Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Southern Oceanic languages

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Geographic distribution
  
Vanuatu, New Caledonia

Glottolog
  
None

Southern Oceanic languages

Linguistic classification
  
Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Central–Eastern Southern Oceanic

Subdivisions
  
Vanuatu (various branches) New Caledonia

The Southern Oceanic languages are a linkage of Oceanic spoken in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. It was proposed by Lynch, Ross, and Crowley in 2002 and supported by later analysis. They suspect that it is a linkage rather than a straightforward family.

Languages

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
  • Ambrym–Paama
  • Epi–Efate
  • Epl
  • Shepherds–North Efate
  • South Efate – Southern Melanesian linkage
  • South Efate dialect network
  • Southern Melanesian family
  • Southern Vanuatu family
  • New Caledonian family

    • This organization is rather impressionistic. The non-nuclear branches are subsumed under the name Northern Vanuatu, but this is a residual group of languages with no defining features.

    Clark (2009) has a slightly different structure for the northern and central languages:

    North–Central Vanuatu

  • East Santo
  • Malekula Interior
  • Northeast Vanuatu – Banks Islands
  • Central Vanuatu languages
  • East Vanuatu languages
  • Epi languages
  • Malekula Coastal languages
  • West Santo languages

    • The Southern Vanuatu and New Caledonian languages were not addressed.

    References

    Southern Oceanic languages Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA