Evans Bethwyn. A study of valency-changing devices in Proto Oceanic

The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, 2003. — 374 p. — (Pacific Linguistics 539/Studies in language change 1).This study looks at such shared features not to provide proof of common origin, but rather to provide a reconstruction of the original ancestor language. The existence of Proto Oceanic, the ancestor of the modern Austronesian languages of the Pacific Islands and coastal Papua New Guinea, has long been recognised and many features of it have already been reconstructed. The aim of this study is to present a reconstruction of the system of verb classes and valency-changing devices of Proto Oceanic. While previous studies have looked at such issues and indeed reconstructed the verb classes and valency-changing devices, this study builds on these earlier works to provide a more detailed account of the Proto Oceanic system, especially in terms of the function and distribution of the valency-changing devices. It is the study of the valency-changing devices which allows a more detailed reconstruction of the system of verb classes in Proto Oceanic to be put forward. As part of the reconstruction of the Proto Oceanic system, this study also examines and presents the verb class systems and valency-changing devices of various modem Oceanic languages.