Proto-Polynesian_language

Proto-Polynesian language

Proto-Polynesian language

Common ancestor of the Polynesian languages

Proto-Polynesian (abbreviated PPn) is the hypothetical proto-language from which all the modern Polynesian languages descend. It is a daughter language of the Proto-Austronesian language. Historical linguists have reconstructed the language using the comparative method, in much the same manner as with Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic. This same method has also been used to support the archaeological and ethnographic evidence which indicates that the ancestral homeland of the people who spoke Proto-Polynesian was in the vicinity of Tonga, Samoa, and nearby islands.[1]

Quick Facts Reconstruction of, Region ...

Phonology

Proto-Polynesian has a small phonological inventory, with 13 consonants and 5 vowels.[2]

Consonants

More information Bilabial, Alveolar ...

Vowels

Proto-Polynesian had five vowels, /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/, with no length distinction. In a number of daughter languages, successive sequences of vowels came together to produce long vowels and diphthongs, and in some languages these sounds later became phonemic.[3]

Sound correspondences

More information *p, *t ...

Vocabulary

The following is a table of some sample vocabulary as it is represented orthographically in various languages.[4] All instances of ⟨ʻ⟩ represent a glottal stop, IPA /ʔ/. All instances of ⟨ng⟩ and Samoan ⟨g⟩ represent the single phoneme /ŋ/. The letter ⟨r⟩ in all cases represents voiced alveolar tap /ɾ/, not /r/.

More information Tongan, Niuean ...

See also

Notes

  1. [1]
    Kirch, Patrick Vinton; Roger Green (2001). Hawaiki, Ancestral Polynesia: An Essay in Historical Anthropology. Cambridge University Press. pp. 99–119. ISBN 978-0-521-78309-5.
  2. [2]
    Marck, Jeff (2000). Topics in Polynesian languages and culture history (PDF). Pacific Linguistics 504. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  3. [3]
    Rolle, Nicholas (2009). "The Phonetic Nature of Niuean Vowel Length". Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics (TWPL). 31. ISSN 1718-3510.
  4. [4]
    Hockett, C.F. (May 1976), "The Reconstruction of Proto-Central Pacific", Anthropological Linguistics, 18 (5): 187–235
  5. [5]
    Archaic: the modern Tahitian word for two is piti, due to the practice of pi'i among Tahitians, a form of linguistic taboo. However, the cognate remains in the second-person dual pronoun ʻōrua, roughly translated you two.
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