Chapter 5.1 Introduction

Malcolm Ross and Andrew Pawley and Meredith Osmond

1. Aims⇫

This is the fifth in a series of volumes on the lexicon of the Proto Oceanic (POc) language.¹ POc was the immediate ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. This subgroup consists of all the Austronesian languages of Melanesia east of 136˚ E, together with those of Polynesia and (with two exceptions) those of Micronesia — more than 450 languages in all (see Map 1).² Extensive arguments for the existence of Oceanic as a clearly demarcated branch of Austronesian were first put forward by Otto Dempwolff in the 1920s, and the validity of the subgroup is now recognised by virtually all scholars working in Austronesian historical linguistics.

The development and break-up of the POc language and speech community were stages in a truly remarkable chapter in human prehistory—the colonisation by Austronesian speakers of the Indo-Pacific region in the period after about 2000 BC. The outcome was the largest of the world’s well-established language families and (until the expansion of Indo-European after Columbus) the most widespread. The Austronesian family comprises more than 1,000 distinct languages. Its eastern and western outliers, Madagascar and Easter Island, are two-thirds of a world apart, and its northernmost extensions, Hawai’i and Taiwan, are separated by 70 degrees of latitude from its southernmost outpost, Stewart Island in New Zealand.

It is likely that the divergence of Oceanic from its nearest relatives, which are the Austronesian languages spoken around Cenderawasih Bay and in South Halmahera (Blust 1978a), began when Austronesian speakers from the Cenderawasih Bay area moved eastwards along the north coast of New Guinea and into the Bismarck Archipelago. There is a strong school of opinion that associates the subsequent break-up of POc with the rapid colonisation of Island Melanesia and the central Pacific by bearers of the Lapita culture between about 1200 and 900 BC (see Map 2 and volume 2, chapter 2).

The present project aims to bring together a large corpus of lexical reconstructions for POc, with supporting cognate sets, organised according to semantic fields and using a standard orthography for POc. We hope that it will be a useful resource for culture historians, archaeologists and others interested in the prehistory of the Pacific region. The comparative lexical material should also be a rich source of data for various kinds of purely linguistic research, e.g. on semantic change and subgrouping in the more than 450 daughter languages.

Volume 1 of The lexicon of Proto Oceanic deals with material culture. Volumes 2, 3 and 4 examine relevant sets of cognate terms in order to gain insights into how POc speakers viewed their environment. Volume 2 deals with the geophysical or inanimate environment, volumes 3 and 4 treat plants and animals respectively. The present volume and volume 6 return to terminologies centring on people. This volume is concerned with gender and age, the body, and human conditions and physical and cognitive activities that arise from nature rather than nurture. Volume 6 will concern culturally learned activities, social organisation, belief systems, rituals, recreation and other elements of non-material culture. The seventh and final volume will perform a number of functions. It will treat certain lexical categories, e.g. closed classes of lexical roots, not dealt with in earlier volumes. It will review the main findings of the project concerning the culture and environment of Proto Oceanic speakers and will compare these findings with what archaeology tells us about the way of life and environment of the bearers of the Lapita culture. Volume 7 will also provide an index to the POc and other reconstructions presented in the whole work, as well as an English-to-POc finderlist and a list of all languages cited, together with their subgroups.³

Chapter 2 of the present volume presents reconstructions and supporting cognate sets for terms for people: ‘person’, ‘woman’, ‘man’, age cohort terms from early childhood to old age, terms for people by absence or deprivation of relationship (‘orphan’, ‘unmarried adult’, ‘widow(er)’) and for twins. Kin relationship terms are handled in volume 6 rather than here, as they are a dimension of social organisation.

Chapters 3 to 7 concern terms that have to do with the human body. Chapter 3 presents terms for the parts of the body and bodily substances, both substances of which the body is made up and which it emits. Chapter 4 is dedicated to conditions and activities of the human body, ranging from processes that occur spontaneously (sweating, breathing, snoring) to deliberate activities like eating, drinking and copulating. In between these extremes are numerous events with lesser degrees of agentivity, like sleeping, belching, yawning, defecating, laughing and crying. Chapter 5 is entitled ‘Health and disease’ and gives some insight into the diseases recognised and labelled by POc speakers. Chapter 6 investigates how Oceanic languages talk about posture and movement, the latter including not only human locomotion but also how people cause other people and things to move: raising and lowering, pulling, pushing and putting, various modes of carrying, and so on. Chapter 7 gives terms for a miscellany of activities performed with the body and its parts: working, gesturing, seizing and holding, treading, bathing and washing, waiting and hiding.

Chapters 8 to 11 deal with various aspects of the human mind. Chapter 8 presents terms for the five senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and perceiving by touch. Chapter 9 investigates the structure and semantics of body-part metaphors in Oceanic languages, as these evidently formed an integral part of the POc terminologies handled in Chapters 10 and 11. Chapter 10 examines terms for various aspects of cognition (knowing and thinking, truth, memory, deciding, agreeing, choosing and learning) and their organisation in POc. The final chapter, Chapter 11, presents terms that human beings use to describe one another with respect to their physical qualities, temperaments, emotions, desires and evaluations.

2. The relation of the current project to previous work⇫

Reconstructions of POc phonology and lexicon began with Dempwolff’s pioneering work in the 1920s and 1930s. Dempwolff’s dictionary of reconstructions attributed to Proto Austronesian (PAn) (Dempwolff 1938)—but equivalent in modern terms to Proto Malayo-Polynesian (PMP)—contains some 600 reconstructions with reflexes in Oceanic languages.

Since the 1950s, POc and other early Oceanic interstage languages have been the subject of a considerable body of research. However, relatively few new reconstructions safely attributable to POc were added to Dempwolff’s material until the 1970s. In 1969 George Grace made available as a working paper a compilation of reconstructions from various sources amounting to some 700 distinct items, attributed either to POc or to early Oceanic interstages. These materials were presented in a new orthography for POc, based largely on Biggs’ (1965) orthography for an interstage he called Proto Eastern Oceanic. Updated compilations of Oceanic cognate sets were produced at the University of Hawai’i in the period 1977–1983 as part of a project directed by Grace and Pawley. These compilations and the supporting data are problematic in various respects and we have made only limited use of them.

Comparative lexical studies have been carried out for several lower-order subgroups of Oceanic: for Proto Polynesian by Biggs (resulting in Walsh & Biggs 1966, Biggs et al. 1970 and subsequent versions of the POLLEX file, including Biggs & Clark 1993, Clark & Biggs 2006 and Greenhill & Clark 2011); for Proto Micronesian by scholars associated with the University of Hawai’i (Bender et al. 1983, 2003); for the ancestor of the Banks and Torres languages by Alexandre François (several unpublished manuscripts); for Proto North and Central Vanuatu by Clark (Clark 1996, 2009); for Proto Southern Vanuatu by Lynch (1978b, 1996b, 2001c); for New Caledonia by Ozanne-Rivierre (1992), Haudricourt & Ozanne-Rivierre (1982) and Geraghty (1989); for Proto SE Solomonic by Levy (1980) and Lichtenberk (1988); for Proto Central Pacific by Hockett (1976), Geraghty (1983, 1986, 1996, together with a number of unpublished papers); for Proto Eastern Oceanic by Biggs (1965), Cashmore (1969), Levy and Smith (1970), and Geraghty (1990); and for Proto Central Papuan by Pawley (1975), Lynch (1978a, 1980), and Ross (1994a).

Robert Blust (1970, 1980b, 1983-84a, 1986, 1989) of the University of Hawai’i has, in a series of papers published extensive, alphabetically ordered, lexical reconstructions (with supporting cognate sets) for interstages earlier than POc, especially for Proto Austronesian, Proto Malayo-Polynesian and Proto Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. He has also written several papers investigating specific semantic fields (Blust 1980a, 1982b, 1987, 1994). Blust & Trussel have a major work in progress, the Austronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), which will bring together all Blust’s reconstructions for Proto Austronesian and lower-order stages. This is stored in electronic form at the University of Hawai’i.⁴ The version to which we refer dates from 2012.

Several papers predating our project systematically investigated particular semantic domains in the lexicon of POc, e.g. Milke (1958), French-Wright (1983), Pawley (1982a, 1985), Pawley & Green (1984), Lichtenberk (1986), Walter (1989), and the various papers in Pawley & Ross (1994). Ross (1988) contains a substantial number of new POc lexical reconstructions, as well as proposed modifications to the reconstructed POc sound system and the orthography. However, previous Oceanic lexical studies were limited both by large gaps in the data, with a distinct bias in favour of ‘Eastern Oceanic’ languages, and by the technical problems of collating large quantities of data. Although most languages in Melanesia remain poorly described, there are now many more dictionaries and extended word lists, particularly for Papua New Guinea, than there were in the 1980s. And developments in computing hardware and software now permit much faster and more precise handling of data than was possible then. A list of sources and a summary of the Project’s collation procedures is found in Appendix 1.

Several compilations of reconstructions have provided valuable points of reference, both inside and outside the Oceanic group. We are indebted particularly to Bender et al. (2003), two editions of POLLEX (Biggs & Clark 1993 and Clark & Biggs 2006), Blust & Trussel (ACD), Clark (2009) and Lynch (2001c).

In the course of planning the several volumes of the present project, we came to realise that the form in which preliminary publications were presented—namely as essays, each discussing cognate sets for a particular semantic field at some length—would also be the best form for the presentation of this set of volumes. A discursive treatment of individual terminologies, as opposed, say, to a dictionary-type listing of reconstructions with supporting cognate sets, makes it easier to relate the linguistic comparisons to relevant issues of culture history, language change, and methodology. Hence each of the present volumes has as its core a collection of analytic essays. Some of these have been published or presented elsewhere, but are included here in revised form. In some cases we have updated the earlier versions in the light of subsequent research, and, where appropriate, have inserted cross-references between contributions. Authorship is in some cases something of a problem, as a number of people have had a hand in collating the data, doing the reconstructions, and (re)writing for publication here. In most chapters, however, one person did the research which determined the structure of the terminology, and that person appears as the first or only author, and where another or others had a substantial part in putting together the chapter they appear as the second and further authors.

