Reconstructing Proto-oceanic Stress

Lynch, John (June 2000). "Reconstructing Proto-oceanic Stress". Oceanic Linguistics. 39 (1): 53–82. doi:10.1353/ol.2000.0007. ISSN 1527-9421.

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Abstract: The paper “Reconstructing Proto-oceanic Stress” explores the stress patterns in Proto-Oceanic (POC) languages and presents a hypothesis on how these patterns developed into the stress systems observed in present-day Oceanic languages. The study is motivated by the lack of a universally agreed-upon stress system for Proto-Austronesian (PAN), the ancestor of POC, making it necessary to adopt a bottom-up approach based on existing daughter languages rather than a top-down method from PAN.

The paper presents counterarguments to some existing theories, such as those proposed by Ross and Blust regarding stress and accent correlations in languages like Budai Rukai and Proto-Philippines. It highlights the diversity of stress assignment systems found in Oceanic languages, especially within the Western Oceanic linkage, where variations include final stress, penultimate stress, and others.

The author proposes that primary stress in Proto-Oceanic was typically assigned to the final syllable if it was closed, otherwise to the penultimate syllable. This hypothesis is suggested to better explain the wide distribution of stress systems in modern Oceanic languages, leading to revisions of original views about Proto-Oceanic stress. The study’s contributions offer a deeper understanding of how historical linguistics can trace language development and stress patterns over time, albeit with acknowledgment of areas requiring further research.

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MAG: 2003919814
OpenAlex: W2003919814
CorpusID: 143494693