| Northwest Solomonic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Solomon Islands |
| Linguistic classification: | Austronesian
|
| Subdivisions: | |
The family of Northwest Solomonic languages is a branch of the Oceanic languages. It includes the Austronesian languages of Bougainville and Buka in Papua New Guinea, and of Choiseul, New Georgia, and Santa Isabel (excluding Bugotu) in the Solomon Islands.
The unity of Northwest Solomonic and the number and composition of its subgroups, along with its relationship to other Oceanic groups, was established in pioneering work by Malcolm Ross.[1]
Northwest Solomonic consists of six subgroups:
A 2008 statistical lexical analysis of the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database[2] proposed a smaller Northwest Solomonic grouping consisting only of Choiseul, Isabel and New Georgia. This study, which has yet to be widely accepted, gives a 90% probability that the Choiseul and New Georgia languages form a group on their own, with the Santa Isabel languages being the most divergent. Conversely, Ross (1988) presents lexical and grammatical evidence linking the Isabel and New Georgia languages. The database study also suggested the unity of the Nehan–Bougainville languages (Piva–Bannoni and Nehan–North Bougainville) as a separate branche, and that the Mono–Uruavan languages may be in the Patpatar–Tolai branch.