3. Reconstructing the lexicon⇫

The lexical reconstructions presented in these volumes are arrived at using the standard methods of comparative linguistics, which require as preliminaries a subgrouping or internal classification of the languages in question (§1.3.2) and the working out of systematic sound correspondences among cognate vocabulary in contemporary languages (§1.3.3). As well as cognate sets clearly attributable to POc, we have included some cognate sets which at this stage are attributable to various interstage languages, particularly Proto Western and Proto Eastern

Oceanic (but see §1.3.2.4 for definitions). We have set out to pay more careful attention to reconstructing the semantics of POc forms than has generally been done in earlier work, treating words not as isolates but as parts of terminologies.

3.1. Terminological reconstruction⇫

Our method of doing ‘terminological reconstruction’ is as follows. First, the terminologies of present-day speakers of Oceanic languages are used as the basis for constructing a hypothesis about the semantic structure of a corresponding POc terminology, taking account of (i) ethnographic evidence, i.e. descriptions of the lifestyles of Oceanic communities and (ii) the geographical and physical resources of particular regions of Oceania. For example, by comparing terms in several languages for parts of an outrigger canoe, or for growth stages of a coconut, one can see which concepts recur and so are likely to have been present in POc. Secondly, a search is made for cognate sets from which forms can be reconstructed to match each meaning in this hypothesised terminology. The search is not restricted to members of the Oceanic subgroup; if a term found in an Oceanic language proves to have external (non-Oceanic) cognates, the POc antiquity of that term will be confirmed and additional evidence concerning its meaning will be provided. Thirdly, the hypothesised terminology is re-examined to see if it needs modification in the light of the reconstructions. There are cases, highlighted in the various contributions to these volumes, where we were able to reconstruct a term where we did not expect to do so and conversely, often more significantly, where we were unable to reconstruct a term where we had believed we should be able to. In each case, we have discussed the reasons why our expectations were not met and what this may mean for Oceanic culture history.

Blust (1987:81) distinguishes between conventional ‘semantic reconstruction’, which asks, “What was the probable meaning of protomorpheme X?”, and Dyen and Aberle’s (1974) ‘lexical reconstruction’, where one asks, “What was the protomorpheme which probably meant ‘X’?” At first sight, it might appear that terminological reconstruction is a version of lexical reconstruction. However, there are sharp differences. Lexical reconstruction applies a formal procedure: likely protomeanings are selected from among the glosses of words in available cognate sets, then an algorithm is applied to determine which meaning should be attributed to each set. This procedure may have unsatisfactory results, as Blust points out. Reconstructions may end up with crude and overly simple glosses; or no meaning may be reconstructed for a form because none of the glosses of its reflexes is its protomeaning.

Terminological reconstruction is instead similar to the semantic reconstruction approach. In terminological reconstruction the meanings of protomorphemes are not determined in advance. Instead, cognate sets are collected and their meanings are compared with regard to:

• their specific denotations, where these are known;
• the geographic and genetic distribution of these denotations (i.e. are the glosses from which the protogloss is reconstructed well distributed? );
• any derivational relationships to other reconstructions;
• their place within a working hypothesis of the relevant POc terminology (e.g., are terms complementary —‘bow’ implies ‘arrow’; ‘seine net’ implies ‘floats’ and ‘weights’? Are there different levels of classification—generic, specific, and so on?).

For example, it proved possible to reconstruct the following POc terms for tying with cords (vol.1:290–293):

• POc *buku ‘tie (a knot); fasten’
• POc *pʷita ‘tie by encircling’
• POc *paqu(s), *paqus-i- ‘bind, lash; construct (canoe +) by lashing together’
• POc *pisi ‘bind up, tie up, wind round, wrap’
• POc *kiti ‘tie, bind’

In each of the supporting cognate sets from contemporary languages there are a number of items whose glosses in the dictionaries or word lists are too vague to tell the analyst anything about the specific denotation of the item, and in the case of *kiti this prevents the assignment of a more specific meaning. The verb *buku can be identified as the generic term for tying a knot because of its derivational relationship (by zero derivation) with a noun whose denotation is clearly generic, *buku ‘node (as in bamboo or sugarcane); joint; knuckle; knot in wood, string or rope’ (vol.1:85–86; this volume, §3.6.8.1.2). Reconstruction of the meaning of *pʷita as ‘tie by encircling’ is supported by the meanings of the Lukep, Takia and Longgu reflexes, respectively ‘tie by encircling’, ‘tie on (as grass-skirt)’, and ‘trap an animal’s leg; tie s.t. around ankle or wrist’: Lukep and Takia are North New Guinea languages, whilst Longgu is SE Solomonic. Reconstruction of the meaning of *paqu(s), *paqus-i- as ‘bind, lash; construct (canoe +) by tying together’ is supported by the meanings of the Takia, Kiribati and Samoan reflexes, respectively ‘tie, bind; construct (a canoe)’, ‘construct (canoe, house)’, and ‘make, construct (wooden objects, canoes +)’: Takia is a North New Guinea language, Kiribati is Micronesian, and Samoan is Polynesian. The meaning of *pisi is similarly reconstructed by reference to the meanings of its Mono-Alu, Mota, Port Sandwich, Nguna and Fijian reflexes.

Often, however, the authors have been less fortunate in the information available to them. For example, Osmond (vol.1:222–225) reconstructs six POc terms broadly glossed as ‘spear’. Multiple terms for implements within one language imply that these items were used extensively and possibly in specialised ways. Can we throw light on these specialised ways? Unfortunately, some of the word lists and dictionaries available give minimal glosses, e.g. ‘spear’, for reflexes of the six reconstructions. What we need to know for each reflex is: what is the level of reference? Is it a term for all spears, or perhaps all pointed projectiles including arrows and darts? Or does it refer to a particular kind of spear? Is it noun or verb or both? If a noun, does it refer to both the instrument and the activity? Most word lists are frustratingly short on detail. For this kind of detail, ethnographies have proved a more fruitful source of information than many word lists.

Another problem is inherent in the dangers of sampling from over 450 languages. The greater the number of languages, the greater are the possible variations in meaning of any given term, and the greater the chances of two languages making the same semantic leaps quite independently. Does our (sometimes quite limited) cognate set provide us with a clear unambiguous gloss, or have we picked up an accidental bias, a secondary or distantly related meaning? Did etymon x refer to fishhook or the material from which the fishhook was made? Did etymon y refer to the slingshot or to the action of turning round and round?

3.2. Subgrouping and reconstruction⇫

3.2.1. Subgrouping⇫

Although the subgrouping of Austronesian languages, and hypotheses about which protolanguage was spoken where, remain in certain cases somewhat controversial, it is impossible to proceed without making some assumptions about these matters. Figures 1 and 2 are approximate renderings of our subgrouping assumptions. The upper part of the tree, shown in Figure 1, is due to Blust, originally presented in Blust (1977b) and repeated with additional supporting evidence in subsequent publications (Blust 1978a, 1982, 1983-84b, 1993, 2009a).⁵ The diagram of the lower (Oceanic) part of the tree in Figure 2 shows nine primary subgroups of Oceanic. Its rake-like structure indicates that no convincing body of shared innovations has been found to allow any of the nine subgroups to be combined into higher-order groupings. Sections 1.3.2.2, 1.3.2.3 and 1.3.2.4 offer some commentary on our subgrouping, and in §1.3.2.4 we explain how we handle the rake-like structure in making reconstructions.

3.2.2. Kinds of subgroup⇫

In Figures 1 and 2 each node is either a single language,⁶ usually a reconstructed protolanguage, or, in italics, a group of languages.

Where a node is a protolanguage, its descendants form a proper subgroup (in the technical sense in which historical linguists use the term ‘subgroup’). A proper subgroup is identified by innovations shared by its member languages, i.e. it is ‘innovation-defined’ in the terminology of Pawley & Ross (1995). These innovations are assumed to have occurred just once in the subgroup’s protolanguage, i.e. the exclusively shared ancestor of its members. Thus languages of the large Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian share a set of innovations relative to the earlier Austronesian stages shown in Figure 1 (Dempwolff 1934).⁷ By inference these innovations occurred in their common ancestor, POc, and the claim that they are innovations is based on a comparison of reconstructed POc with reconstructed PMP. The innovations may be phonological (e.g. PMP *e, pronounced [ə], and PMP *aw both became POc *o), morphological (e.g. POc acquired a morphological distinction between three kinds of possessive relationship: food, drink and default), or lexical (e.g. PMP *limaw ‘citrus fruit’ was replaced by POc *molis).

Italics are used in Figures 1 and 2 to indicate a group of languages which is not a proper subgroup, i.e. has no identifiable exclusively shared parent. Thus Formosan languages in Figure 1 indicates a collection of languages descended (along with PMP) from PAn. They are spoken in Taiwan, but do not form a subgroup. There was no ‘Proto Formosan’, as Formosan languages and language groups are all descended directly from PAn.

Some of the italicised labels in Figures 1 and 2 include the term linkage. A linkage (an ‘innovation-linked group’ in the terminology of Pawley & Ross 1995) is a collection of usually quite closely related languages or dialects,⁸ speakers of which were in sufficient contact at one time or another during their history for innovations to pass from one language to the next, often resulting in a pattern such that the domains of various innovations overlap but are not coterminous.⁹ A number of Oceanic linkages have been recognised by scholars researching the history of the languages of Fiji (Geraghty 1983), of the Caroline Islands (Jackson 1983), of NW Melanesia (Ross 1988), of the SE Solomons (Lichtenberk 1988, 1994; Pawley 2011) and of Vanuatu (Tryon 1976, Clark 1985, Lynch 2000c, 2004b, François 2011a, 2014).¹⁰ A linkage may arise in at least three ways, but distinguishing between them is often impossible.

First, what would otherwise be a proper subgroup may happen to lack exclusively shared innovations, perhaps because the parent did not exist as a unit for long enough to undergo any innovations of its own.¹¹

Second, a linkage may consist of some but not all of the languages descended from a single parent. The Western Oceanic linkage reflects the innovations of POc, but no innovation is common to the whole of Western Oceanic (although the merger of POc *r and *R comes close). However, the languages of its three component linkages—North New Guinea, Papuan Tip and Meso-Melanesian—display complex patterns of overlapping innovations. The Western Oceanic linkage appears to be descended from the dialects of POc that were left behind in the Bismarck Archipelago after speakers of the languages ancestral to the other eight primary subgroups in Figure 2 had moved away to the north or east (Ross 2014, 2017). After these departures various innovations occurred. Each arose somewhere in the Western Oceanic dialect network and spread to neighbouring dialects without reaching every dialect in the network.

The third type of linkage is the result of contact among languages descended from more than one immediate parent, indicated in Figure 2 by a dashed line around the relevant groups of languages. An example is the Fijian linkage, which represents the partial resynthesis of the Fiji-based descendants of earlier Western Central Pacific and Eastern Central Pacific linkages after Rotuman and Polynesian had split off from them (Geraghty & Pawley 1981, Geraghty 1983, Pawley 1996c).¹² Geraghty reconstructed the history of the Fijian linkage by painstaking analysis of innovations from at least two stages in its history. From the earlier period Western Fijian languages share innovations with Rotuman and Eastern Fijian with Polynesian. From a more recent period Western Fijian and Eastern Fijian languages share innovations with each other, reflecting their reintegration into a single linkage, within which the present Western/Eastern boundary has shifted relative to the (fuzzy) boundary of the earlier period.

For most of the linkages noted in Figures 1 and 2 this kind of analysis is not available. For example, Blust (1993) argues that CEMP was a linkage. But its history is far from clear. Does CEMP perhaps include some languages that share history with languages to their west and others that share history with those to their north? The North/Central Vanuatu linkage, long assumed to be some sort of genealogical unit, appears to reflect the partial reintegration of at east two dialect networks, North Vanuatu and Central Vanuatu, that probably had not diverged greatly from each other, but the details of this history are difficult to elucidate (Lynch 2000c).¹³

The languages of a linkage have no identifiable exclusively shared parent.Yet we have found many instances in which a cognate set is limited to one of the linkages in Figures 1 and 2: CEMP, Western Oceanic, New Guinea Oceanic, Southern Oceanic or the reintegrated North and Central Vanuatu linkage. As with PEOc and PROc (§1.3.2.4), we think it is preferable to attribute these reconstructions to a hypothetical protolanguage rather than to a higher node in the tree. Hence there are reconstructions labelled PCEMP, PWOc and so on.

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Again these apparent lexical innovations offer only the weakest evidence for the protolanguage to which they are attributed. In addition to the explanations of the kinds offered for PEOc and PROc etyma in §1.3.2.4 it is possible, for example, that an innovatory ‘PWOc’ etymon arose when the Western Oceanic dialect network was still close-knit, and spread from dialect to dialect before the network broke into the two networks ancestral to its present-day first-order subgroups.

3.2.3. Further notes on subgroups⇫

This section brings together brief notes on the subgroups in Figure 2 beyond those mentioned in the discussion in §1.3.2.2.

Admiralty is a proper subgroup Ross (1988: ch.9).

Western Oceanic consists of the North New Guinea linkage (NNG), Papuan Tip family (PT), Meso-Melanesian linkage (MM) and the Sarmi/Jayapura (SJ) group (see Map 4). The last-named may belong to the NNG linkage, but this is uncertain Ross (1996b). It is not shown in Figure 2 and its languages do not play a crucial role in reconstruction. It is possible that the NNG and PT groups form a super-group, the New Guinea Oceanic linkage, and so etyma reflected only in NNG and PT languages are attributed to a putative Proto New Guinea Oceanic (Milke 1958, Pawley 1978), and etyma reflected in either NNG or PT (or both) and in MM are labelled PWOc.

SE Solomonic was established as a proper subgroup by Pawley (1972:98–110). Further support was provided by Levy (1979, 1980, n.d.), Tryon & Hackman (1983) and Lichtenberk (1988). Lichtenberk (1994b) and Pawley (2011) look at the internal structure of SE Solomonic.

Temotu comprises the languages of the Reef Islands, Santa Cruz, Utupua and Vanikoro, located 400 km east of the main Solomons archipelago and to the north of Vanuatu (Map 3). Its identity as a proper subgroup of Oceanic was established by Ross & Næss (2007) and further supported by Næss & Boerger (2008).

The Southern Oceanic linkage as proposed by Lynch (1999, 2000c, 2001d, 2004b) is characterised by complex overlapping innovations, but by none that are reflected in all its member languages and would qualify it as a proper subgroup (see discussion in Lynch et al. 2002:112–114).¹⁴

Micronesian is a proper subgroup (Jackson 1983, 1986, Bender et al. 2003).

Central Pacific is a proper subgroup, but one defined by only a handful of shared innovations, indicating that the period of unity was short (Geraghty 1996). The high-order subgrouping of Central Pacific is due to Geraghty (1983), except for the position of Rotuman, due to Pawley (1996b). Within Central Pacific is another long recognised proper subgroup, Polynesian, for which Pawley (1996a) lists diagnostic innovations.

3.2.4. Criteria for reconstruction⇫

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The strength of a lexical reconstruction rests crucially on the distribution of the supporting cognate set across subgroups. The distribution of cognate forms and agreements in their meanings is much more important than the number of cognates. It is enough to make a secure reconstruction if a cognate set occurs in just two languages in a family, with agreement in meaning, provided that the two languages belong to different primary subgroups and provided that there is no reason to suspect that the resemblances are due to borrowing or chance. The PMP term *apij ‘twins’ is reflected in several western Malayo-Polynesian languages (e.g. Batak apid ‘twins, double (fused) banana’) but only a single Oceanic reflex is known, namely Roviana avisi ‘twins of the same sex’. Because Roviana belongs to a different first-order branch of Malayo-Polynesian from the western Malayo-Polynesian witnesses and because there is virtually no chance that the agreement is due to borrowing or chance similarity, this distribution is enough to justify the reconstruction of PMP *apij, POc *apic ‘twins’.

The rake-like form of Figure 2 almost certainly reflects the very rapid settlement of Oceania out of the Bismarcks,¹⁵ but it confronts us with a methodological question. If we follow the rubric that we make a reconstruction if a cognate set occurs in languages of just two primary subgroups, then reflexes of an etymon in, say, a SE Solomonic language and a Micronesian language would be sufficient evidence for a POc reconstruction and the absence of reflexes in Admiralty and Western Oceanic would be irrelevant. Given what we know about the location of the POc homeland (in the Bismarcks; vol.2, ch.2) and the early eastward spread of Oceanic speakers, this is too loose a criterion. Instead, we assume two hypothetical nodes not shown in the tree in Figure 2.¹⁶ These are

• Remote Oceanic, comprising Southern Oceanic, Micronesian and Central Pacific;
• Eastern Oceanic, comprising SE Solomonic and Remote Oceanic.¹⁷

If a cognate set occurs in two or all three of the groups in Remote Oceanic, the reconstruction is attributed to PROc (PROc). If a cognate set occurs in one or more of the groups in Remote Oceanic and in SE Solomonic, it is attributed to Proto Eastern Oceanic (PEOc). In this way we acknowledge that such reconstructions may represent an innovation that postdates the spread of the early Oceanic speech community. There are enough PROc and PEOc reconstructions to suggest that such lexical innovations indeed occurred. This in turn provides evidence for Remote Oceanic and Eastern Oceanic subgroups, but evidence that is too weak to be relied on, for at least two reasons. First, it is quite possible that some of our PROc and PEOc reconstructions will be promoted to POc as more Admiralty and Western Oceanic data become available. Second, it is reasonable to assume that some of our PROc and PEOc etyma are of POc antiquity but happen to have been lost in Proto Admiralty and Proto Western Oceanic. Without supporting phonological or morphological evidence we are unwilling to treat PROc or PEOc as anything other than convenient hypothetical groups which allow us to retain conservative criteria for a POc reconstruction.

FIXME: relabel reconstructions in vol 1 and 2?

A reconstruction here labelled ‘PROc’ was in volume 1 or 2 labelled ‘PEOc’, but if its supporting data include no SE Solomonic reflexes, it has the same status as a PROc reconstruction in volumes 3 and 4 and the present volume. Two factors have led to the distinction between PEOc and PROc in more recent volumes. One is that the historical separateness of SE Solomonic from both Western Oceanic and the groups treated as Remote Oceanic has become increasingly clear through recent research (Pawley 2009). The other, especially relevant to volume 3, is that the primary biogeographic divide in Oceania is between Near and Remote Oceania (see vol. 2, Map 5), i.e. between the main Solomons archipelago and the Temotu islands. Whether or not a plant name has a SE Solomonic reflex is thus significant. Many plant names do not, and are thus attributed in volume 3 to PROc.

Our criterion for attributing a reconstruction to POc is that the cognate set must occur in at least two out of four criterial groupings: Admiralties (or Yapese or Mussau), Western Oceanic, Temotu and our hypothetical Eastern Oceanic. Both here and at the hypothetical interstages defined above, no reconstruction is made if there are grounds to infer borrowing from one of these groupings to another.¹⁸ We also reconstruct an etymon to POc if it is reflected in just one of the four criterial groupings and in a non-Oceanic Austronesian language (a member of one of the subgroups on the left branches in Figure 1), as illustrated above by the reconstruction of POc *apic ‘twins’.

These criteria are identical to those applied in volumes 1 and 2 except for the addition of Temotu (which figures in few cognate sets). The establishment of Temotu as a primary subgroup (Ross & Næss 2007) postdates the publication of volumes 1 and 2.

There are indications that Yapese (a single-language subgroup) and Mussau and Tench (a subgroup with two closely related languages) may be more closely related to Admiralty than to any other Oceanic subgroup,¹⁹ and for this reason they are tentatively treated as Admiralty languages for the purposes of reconstruction. That is, the presence of a reflex in one or more of these languages and in Admiralty does not support a POc reconstruction, but the presence of of a reflex in one or more of these languages and one of Western Oceanic, Temotu and Eastern Oceanic does support one.

