Linguistic stratigraphy in the central Solomon Islands: Lexical evidence of 
early Papuan/Austronesian interaction

Terrill, Angela

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Linguistic stratigraphy in the central Solomon Islands: Lexical evidence of early Papuan/Austronesian interaction

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Terrill, Angela
Language and Cognition Group, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Pioneers of Island Melanesia, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Terrill, A. (2003). Linguistic stratigraphy in the central Solomon Islands: Lexical evidence of early Papuan/Austronesian interaction. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 112(4), 369-401.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0013-1DDD-9

Abstract

The extent to which linguistic borrowing can be used to shed light on the existence and nature of early contact between Papuan and Oceanic speakers is examined. The question is addressed by taking one Papuan language, Lavukaleve, spoken in the Russell Islands, central Solomon Islands and examining lexical borrowings between it and nearby Oceanic languages, and with reconstructed forms of Proto Oceanic. Evidence from ethnography, culture history and archaeology, when added to the linguistic evidence provided in this study, indicates long-standing cultural links between other (non-Russell) islands. The composite picture is one of a high degree of cultural contact with little linguistic mixing, i.e., little or no changes affecting the structure of the languages and actually very little borrowed vocabulary.