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17-567: The Western Oceanic languages is a linkage of Oceanic languages , proposed and studied by Ross (1988) . They make up a majority of the Austronesian languages spoken in New Guinea . The West Oceanic linkage is made up of three sub-linkages: The center of dispersal was evidently near the Willaumez Peninsula on the north coast of New Britain . Linkage (linguistics) The term

34-606: A remarkably large amount of Austronesian vocabulary. 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. Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002) propose three primary groups of Oceanic languages: The "residues" (as they are called by Lynch, Ross, & Crowley), which do not fit into

51-446: A set of exclusively-shared innovations), but whose common ancestor may not have been discretely separated from its neighbours. For example, a chain of dialects {A B C D E F} may undergo a number of linguistic innovations, some affecting {BCD}, others {CDE}, still others {DEF}. Insofar as each set of dialects was mutually intelligible at the time of the innovations, all can be seen as forming separate languages. Among them, Proto-BCD will be

68-567: A single ancestral language, but that is not the case for Central Malayo-Polynesian. This scenario does not amount to a denial of a common ancestry of the Central Malayo-Polynesian languages. It is only a reinterpretation of the age of the relationship to be just as old as their relationship to Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. François (2014 , p. 171) suggests that most of the world's language families are really linkages that are made up of intersecting, not nested, subgroups. He cites

85-460: 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 him, historically this

102-456: 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

119-707: Is the one formed by the Central Malayo-Polynesian languages of the Banda Sea (a sea in the South Moluccas in Indonesia ). The Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages are commonly divided into two branches, Central Malayo-Polynesian and Eastern Malayo-Polynesian , each having certain defining features that unify them and distinguish them from the other. However, whereas Proto-Eastern and Proto-Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian can be reconstructed (the sibling and

136-592: 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

153-564: The Oceanic languages of northern Vanuatu as well as those of Fiji and of Polynesia and at least some sections of the Pama-Nyungan , Athabaskan , Semitic , Sinitic , and Indo-European families . Within Indo-European, Indo-Aryan , Western Romance and Germanic , in turn, form linkages of their own. Oceanic languages The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of

170-409: The wave model . The cladistic approach underlying the tree model requires the common ancestor of each subgroup to be discontiguous from other related languages and unable to share any innovation with them after their "separation". That assumption is absent from Ross and François's approach to linkages. Their genealogical subgroups also have languages descended from a common ancestor, as defined by

187-431: The dialect continuum turns into a linkage. According to the comparative method , a group of languages that exclusively shares a set of innovations constitutes a " (genealogical) subgroup ". A linkage is thus usually characterised by the presence of intersecting subgroups. The tree model does not allow for the existence of intersecting subgroups and so is ill-suited to represent linkages, which are better approached using

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204-452: The language ancestral to the subgroup BCD, Proto-CDE the language ancestral to CDE and so on. As for the language descended from dialect D, it will belong simultaneously to three "intersecting subgroups" (BCD, CDE and DEF). In both the tree and the linkage approaches, genealogical subgroups are strictly defined by their shared inheritance from a common ancestor. Simply, although trees entail that all proto-languages must be discretely separated,

221-404: The linkage model avoids that assumption. François also claims that a tree can be considered a special case of a linkage in which all subgroups happen to be nested and temporally ordered from broadest to narrowest. In order to unravel the genealogical structure of linkages, Kalyan and François have designed a dedicated quantitative method, named Historical glottometry . An example of a linkage

238-479: The parent of Central Malayo-Polynesian, respectively), a Proto-Central Malayo-Polynesian language reconstruction, distinct from Proto-Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian does not seem feasible. It may be that the branches of Central Malayo-Polynesian are each as old as Eastern Malayo-Polynesian but that they went on to exchange features that are now considered to define them as a family. The features common to Eastern Malayo-Polynesian can be assumed to have been present in

255-558: 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: 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. Roger Blench (2014) argues that many languages conventionally classified as Oceanic are in fact non-Austronesian (or " Papuan ", which

272-679: 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

289-691: Was introduced by Malcolm Ross in his study of Western Oceanic languages ( Ross 1988 ). It is contrasted with a family , which arises when the proto-language speech community separates into groups that remain isolated from each other and do not form a network. Linkages are formed when languages emerged historically from the diversification of an earlier dialect continuum . Its members may have diverged despite sharing subsequent innovations, or such dialects may have come into contact and so converged. In any dialect continuum, innovations are shared between neighbouring dialects in intersecting patterns. The patterns of intersecting innovations continue to be evident as

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