley Andrew Kenneth Pawley (born 1941 in Sydney), FRSNZ, FAHA, is Emeritus Professor at the School of Culture, History & Language of the ''College of Asia & the Pacific'' at the Australian National University. Career Pawley was born in Sydney but ...

, Malcolm Ross and Meredith Osmond. This encyclopedic project has produced 5 volumes so far, available in open access. In addition,

Robert Blust Robert A. Blust (; ; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Blu ...

also includes Proto-Oceanic in his ''Austronesian Comparative Dictionary'' (abbr. ACD).

Animal names

Selected reconstructed Proto-Oceanic terms of various animals from Blust's ACD: ;Fishes : ;Birds : ;Other animals :

Plant names

Pawley and Ross (2006)

Reconstructed Proto-Oceanic terms for horticulture and food plants (other than coconuts): ;

Tuber Tubers are a type of enlarged structure used as storage organs for nutrients in some plants. They are used for the plant's perennation (survival of the winter or dry months), to provide energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growing ...

s and their culture: : ; Bananas: : ;Other food plants: : ;Gardening practices: :

Ross (2008)

Reconstructed plant terms from Malcolm Ross (2008):Ross, Malcolm. Concluding notes, 427-436. In Ross, Pawley, Osmond, Meredith (2008). ;Proto-Oceanic plant terms inherited from Proto-Austronesian or

Proto-Malayo-Polynesian Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) is the reconstructed ancestor of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which is by far the largest branch (by current speakers) of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian is ancestral to all Austrones ...

(65 reconstructions) : ;Proto-Oceanic plant terms inherited from Proto- Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (11 reconstructions) : ;Proto-Oceanic plant terms inherited from Proto- Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (4 reconstructions) : ;Reconstructed terms with no external cognates ;Proto-Oceanic plant terms with no known non-Oceanic cognates (97 reconstructions) : ;Proto- Western Oceanic plant terms with no known external cognates (22 reconstructions) : ;Proto- Eastern Oceanic plant terms with no known external cognates (15 reconstructions) : ;Proto-

Remote Oceanic A family of some 200 Remote Oceanic languages has traditionally been posited as a subgroup of the Central-Eastern Oceanic languages. However, it was abandoned by Lynch, Ross, & Crowley in 2002, as no defining features of the family could be fou ...

plant terms with no known external cognates (6 reconstructions) :

Blust and Trussel (2020)

Selected reconstructed Proto-Oceanic terms of various plants from the ''Austronesian Comparative Dictionary'': :

Example sentences

From Lynch, Ross, and Crowley (2002):

Notes

References

* * * * * * {{Refend
''The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society''
Volume 3
Plants
2008. Pacific Linguistics 599

External links

(by John Bowden)
''The Oceanic Lexicon Project''
a research project by

, Malcolm Ross and Meredith Osmond. Oceanic languages Oceanic