More specifically, it is the shared ancestor of the following modern languages (ranked geographically, from NW to SE): Hiw, Lo-Toga, Lehali, Löyöp, Volow, Mwotlap, Lemerig, Vera'a, Vurës, Mwesen, Mota, Nume, Dorig, Koro, Olrat, Lakon, and Mwerlap.
Proto-Torres-Banks, as reconstructed with the comparative method from the attested daughter languages, evidently represented an early, mutually intelligible chain of Oceanic dialects in the northern part of Vanuatu starting from 1000 BCE after Lapita settlement of the archipelago, as evidenced by the pattern of loss and retention of the Proto-Oceanic phoneme *R, which merged with *r in the early history of the North-Central Vanuatu dialect chain.
[1] Elements of the proto-language have been proposed by linguist A. François: vowels[2] and consonants,[3] personal pronouns,[4] space system,[5] vocabulary.
[2] For example, PTB *laŋi "wind" > HIW [jɔŋ], MTPTooltip Mwotlap language [lɛŋ], giving rise to phonemes /ɔ/ and /ɛ/ respectively.
[6] Pervasive phonological sound changes include: Considering each POc proto-phoneme sequentially, the PTB reflexes can be listed in the following table.