Southern Oceanic languages
| Southern Oceanic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Vanuatu, New Caledonia |
| Linguistic classification: |
Austronesian
|
| Subdivisions: |
|
| Glottolog: | None |
Southern Oceanic
|
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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 suspect that it is a linkage rather than a straightforward family.
Lynch (1995) tentatively grouped the languages as follows:
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
The Southern Vanuatu and New Caledonian languages were not addressed.
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