Oceanic languages

Oceanic
Geographic distribution:	Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia
Linguistic classification:	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (MP) Nuclear MP (Central–Eastern) Oceanic
Proto-language:	Proto-Oceanic
Subdivisions:	Admiralty Islands–Yapese St Matthias Islands Western Oceanic Temotu Central–Eastern Oceanic
Glottolog:	ocea1241[1]
The branches of Oceanic   Admiralties and Yapese   St Matthias   Western Oceanic   Temotu   Southeast Solomons   Southern Oceanic   Micronesian   Fijian–Polynesian The black ovals at the northwestern limit of Micronesia are the Sunda–Sulawesi languages called Palauan and Chamorro. The black circles in with the green are offshore Papuan languages.

The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a well-established family of 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 are spoken by only two million people. The largest individual Oceanic languages are Eastern Fijian with over 600,000 speakers, and Samoan with an estimated 400,000 speakers. The Kiribati (Gilbertese), Tongan, Tahitian, Māori, Western Fijian and Kuanua (Tolai) languages each have over 100,000 speakers.

The common ancestor which is reconstructed for this group of languages is called Proto-Oceanic (abbr. POc).

Classification

The Oceanic languages were first shown to be a language family by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1896 and, besides Malayo-Polynesian, they are the only established large branch of Austronesian languages. Grammatically, they have been strongly influenced by the Papuan languages of northern New Guinea, but they retain a remarkably large amount of Austronesian vocabulary.^[2]

Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002)

According to Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002), Oceanic languages often form linkages with each other. Linkages are formed when languages emerged historically from an earlier dialect continuum. The linguistic innovations shared by adjacent languages define a chain of intersecting subgroups (a linkage), for which no distinct proto-language can be reconstructed.^[3]

Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002) propose three primary groups of Oceanic languages:

• Admiralties linkage: languages of Manus Island, its offshore islands, and small islands to the west.
• Western Oceanic (WOc) linkage: languages of the north coast of Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea (excluding the Admiralties) and the western Solomon Islands. West Oceanic is made up of three or four sub-linkages and families:

• ? Sarmi–Jayapura linkage: maybe part of the North New Guinea linkage?
• North New Guinea linkage: consists of languages of the north coast of New Guinea, east from Jayapura.
• Meso-Melanesian linkage: consists of languages of the Bismarck Archipelago and Solomon Islands.
• Papuan Tip linkage: consists of languages of the tip of the Papuan Peninsula.

• Central–Eastern Oceanic (CEOc) linkage: nearly all languages of Oceania not included in the Admiralties and Western Oceanic. Central–Eastern consists of four or five subgroups:

• Southeast Solomonic linkage: of the South East Solomon Islands.
• (Utupua–Vanikoro linkage: later removed to Temotu languages).
• Southern Oceanic linkage: consist of languages of New Caledonia and Vanuatu.
• Central Oceanic linkage: consists of Polynesian languages, and the languages of Fiji.
• Micronesian linkage.

The "residues" (as they are called by Lynch, Ross, & Crowley), which do not fit into the three groups above, but are still classified as Oceanic are:

• St. Matthias Islands linkage.
• ? Yapese language: of the island of Yap. Perhaps part of the Admiralties?

Ross & Næss (2007) removed Utupua–Vanikoro, from Central–Eastern Oceanic, to a new primary branch of Oceanic:^[4]

• Temotu linkage, named after the Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands.

Word order

Word order in Oceanic languages is highly diverse, and is distributed in the following geographic regions (Lynch, Ross, & Crowley 2002:49).

• SVO: Admiralty Islands, most of Markham Valley, Siasi Islands, most of New Britain, New Ireland, some parts of Bougainville Island, most parts of the southeast Solomon Islands, most parts of Vanuatu, some parts of New Caledonia, most of Micronesia
• SOV: central and southeast Papua New Guinea, some parts of Markham Valley, Madang coast, Wewak coast, Sarmi coast, a few parts of Bougainville, some parts of New Britain
• VSO: New Georgia, some parts of Santa Ysabel Island, much of Polynesia, Yap
• VOS: Fijian language, Anejom language, Loyalty Islands, Kiribati, many parts of New Caledonia, Gela language
• TVX (where T = topic, V = verb, X = arguments other than topic): much of Bougainville Island, Choiseul Island, some parts of Santa Ysabel Island

See also

• Wave model of language change

Notes

1. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Oceanic". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
2. Mark Donohue and Tim Denham, 2010. Farming and Language in Island Southeast Asia: Reframing Austronesian History. Current Anthropology, 51(2):223–256.
3. The Wave model is more appropriate than the Tree model for representing such linkages: see François, Alexandre (2014), "Trees, Waves and Linkages: Models of Language Diversification" (PDF), in Bowern, Claire; Evans, Bethwyn, The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, London: Routledge, pp. 161–189, ISBN 978-0-41552-789-7.
4. Ross, Malcolm and Åshild Næss (2007). "An Oceanic Origin for Äiwoo, the Language of the Reef Islands?". Oceanic Linguistics 46: 456–498. doi:10.1353/ol.2008.0003.

References

• Ray, S.H. (1896). "The common origin of the Oceanic languages". Journal of the Polynesian Society: 58–68.
• Lynch, John; Malcolm Ross; Terry Crowley (2002). The Oceanic languages. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. ISBN 978-0-7007-1128-4. OCLC 48929366. Cite uses deprecated parameter |coauthors= (help)
• Ross, Malcolm and Åshild Næss (2007). "An Oceanic Origin for Äiwoo, the Language of the Reef Islands?". Oceanic Linguistics 46: 456–498. doi:10.1353/ol.2008.0003.