In chapter 2 (§4) of volume 2 Pawley discusses Blust’s (1998a) proposal that the primary split in Oceanic divides Admiralty from a subgroup embracing all other Oceanic languages. Pawley dubs the latter ‘Nuclear Oceanic’. If Blust’s subgrouping were accepted, then an etymon which lacked cognates outside Oceanic would need to be reflected both in an Admiralties language and in a non-Admiralties language for a POc reconstruction to be made. Etyma with reflexes in both Western and Eastern Oceanic, but not in the Admiralties, would be reconstructed as Proto Nuclear Oceanic. Under the criteria outlined above, however, we attribute these reconstructions to POc. These criteria were used in volumes 1 and 2, and we have thought it wise to maintain them throughout the volumes of this work. The reader who wishes to single out reconstructions attributable to a putative Proto Nuclear Oceanic (rather than to POc) can easily recognise them, however. They are those POc reconstructions for which (i) there are no Admiralties reflexes, and (ii) there is no higher-order reconstruction (i.e. PEMP, PCEMP, PMP or PAn), since the latter would be based on cognates outside Oceanic.

3.3. Sound correspondences⇫

As we noted above, reconstruction depends on working out the systematic sound correspondences among cognate vocabulary in contemporary languages and on having a working hypothesis about how the sounds of POc have changed and are reflected in modern Oceanic languages. Working out sound correspondences even for twenty languages is a large task, and so we have relied heavily on our own previous work and the work of others. The sound correspondences we have used are those given by Ross (1988) for Western Oceanic and Admiralties; by Levy (1979, 1980) and Lichtenberk (1988) for Cristobal-Malaitan, by Pawley (1972) and Tryon & Hackman (1983) for SE Solomonic; by Ross & Næss (2007) for Temotu; by Tryon (1976) and Clark (2009) for North and Central Vanuatu; by Lynch (1978b, 2001c) for Southern Vanuatu; by Geraghty (1989), Haudricourt & Ozanne-Rivierre (1982), Ozanne-Rivierre (1992, 1995) and Lynch (2015) for New Caledonia; by Jackson (1986) and Bender et al. (2003) for Nuclear Micronesian; by Geraghty (1986) for Central Pacific; by Biggs (1978) for Polynesian; by Ross (1996a) for Yapese; and by Ross (1996b) for Oceanic languages of Irian Jaya.

For non-Oceanic languages we have referred to sound correspondences given by Tsuchida (1976) for Formosan languages; by Zorc (1977, 1986) and Reid (1982) for the Philippines; by Adelaar (1992b) and Nothofer (1975) for Malay and Javanese; by Sneddon (1984) for Sulawesi; by Collins (1983) for Central Maluku; and by Blust (1978a) for South Halmahera and Irian Jaya.

We are aware that regular sound correspondences can be interfered with in various ways: by phonetic conditioning that the analyst has not identified (see, e.g., Blust (1996a)), by borrowing (for an extreme Oceanic case, see Grace 1996), or, as recent research suggests, by the frequency of an item’s use (Bybee 1994). We have tried at least to note, and sometimes to account for, irregularities in cognate sets.

3.4. Proto Oceanic phonology and orthography⇫

3.4.1. Reconstructed Proto Oceanic phonology⇫

Work based on the sound correspondences of both Oceanic and non-Oceanic languages has resulted in the reconstructed paradigm of POc phonemes shown in Table 1. The orthography used here and in the POc reconstructions in this work is from Ross (1988), with the addition of *pʷ and *kʷ. The terms ‘oral grade’ and ‘nasal grade’ and the relationship of POc phonology to PMP are discussed in §1.3.4.2.

Table 2 shows two POc orthographies. The first was established by Biggs (1965), for PEOc, and Grace (1969), who applied it to POc. It has been used with a number of variants, separated by a slash in Table 2. The second, introduced by Ross (1988), is the one generally used in this work. One matter not discussed here is POc stress, for which see Lynch (2000a).

Table 1 Reconstructed paradigm of POc phonemes

*pʷ	*p	*t	*c	*k	*kʷ	*q
*bʷ	*b	*d	*j	*g
		*s
*mʷ	*m	*n	*ñ	*ŋ
		*r				*R
		*dr
		*l
*w			*y

*i		*u
*e		*o
	*a

Table 2 POc orthographies after Grace (1969) and Ross (1988)

Grace	oral grade	*p	—	*t	*d/*r	*s	*j	*k	—
Ross		*p	*pʷ	*t	*r	*s	*c	*k	*kʷ

Grace	nasal grade	*mp	*ŋp/*mpw	*nt	*nd/*nr	*nj	*ŋk
Ross		*b	*bʷ	*d	*dr	*j	*g

Grace	*m	*ŋm/*mw	*n	*ñ	*ŋ	*w	*y	*l	*q	*R
Ross	*m	*mʷ	*n	*ñ	*ŋ	*w	*y	*l	*q	*R

Grace	*i	*o	*e	*a	*u
Ross	*i	*o	*e	*a	*u

3.4.2. The Proto Austronesian and Proto Malayo-Polynesian antecedents of Proto Oceanic phonology⇫

Oceanic languages reflect a set of shared innovations relative to PMP (see Table 3) and it was on the basis of some of these that Dempwolff (1937) first recognised Oceanic as a major Austronesian subgroup. The innovations which occurred over the pre-POc period were mergers and splits, the introduction of new phonemes, and one deletion, as follows:

1. The PMP voiced/voiceless pairs *p, *b and *k, *g merged respectively as early pre-POc *p and *k. Ozanne-Rivierre (1992) suggests that the corresponding *t, *d merger was hindered by their mismatch in point of articulation (dental vs alveolar).
2. The PMP pairs *s, *z and *d, *r merged respectively as pre-POc *s and *d (phonetically probably [r], since Eastern Malayo-Polynesian cognates are liquids).
3. PMP and a number of its descendants had word-medial homorganic nasal + obstruent sequences (not shown in the table). Some instances of the pre-POc word-initial obstruents *p, *t, *k, *d/r, *s and *j also acquired a preceding homorganic nasal (the occurrence of this process is unpredictable and its causes largely unknown). These sequences became the unitary POc prenasalised voiced obstruents.
4. The labiovelars *pʷ, *bʷ, *mʷ and *kʷ entered the language (Blust 1981a, Lynch 2002e, Ross 2011). Most of the items containing a labiovelar lack non-Oceanic cognates, and some, at least, must have been borrowed into POc from neighbouring Papuan languages. For example, it can be argued that *mʷapo(q) ‘taro’ was borrowed by POc speakers as they acquired more sophisticated taro-growing techniques from Papuan speakers (vol.3:267). A few of these items were inherited into POc, and the labiovelar was the reflex of a labial occurring next to a round vowel. However, it is not clear in these items that the labiovelar actually occurred in POc. Thus a number of Oceanic languages reflect *tamʷata ‘man, husband’, derived from *tau ‘body, person’ + *mataq ‘unripe, immature, young’, but we cannot be sure whether this or *taumata(q) was the POc form (§2.2.2.1)
5. PMP *h was lost in POc.
6. PMP *e, phonetically [ə], became POc *o, and the PMP word-final diphthongs *-uy(-),²⁰ *-aw and *-ay were simplified to POc *-i, *-o and *-e respectively, the first two thereby merging with plain vowels.

Table 3 Correspondences between PMP and POc protophonemes²¹

PAn		*p, *b	—	*t, *C	*d, *r	*s, *z	*j	*k, *g	—
PMP		*p, *b	—	*t	*d, *r	*s, *z	*j	*k, *g	—
POc	oral grade:	*p	*pʷ	*t	*r	*s	*c	*k	*kʷ
	nasal grade:	*b	*bʷ	*d	*dr	*j		*g	—

PAn	*m	—	*n, *-L(-)	*ñ	*ŋ	*w	*y	*l, *L-	*q	*R	*S
PMP	*m	—	*n	*ñ	*ŋ	*w	*y	*l	*q	*R	*h
POc	*m	*mʷ	*n	*ñ	*ŋ	*w	*y	*l	*q	*R	*∅

PAn/PMP	*i, *-uy(-)	*e [ə], *-aw	*-ay	*a	*u
POc	*i	*o	*e	*a	*u

The combined effect of (a) and (c) is that each of the PMP pairs *p, *b and *k, *g first merged and then split. As a result, for example, PMP *p became either POc *p or POc *b, and the same was true of PMP *b, giving the kind of crossover seen in the initial consonants of these examples:

PMP *panas ‘hot, warm’	POc *panas
PMP *punay ‘wild pigeon’	POc *bune
PMP *baqeRuh ‘new’	POc *paqoRu
PMP *beRek ‘pig’	POc *boRok ‘domestic pig’.

Similarly, either PMP *k or PMP *g could become either POc *k or POc *g. For example,

PMP *kuden ‘cooking pot’	POc *kuron
PMP *kabut ‘mist’	POc *gabu
PMP *gapgap ‘stammer’	POc *kaka(p)
PMP *gemgem ’make a fist	POc *gogo(m), *gom-i ‘hold in the fist’

An innovation that has come to light during work on these volumes concerns certain PMP trisyllabic roots with *-e- (*[ə]) as the nucleus of their second syllable. These trisyllables lost *-e- in POc, along with the second consonant of the resulting consonant cluster. Thus PMP *buteliR ‘wart’ became POc *putiR (§5.3.2.5). Other etyma where this happened are PMP *buqeni, POc *puni ‘ringworm, Tinea imbricata’ (§5.3.3.2), PMP *tuqelan, POc *tuqan ‘bone’ (§3.3.4), PMP *baReqaŋ, POc *paRa(ŋ) ‘molar tooth’ (§3.4.12.5), PMP *biseqak ‘split’, POc *pisa(k)~*pisak-i- (vol.1:261), and PMP *ma-udehi, POc *muri ‘be behind’ (vol.2:251 and §6.5.3), PMP *ma-heyaq ‘shy, embarrassed; ashamed’, POc *maya(q) (§11.4.2). The conditioning of this change remains unclear, as it did not affect PMP *maqesak, POc *maosak ‘ripe, cooked’ (vol.1:157), PMP *baqeRu, POc *paqoRu ‘new’ (vol.2:203), PMP *qateluR, POc *qatoluR ‘egg’ (vol.4:278) or PMP *qulej-an, *quloc-a(n) ‘maggoty’ (vol.4:415).²²

3.5. Proto Oceanic bound verbal morphology²³⇫

Because reconstructions in the present volume more often entail POc bound morphemes than those in previous volumes, this section briefly revisits aspects of POc morphology described in chapter 2 (§3) of volume 1. This is a consequence of the present volume’s subject matter. Many of the reconstructions in chapter 3 are of nouns denoting inalienably possessed body-parts that entail the direct possession construction, which is described in §3.1.1.

