A necessary first step in explaining these developments is a brief overview of the distribution and groupings of the indigenous languages of the Pacific region.

There are approximately 6,000 distinct languages spoken in the world today, of which nearly 25 percent, or 1,500, are spoken in the Pacific Islands region (here defined as the great island of New Guinea and all the islands of Oceania to the east, as far as Easter Island). For purposes of this discussion, Australia and its indigenous languages are excluded. All that needs be said about them here is that they constitute a group of genetically related languages, but are unrelated to the languages of New Guinea and Greater Oceania.

In the island Pacific there are two major language groups. The first group is known as Papuan, a group of some 750 languages which extends right along the central mountain chain of the great island of New Guinea. To the west, Papuan languages are also found on the Indonesian islands of Alor, Pantar and Halmahera, and in newly independent East Timor. To the east, Papuan languages are also found in the Bismarck Archipelago, in New Britain, New Ireland and Bougainville. There are also Papuan languages spoken in the Solomon Islands. It has now been demonstrated that roughly 450 of the Papuan languages are genetically related (Pawley 1998), members of the Trans New Guinea Family of languages, first identified by Wurm, McElhanon and Voorhoeve in the 1970s. While it remains to be proved that the remaining 300 Papuan languages are genetically related to each other and to the languages of the Trans New Guinea Family, linguists are optimistic that all of the Papuan languages will ultimately be shown to be genetically related. The Papuan languages are considered to be quite ancient, as archaeological evidence indicates that mainland New Guinea has been settled for approximately 50,000 years, while dates of more than 30,000 have been demonstrated for New Ireland, and more than 20,000 for Bougainville and parts of the Solomon Islands (Spriggs 1997).

Map courtesy ANU Cartographic Services, RSPAS, ANU, Canberra.

The Austronesian languages, on the other hand, are believed to be much younger, having had their origins in Taiwan and/or the south coast of mainland China about 6,000 years ago. The Austronesian languages, more than 1,000, extend from Taiwan (where they are spoken by the indigenous population), through the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, pockets of mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar and then eastward around the coasts of the great island of New Guinea, down through the Melanesian chain as far as Fiji, then further eastward to include all of the indigenous languages of Polynesia and Micronesia (see figure 2.1). The Austronesian languages are all genetically related, roughly half of them belonging to a single Oceanic subgroup, which includes all of the Austronesian languages east of Geelvinck Bay, about 130 degrees east longitude. The Austronesian-speaking peoples migrated from Southeast Asia to the New Britain/New Ireland area about 4,000 years ago, before moving rapidly southeast about 3,500 years ago to people first, the islands of the Melanesian chain, and then the islands further east and north, Polynesia and Micronesia (Spriggs 1997).

What characterises the Oceanic region is the number and diversity of indigenous languages. A summary table will suffice for present purposes, as follows:

The major subgroups of the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian are discussed in Tryon (1995) and Ross (1995). They are not relevant to this discussion except to note that nearly half of the Polynesian languages are spoken outside Polynesia, in Melanesia and Micronesia, where they are known as Polynesian Outlier languages. These languages are considered to have been present in their current locations for approximately 800 years.

The language diversity which marks the Oceanic region is considered to be the result not only of long-term isolation, due to geographical factors, and inter-group hostility, but also because of the considerable language contact between Papuan and Austronesian languages, between Papuan languages themselves, and also between Polynesian Outlier and stay-at-home Austronesian languages in Island Melanesia (Lynch 1981; Pawley 1981).