Proto-Polynesian language
Encyclopedia
Proto-Polynesian, is the hypothetical proto-language
from which all the modern Polynesian languages
descend. Historical linguists
have reconstructed the language using the comparative method
, in much the same manner as with Proto-Indo-European
and Proto-Afro-Asiatic
. 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.
in various languages. All instances of <'> represent a glottal stop, IPA /ʔ/. All instances of and Samoan represent the single phoneme /ŋ/. The letters in all cases represents voiced alveolar tap /ɾ/, not /r/.
Proto-language
A proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead.Often the proto-language is not known directly...
from which all the modern Polynesian languages
Polynesian languages
The Polynesian languages are a language family spoken in the region known as Polynesia. They are classified as part of the Austronesian family, belonging to the Oceanic branch of that family. They fall into two branches: Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian. Polynesians share many cultural traits...
descend. Historical linguists
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
have reconstructed the language using the comparative method
Comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal...
, in much the same manner as with Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European may refer to:*Proto-Indo-European language, the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.*Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language....
and Proto-Afro-Asiatic
Proto-Afro-Asiatic
Proto–Afroasiatic is the hypothetical proto-language from which modern Afroasiatic languages are descended.-Consonant correspondences:The following table shows consonant correspondences in Afroasiatic languages, along with some reconstructed consonants for Proto-Afroasiatic.# under special...
. 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.
Phonology
The phonology of Proto-Polynesian is very simple, with 13 consonants, 5 vowels, and no phonemes that are cross-linguistically unusual.Consonants
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
*p | *t | *k | *q |
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
*m | *n | *ŋ | |
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
*f | *s | *h | |
| Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular.... |
*r | |||
| Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
*l | |||
| Glide Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:... |
*w |
Vowels
Proto-Polynesian had five simple 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.Sound correspondences
| Proto-Polynesian | *p | |*t | |*k | |*q (ʔ) | |*f | *w | |*s | |*h | |*m | |*n | *ŋ | |*l | |*r |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tongan Tongan language Tongan is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. It has around 200,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO language.-Related languages:... |
p | t | k | ʔ | f | v | h | h | m | n | ŋ | l | Ø |
| Niuean Niuean language The Niuean language or Niue language is a Polynesian language, belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian languages. It is most closely related to Tongan and slightly more distantly to other Polynesian languages such as Māori, Sāmoan, and Hawaiian... |
Ø | ||||||||||||
| ? | ʔ/Ø | h/Ø | l/Ø | ||||||||||
| Proto-Nuclear-Polynesian | ʔ | w | s | Ø | l | ||||||||
| Sāmoan Samoan language Samoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most... |
ʔ | Ø | v | ||||||||||
| East Futunan | k | ʔ/Ø | |||||||||||
| Tikopian Tikopia language The Tikopia language is a Polynesian Outlier language from the island of Tikopia in the Solomon Islands. It is closely related to the Anuta language of the neighboring island of Anuta. Tikopian is also spoken by the Polynesian minority on Vanikoro, who long ago migrated from Tikopia.-External... |
Ø | ɾ | |||||||||||
| Nukuoroan Nukuoro language The Nukuoro language is a Polynesian language, spoken by about 860 people on the Nukuoro Island and on Pohnpei in Micronesia.It is extremely similar to Kapingamarangi language.-External links:*... |
Ø | h | l | ||||||||||
| Rapa Nui Rapa Nui language Rapa Nui , also known as Pascuan or Pascuense, is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island.... |
ʔ/Ø | v/h | h | ɾ | |||||||||
| Proto-Eastern-Polynesian | Ø | f | w | h | l | ||||||||
| MVA, Rarotongan Cook Islands Maori The Cook Islands Māori language, also called Māori Kūki 'Āirani or Rarotongan, is the official language of the Cook Islands. Most Cook Islanders also call it Te reo Ipukarea, literally "the language of the Ancestral Homeland".... |
?/v | v | ʔ | ɾ | |||||||||
| Tuamotuan Tuamotuan language The Tuamotuan language or Paumotuan is a Tahitic language spoken by about 6700 people in the Tuamotu Islands with an additional 2000 speakers in Tahiti... |
f/h/v | v | h | ɾ | |||||||||
| Māori Maori language Māori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand... |
wh/h | w | ɾ | ||||||||||
| Tahitian Tahitian language Tahitian is an indigenous language spoken mainly in the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to the other indigenous languages spoken in French Polynesia: Marquesan, Tuamotuan, Mangarevan, and Austral Islands languages... |
ʔ | f/v/h | v | ʔ | ɾ | ||||||||
| N. Marquesan | k | h | v | k | ʔ | ||||||||
| S. Marquesan | ʔ | f/h | v | n | ʔ | ||||||||
| Hawaiian Hawaiian language The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii... |
k | ʔ | h/w | w | n | l | |||||||
Vocabulary
The following is a table of some sample vocabulary as it is represented orthographicallyOrthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
in various languages. All instances of <'> represent a glottal stop, IPA /ʔ/. All instances of
| Polynesian vocabulary | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proto-Polynesian | Tongan Tongan language Tongan is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. It has around 200,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO language.-Related languages:... |
Niuean Niuean language The Niuean language or Niue language is a Polynesian language, belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian languages. It is most closely related to Tongan and slightly more distantly to other Polynesian languages such as Māori, Sāmoan, and Hawaiian... |
Sāmoan Samoan language Samoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most... |
Rapa Nui Rapa Nui language Rapa Nui , also known as Pascuan or Pascuense, is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island.... |
Tahitian Tahitian language Tahitian is an indigenous language spoken mainly in the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to the other indigenous languages spoken in French Polynesia: Marquesan, Tuamotuan, Mangarevan, and Austral Islands languages... |
Māori Maori language Māori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand... |
Rarotongan Cook Islands Maori The Cook Islands Māori language, also called Māori Kūki 'Āirani or Rarotongan, is the official language of the Cook Islands. Most Cook Islanders also call it Te reo Ipukarea, literally "the language of the Ancestral Homeland".... |
S. Marquesan | Hawaiian Hawaiian language The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii... |
English English language English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria... |
| *taŋata | tangata | tangata | tagata | tangata | ta'ata | tangata | tangata | enata | kanaka | man |
| *sina | hina | hina | sina | hina | hinahina | hina | ina | hina | grey-haired | |
| *kanahe | kanahe | kanahe | anae | 'anae | kanae | kanae | anae | mullet | ||
| *tiale | siale | tiale | tiale | tiare | tiare | tīare | tiare | kiele | flower | |
| *waka | vaka | vaka | vaa | vaka | va'a | waka | vaka | vaka | waa | canoe |
| *fafine | fafine | fifine | fafine | hahine | vahine | wahine | vaine | vehine | wahine | woman |
| *matuqaGlottal stop is represented as <*q> in reconstructed Proto-Polynesian words. | motua | motua | matua | matua | metua | matua | metua, matua | motua | makua | parent |
| *rua | ua | ua | lua | rua | rua 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 pronounōrua, roughly translated you two. | rua | rua | ua | lua | two |
| *tolu | tolu | tolu | tolu | toru | toru | toru | toru | tou | kolu | three |