The Oceanic languages make up one of the largest subgroups of the Austronesian language family, the second biggest language family in the world. These 600+ language varieties span the entire Pacific Ocean – from Hawai'i to New Zealand, Tobi (Palau) to Rapa Nui. Due to the high number of languages spoken by widely varying speech communities over such a vast area, the Oceanic subgroup raises critical questions about linguistic diversity, language evolution, language contact, and language development.
The Comparative Oceanic Linguistics - CoOL - project responds to these questions by combining methods of classic comparative historical linguistics, computational linguistics, and sociolinguistics to reconstruct the Oceanic past and to explore how high mobility, overlapping migrations, and complex interactions have impacted language histories.
Ongoing work includes revising the classifications of Southern Oceanic and Polynesian languages, investigating the magnitude and causes of variation in linguistic diversification rates, modelling the evolution of linguistic disparity, identifying linguistic signals of early contact between speakers of Oceanic and non-Oceanic languages, discovering the source(s) and timing of the Polynesian Outlier westward migrations, and reconstructing linkages and dialect networks in the break-up of Proto Oceanic.
Group members
Group leader
Senior Scientist
Senior Associate Scientist
Postdocs
Doktorand:innen
Collaborators
- Bethwyn Evans
- Aymeric Hermann
- Malcolm Ross
- Jacques Vernaudon
Publications
2025
Graff, A., Chousou-Polydouri, N., Inman, D., Skirgård, H., Lischka, M., Zakharko, T., Barbieri, C., & Bickel, B. (2025). Curating global datasets of structural linguistic features for independence. Scientific Data, 12: 106. |
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Boissonneault, M., Tallman, A., Gast, V., & Greenhill, S. J. (2025). Projected speaker numbers and dormancy risks of Canada’s indigenous languages. Royal Society Open Science, 12(2): 241091. |
Open Access2024
Clement, A. M., Cloutier, R., Lee, M. S. Y., King, B., Vanhaesebroucke, O., Bradshaw, C. J. A., Dutel, H., Trinajstic, K., & Long, J. A. (2024). A Late Devonian coelacanth reconfigures actinistian phylogeny, disparity, and evolutionary dynamics. Nature Communications, 15(1): 7529. |
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Barlow, R. (2024). Numerals (advance online). In The international encyclopedia of language and linguistics. (3rd Edition). Elsevier. |
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Dunn, R. R., Kirby, k, K. R., Bowern, C., Ember, C. R., Gray, R. D., McCarter, J., Kavanagh, P. H., Trautwein, M., Nichols, L. M., Gavin, M. C., & Botero, C. (2024). Climate, climate change and the global diversity of human houses. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 6: e24, pp. 1-55. |
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King, B., Greenhill, S. J., Reid, L. A., Ross, M., Walworth, M., & Gray, R. D. (2024). Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Philippine languages supports a rapid migration of Malayo-Polynesian languages. Scientific Reports, 14(1): 14967. |
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Skirgård, H. (2024). Disentangling ancestral state reconstruction in historical linguistics: Comparing classic approaches and new methods using Oceanic grammar. Diachronica, 41(1), 46-98. |
2023
Barlow, R., & Killian, D. (2023). Tomoip phonetics and phonology. Te Reo, 66(1), 60-96. |
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Shcherbakova, O., Michaelis, S. M., Haynie, H. J., Passmore, S., Gast, V., Gray, R. D., Greenhill, S. J., Blasi, D. E., & Skirgård, H. (2023). Societies of strangers do not speak less complex languages. Science Advances, 9(33): eadf7704. |
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Rangelov, T. (2023). The acoustic and articulatory properties of the prenasalised coronal trill in two Oceanic languages. In R. Skarnitzl, & J. Volín ( |
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Heggarty, P., Anderson, C., Scarborough, M., King, B., Bouckaert, R., Jocz, L., Kümmel, M. J., Jügel, T., Irslinger, B., Pooth, R., Liljegren, H., Strand, R. F., Haig, G., Macák, M., Kim, R. I., Anonby, E., Pronk, T., Belyaev, O., Dewey-Findell, T. K., Boutilier, M., Freiberg, C., Tegethoff, R., Serangeli, M., Liosis, N., Stroński, K., Schulte, K., Gupta, G. K., Haak, W., Krause, J., Atkinson, Q. D., Greenhill, S. J., Kühnert, D., & Gray, R. D. (2023). Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages. Science, 381(6656): eabg0818. |
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Auderset, S., Greenhill, S. J., DiCanio, C. T., & Campbell, E. W. (2023). Subgrouping in a ‘dialect continuum’: A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of the Mixtecan language family. Journal of Language Evolution, 8(1): lzad004, pp. 33 -63. |
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Passmore, S., Barth, W., Greenhill, S. J., Quinn, K., Sheard, C., Argyriou, P., Birchall, J., Bowern, C., Calladine, J., Deb, A., Diederen, A., Metsäranta, N. P., Araujo, L. H., Schembri, R., Hickey-Hall, J., Honkola, T., Mitchell, A., Poole, L., Rácz, P. M., Roberts, S. G., Ross, R. M., Thomas-Colquhoun, E., Evans, N., & Jordan, F. M. (2023). Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology. PLoS One, 18(5): e0283218. |
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Rangelov, T., Walworth, M., & Barbour, J. (2023). A multifaceted approach to understanding unexpected sound change: the bilabial trills of Vanuatu’s Malekula Island. Diachronica, 40(3), 384-432. |
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Zariquiey, R., Vera, J., Greenhill, S. J., Valenzuela, P., Gray, R. D., & List, J.-M. (2023). Untangling the evolution of body-part terminology in Pano: conservative versus innovative traits in body-part lexicalization. Interface Focus, 13(1): 20220053. |
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Barlow, R. (2023). A grammar of Ulwa (Papua New Guinea). Berlin: Language Science Press. |
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Barlow, R. (2023). Papuan-Austronesian contact and the spread of numeral systems in Melanesia. Diachronica, 40(3), 287-340. |
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Choo, B., Holland, T., Clement, A. M., King, B., Challands, T., Young, G., & Long, J. A. (2023). A new stem-tetrapod fish from the Middle–Late Devonian of central Australia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 43(3): e2285000. |
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Sheehan, O., Watts, J., Gray, R. D., Bulbulia, J., Claessens, S., Ringen, E. J., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2023). Coevolution of religious and political authority in Austronesian societies. Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 38-45. |
2021
Walworth, M., Dewar, A., Ennever, T., Takau, L., & Rodriguez, I. (2021). Multilingualism in Vanuatu: Four case studies. International Journal of Bilingualism, 25(4), 1120–1141.
DOI
2020
Hermann, Aymeric & Walworth, Mary. (2020). Approche interdisciplinaire des échanges interculturels et de l’intégration des communautés polynésiennes dans le centre du Vanuatu. Journal de la Société des océanistes. 239-262.
DOI
Contact
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
Departmental Administrator:
Iren Hartmann
phone: +49 (0)341 3550 - 259
e-mail: dlce_info@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de
Video and Language recording
Welcome to Vanuatu Voices!
Vanuatu Voices presents phonetically-transcribed primary recordings, from numerous villages throughout different islands, to both document and exhibit the extensive variation and unparalleled diversity of the Vanuatu languages.