Chapters 4 and 6–11 are overwhelmingly concerned with the reconstruction of verbs denoting events and states.²⁴ POc had only a rather small class of adjectives (properly, adjectival nouns; Ross 1998a), and many states were encoded as verbs. The following subsections deal briefly with the morphology of POc verb stems. The POc verb complex is reconstructed by Pawley (2003b). Verbs evidently took a proclitic indexing their subject and, if transitive, an enclitic indexing their object, e.g. POc *i=kiniti=au ‘he pinched me’ (cf. Manam i-ʔint-a).²⁵ In many daughter languages these are a prefix and a suffix, and their obligatory presence is often indicated in cognate-set data by a preceding and following hyphen.

3.5.1. A-verbs, U-verbs and statives⇫

In English—and many other languages—intransitive verbs can be divided into those which intrinsically only have one participant, like ‘die’, ‘fall’, ‘walk’ and ‘swim’, and those which could have a second but unspecified participant, like ‘eat [s.t.]’, ‘kick [s.o.]’ and ‘hunt [s.t.]’. In English an intransitive verb with a second but unspecified participant usually has the actor as its single argument.²⁶ One says John ate or John ate the bread, but not *The bread ate (meaning that someone ate it). In some Oceanic languages, however, there is a subclass of intransitive verbs which do work like ate in *The bread ate. They denote a semantic relation with a potential second participant, but the subject of the verb is the undergoer, not the actor, as in this sentence:

• • Boumā (Fij): (Dixon 1988:204)

    ‘The sugarcane is being crushed.’ (literally ‘The sugarcane crushes’)

    e	gagi	a	dovu
    S:3S	crush	ART	sugarcane

This and the following examples are from Boumaa Fijian.

The potential second participant is of course the actor, who emerges in the transitive version of the verb (which in this—but not every—case has the same form as the intransitive).

• • Boumā (Fij)

    ‘I’m crushing the sugarcane.’

    au	gagi-a	a	dovu.
    S:1S	crush-O:3S	ART	sugarcane

Intransitive verbs of this kind are here called U-verbs (‘undergoer verbs’). Their existence in Fijian has long been recognised (Arms 1974a, Biggs 1974, Foley 1976), and has also been documented for Longgu by Hill (1992) and for Hoava by Davis (2003:113). Evans (2003:26-32) suggests that U-verbs are quite common in Oceanic languages.

Some Oceanic languages, like Fijian, have two other subclasses of intransitive verb. One is the subclass of U-verbs which contains stative or ‘adjectival’ verbs, as in this example:²⁷

• • Boumā (Fij)

    ‘This dog is black.’

    e	loaloa	a	ʔolii	ya
    S:3S	be.black	ART	dog	this

These verbs are stative in the sense that they denote states. In actual use, statives were and are often used inchoatively, i.e. of coming to be in a state. This explains why, for example, *mate and many of its reflexes mean both ‘be dead’ and ‘die’, as well as ‘be unconscious’ and ‘faint, become unconscious’ (§4.2.1.2). The difference between stative meaning and inchoative meaning was and is made by using a verb in differing grammatical constructions. Specifically, the stative meaning was indicated by a perfective construction, as it is in Sa’a mae ʔoto ‘quite dead’ and Manam -mate tina ‘dead + intensifier’.

Contrasting with U-verbs are A-verbs (‘actor verbs’), which resemble English intransitives in that the actor is the subject both of the intransitive and of its transitive counterpart.²⁸

• 1. Boumā (Fij): (Dixon 1988)

     ‘I’m kicking.’

     au	rabe
     S:1S	kick

  2. Boumā (Fij): (Dixon 1988)

     ‘I’m kicking the ball.’

     au	rabe-t-a	a	polo
     s:1s	kick-TR-O:3S	ART	ball

Dixon (1988:205) notes that Boumaa Fijian A-verbs are mostly verbs of motion like ‘go’, ‘jump’, ‘creep’, ‘fly’ etc, whereas U-verbs are mostly verbs of affect: ‘crush’, ‘bend’, ‘fold’, ‘squeeze’, ‘tie up’ etc. The same appears to be true of Longgu (Hill 1992). This is noteworthy, because it means that U-verbs denote semantic relations which one would expect to be prototypically transitive (Hopper and Thompson 1980) (and they do have transitive counterparts, as the sugarcane-crushing example illustrates).

Unfortunately, the data usually do not allow us to distinguish between U- and A-verbs in our glosses of intransitives, but there are a few exceptions, e.g. POc *kilat (U-verb) ‘be seen clearly, discerned, recognised’ (§8.2). In many languages it is not clear whether there are U- verbs. Some sources (e.g. Capell’s 1941 dictionary of Bauan Fijian and Fox’s 1955 dictionary of Gela) often gloss U-verbs as if they were A-verbs.

Oceanic languages have an array of valency-changing morphemes, described in §§1.3.5.2–1.3.5.5, which interact with A- and U-verbs in various ways to shift semantic roles (but only rarely to add a second object). These are all lexical derivations. In other words, they are partially unpredictable, and lack the productivity of a voice system.

3.5.2. Transitivising morphology: *-i and *-akin[i]⇫

POc had two transitivising suffixes (or perhaps enclitics), *-i and *-akin[i]. When *-i was added to an A-verb, its valency was increased by the addition of an object. When it was added to a U-verb, the undergoer subject became the object and its valency was increased by the addition of an actor subject, as illustrated in the examples in §1.3.5.1.

It is somewhat inaccurate, however, to talk about “POc *-i”, as the morpheme had a zero alternant. POc verb roots were mostly disyllabic and either consonant-final or vowel-final, that is, (C)V(C)VC or (C)V(C)V. The canonic shape of the root alone determined its transitive form. The transitive of a consonant-final root was formed with *-i, but with a vowel-final root like *wase- ‘share (s.t.) out’ or *kati- ‘husk (s.t.) with teeth’, no transitive suffix occurred and the object enclitic was added directly to the root (Evans 1995, 2003:96-99, 106-118). A probable exception were roots ending in *-a, where the suffix *-i- may have occurred between the root and the object enclitic, at least when the enclitic itself began with *a (*=au o:1s, *=a o:3s). In Table 4 are some reconstructed POc A- verbs and U-verbs, both consonant-final and vowel-final, with their corresponding transitives.

POc *-akin[i] was an applicative suffix which increased the valency of an intransitive verb by the addition of an object (or in some cases perhaps simply replaced *-i on a transitive verb that no longer had an intransitive counterpart). Whereas the object of a verb formed with *-i (or zero) was typically a patient or location, however, the object of a verb formed with *-akin[i] typically had some other semantic role. With a verb of movement, for example, it was an entity that accompanied the actor, e.g. Bauan Fijian ðiði ‘run’, ðiðiv-i ‘run to’, ðiðiv-aki run off with (s.t.)’ (§6.6). With a verb of cognition or emotion it was a cause or stimulus, e.g. Bauan Fijian leva ‘be angry’, levað-i ‘be angry with (s.o)’, levat-aki ‘be angry about (what s.o. has done)’. With a verb of bodily emission it was the emitted substance, e.g. Bauan Fijian lua ‘vomit’, luað-a ‘vomit on s.t.’, luar-ak-a ‘vomit s.t. up’ (§4.4.4).

Table 4 Proto Oceanic transitivising *-i

	intransitive		corresponding transitive
A-verbs	*kinit	‘pinch’	*kinit-i-	‘pinch (s.o/s.t)’
	*inum	‘drink’	*inum-i-	‘drink (s.t.)’
	*kati	‘husk with teeth’	*kati-	‘husk (s.t.) with teeth’
	*muri	‘follow’	*muri-	‘follow (s.t./s.o.)’
U-verbs	*pʷosa(k)	‘be cracked open’	*pʷosak-i-	‘crack (s.t.) open’
	*loŋoR	‘be audible’	*loŋoR-i-	‘hear, listen to’
	*soka	‘be pierced, stabbed’	*soka-i-	‘pierce, stab (s.t./s.o.)’
	*wase	‘be shared out’	*wase-	‘share (s.t.) out’
	*poli	‘be bought’	*poli-	‘buy (s.t.)’

We follow Evans (2003) in reconstructing *-akin[i], indicating that the morpheme had two forms, *-aki(n) and *-akini, formally parallel to the alternation between intransitive and transitive forms with consonant-final roots in Table 4 (Clark 1973). Indeed, there is good evidence that *-akin[i] was once a verb. The final *-n of the *-aki(n) variant is, however, nowhere preserved. Instead, we find -aki, -aʔi and other such reflexes, reduced in some Oceanic languages (e.g. Tawala [PT]) to -e.

In POc, *-i and *-akin[i] were often added to an intransitive root with a final consonant, like *taŋis ‘weep’, but in many Oceanic languages word-final consonants have been lost, with the result that when the ancient consonant is retained before a transitive affix it is interpreted as part of the suffix, as in Wayan Fijian taŋi ‘weep’ vs taŋi-ði- ‘cry for (s.o.)’ and taŋi-ðakini- ‘cry about (s.t.)’. This has had the consequence that, at least in SE Solomonic and Fijian languages, the inherited consonant has been replaced by another consonant, as in the verbs above derived from Bauan Fijian leva and lua.

Table 5 summarises the valency-changing devices putatively used with the three POc verb classes. This situation remains more or less unchanged in many daughter languages. Column 2 indicates a difference between U-verbs and statives: a transitive verb could be formed with *-i from either an A-verb or a U-verb, but a transitive could be formed from a stative only with one of the causative prefixes *pa- and *paka-, which are the topic of the next subsection.

