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- Title
The Bilabial-to-Linguolabial Shift in Southern Oceanic: A Subgrouping Diagnostic?
- Authors
Lynch, John
- 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 is not 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.
- Subjects
VANUATU; VOWELS; INVENTORIES; LANGUAGE &; languages
- Publication
Oceanic Linguistics, 2019, Vol 58, Issue 2, p292
- ISSN
0029-8115
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/ol.2019.0010