Proto-Oceanic (abbreviated as 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 unatte ...

that

historical linguists Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how language change, languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of language ...

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 Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify ...

(PAN), the common ancestor of the Austronesian languages. Proto-Oceanic was probably spoken around the late 2nd millennium BCE in the

Bismarck Archipelago The Bismarck Archipelago (, ) is a group of islands off the northeastern coast of New Guinea in the western Pacific Ocean and is part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. Its area is about . History The first inhabitants of the archipela ...

, east of

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

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

Lapita culture The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian peoples, Austronesian people and their distinct material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 BCE. The Lapita people are believed t ...

Linguistic characteristics

The methodology of

comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language and comparative linguistics aim ...

, together with the relative homogeneity of

Oceanic languages The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, 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, the latter is indicated: Based on evidence from the Southern Oceanic and Micronesian languages, Lynch (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''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...

, the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands, also known simply as the Solomons,John Prados, ''Islands of Destiny'', Dutton Caliber, 2012, p,20 and passim is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 1000 smaller islands in Melanesia, part of Oceania, t ...

, and

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of approximately 2,000 small islands in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: Maritime Southeast Asia to the west, Poly ...

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 The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply ...

in contact with Oceanic languages. In turn, most Polynesian languages, and several languages of

New Caledonia New Caledonia ( ; ) is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, southwest of Vanuatu and east of Australia. Located from Metropolitan France, it forms a Overseas France#Sui generis collectivity, ''sui generis'' collectivity of t ...

, have the VSO word order. Whether Proto-Oceanic had SVO or VSO is still debatable.

Lexicon

From the mid-1990s to 2023, reconstructing the

lexicon A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) 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 () ...

of Proto-Oceanic was the object of the ''Oceanic Lexicon Project'', run by scholars

Andrew Pawley Andrew Kenneth Pawley (born 1941 in Sydney) is an Australian–New Zealand linguist and Emeritus Professor at the School of Culture, History and Language of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Career Paw ...

, Malcolm Ross and Meredith Osmond. This encyclopedic project produced 6 volumes altogether, all available in open access. In addition, Robert Blust 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 that plants use as storage organs for nutrients, derived from stems or roots. Tubers help plants perennate (survive winter or dry months), provide energy and nutrients, and are a means of asexual reproduc ...

s and their culture: : ;

Banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing the ...

s: : ;Other food plants: : ;Gardening practices: :

Ross (2008)

Reconstructed plant terms from Malcolm Ross (2008): ;Proto-Oceanic plant terms inherited from Proto-Austronesian or Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (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 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'': :

Pottery

There are several known reconstructed words evident of material pottery culture among the

Lapita The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian people and their distinct material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 BCE. The Lapita people are believed to have originated fro ...

:Ross, Pawley & Osmond (1998). Vol. I pp. 68-71. * *kuroŋ – earthernware pot * *kalala(ŋ) – water jar * *palaŋa – frying pan (cf. Malay '' belanga'')

Example sentences

From Lynch, Ross, and Crowley (2002): From Ross (2004):

Notes

References

* * * * * Ross, Malcolm D.,

, Meredith Osmond (eds). ''The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society''
6 volumes
in

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

: ** ** ** ** ** **

External links

A detailed presentation and bibliography for Oceanic languages
(by John Bowden)
''The Oceanic Lexicon Project''
a research project by

, Malcolm Ross and Meredith Osmond. {{Austronesian languages Oceanic languages Oceanic