The Torres–Banks languages form a
linkage of
Southern Oceanic languages
The Southern Oceanic languages are a linkage (rather than family) of Oceanic languages spoken in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. It was proposed by John Lynch in 1995 and supported by later studies. It appears to be a linkage rather than a language ...
spoken in the
Torres Islands
The Torres Islands are an island chain in the Torba Province of the country of Vanuatu, the country’s northernmost island group. The chain of islands that make up this micro-archipelago straddles the broader cultural boundary between Island Me ...
and
Banks Islands
The Banks Islands (in Bislama ''Bankis'') are a group of islands in northern Vanuatu. Together with the Torres Islands to their northwest, they make up the northernmost province of Torba Province, Torba. The island group lies about north of Maew ...
of northern
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...
.
Languages
François (2011) recognizes 17 languages spoken by 9,400 people in 50 villages, including 16 living (3 of which are moribund) and one extinct language.
[ François (2011).]
The 17 languages, ranked from northwest to southeast, are:
:
Comparative studies
A. François has published several studies comparing various features of the Torres–Banks languages:
*
François (2005): Inventories of vowel systems, and their historical development;
*
François (2007): Systems of noun articles, and their historical development;
*
François (2009): How several languages grammaticalized a set of light personal pronouns into markers for “aorist” aspect;
*
François (2011): How Torres–Banks languages tend to show structural isomorphism, yet lexical diversity;
*
François (2013): Etymological reconstruction of spiritual terms in Torres–Banks languages;
*
François (2015): Systems of geocentric space directionals, and their historical development;
*
François (2016): Historical morphology of personal pronouns.
François (2012) is a
sociolinguistic
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies unde ...
study of the area.
Genealogical structure of the Torres–Banks linkage
The internal structure of the Torres–Banks linkage was assessed based on the
Comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...
, and presented in the framework of
historical glottometry Historical glottometry is a method used in historical linguistics. It is a quantitative, non-cladistic approach to language subgrouping.
The aim of historical glottometry (HG) is to address the limitations of the tree model when applied to diale ...
(
François 2014,
2017
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Events January
* January 1 – Istanbul nightclub shooting: A gunman dressed as Santa Claus opens fire at the ...
;
Kalyan & François 2018).
Kalyan & François (2018: 81) identified the following best-supported subgroups (in decreasing order of genealogical closeness):
* Mwotlap – Volow
* Hiw – Lo-Toga
* Vurës – Mwesen
* Lemerig – Vera'a
* Koro – Olrat – Lakon
* Dorig – Koro – Olrat – Lakon
* Olrat – Lakon
* Lehali – Löyöp – Mwotlap – Volow
* 15 Banks languages together
(Lehali – Löyöp – Mwotlap – Volow – Lemerig – Vera'a – Vurës – Mwesen – Mota – Nume – Dorig – Koro – Olrat – Lakon – Mwerlap)
It is possible that the strict common ancestor of any two members of the Torres–Banks linkage is
Proto-Oceanic
Proto-Oceanic (abbreviated as POc) is a proto-language that comparative linguistics, historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic languages, Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian ...
itself.
Evidence of this is found in the irregular preservation of final consonants in
Lakon (via a now-lost
paragogic
Paragoge () is the addition of a sound to the end of a word. It is a type of epenthesis.
Paragoge is most often linked with the nativization of loanwords. It is particularly common in Brazilian Portuguese, not only in loanwords but also in word ...
vowel) in some words, consonants which were lost in most other languages.
[ François (2005: 479-481).][ François (2011).]
Proto-language
The
common ancestor
Common descent is a concept in evolutionary biology applicable when one species is the ancestor of two or more species later in time. According to modern evolutionary biology, all living beings could be descendants of a unique ancestor commonl ...
of all Torres-Banks languages is called
Proto-Torres–Banks, viewed here as a mutually-intelligible chain of dialects within the Torres and Banks islands.
Notes
References
*
Codrington, Robert Henry (1885). ''The Melanesian Languages''. Oxford: Clarendon Press
full text from the Internet Archive.
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External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:North Vanuatu Languages
Languages of Vanuatu
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