Temotu languages

Temotu
Geographic
distribution		 Solomon Islands
Linguistic classification Austronesian
Subdivisions
Glottolog temo1244[1]
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  Temotu

The Temotu languages, named after Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands, are a branch of Oceanic languages proposed in Ross & Næss 2007 for the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages.

History of classification

These languages had previously been considered Papuan, but Ross & Næss established that the closest relatives were the Utupua–Vanikoro languages, previously thought to be Central–Eastern Oceanic.[2] However, Roger Blench (2014)[3] 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 thus 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 and Vanikoro, but had rather migrated to the islands from elsewhere. According to Blench, historically this was due to the Lapita demographic expansion consisting of both Austronesian and non-Austronesian settlers migrating from the Lapita homeland in the Bismarck Archipelago to various islands further to the east.

Languages

Map showing the ten languages of the Temotu group, plus the Polynesian language Vaeakau-Taumako.

Ethnologue does not accept the Vanikoro node.

References

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Temotu". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ↑ 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.
  3. ↑ Blench, Roger. 2014. Lapita Canoes and Their Multi-Ethnic Crews: Might Marginal Austronesian Languages Be Non-Austronesian? Paper presented at the Workshop on the Languages of Papua 3. 20-24 January 2014, Manokwari, West Papua, Indonesia.
  4. ↑ François, Alexandre (2009), "The languages of Vanikoro: Three lexicons and one grammar" (PDF), in Evans, Bethwyn, Discovering history through language: Papers in honour of Malcolm Ross, Pacific Linguistics 605, Canberra: Australian National University, pp. 103–126


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