The Lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society
3. Plants
edited by Malcolm Ross, Andrew Pawley and Meredith Osmond
PL 599

This is the third in a series of six volumes on the lexicon of Proto Oceanic, the ancestor of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family. Each volume deals with a particular domain of culture and/or environment and consists of a collection of essays each of which presents and comments on lexical reconstructions of a particular semantic field within that domain.

Volume 3 examines the terms that Proto Oceanic speakers used to name plants and parts of plants. After the general introduction to the series, Chapter 2 places Proto Oceanic plant naming within its biogeographic and ethnographic context, Chapter 3 examines its major  plant categories from an ethnobotanical standpoint, and Chapter 4 reconstructs terms for parts of plants. Chapters 5-8 present reconstructed names of wild plants, organised by vegetation habitat: the coastal strand, mangrove swamp, rain forest and secondary forest. Chapters 9-13 investigate the naming of cultivated plants: staple foods, green vegetables, nut and fruit trees, the coconut and a variety of cultivated non-food plants.

2008 ISBN 9780858835894, 565 pp.
Prices: Australia AUD $137.50 (incl. GST), Overseas AUD $125.00

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Last modified: 15 August 2004
Authorised by: The Managing Editors, Pacific Linguistics
Copyright © 1996-2004, The Australian National University
Maintained by: John Bowden, John.Bowden@anu.edu.au, and Malcolm Ross, Malcolm.Ross@anu.edu.au