A New View of the Proto-Oceanic Pronominal System.

Proto-Oceanic had two distinct sets of clitic pronouns, with members of one set expressing the S (‘subject’ of intransitive sentences), while the members of the other set expressed the A (‘agent’ of transitive sentences). Clitic pronouns expressing O (‘object’) observed in some Oceanic languages today are later innovations, rather than reflexes of Proto-Oceanic ‘object’ clitic forms. The main evidence comes from a comparison of what is reconstructible for Proto-Extra Formosan, a parent language of Proto-Oceanic, and Proto-Polynesian, one of the daughter protolanguages of Proto-Oceanic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]