TheReef Islands – Santa Cruz languages (usually shortened toReefs – Santa Cruz, abbreviated RSC) are a branch of theOceanic languages comprising the languages of theSanta Cruz Islands andReef 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,[1] whileStephen Wurm argued that they werePapuan languages.[2]
These languages were only definitively classified as part of theOceanic subgroup of theAustronesian family after a series of papers that refuted the three major arguments for classifying them as either primarilyPapuan languages or at least heavily influenced by a Papuan substrate.
Åshild Næss (2006) showed that the "multiple noun classes" in RSC do not resemble Papuan-stylegender systems, but do have parallels in other Oceanic languages of nearbyVanuatu.[4]
Åshild Næss and Brenda H. Boerger (2008) showed that the complex verbal structures of RSC are derived by normal erosion of verbmorphology andgrammaticalization ofverb serialization commonly found in many Oceanic languages, and thus do not reflect a Papuan substrate.[5]
William James Lackey and Brenda H. Boerger (2021) revises the reconstruction made by Ross and Næss (2008), and outlines in detail some regular correspondences between RSC and Proto-Oceanic consonants that were overlooked, such as*s >t (and latert >s before /i/). They also conclude that the truncation of syllables in Proto-RSC was primarily driven bystress: words that contained a Proto-Oceanic final consonant, beingoxytone, preserved their final syllable; likewise, syncope (word-medially) took place if the word originally ended in a final consonant, or was trisyllabic.[6]
Ross and Næss (2007) offer a retrospective conclusion:
How then did it come about that Stephen Wurm thought the RSC [Reefs – Santa Cruz] languages were Papuan? In small measure because the reconstruction ofPOc had in the 1970s not progressed to where it is today. In larger measure because the typological features he found in the RSC languages had yet to be documented in other Oceanic languages. And because the RSC languages had undergone phonological changes which rendered some cognates unrecognizable and led eventually to the replacement of others.
^Lincoln, Peter C. "Reefs – Santa Cruz as Austronesian".Second International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics: Proceedings. Pacific Linguistics. pp. 929–967.
^Wurm, Stephen. "Reefs – Santa Cruz: Austronesian, but ... !".Second International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics: Proceedings. Pacific Linguistics. pp. 969–1010.
^Næss, Åshild (2006). "Bound Nominal Elements in Äiwoo (Reefs): A Reappraisal of the 'Multiple Noun Class Systems'".Oceanic Linguistics.45:269–296.doi:10.1353/ol.2007.0006.
^Næss, Åshild and Brenda H. Boerger (2008). "Reefs – Santa Cruz as Oceanic: Evidence from the Verb Complex".Oceanic Linguistics.47:185–212.doi:10.1353/ol.0.0000.hdl:1959.13/1052427.
^Lackey, William James and Brenda H. Boerger (2021). "Reexamining the Phonological History of Oceanic's Temotu subgroup".Oceanic Linguistics:er5 –er17.doi:10.1353/ol.2021.0020.
