Proto-Polynesian (abbreviated PPn) is the reconstructed

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...

from which all modern

Polynesian languages The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austr ...

descend. It is a descendant of the

Proto-Oceanic language Proto-Oceanic (abbreviated as 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 desce ...

(the language associated with the Lapita civilization), itself a descendant of

Proto-Austronesian Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify in ...

. The homeland of Proto-Polynesian speakers is believed to have been

Tonga Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...

Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa and known until 1997 as Western Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu), two smaller, inhabited ...

, and nearby islands.

Phonology

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

Consonants

Vowels

Proto-Polynesian had five vowels, , 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.

Sound correspondences

Vocabulary

The following is a table of some sample vocabulary as it is represented orthographically in various languages. All instances of represent a glottal stop, IPA . All instances of and Samoan represent the single phoneme . The letter in all cases represents voiced alveolar tap , not .

Notes

External links

{{Polynesian languages Polynesian languages Polynesian