agreements. This, like no.3, finds support from the Ta'aroa religion and perhaps other aspects of the culture and accords with the earlier archaeological dates presently known for the Marquesas. An objection similar to that for no. 3 may be raised.
Recent years have seen a considerable revision of the classification of Polynesian language groups. The cultural dichotomy of West and East Polynesia once seen to be reflected in linguistic correlates, no longer conforms with the accepted ordering of languages in geographic western Polynesia. From a comparative morphological analysis, Pawley has shown in a pioneering work that the two major co-ordinate linguistic groupings of Polynesian are not West and East Polynesian, but Tongic, comprising Tongan and Niuean, and Nuclear Polynesian, consisting of all other languages and dialects in the Polynesian triangle. This conclusion derived from an examination of shared innovations in morphological markers, viz., words carrying grammatical meaning (definite articles,
time-space interrogatives & indicators, demonstratives, 2nd person dual, etc. ) as opposed to lexical meaning entailed by core vocabulary items
(cognates or semantics, mainly nouns). Support of this reclassification also came from an earlier but essentially similar subgrouping suggested by Elbert on grounds of comparative phonology. Nuclear Polynesian is further divided into two sub-groups; Samoic comprising Samoan and most of the dialects spoken in the Polynesian outliers, and East Polynesian consisting of all other languages and dialects(69). That Samoan is
(69) A.Pawley, "Polynesian Languages: a Subgrouping based on shared innovations in morphology",
J.P.S.
75,41.closer than Tongan to the languages of eastern Polynesia is shown also by the lexicostatistical findings of Emory and others, but nevertheless on phonological and morphological grounds the language is quite distinct from the eastern dialects(70).
Further modifications to the subgrouping of Eastern Polynesian dialects and some new suggestions regarding their order of differentiation were made by Green from the evidence of shared phonological and lexical innovations. Proto-East Polynesian, the ancestral language of all eastern dialects, became proto-Central Polynesian following an early separation of the dialect spoken in remote Easter Island where the proto-Polynesian glottal stop is interpreted as a retention, shared with no other living language except Tongan. Proto-Central Polynesian, Green suggested, then differentiated into proto-Marquesic and proto-Tahitic, the immediate ancestral languages of the two major modern East Polynesian sub-groups. The order of this differentiation and the islands where some of these several postulated proto-languages were spoken are linguistic as well as historical problems, related to the questions concerning the first archipelago(s) to be settled from Samoa and the location of the dispersal centre(s) from which all other islands of eastern Polynesia became gradually inhabited. From evidence found in the first published Marquesan dictionary (1904) and recent linguistic observations, Green postulated that proto-Marquesic divided into Mangarevan and proto-Marquesan, and that the latter differentiated into the modern North-western and South-eastern Marquesan dialects, a division approximately concomittant with the Leeward-Windward grouping of the islands. He also offered some evidence in support of a suggestion by Emory that Hawaiian was probably a split-off from S.E. Marquesan(71). In fact the missionary W.P. Crook who had resided on Tahuata and Nukuhiva before the turn of the
(70) Green, Subgrouping,10,12,15. (71) Ibid.,16-18, 20,22-25.
eighteenth century had commented in some detail on the Leeward-Windward dialectical differentiations and provided a number of lexical items by way of illustration(72). Crook's unpublished material appears to have been ignored by linguists.
Green maintained the notion of an "overall isolation of the East Polynesian area from West Polynesia", the cultural division being a correlate of the split of Nuclear Polynesian into Samoic and East Polynesian. Thus, whereas the lexical relationships evident in the
vocabulary agreements between Tonga-Samoa and Tahiti-Hawaii are
respectively explained as evidence for diffusion and a "secondary decisive settlement", explanations for which there is some traditional and archaeological evidence, that the same lexical phenomenon for the language of the Society-Samoan Islands perhaps allows for a similar historical solution is ignored. Green interpreted the lexicostatistical
comparisons by Emory and others as demonstrating that Marquesan
"preceeded Tahitian in differentiating from East Polynesian"(73), the suggestion apparently being that the closer vocabulary agreements between Tahitian and Samoan reflected the former intermediary position of proto-East Polynesian. In regards to the lexical relationship between
Tahitian and Marquesan vis-a-vis proto-East Polynesian, the
interpretation accords with Emory's postulate already mentioned, that the first language to branch off from a common mother tongue is likely
to show a greater divergence than subsequent fissions or
differentiations.
The geographical location of the proto-East Polynesian language obviously relates to the archipelago in eastern Polynesia first
(72) Greatheed & Crook, Us. An Account, 106b,113,114,115.
[U.P. Crook],Ms. A Marquesan and English Grammar, 2,5,10,14,15,17,18.
CU.P . Crook] A Marquesan and English Dictionary, inter-alia. Crook recorded phonological as well as morphological innovations and noted several examples also of considerable lexical differences in the two dialects.
settled from Samoa to become the primary dispersal centre. Green agreed that on linguistic evidence the Society Islands and the Marquesas appear to be the best candidates, with the latter having the better claim, presumably on archaeological grounds. He noted that the current state of