The Temotu languages, named after

Temotu Province Temotu (or Te Motu, literally "the island" in Polynesian) is the easternmost province of Solomon Islands. The province was formerly known as Santa Cruz Islands Province. It consists, essentially, of two chains of islands which run parallel to ...

of the

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 ...

, are a branch 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 ...

proposed in Ross & Næss (2007) to unify the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages with Utupua and Vanikoro, each a group of three related languages. Utupua and Vanikoro were formerly classified together as the Utupua–Vanikoro languages or Eastern Outer Islands languages (see ).

History of classification

The Reefs-Santa Cruz languages had previously been considered Papuan, but Ross & Næss (2007) established that their closest relatives were the Utupua–Vanikoro languages, previously thought to be Central–Eastern Oceanic. However,

Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and work ...

(2014) argues that the aberrancy of Utupua and Vanikoro, which he considers to be separate branches that do not group with each other, is due to the fact that they are actually non-Austronesian languages. Blench (2014) doubts that Utupua and Vanikoro are closely related, and argues that thus they should not be grouped together. Since each of the three Utupua and three Vanikoro languages are highly distinct from each other, Blench doubts that these languages had diversified on the islands of

Utupua Utupua is an island in the Santa Cruz Islands, located 66 km to the Southeast of the main Santa Cruz group, between Vanikoro and Santa Cruz proper (Nendö). This island belongs administratively to the Temotu Province of Solomon Islands. G ...

and

Vanikoro Vanikoro (sometimes wrongly named ''Vanikolo'') is an island in the Santa Cruz Islands, Santa Cruz group, located to the Southeast of the main Santa Cruz group. It is part of the Temotu Province of Solomon Islands. The name ''Vanikoro'' is alway ...

, but had rather migrated to the islands from elsewhere. According to Blench, historically this was due to the

Lapita The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian people and their distinct material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 BCE. The Lapita people are believed to have originated fro ...

demographic expansion consisting of both Austronesian and non-Austronesian settlers migrating from the Lapita homeland in the

Bismarck Archipelago The Bismarck Archipelago (, ) is a group of islands off the northeastern coast of New Guinea in the western Pacific Ocean and is part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. Its area is about . History The first inhabitants of the archipela ...

to various islands further to the east. More recently, Lackey & Boerger (2021) finds no phonological evidence for an Utupua-Vanikoro subgroup, suggesting that they actually consist of two primary branches.

Languages

* Reef Islands–Santa Cruz *

: Amba, Asumboa, Tanimbili *

: Teanu, Lovono, Tanema François (2009) notes that the lexicons of all three Vanikoro languages are highly distinct from each other and do not appear to be closely related, although their grammars are all similar.

References

{{Austronesian languages Languages of the Solomon Islands Oceanic languages