| Oceanic | |
| Region: | Oceania |
| Familycolor: | Austronesian |
| Fam2: | Malayo-Polynesian |
| Fam3: | Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian |
| Fam4: | Eastern Malayo-Polynesian |
| Protoname: | Proto-Oceanic |
| Child1: | Admiralty Islands–Yapese |
| Child2: | St Matthias Islands |
| Child3: | Western Oceanic |
| Child4: | Temotu |
| Child5: | Central–Eastern Oceanic |
| Glotto: | ocea1241 |
| Glottorefname: | Oceanic |
| Map: | Oceanic languages.svg |
| Mapcaption: | The branches of Oceanic (The bottom four could be grouped under one branch, -Central Eastern Oceanic)The black ovals at the northwestern limit of Micronesia are the non-Oceanic Malayo-Polynesian languages Palauan and Chamorro. The black circles inside the green circles are offshore Papuan 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 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 Gilbertese (Kiribati), Tongan, Tahitian, Māori and Tolai (Gazelle Peninsula) languages each have over 100,000 speakers. The common ancestor which is reconstructed for this group of languages is called Proto-Oceanic (abbr. "POc").
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.[1]
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.[2]
Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002) propose three primary groups of Oceanic languages:
languages of Manus Island, its offshore islands, and small islands to the west.
languages of the north coast of Irian Jaya (Western New Guinea), Papua New Guinea (excluding the Admiralties) and the western Solomon Islands. West Oceanic is made up of three or four sub-linkages and families:
consists of languages of the north coast of New Guinea, east from Jayapura.
consists of languages of the Bismarck Archipelago and Solomon Islands.
consists of languages of the tip of the Papuan Peninsula.
nearly all languages of Oceania not included in the Admiralties and Western Oceanic. Central–Eastern consists of four or five subgroups:
of the South East Solomon Islands.
consists of languages of New Caledonia and Vanuatu.
consists of the Polynesian languages, and the languages of Fiji.
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:
Ross & Næss (2007) removed Utupua–Vanikoro, from Central–Eastern Oceanic, to a new primary branch of Oceanic:[3]
Blench (2014) considers Utupua and Vanikoro to be two separate branches that are both non-Austronesian.
Ross, Pawley, & Osmond (2016) propose the following revised rake-like classification of Oceanic, with 9 primary branches.[4]
Roger Blench (2014)[5] argues that many languages conventionally classified as Oceanic are in fact non-Austronesian (or "Papuan", which is a geographic rather than genetic grouping), including Utupua and Vanikoro. Blench 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.
Other languages traditionally classified as Oceanic that Blench (2014) suspects are in fact non-Austronesian include the Kaulong language of West New Britain, which has a Proto-Malayo-Polynesian vocabulary retention rate of only 5%, and languages of the Loyalty Islands that are spoken just to the north of New Caledonia.
Blench (2014) proposes that languages classified as:
Word order in Oceanic languages is highly diverse, and is distributed in the following geographic regions (Lynch, Ross, & Crowley 2002:49).
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
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
New Georgia, some parts of Santa Ysabel Island, much of Polynesia, Yap
Fijian language, Anejom language, Loyalty Islands, Kiribati, many parts of New Caledonia, Nggela
much of Bougainville Island, Choiseul Island, some parts of Santa Ysabel Island