Proto-Oceanic (abbr. POc) is a protolanguage that language comparatists – particularly after Otto Dempwolff's works – have proposed as the probable common ancestor to the group of Oceanic languages. Proto-Oceanic is itself an Austronesian language, and therefore a descendant of Proto-Austronesian (PAN), the common ancestor of the Austronesian languages.
Proto-Oceanic was probably spoken about 4200 years ago, in the Bismarck Archipelago, east of Papua New Guinea. Archaeologists and linguists currently agree that the POc-speaking community more or less coincides with the Lapita civilization.
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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; in particular, it must be noted that the detail of these reconstructions is still the object of much discussion among Oceanicist scholars.
The phonology of POc can be reconstructed with reasonable certainty.[1] Proto-Oceanic had 5 vowels: *i, *e, *a, *o, *u, with no length contrast. It also possessed 23 consonants, reconstructed as follows:
| Labiovelar | Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | Voiceless | *pʷ | *p | *t | *c | *k | *q |
| Prenasalized | *ᵐbʷ | *ᵐb | *ⁿd | *ᶮɟ | *ᵑɡ | ||
| Nasal | *mʷ | *m | *n | *ɲ | *ŋ | ||
| Fricative | *s | ||||||
| Trill | Plain | *r | *ʀ | ||||
| Prenasalized | *ⁿr | ||||||
| Lateral | *l | ||||||
| Glide | *w | *j | |||||
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 order VSO.
There is therefore still debate whether the syntax of Proto Oceanic has to be reconstructed as SVO or VSO.