Proto-Temotu (abbreviated as PTm) is the reconstructed ancestor of the

Temotu languages The Temotu languages, named after Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands, are a branch of Oceanic languages proposed in Ross & Næss (2007) to unify the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages with Utupua and Vanikoro, each a group of three related langua ...

Temotu Province Temotu (or Te Motu, literally "the island" in Polynesian) is the easternmost province of Solomon Islands. The province was formerly known as Santa Cruz Islands Province. It consists, essentially, of two chains of islands which run parallel t ...

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 ca ...

. It belongs to the

Oceanic Oceanic may refer to: *Of or relating to the ocean *Of or relating to Oceania **Oceanic climate **Oceanic languages **Oceanic person or people, also called "Pacific Islander(s)" Places *Oceanic, British Columbia Oceanic is an unincorporated set ...

branch of the Austronesian languages. A partial reconstruction was done by Malcolm Ross and Åshild Næss in 2007, with further revisions by William James Lackey and Brenda H. Boerger in 2021.

Descendants

Proto-Temotu diversified into three primary branches: Reefs – Santa Cruz,

Utupua Utupua is an island in the Santa Cruz Islands, located 66 km to the Southeast of the main Santa Cruz group, between Vanikoro and Santa Cruz proper ( Nendo Island). This island belongs administratively to the Temotu Province of the Solom ...

, and

Vanikoro Vanikoro (sometimes wrongly named ''Vanikolo'') is an island in the Santa Cruz group, located to the Southeast of the main Santa Cruz group. It is part of the Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands. The name ''Vanikoro'' is always used as thou ...

. Originally, some linguists had proposed to group Utupua and Vanikoro languages under a single Utupua–Vanikoro subgroup, sometimes labelled “Eastern Outer Islands”. Tryon & Hackman (1983), Lynch & Tryon (1985). The unity of that subgroup has been however questioned by Lackey & Boerger (2021), who fail to identify shared phonological innovations for it.

Innovations

Proto-Temotu was a phonologically conservative language in many respects, and was evidently an early descendant of

Proto-Oceanic Proto-Oceanic (abbr. ''POc'') is a proto-language that historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Oceanic is a descendant ...

. For example, it retained Proto-Oceanic final consonants, as evidenced in the paragogic addition of a final vowel in the Vanikoro languages; it retained the contrast between ''*n'' and ''*ñ'', based on an occasional Asumbuo reflex of ''y'', reflecting a distinction lost in almost all other Oceanic languages; and many others; and it retained Proto-Oceanic ''*R'' as a distinct sound, evidenced by its occasional loss in daughter languages in contrast to ''*r'' and ''*l'', which are usually never lost. François (2011). Nevertheless, Proto-Temotu can be defined by a handful of (admittedly weak) shared phonological innovations: * Proto-Oceanic ''*l'' and ''*r'' merge as ''*l''; * Proto-Oceanic ''*s'', ''*c'', ''*j'' merge as ''*s''; * Lenition of Proto-Oceanic ''*q'' to a velar or uvular fricative, either or � The small number of these shared innovations, and their weak diagnostic value, mean that the very existence of Proto-Temotu is still under debate: it is almost the same language as Proto-Oceanic itself, separated only by a few hundred years at most, as evidenced by the direct migration of

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

peoples from 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 50,000 square km. History The first inhabitants o ...

to the islands in present-day

Sample words

Words reconstructed for Proto-Temotu, according to Ross & Næss (2007), are: * ''*amuk'' "mosquito" (< POc ''*ñamuk'') * ''*ima'' "hand" (< POc ''*lima'') * ''*li'' "five" (< POc ''*lima'') * ''*lu'' "two" (< POc ''*rua'') * ''*umʷaq'' "house" (< POc ''*Rumaq'')

Notes

References

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Proto-Temotu language *