The Southern Oceanic languages are a

linkage Linkage may refer to: * ''Linkage'' (album), by J-pop singer Mami Kawada, released in 2010 *Linkage (graph theory), the maximum min-degree of any of its subgraphs *Linkage (horse), an American Thoroughbred racehorse * Linkage (hierarchical cluster ...

(rather than family) of

Oceanic languages The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages ...

spoken in Vanuatu and

New Caledonia ) , anthem = "" , image_map = New Caledonia on the globe (small islands magnified) (Polynesia centered).svg , map_alt = Location of New Caledonia , map_caption = Location of New Caledonia , mapsize = 290px , subdivision_type = Sovereign st ...

. It was proposed by John Lynch in 1995 and supported by later studies. It appears to be a

rather than a language family with a clearly defined internal nested structure.

Classification

Clark (2009) groups the North Vanuatu and Central Vanuatu languages together into a North-Central Vanuatu (NCV) group and also reconstructs Proto-North-Central Vanuatu, but this is not accepted by

Lynch Lynch may refer to: Places Australia * Lynch Island, South Orkney Islands, Antarctica * Lynch Point, Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica * Lynch's Crater, Queensland, Australia England * River Lynch, Hertfordshire * The Lynch, an island in the River ...

(2018). In addition to the Temotu languages and the Northwest Solomonic languages of the western Solomon Islands, Geraghty (2017) notes that many Southern Oceanic languages are often lexically and typologically aberrant, likely with Papuan substrata - particularly the Espiritu Santo,

Malakula Malakula Island, also spelled Malekula, is the second-largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, in Melanesia, a region of the Pacific Ocean. Location Malakula is separated from the islands of Espiritu Santo and Malo by ...

, South Vanuatu, and New Caledonian languages, and perhaps also some Central Vanuatu languages of

Ambrym Ambrym is a volcanic island in Malampa Province in the archipelago of Vanuatu. Volcanic activity on the island includes lava lakes in two craters near the summit. Etymology Ambrym (also known as ''Ambrin'', ''"ham rim"'' in the Ranon language ...

and Efate. Nevertheless, languages in the eastern Solomon Islands, including

Guadalcanal Guadalcanal (; indigenous name: ''Isatabu'') is the principal island in Guadalcanal Province of Solomon Islands, located in the south-western Pacific, northeast of Australia. It is the largest island in the Solomon Islands by area, and the seco ...

Malaita Malaita is the primary island of Malaita Province in Solomon Islands. Malaita is the most populous island of the Solomon Islands, with a population of 161,832 as of 2021, or more than a third of the entire national population. It is also the se ...

, Makira, and a scattering of

North Vanuatu languages The North Vanuatu languages form a Linkage (linguistics), linkage of Southern Oceanic languages spoken in northern Vanuatu. Languages Clark (2009) Clark (2009) provides the following classification of the North Vanuatu languages, divided into tw ...

including Mota,

Raga A ''raga'' or ''raag'' (; also ''raaga'' or ''ragam''; ) is a melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music akin to a musical mode, melodic mode. The ''rāga'' is a unique and central feature of the classical Indian music tradit ...

, and Tamambo, are much more conservative.

Languages

Following Clark (2009) and ''

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...

'' 4.0, three major groups can be delineated, which are North-Central Vanuatu, South Vanuatu, and New Caledonian. The first group is a

, while the others form genetic subgroups. * North-Central Vanuatu * South Vanuatu * New Caledonian

Lynch (1995)

(1995) tentatively grouped the languages as follows: * Banks–Torres family * Northwest Santo family * Southwest Santo family * Sakao * East Santo family * Ambae–Maewo family *Nuclear Southern Oceanic linkage **Central Vanuatu linkage *** Malekula Coastal *** Malekula Interior ***

Pentecost Pentecost (also called Whit Sunday, Whitsunday or Whitsun) is a Christianity, Christian holiday which takes place on the 50th day (the seventh Sunday) after Easter Sunday. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles in the Ne ...

*** Ambrym–Paama **Epi–Efate *** Epi *** Shepherds–North Efate **South Efate – Southern Melanesian linkage *** South Efate dialect network ***Southern Melanesian family **** Southern Vanuatu family **** New Caledonian family The non-nuclear branches are subsumed under Northern Vanuatu.

Ross, Pawley, & Osmond (2016)

Ross, Pawley, & Osmond (2016) propose the following internal classification for Southern Oceanic.Ross, Malcolm; Pawley, Andrew; Osmond, Meredith (eds)
''The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society''
Volume 5
People: body and mind
2016. Asia-Pacific Linguistics (A-PL) 28. *Southern Oceanic linkage ** North Vanuatu linkage **Nuclear Southern Oceanic linkage *** Central Vanuatu linkage *** South Vanuatu languages *** Loyalties-New Caledonia languages

Notes and references

References

Bibliography

* * * Lynch, John, and Terry Crowley. 2001. ''Languages of Vanuatu: A New Survey and Bibliography''. (Pacific Linguistics, 517.) Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. * Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross & Terry Crowley. 2002. ''The Oceanic languages.'' Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. {{Austronesian languages Central–Eastern Oceanic languages