Proto-Oceanic language

Proto-Oceanic
Proto-Oceanic
POc
Reconstruction of	Oceanic languages
Region	Bismarck Archipelago
Era	ca. late 3rd millennium BCE
Reconstructed; ancestors	Proto-Austronesian Proto-Malayo-Polynesian ;
Lower-order reconstructions	Proto-Admiralty Islands; Proto-Western Oceanic; Proto-Temotu; Proto-Southeast Solomonic; Proto-Southern Oceanic; Proto-Micronesian; Proto-Central Pacific;

Proto-Oceanic (abbr. POc) is a proto-language that historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Oceanic is a descendant of the Proto-Austronesian language (PAN), the common ancestor of the Austronesian languages.

Proto-Oceanic was probably spoken around the late 3rd millennium BCE in the Bismarck Archipelago, east of Papua New Guinea.^[1] Archaeologists and linguists currently agree that its community more or less coincides with the Lapita culture.

^ Pawley, Andrew (2007), "Locating Proto Oceanic" (PDF), in Ross, Malcolm; Pawley, Andrew; Osmond, Meredith (eds.), The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The physical environment, vol. 2, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, pp. 17–34, hdl:1885/106908, ISBN 9781921313196, retrieved 12 December 2023

[1] Pawley, Andrew (2007), "Locating Proto Oceanic" (PDF), in Ross, Malcolm; Pawley, Andrew; Osmond, Meredith (eds.), The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The physical environment, vol. 2, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, pp. 17–34, hdl:1885/106908, ISBN 9781921313196, retrieved 12 December 2023

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