The Southern Oceanic languages are a linkage (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 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 ...

and

New Caledonia New Caledonia ( ; ) is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, southwest of Vanuatu and east of Australia. Located from Metropolitan France, it forms a Overseas France#Sui generis collectivity, ''sui generis'' collectivity of t ...

. It was proposed by John Lynch in 1995 and supported by later studies. It appears to be a linkage 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 (2018). In addition to the Temotu languages and the Northwest Solomonic languages of the western

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands, also known simply as the Solomons,John Prados, ''Islands of Destiny'', Dutton Caliber, 2012, p,20 and passim is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 1000 smaller islands in Melanesia, part of Oceania, t ...

, Geraghty (2017) notes that many Southern Oceanic languages are often lexically and typologically aberrant, likely with Papuan substrata - particularly the Espiritu Santo,

Malakula Malakula, 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 Island, Ma ...

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

Efate Efate (), also known as Île Vate (), is an island in the Pacific Ocean which is part of the Shefa Province in Vanuatu. Geography It is the most populous (approx. 66,000) island in Vanuatu. Efate's land area of makes it Vanuatu's third larg ...

. 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 southwestern Pacific Ocean, northeast of Australia. It is the largest island in the Solomons by area and the second- ...

, Malaita,

Makira The island of Makira (previously known as San Cristóbal) is the largest island of Makira-Ulawa Province in Solomon Islands. It is third most populous of the Solomon Islands after Malaita and Guadalcanal, with a population of 55,126 as of 2020 ...

, and a scattering of North Vanuatu languages including Mota,

Raga A raga ( ; , ; ) is a melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music akin to a musical mode, melodic mode. It is central to classical Indian music. Each raga consists of an array of melodic structures with musical motifs; and, fro ...

, and Tamambo, are much more conservative.

Languages

Following Clark (2009) and ''

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...

'' 4.0, three major groups can be delineated, which are North-Central Vanuatu, South Vanuatu, and New Caledonian. The first group is a linkage, while the others form genetic subgroups. * North-Central Vanuatu * South Vanuatu * New Caledonian

Lynch (1995)

Lynch (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 49th day (50th day when inclusive counting is used) after Easter Day, Easter. It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spiri ...

*** 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 The nine South Vanuatu languages form a family of the Southern Oceanic languages, spoken in Tafea Province (Tanna (island), Tanna, Aneityum, Futuna Island, Vanuatu, Futuna, Erromango, and Aniwa Island, Aniwa) of Vanuatu. Languages *Erromango fam ...

*** 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