Reef Islands – Santa Cruz languages
| Reef Islands – Santa Cruz | |
|---|---|
| Reefs – Santa Cruz | |
| Geographic distribution |
Solomon Islands |
| Linguistic classification | Austronesian |
| Subdivisions |
|
| Glottolog | reef1242 |
The Reef Islands – Santa Cruz languages (usually shortened to Reefs – Santa Cruz, abbreviated RSC) are a small language family comprising the languages of the Santa Cruz Islands and Reef Islands:
The debate in Oceanic linguistics dated from the Second International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics in 1978, where two opposing papers were presented. Peter Lincoln argued that the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages were Oceanic, while Stephen Wurm argued that they were Papuan languages.
These languages were only definitively classified as part of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian family after a series of papers that refuted the three major arguments for classifying them as either primarily Papuan languages or at least heavily influenced by a Papuan substrate.
Ross and Næss (2007) offer a retrospective conclusion:
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