Linguistic Characteristics of Proto-Oceanic
The methodology of comparative linguistics, together with the relative homogeneity of Oceanic languages, make it possible to reconstruct with reasonable certainty the principal linguistic properties of their common ancestor, Proto-Oceanic. Like all scientific hypotheses, these reconstructions must be understood as obviously reflecting the state of science at a particular moment in time; in particular, the detail of these reconstructions is still the object of much discussion among Oceanicist scholars.
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