Proto-Oceanic language

Proto-Oceanic
Proto-Oceanic
POc
Reconstruction of	Oceanic languages
Region	Bismarck Archipelago
Era	ca. late 3rd millennium BCE
Reconstructed; ancestors	Proto-Austronesian Proto-Malayo-Polynesian ;
Lower-order reconstructions	Proto-Admiralty Islands; Proto-Western Oceanic; Proto-Temotu; Proto-Southeast Solomonic; Proto-Southern Oceanic; Proto-Micronesian; Proto-Central Pacific;

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 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.^[1] Archaeologists and linguists currently agree that its community more or less coincides with the Lapita culture.

Linguistic characteristics

The methodology of comparative linguistics, 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.^[2] 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: /pʲ/ /ᵐbʲ/ /mʲ/.^[4]

Basic word order

Many Oceanic languages of New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Micronesia 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

From the mid-1990s to 2023, reconstructing the lexicon of Proto-Oceanic was the object of the Oceanic Lexicon Project, run by scholars Andrew Pawley, Malcolm Ross and Meredith Osmond.^[5] 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).^[6]

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):^[7]

Tubers and their culture

Bananas

Other food plants

Gardening practices

Ross (2008)

Reconstructed plant terms from Malcolm Ross (2008):^[8]

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:^[6]

Example sentences

From Lynch, Ross, and Crowley (2002):

*I=kaRat-i=a

3SG=bite-TR=3SG

a

ART

tau

person

na

ART

ᵐboRok.

pig

'The pig bit a/the person.'

*A

ART

na=ᵑgu

CL=3SG

a

ART

Rumaq.

house

'The house is mine.'

From Ross (2004):

*Au=papa-i=a

1SG=carry-TR=3SG

natu-mu

child-2SG

i=ua

3SG=go

i

PREP

laur.

coast

'I brought your child (to you) to the beach.'

*Ra=sipo

3PL=go.down

ra=paqus-i=a

3PL=bind-TR=3SG

na

ART

waᵑga.

canoe

'They went down to bind up the canoe.'

Notes

^ Pawley, Andrew (2007), "Locating Proto Oceanic" (PDF), in Ross, Malcolm; Pawley, Andrew; Osmond, Meredith (eds.), The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The physical environment, vol. 2, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, pp. 17–34, hdl:1885/106908, ISBN 9781921313196, retrieved 12 December 2023
^ See Ross, Pawley, Osmond (1998): 15).
^ The consonant *R has been recently reconstructed as an alveolar flap by François (2011), p.141.
^ Lynch, John (2003). "The Bilabials in Proto Loyalties". In Lynch, John (ed.). Issues in Austronesian Historical Phonology. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 153–173 (171). doi:10.15144/PL-550.153.
^ Homepage of the Oceanic Lexicon Project; downloadable set of volumes.
^ a b Blust, Robert; Trussel, Stephen (June 21, 2020). "Austronesian Comparative Dictionary, web edition". Retrieved October 1, 2020.
^ Pawley, Andrew and Malcolm Ross. 2006. The Prehistory of Oceanic Languages: A Current View. In The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. doi:10.22459/A.09.2006
^ Ross, Malcolm. Concluding notes, 427–436. In Ross, Pawley, Osmond, Meredith (2008).
^ Robert Blust has identified cognates in western Malayo-Polynesian languages, so *tawan can be reconstructed for PMP, cf. Blust, Robert (25 April 2020). "*tawan". Austronesian Comparative dictionary. Retrieved 30 April 2020.

References

François, Alexandre (2011), "Where *R they all? The history and geography of *R loss in Southern Oceanic", Oceanic Linguistics, 50 (1): 142–199, doi:10.1353/ol.2011.0009, S2CID 55766987
Lynch, John; Malcolm Ross; Terry Crowley (2002). The Oceanic languages. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. ISBN 978-0-7007-1128-4. OCLC 48929366.
Ross, Malcolm D. (1988). Proto-Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of Western Melanesia. Canberra: Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-85883-367-8. OCLC 20100109.
Ross, Malcolm D. (2004). "The grammaticization of directional verbs in Oceanic languages". In Bril, Isabelle; Ozanne-Rivierre, Françoise (eds.). Complex Predicates in Oceanic Languages. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110913286. ISBN 978-3-11-018188-3.
Ross, Malcolm D., Andrew Pawley, Meredith Osmond (eds). The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society: 6 volumes, in open access:
- Ross, Malcolm D.; Andrew Pawley; Meredith Osmond (1998). The lexicon of Proto-Oceanic: Volume 1, Material culture (PDF). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 9780858835078. OCLC 470523930.
- ——; ——; —— (2003). The lexicon of Proto-Oceanic: Volume 2, The physical environment (PDF). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 9781921313196. OCLC 909878691.
- ——; ——; —— (2008). The lexicon of Proto-Oceanic: Volume 3, Plants (PDF). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics 599. ISBN 9780858835894. OCLC 1075805883.
- ——; ——; —— (2011). The lexicon of Proto-Oceanic: Volume 4, Animals (PDF). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics 621.
- ——; ——; —— (2016). The lexicon of Proto-Oceanic: Volume 5, People: Body and mind (PDF). Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics (A-PL) 28.
- ——; ——; —— (2023). The lexicon of Proto-Oceanic: Volume 6, People: Society (PDF). Canberra.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

External links

A detailed presentation and bibliography for Oceanic languages (by John Bowden)
The Oceanic Lexicon Project, a research project by Andrew Pawley, Malcolm Ross and Meredith Osmond.

[1] Pawley, Andrew (2007), "Locating Proto Oceanic" (PDF), in Ross, Malcolm; Pawley, Andrew; Osmond, Meredith (eds.), The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The physical environment, vol. 2, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, pp. 17–34, hdl:1885/106908, ISBN 9781921313196, retrieved 12 December 2023

[2] See Ross, Pawley, Osmond (1998): 15).

[3] The consonant *R has been recently reconstructed as an alveolar flap by François (2011), p.141.

[4] Lynch, John (2003). "The Bilabials in Proto Loyalties". In Lynch, John (ed.). Issues in Austronesian Historical Phonology. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 153–173 (171). doi:10.15144/PL-550.153.

[5] Homepage of the Oceanic Lexicon Project; downloadable set of volumes.

[ACD-6] Blust, Robert; Trussel, Stephen (June 21, 2020). "Austronesian Comparative Dictionary, web edition". Retrieved October 1, 2020.

[7] Pawley, Andrew and Malcolm Ross. 2006. The Prehistory of Oceanic Languages: A Current View. In The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. doi:10.22459/A.09.2006

[8] Ross, Malcolm. Concluding notes, 427–436. In Ross, Pawley, Osmond, Meredith (2008).

[9] Robert Blust has identified cognates in western Malayo-Polynesian languages, so *tawan can be reconstructed for PMP, cf. Blust, Robert (25 April 2020). "*tawan". Austronesian Comparative dictionary. Retrieved 30 April 2020.