Southern Oceanic languages

Southern Oceanic
Geographic distribution	Vanuatu, New Caledonia
Linguistic classification	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Central–Eastern Southern Oceanic
Subdivisions	Vanuatu (various branches) New Caledonia
Glottolog	None
Southern Oceanic

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 consider it to be a linkage rather than a language group with a clearly defined internal nested structure.

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
    • Epi
    • 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

• Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross & Terry Crowley. 2002. The Oceanic languages. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
• Clark, Ross. 2009. *Leo Tuai: A comparative lexical study of North and Central Vanuatu languages. Canberra ACT.: Pacific Linguistics (Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University).