The proto‐Oceanic language community∗

Abstract

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 ofa 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 farflung lands.1 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 outlines 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 ofa 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. Into Oceanic fall nearly ail of the so-called Melanesian languages,2 plus the Polynesian group and the Microne sian languages other than Chamorro, Belauan (Palauan) and possibly Yapese. No Oceanic languages are found west of New Guinea. The boundary line bet ween the Oceanic group and the rest of Austronesian runs through the north coast of New Guinea between 136? and 138? E (east of the Bird's Head, bet ween Sarera Bay and the Sarmi Coast), and curves through the western islands of Micronesia between 132? and 140? E (see Figure 1).