Abstract:

A highly unusual sound change in around 15 Southern Oceanic languages spoken in Espiritu Santo and Malakula in Vanuatu produced linguolabials from bilabials when before Proto-Oceanic nonback vowels, with those linguolabials further developing as apicals in some of those languages. Despite the development of these extremely rare phonemes, I will show that this phonological shift isnot diagnostic of a single subgroup consisting of all the languages that evidence it. Rather, it appears that the linguolabial shift (i) supports a subgrouping of all or nearly all of those Espiritu Santo languages that show it, but (ii) was introduced into the phonological inventory of a number of Malakula languages at a much later date, spreading through contact rather than by inheritance.