The Proto‐oceanic Language Community

Pawley, Andrew; Green, Roger C. (July 1984). "The Proto‐oceanic Language Community". The Journal of Pacific History. 19 (3): 123–146. doi:10.1080/00223348408572489. ISSN 1469-9605 0022-3344, 1469-9605 .

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Abstract: The colonization By Austronesian speakers of the Indo-Pacific Islands- scattered almost two-thirds of the way round the tropical and subtropical world—was a feat with only one parallel in human history: the expansion of West European peoples after Columbus. In each case advances in sailing methods by maritime peoples, speakers of a single language family originally living on continents or continental islands, enabled them to undertake long ocean voyages to explore and trade, and led to their rapid colonization of farfiung lands.' Yet the Austronesian expansion was more or less completed long before Columbus, and the challenge of reconstructing its course is more akin to that of reconstructing the original Indo-European expansion across Eurasia after 3500 B.C. We are dealing with prehistoric events and cir- cumstances whose oudincs may be recovered only by careful application of the methods available to prehistorians, especially those of archaeology and comparative-historical linguistics.

This paper will focus on one stage in the Austronesian settlement of the Pacific that associated with the reconstructed language known as Proto- Oceanic (POC). What makes this stage of particular importance is that Proto- Oceanic is regarded by linguists as the immediate ancestor of a subgroup which contains more than 400 languages, or about half the Austronesian total. The subgroup coincides almost exactly with those members of Austronesian that are spoken in the southwest and central Pacific.

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MAG: 2089043372
OpenAlex: W2089043372
CorpusID: 162323846