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 ...
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 Lynch, Ross, and Crowley in 2002 and supported by later studies. They consider it to be 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 a language group 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
Reefs – Santa Cruz languages
The Reef Islands – Santa Cruz languages (usually shortened to Reefs – Santa Cruz, abbreviated RSC) are a branch of the Oceanic languages comprising the languages of the Santa Cruz Islands and Reef Islands:
* Äiwoo (also known as ''Reefs'') ...
and the
Meso-Melanesian languages of the western
Solomon Islands, Geraghty (2017) notes that many Southern Oceanic languages are often lexically and typologically aberrant languages likely with
Papuan substrata – particularly the
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 adjacent islands, are much more conservative, and not as lexicaly aberrant as the
Temotu languages and languages of the western Solomons.
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, four major groups can be delineated, which are
North Vanuatu,
Central Vanuatu,
South Vanuatu, and
New Caledonian. All four groups are
linkages.
*
North Vanuatu
**
Torres–Banks
**
Espiritu Santo[Tryon, Darrell. 2010. The languages of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. In John Bowden and Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Malcolm Ross (eds.), ''A journey through Austronesian and Papuan linguistic and cultural space: papers in honour of Andrew K. Pawley'', 283-290. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.]
**(various others)
*
Central Vanuatu
**
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 ...
**(various others)
*
South Vanuatu
*
New Caledonian
Lynch (1995)
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 ...
(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
See also
*
Languages of Vanuatu
References
*
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.
*Clark, Ross. 2009. ''*Leo Tuai: A comparative lexical study of North and Central Vanuatu languages.'' Canberra: Pacific Linguistics (Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University).
{{Austronesian languages
Central–Eastern Oceanic languages