Table 5 Classes of intransitive verb in Proto Oceanic

	1	2	3
	intransitive subject	forms a transitive with *-i ?	forms a causative?
A-verbs	A	yes	yes
U- verbs	U	yes	yes
Stative verbs	U	no	yes

3.5.3. Causativising morphology: *pa- and *paka-⇫

POc causatives were formed with one of the two widely reflected prefixes *pa- and *paka-, usually accompanied by the transitiviser *-i. A given Oceanic language reflects either *pa- or *paka-, but not both. This is curious, as it compels us to reconstruct two POc prefixes with apparently the same function. However, the history of the two forms is well known. In PAn and PMP *pa-ka- causativised stative or non-agentive verbs (*ka- marked a verb stem as stative or non-agentive: see §1.3.5.4), whereas *pa- causativised dynamic, agentive verbs (Zeitoun & Huang 2000, Ross 2015). The fact that their reflexes are in contrast in no known Oceanic language indicates that when POc broke up, the distinction between them had been lost but the two forms continued to coexist.

Table 5 shows that causatives could be formed from all three POc verb classes. Indeed, this was the only way that a transitive verb could be formed from a stative. The causative adds an actor argument, the causer, to the verb, as these Boumaa Fijian examples show. The verb vuli ‘learn’ in (a) is an A-verb, so its actor subject is the same as that of the transitive in (b). The causative in (c) introduces the causer argument o Jone ‘John’, and the actor becomes its object. The object of (b), ‘arithmetic’, is an oblique in both the intransitive of (a) and the causative of (c). In (d) the verb ʔau ‘take, carry’ is a U-verb, so its subject ‘letter’ in (a) becomes the object of the transitive in (b) and of the causative in (c).

• 1. Boumā (Fij)

     ‘I am learning (about arithmetic).’

     au	sā	vuli	(i-na	fika)
     S:1S	ASP	learn	PREP-ART	arithmetic

  2. Boumā (Fij)

     ‘I am learning arithmetic.’

     au	sā	vuli-ŋa	a	fika
     S:1S	ASP	learn-TR:O:3S	ART	arithmetic

  3. Boumā (Fij): (Dixon 1988:50)

     ‘John is teaching me (arithmetic).’

     e	sā	vaʔa-vuli-ŋi	au	o	Jone	(i-na	fika)
     s:3s	ASP	CAUS-learn-TR	O:1S	ART	John	PREP-ART	arithmetic

  4. Boumā (Fij)

     ‘The letter is being taken/sent.’

     e	ʔau	yane	a	ivola
     s:1s	take	thither	ART	letter

  5. Boumā (Fij)

     ‘The youth is taking the letter.’

     e	ʔaut-a	yane	a	ivola	a	ðauravou
     s:1s	take-o:3s	thither	ART	letter	ART	youth

  6. Boumā (Fij): (Dixon 1988:185)

     ‘The woman is posting (= causing to be sent) the letter.’

     e	vaʔa-ʔau-ta	yane	a	ivola	a	marama
     s:1s	CAUS-take-O:3S	thither	ART	letter	ART	woman

Boumaa Fijian, like many other Oceanic languages, has no ditransitive verbs, so one of the three roles potentially associated with the causative must become an oblique or disappear, as happens in (c) and (f).

The situation described with regard to transitivisation and causativisation in Boumaa Fijian also holds with various complications or simplifications in many other Oceanic languages and presumably did so in POc.

3.5.4. Detransitivising morphology: reduplication, *ma-/*ka-, *ta- and *paRi-⇫

Detransitivising morphology took four forms in POc: reduplication and the prefixes *ma-/*ka-, *ta- and *paRi-. Only *paRi- remained as productive in POc as the transitivising and causativising morphology described in the two preceding subsections. It formed reciprocals,²⁹ and reflexes occasionally appear in the data, and are marked ‘reciprocal’ accordingly.

The other three pieces of detransitivising morphology shared the function of reducing a verb’s valency from two to one. Reduplication turned a transitive into an A-verb (Evans 2003:81–84, 301). This was perhaps the most productive of POc’s detransitiving stategies, as Evans reports a number of languages reflecting an apparent POc *kani-kani (VI) ‘eat’, from *kani (VT) ‘eat’, in competition with inherited *paŋan (VI) ‘eat’, discussed in §1.3.5.5.

On Evans’ analysis (2003:268–279, 300), POc *ma- had several functions. One was to turn a transitive into a U-verb, e.g. POc *ma-kini(t) ‘be stung, have a stinging pain’ (§5.3.2.3), from POc *kinit, *kinit-i- ‘to pinch, nip’ (vol.1:280). Another was to form a stative from a dynamic verb or perhaps a noun, e.g. POc *ma-raqu ‘be thirsty’ (§4.3.3.2), *ma-draRa(q) ‘be bloody, bleed’ (§4.4.1), *ma-ridriŋ ‘be cold’ (§4.8.1), *ma-saki(t) (V) ‘be in pain, sick’ (§5.3.1), *matakut (VI) ‘be afraid’ (§11.4.1). In this function *ka- alternated with *ma- in POc, the outcome of a productive PMP alternation explained in §1.3.5.5, but it seems that neither was productive by the time POc broke up. The prefix *ma- is also found in a small number of non-stative intransitives with an experiencer subject, and the following are reconstructed in ch.4: POc *ma-soru ‘hiccup’ (§4.3.7.1), *ma-ñawa ‘breathe’ (§4.5.1), *mawap ‘yawn’ (§4.5.6), *ma-turu(R) ‘sleep, be asleep’ (§4.6.1).

The functions of *ta- were similar to those of *ma-, but with three differences. First, a U-verb with *ta- denoted an action or state that had seemingly occurred without the intervention of an agent, whereas *ma- remained unspecified with regard to agency. Second, *ta- appears to have been productive in POc, as it remains productive in some modern languages (Evans 2003:289–300). Reflexes of *ta- crop up in the data, but rarely in reconstructions, e.g. POc *ta-lili ‘be dizzy’ (§5.3.16), *ta-bulo(s) (VI) ‘turn round, turn back’, spontaneous derivative of bulos-i- (VT) ‘turn round, turn back’ (§6.4.2).

3.5.5. Malayo-Polynesian fossils: verbal morphology⇫

A number of Malayo-Polynesian fossils occur in the POc reconstructions in this volume. They are fossils in the sense that by the break-up of POc they were apparently fully integrated into the POc stems in which they are reflected, appear only sporadically, and had no productive function. Nonetheless, knowledge of parts of the verbal system of PMP is necessary to understanding how these forms came to be present in POc.³⁰

Table 6 A schematic representation of the English, PMP and POc voice systems (A = actor, U = undergoer, V = verb)

	English	PMP	POc
Transitive	active voice	undergoer voice	transitive
	ASUBJ V UOBJ	V AGENITIVE USUBJ	V A SUBJ UOBJ
Intransitive	passive voice	actor voice	intransitive
	USUBJ V [by A]	V ASUBJ [UOBLIQUE]	V ASUBJ [UOBLIQUE]

The relevant feature of the PMP system is a contrast between two voices.³¹ The English voice system distinguishes between a transitive active voice (e.g. The chicken bit a mango) and an intransitive passive voice (The mango was bitten [by the chicken]). The PMP voice system was organised differently. It had a transitive undergoer voice, i.e. the undergoer was the subject and the actor was marked as genitive (‘be-bitten of-the chicken the mango’). There was also an intransitive actor voice, i.e. the actor was subject and the undergoer, if any, was in an oblique case (‘bit the chicken [at a mango]’).³² This system is maintained in most languages of the Philippines, where specialists have labelled this kind of voice system a ‘focus’ system. The contrast between the English and PMP voice systems is presented in Table 6.

One would predict from this configuration that PMP actor-voice verbs gave rise to POc intransitives, while PMP undergoer-voice verbs became POc transitives, and, as Table 6 implies, this prediction is fulfilled, but with certain qualifications. Table 6 also indicates that at some point between the break-up of PMP and the emergence of POc, transitive clause structure was realigned so that the PMP (undergoer) subject became the POc object and the PMP genitive actor was reanalysed as the subject.

Table 7 shows the parts of the PMP voice paradigm that are relevant to POc. Forms in the grey cells did not survive as verbal morphemes in POc.³³ PMP had three sets of undergoer voices, marking the subject as semantic patient, location, and instrument or beneficiary respectively. PMP dependent forms occurred after an auxiliary, and it is these that have become the default POc forms.

Table 7 The PMP voice morphology (partial) (√ = verb root)

	independent		dependent
	neutral	perfective
Actor voice or intransitive	*⟨um⟩√	(*⟨um-in⟩√)	*√
Undergoer voice (patient)	(*√-en)	*⟨in⟩√	(*√-a)
Undergoer voice (location)	*√-an	(*⟨in⟩√-an)	*√-i
Undergoer voice (instrument/beneficiary)	(*i-√)	(*i-⟨in⟩√)	*√-áni

The typical POc intransitive is a plain or reduplicated root reflecting the PMP actor voice dependent form. The patient and location undergoer voice forms merged at some pre-POc stage, so that the location form *√-i became the POc transitive suffix, as described in §1.3.5.2. The PMP instrument/beneficiary undergoer voice form *√-áni³⁴ became a POc applicative *-ani, reflected in various Admiralties languages and Meso-Melanesian languages of New Ireland.³⁵ However, in a far larger number of Oceanic languages it has been replaced by POc *-akin[i], the origin of which is far from obvious, despite widespread reflexes in non-Oceanic Malayo-Polynesian languages (Evans 2003:157–170, Ross 2002).

