Central Solomons
(tentative)
Geographic
distribution
Solomon Islands
Linguistic classificationOne of the world's primary language families within Papuan languages
Proto-languageProto-Central Solomons
Subdivisions
GlottologNone
Language families of the Solomon Islands.
  Central Solomons

The Central Solomon languages are the four Papuan languages spoken in the state of Solomon Islands.

The four languages are, listed from northwest to southeast,

Classification

The four Central Solomon languages were identified as a family by Wilhelm Schmidt in 1908. The languages are at best distantly related, and evidence for their relationship is meager. Dunn and Terrill (2012) argue that the lexical evidence vanishes when Oceanic loanwords are excluded.[1] Ross (2005) and Pedrós (2015), however, accept a connection, based on similarities among pronouns and other grammatical forms.

Pedrós (2015) suggests, tentatively, that the branching of the family is as follows.

Central Solomons

Savosavo and Bilua, despite being the most distant languages geographically, both split more recently than Lavukaleve and Touo according to Pedrós.

Palmer (2018) regards the evidence for Central Solomons as tentative but promising.[2]

An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)[3] grouped Touo, Savosavo, and Bilua together. Lavukaleve was not included. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.

Pronoun reconstructions

Pedrós (2015) argues for the existence of the family through comparison of pronouns and other gender, person and number morphemes and based on the existence of a common syncretism between 2nd person nonsingular and inclusive. He performs an internal reconstruction for the pronominal morphemes of each language and then proposes a reconstruction of some of the pronouns of the claimed family. The reconstructions are the following:

1 singular2 singularinclusive/
2 non-singular
1 exclusive
Pre-Savosavo*a-ɲi*no*mea-
Pre-Touonoe*mee̤-
Pre-Lavukaleve*ŋai*ŋo*mee
Pre-Bilua*ani/*aŋai*ŋomee-
Proto-Central Solomons*ani/*aŋai*ŋo*me*e

Numerals

Central Solomon numerals from Pedrós (2015):

numeralSavosavoTouoLavukaleveBilua
1 ˈela, ˈpade / paaɺo / azoˈtelakom, ˈtelakoˈomadeu, ˈmadeu
2 ˈedoe̤ɺiˈlelemal, ˈlelaol, ˈlelaɰel, ˈlemalˈomuga, ˈmuga
3 iˈɰiβa / iˈɰiahieˈeŋaˈzouke, ke
4 ˈaɰaβaa̤vonunˈariku
5 ˈarasoduˈsieˈsike, ke

As the comparisons indicate, lexical evidence for the relatedness of the four languages is limited.

Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words are from Tryon & Hackman (1982),[4] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database.[5] The Savosavo data is from Claudia Wegener's field notes.[6]

glossLavukaleveMbaniata (Lokuru dialect)Mbilua (Ndovele dialect)Savosavo
head vatulezubatu
hair memeazufutouluta; sivuɰa
ear hovulōŋgototaliŋatagalu
eye lemimberɔvilunito
nose sisiemɔŋgameɲoko
tooth neonānetakanale
tongue letānlleñolapi
leg tau furimeɔekiti
louse kea; lailisa; vutusipi; tiŋgaudole
dog mitakeusiesielemisu
bird malaɣulmānozombiaŋambiaŋakosu
egg keruvāndenatɔrurukolei; si
blood ravuvondaraɰabu
bone sosokiominupizatovolo
skin keutzuɔnatupukorakora
breast ɔfususususususu
man alifinɔzɔmambatada
woman airaŋgoherekoadaki
sky totoāsuziaauoka
moon kuaīndikambosokuɰe
water lafifiɔnĵupiva
fire lakehirɔuzakeda
stone mbeko; vekohɛŋgalandokato
road, path lakeekevekeva
name laŋininiŋinini
eat eu; eui; ouneazafevuatol-ou; samu
one dom; tetelomāroŋo; thufimandeuela; pade
two lelal; lemalēriomuŋgaedo

Syntax

All Central Solomon languages have SOV word order except for Bilua, which has SVO word order due to Oceanic influence.[7]

See also

Further reading

  • Simon J Greenhill, & Robert Forkel. (2019). lexibank/tryonsolomon: Solomon Islands Languages (Version v3.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.3535809

References

  1. Michael Dunn & Angela Terrill (2012) Assessing the lexical evidence for a Central Solomons Papuan family using the Oswalt Monte Carlo test. Diachronica 29:1–27.
  2. Palmer, Bill (2018). "Language families of the New Guinea Area". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 1–20. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
  3. Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013).
  4. Tryon, D.T. and Hackman, B.D. Solomon Islands languages: An internal classification. C-72, viii + 493 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1982. doi:10.15144/PL-C72
  5. Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  6. Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  7. Stebbins, Tonya; Evans, Bethwyn; Terrill, Angela (2018). "The Papuan languages of Island Melanesia". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 775–894. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
  • Ross, Malcolm, 2001. "Is there an East Papuan phylum? Evidence from pronouns", in The boy from Bundaberg. Studies in Melanesian linguistics in honour of Tom Dutton, ed. by Andrew Pawley, Malcolm Ross and Darrell Tryon: 301-322. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Structural Phylogenetics and the Reconstruction of Ancient Language History. Michael Dunn, Angela Terrill, Ger Reesink, Robert A. Foley, Stephen C. Levinson. Science magazine, 23 Sept. 2005, vol. 309, p 2072.
  • Ross, Malcolm, 2005. "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages", in Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan speaking peoples, ed. by Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide and Jack Golson: 15-65. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Pedrós, Toni, 2015. "New arguments for a Central Solomons family based on evidence from pronominal morphemes". Oceanic Linguistics, vol. 54, no. 2 (358-395).
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