The Torres–Banks languages form a
linkage of
Southern Oceanic languages
The Southern Oceanic languages are a linkage of Oceanic languages spoken in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. It was proposed by Lynch, Ross, and Crowley in 2002 and supported by later studies. They consider it to be a linkage rather than a language ...
spoken in the
Torres Islands 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. The island group lies about north of Maewo, and incl ...
of northern
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of no ...
.
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:
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François (2005): Inventories of vowel systems, and their historical development;
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François (2007): Systems of noun articles, and their historical development;
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François (2009): How several languages grammaticalized a set of light personal pronouns into markers for “aorist” aspect;
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François (2011): How Torres–Banks languages tend to show structural isomorphism, yet lexical diversity;
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François (2013): Etymological reconstruction of spiritual terms in Torres–Banks languages;
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François (2015): Systems of geocentric space directionals, and their historical development;
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François (2016): Historical morphology of personal pronouns.
François (2012) is a
sociolinguistic
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural Norm (sociology), norms, expectations, and context (language use), context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on languag ...
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 (
François 2014,
2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...
;
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)
* etc.
Proto-language
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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