The PMP dependent forms mentioned in the previous paragraph evidently remained productive in POc. The evidence suggests that the PMP independent forms that survived into POc were restricted in function and that the undergoer voice forms √-an and *⟨in⟩√ did not participate in realignment, becoming passives in scattered Oceanic languages.³⁶ Thus in clauses where these forms occurred, the PMP transitive construction V A_GENITIVE U_SUBJ noted in Table 6 became V U_SUBJ. Allomorphs of the PMP actor voice form *⟨um⟩√, meanwhile, survived as a fossil in various POc verbs, listed in Table 8. There were several such allomorphs. The infix *⟨um⟩ itself does not appear in POc forms, with two possible grey-shaded WOc exceptions. Instead, the survivors are allomorphs that are more readily reanalysed as part of the root. With a vowel-initial root, infix *⟨um⟩ became prefix *[u]m-, and with a labial-initial root, infix *⟨um⟩ also became *m- but here replacing the initial labial. There is just one example of the latter, at the bottom of Table 8.³⁷

Table 8 POc forms reflecting a fossilised allomorph of the PMP actor voice infix *⟨um⟩

Root forms			Forms reflecting *⟨um⟩
POc	*inum-i- (VT)	‘drink’	POc	*mʷinum (VI)	< *um-inum	§4.3.2.1
PAn	*utaq	‘vomit’	POc	*mutaq (VI)	< *(u)m-utaq	§4.4.4
POc	*ase	‘breathe’	POc	*mase	< *(u)m-ase	§4.5.1
POc	?*(k)asio	‘sneeze’	PROc	*mʷat(i,u)a	< *um-at(i,u)a	§4.5.9
PMP	*qaŋa[p,b]	‘gape etc’	POc	*maŋa(p)	< *q⟨um>aŋa(p)	§4.5.5
PMP	*hipi	‘dream’	POc	*mipi	< *(u)m-ipi	§4.6.3
POc	*turu-	‘knee, joint’	PWOc	*tudruŋ ‘kneel’	< *t⟨um⟩uruŋ	§6.2.4.2
POc	*k[i,u]su	‘spit’	PWOc	*kamisu/*kimusu	< *k⟨um⟩[i,u]su	§4.4.3
POc	*puni (VI)	‘hide’	POc	*muni	< *m-uni	§7.7.2

Table 9 POc forms reflecting fossilised PMP perfective infix *⟨in⟩

Root forms			Forms reflecting *⟨in⟩
PMP	*hipi	‘dream’	POc	*nipi	< *in-ipi	§4.6.3
POc	*k[i,u]su	‘spit’	POc	*kanisu	< *k⟨in⟩[i,u]su	§4.4.3

Not surprisingly, the perfective infix *⟨in⟩ occurs less often in lexicalised forms. The two possible cases are shown in Table 9, neither of them entirely convincing.

3.5.6. Malayo-Polynesian fossils: verbal derivations⇫

PMP also had certain derivational prefixes that were attached to roots to form stems to which the voice morphology of Table 7 then applied. Two of these, *ka- and *paN-, play a significant role in POc reconstruction.

The POc detransitivising morpheme *ma-, at least in its stative function (§1.3.5.4), reflected an ancient (pre-PAn) combination of *⟨um⟩ intransitive + *ka- stative. As a result POc has occasional *ka-/*ma- alternants, e.g. POc *ka-(r,R)aŋo ‘be dry, be low tide’ vs *[ma]Raŋo ‘become withered’ (vol.2:220) and POc *ka-uRi- vs POc *ma-wiRi, both ‘left- hand, be on the left; left side or direction’ (§3.6.3).

Table 10 POc forms reflecting a fossilised PMP *paN-, *N- or *maN-

Root forms			Forms reflecting *paN-
POc	*kani (VT)	‘eat’	POc	*paŋan (VI)	§4.3.1.1
PMP	*qaŋa[p,b]	‘gape etc’	POc	*paŋaŋap	§4.5.5
PMP	*takaw	‘steal’	POc	*panako	Ross 1988:41–42
POc	*roŋoR	‘hear’	POc	*panoŋoR	Geraghty 2010
PMP	*qetaq	‘eat raw’	POc	*paŋoda ‘gather shellfish’	vol.4:438; Geraghty 2010
Root forms			Forms reflecting *N-
POc	*sop-i	‘suck’	POc	*ño-ñop	§4.3.2.2
POc	*k[i,u]su	‘spit’	PWOc	*ŋ[i,u]su	§4.4.3
POc	*tari	‘wait’	Motu	nari	§7.7.1
Root forms			Forms reflecting *maN-
PMP	*qinit	‘heat, warmth’	POc	*maŋini(t) ‘become warm’	§4.8.2
POc	*[ma]raqu	‘be thirsty’	POc	*madraqu	§4.3.3.2
POc	*ma-ridri(ŋ)	‘(s.o.) be cold’	POc	*madridriŋ	§4.8.1
PAn	*diRi	‘stand’	POc	*madriRi	§6.2.2

More widely reflected is the PMP verb-deriving prefix *paN- and its allomorph *N-. Its history and function are unclear, other than that it formed dynamic verbs. It is barely present in Formosan languages, but ubiquitous in conservative Malayo-Polynesian languages.³⁸ The *N symbol here indicates a process that replaces a root-initial voiceless obstruent with a homorganic nasal, and places a homorganic nasal before a voiced obstruent and *-ŋ- before a root-initial vowel (Blust 2004). Reflexes of both *paN- and *N- occur in POc, with no discernible conditioning or difference in function. Systemically, a PMP stem with *paN- or *N- occupied the dependent actor-voice slot in Table 7, i.e. the slot from which POc intransitives were derived. The corresponding PMP independent actor-voice form was *maN-, which, like *⟨um⟩, is rarely reflected in POc. Reconstructed POc verbs that include these morphemes are shown in Table 10.

4. Conventions common to the series⇫

4.1. Presentation of reconstructions⇫

Each of the contributions to these volumes concerns a particular POc ‘terminology’. Generally, each contribution begins with an introduction to the issues raised by the reconstruction of its particular terminology, and the bulk of each contribution consists of reconstructed etyma with supporting data and a commentary on matters of meaning and form.

The reconstruction of POc *[ma]saki(t) (v) ‘be in pain, sick’; (N) ‘sickness’ below, adapted from Chapter 5, shows how reconstructions and supporting cognate sets are presented. Above it is a superordinate (PMP) reconstruction drawn from Blust’s Austronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD; see §1.2). Below it are supporting reflexes. Chapters vary in the degree to which lower-order reconstructions like PSV *a-misa below are included. Lower-order reconstructions are sometimes given to clarify the relationship of reflexes to the higher-order reconstruction: Southern Vanuatu languages, for example, have undergone so much phonological change that a Proto Southern Vanuatu reconstruction helps explicate the relationship between Southern Vanuatu reflexes and the POc reconstruction. Sometimes a lower-order reconstruction displays an extension of meaning or some other semantic change.

PMP	*masakit	‘be in pain, be sick’ (ACD)
POc	*[ma]sakit	(V) ‘be in pain, sick’; (N) ‘sickness’
NNG: Gitua	mazai	‘sick’
NNG: Kaulong	sahi	‘sick, sickness’
NNG: Mapos Buang	rak	‘sick’
NNG: Sengseng	sahi	‘sick’ (h reflects *g)
MM: Vitu	maðaɣi	‘sick’
MM: Tigak	masak	’be in painʼ
MM: Tolai	maki	(N) ‘pain, ache’; (VI) ‘to ache, be sore’
SES: Gela	(va)haɣi	’be in pain; be ill, have malariaʼ
SES: Talise	masaɣe	‘sick’
SES: Tolo	masahe	‘sick, ill; illness, disease’
SES: Kwaio	mataʔi	‘fever, malaria’
SES: To’aba’ita	mataʔi	(VI) ‘be sick’
SES: Arosi	(mara)mataʔi	‘to feel malaria coming on’
SES: Arosi	mataʔi	‘to have fever, malaria, be feverish’
SES: Sa’a	mataʔi	(VI) ‘malaria, to have malaria’
NCV: Dorig	msāɣ	‘fever’
NCV: Unua	mesaxit	‘sick’
PSV	*a-misa	‘sick, be in pain’ (Lynch 2001) (vowel metathesis)
SV: Lenakel	a-mha	‘be sick, in pain’
SV: Kwamera	a-misa	‘be sick, in pain’
SV: Anejom	e-mθa	‘be sick, in pain’
Mic: Ponapean	metek	‘be painful’
Mic: Woleaian	metax	‘sick, sickness, in pain’
Pn: Tongan	mahaki	‘sickness, disease, ailment’ (first element in many compounds) 39
Pn: Rennellese	masaki	‘sickness’ (first element in many compounds) 40
Pn: Samoan	maʔi	‘be sick; fall ill’ (first element in many com- pounds)
Pn: Tuvaluan	mahaki	‘illness’
Pn: Maori	mahaki	‘ill; sick person; cutaneous disease’

Because our supporting data are drawn from such a wide range of languages, the convention is adopted of prefixing each language name with the abbreviation for the genealogical or geographic group to which the language belongs, so that the distribution of a cognate set is more immediately obvious. Table 11 is a key to the labels. Figure 2 shows the positions of these groups in the Oceanic tree. We have sought to be consistent in always listing these groups in the same order, but contributors vary in the ordering of languages within groups.

Lynch’s recent research on Southern Oceanic (§1.3.2.3) renders the NCV group mildly anomalous, although there is no doubt that it reflects an integrated dialect network. There are a number of etyma whose reflexes are confined to North and Central Vanuatu, and so we continue to include ‘Proto North/Central Vanuatu’ reconstructions, even though these perhaps represent a Southern Oceanic term that has been lost in southern Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Where the distribution of reflexes requires it, the chapters in this volume include reconstructions for PROc and for PSOc. Etyma with these distributions were attributed to PEOc in volumes 1 and 2, but the distributions are transparent, thanks to the presence of the group labels in cognate sets.

In the interests of space we have not given the history of the reconstructions themselves, as this would often require commentary on the modifications made by others and by us, and on why we have made them. Where a reconstruction is not new, we have tried to give its earliest source, e.g. ‘ACD’ above, but this is difficult when earlier reconstructions differ in form and meaning.

Table 11 Abbreviations for the genealogical or geographic groups

Yap:	Yapese (one language)
Adm:	Admiralty and Mussau/Tench
NNG:	North New Guinea
SJ:	Sarmi/Jayapura
PT:	Papuan Tip
MM:	Meso-Melanesian
SES:	Southeast Solomonic
TM:	Temotu
NCV:	North/Central Vanuatu, i.e. the reintegrated network formed by the North and Central Vanuatu linkages
SV:	Southern Vanuatu
NCal:	Loyalty and New Caledonia
Mic:	Micronesian
Fij:	Fijian, i.e. the reintegrated network formed by Western and Eastern Fijian dialects
Pn:	Polynesian

In general, the contributions to these volumes are concerned with items reconstructable in POc, PWOc, PEOc, PROc and occasionally Proto New Guinea Oceanic (PNGOc). Etyma for PWOc, PNGOc and PEOc are reconstructed because these may well also be POc etyma for which known reflexes are not well distributed (see discussion in §1.3.2.4). Reconstructions for lower-order interstages are decreasingly likely to reflect POc etyma and may be the results of cultural change as Oceanic speakers moved further out into the Pacific.

Contributors to these volumes have usually not sought to make fresh reconstructions at interstages superordinate to POc. What they have done, however, is to cite other scholars’ reconstructions for higher-order interstages, as these represent a summary of the non-Oceanic evidence in support of a given POc reconstruction. These interstages are shown in Figure 1, together with their abbreviations.

Sometimes non-Oceanic evidence has been found to support a POc reconstruction where no reconstruction at a higher-level interstage has previously been made. In this case a new higher-order reconstruction is made, and the non-Oceanic evidence is given in a footnote.

Whilst we have tried to use the internal organisation of the lexicons of Oceanic languages themselves as a guide in setting the boundaries of each terminology, we have inevitably taken decisions which differ from those that others might have made. There are, obviously, overlaps and connections between various semantic domains and therefore between the contributions here. We have done our best to provide cross-references, but we have sometimes duplicated information rather than ask the reader repeatedly to look elsewhere in the book. Indexes at the end of each volume and in the final volume are intended to make it easier to use the volumes collectively as a work of reference.

4.2. Data⇫

Data sources are listed in Appendix 1.

For some reconstructed etyma only a representative sample of reflexes is given. We have endeavoured to ensure, however, that in each case this sample not only is geographically and genetically representative, but also provides evidence to justify the shape of the reconstruction. Where only a few reflexes are known to us, this is usually noted.

Although there are accepted or standard orthographies for a number of the languages from which data are cited here, all data are transcribed as far as possible into a standard phonemic orthography based on that used by Ross (1988:3–4) in order to facilitate comparison.⁴¹ This means, for example, that the j of the German-based orthographies of Yabem and Gedaged becomes y, Yabem c becomes ʔ, Gedaged z becomes ɬ and so on; the ng of English-based orthographies becomes ŋ; and Fijian g, q and c become ŋ, g and ð respectively.

The following symbols have more or less their usual IPA values: ð, ɢ, ɣ, h, k, l, ʟ, ɬ, ʎ, m, n, ŋ, ñ, p, q, χ, ɾ, r, s, t, w, x, z, ʔ, a, æ, e, ɛ, ə, i, ɨ, o, œ, ɔ, ʌ, u, ʉ, ɯ. As far as possible, however, our orthography is phonemic and does not show allophonic variation, so that there are instances where a symbol does not have its usual phonetic value. For example, Wayan Fijian k is a voiceless stop word-initially but [k] is in free or stylistic variation with [ɣ] word-medially. The voiced stops b, d, g and the voiced bilabial trill ʙ are prenasalised in some languages, but prenasalisation is not written unless it is phonemically distinctive. Where a language has just one rhotic, we usually write r, despite the fact that that rhotic is sometimes a flap. Other orthographic symbols (with values in IPA) are:

f	[ɸ, f]	voiceless bilabial or (less often) labio-dental fricative
v	[β, v]	voiced bilabial or (less often) labio-dental fricative
c	[ts], [ʧ]	voiceless alveolar or palatal affricate
j	[ʣ], [ʤ]	voiced alveolar or palatal affricate
y	[j]	palatal glide
dr	[ⁿr]	prenasalised voiced alveolar trill (as in Fijian)
ö	[ø]	rounded mid front vowel
ü	[y]	rounded high front vowel

Other superscripts and diacritics are as follows:

• contrastive long vowels are represented by a macron, e.g. ā;
• contrastive vowel nasalisation is represented by a tilde, e.g. ã;
• labialisation is marked by a superscript w, e.g. pʷ;
• velarisation is marked by a superscript ɯ, e.g. pᵚ;
• contrastive aspiration is marked by a superscript h, e.g. pʰ;
• apicolabials are represented by the corresponding apical symbol and the linguolabial diacritic (the ‘seagull’), e.g. t̼;
• retroflexes are represented by the corresponding apical symbol with a dot beneath, e.g. ṛ.

Except for inflexional morphemes, non-cognate portions of reflexes, i.e. derivational morphemes and non-cognate parts of compounds, are shown in parentheses (…). Where an inflexional morpheme is an affix or clitic and can readily be omitted, its omission is indicated by a hyphen at the beginning or end of the base. This applies particularly to possessor suffixes on directly possessed nouns (vol.1, ch.2, §3.2). Where an inflexional morpheme cannot readily be omitted, then it is separated from its base by a hyphen. This may happen because of complicated morphophonemics or because the morpheme is always present, like the adjectival -n in some NNG and Admiralties languages and prefixed reflexes of the POc article *na in scattered languages. When a reflex is itself polymorphemic (i.e. the morphemes reflect morphemes present in the reconstructed etymon) or contains a reduplication, the morphemes or reduplicates are also separated by a hyphen.

Languages from which data are cited in this volume are listed in Appendix B in their subgroups (proper or otherwise), together with an index allowing the reader to find the subgroup to which a given language belongs. Appendix B also includes alternative language names. The difficulty of deciding where the borderline between dialect and language lies, combined with the fact that these volumes contain work by a number of contributors, has resulted in some inconsistency in the naming of dialects in the cognate sets. Some occur in the form ‘Lukep (Pono)’, i.e. the Pono dialect of the Lukep language, whilst others are represented simply by the dialect name, e.g. Iduna, noted in Appendix B as ‘Iduna (= dialect of Bwaidoga)’.

4.3. Conventions used in representing reconstructions⇫

Reconstructions are marked with an asterisk, e.g. *manuka ‘ulcer, sore, wound’, a standard convention in historical linguistics. POc reconstructions, and also PWOc and PNGOc reconstructions, are given in the orthography of §1.3.4. For reconstructions at higher-order interstages the orthographies are those used by Blust in his various publications and the ACD. Reconstructions at lower-order interstages are given in the standard orthography used for data (§4.2). Geraghty’s (1986) PCP orthography, for example, based on Standard Fijian spelling, is converted into our standard orthography in the same way as Fijian spelling is. In practice, this means that the orthographies for PEOc, PROc and PCP are the same as for POc, except that a distinction between *p and *v is recognised and *R is generally absent from PCP.⁴² Biggs and Clark’s PPn reconstructions are in any case written in an orthography identical to our standard. Bracketing and segmentation conventions in protoforms are shown in Table 12.

Table 12 Bracketing and segmentation conventions in protoforms

(x)	it cannot be determined whether x was present
(x,y)	either x or y was present
[x]	the item is reconstructable in two forms, one with and one without x
[x,y]	the item is reconstructable in two forms, one with x and one with y
x-y	x and y are separate morphemes
x-	x takes an enclitic or a suffix
⟨x⟩	x is an infix

PMP final consonants are usually retained in POc in absolute word-final position. In many cases decisive evidence for retention or loss can be found in those Oceanic languages that usually retain final consonants. However, there are some cases where it is uncertain whether POc kept the PMP finals. This is so when a PMP etymon is not attested in an Oceanic language that consistently retains POc final consonants. An example is *-d in PMP *palahud ‘go down to the sea or coast’, a term reflected in Oceanic only in languages that regularly lose POc final consonants. In such cases the consonant is reconstructed in parentheses, e.g. POc *palau(r) ‘go to sea, make a sea voyage’.

In presenting words that display anomalies of form, it is often necessary to posit an expected form. For example, the Longgu term dau ‘hang down; drop anchor’ is presented in support of POc *tau(r) ‘hang, be suspended’ (§6.2.4.3). Given the reconstruction, however, we would expect the Longgu form to be tau. In this volume we use a less widely employed convention and mark expected forms with a dagger, e.g. ‘d- for †t-’ or ‘†tau’, to distinguish them both from reconstructions and real data.⁴³

Sometimes we need to refer to a reconstructed form that one would expect as the regular reflex of an established POc etymon, but which does not occur because an irregular sound change has occurred. In such cases the dagger and asterisk conventions are used together. For example, in §3.3.9, we reconstruct PNCV *kaRo ‘vine, rope; vein’. It is descended, however, from POc *waRo(c) ‘vine, creeper; string, rope; vein, tendon’, and the expected PNCV form, referred to in our discussion there, would be †*waRo. The dagger marks it as expected but not attested to.

When historical linguists compile cognate sets they commonly retain word for word the glosses given in the sources from which the items are taken. However, again in the interests of standardisation, we have often reworded (and sometimes abbreviated) the glosses of our sources, while preserving the meaning. Where glosses were in a language other than English we have translated them. In the interests of space and legibility, and because data often have multiple sources, we have given the source of a reflex only when it is not included in the listings in Appendix A.

Sometimes we use the convention of providing no gloss beside the items in a cognate set whose gloss is identical to that of the POc (or other lower-order) reconstruction at the head of the set, i.e. the reconstruction which they reflect.

Where necessary, we use ‘(N)’ to indicate that a gloss is a noun, and ‘(V)’, ‘(VI)’, or ‘(VT)’ to indicate that it is a verb, intransitive verb or transitive verb. Because in many environments transitive verbs were regularly formed from the intransitive stem by adding the suffix *-i- (§1.3.5.2), in many cases the intransitive and transitive verbs are simply shown in sequence, e.g. POc *qalo(p), *qalop-i- ‘beckon with the palm downward, wave’. In such cases, the first verb is always intransitive, the second (in *-i-) transitive.

Within glosses we use the conventional abbreviations ‘k.o.’ (as in ‘k.o. yam’) for ‘kind of’, ‘s.o.’ for ‘someone’ and ‘s.t.’ for ‘something’.

In putting together cognate sets we have quite often found possible cognates which do not quite ‘fit’ the set: they display unexplained phonological irregularities or their meaning is just a little too different from the rest of the set for us to assume cognacy. Rather than eliminate them we often include them below the cognate set under the rubric ‘cf. also’.

5. Indexes⇫

This volume has three indexes. The first, as in volumes 1–4, is an index of reconstructions arranged by their protolanguages. The second, as in volumes 3 and 4, is an alphabetical list of reconstructions. The third is an index to the English glosses.

Notes⇫