ABSTRACT
Collective term for the languages of the southeast Asian islands, New Guinea, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. The most important language groups in this area are MalayoPolynesian, which is spread over nearly the entire Pacific, the southeast Asian islands, and Madagascar and is probably related to the southeast Asian languages, the Australian languages, and the Papuan languages, the numerous language families in New Guinea and the nearby islands, whose genetic affiliation has not yet been completely explained. Research on this group was first focused on the Malayo-Polynesian languages, while the important investigation of the Australian and Papuan languages was not seriously begun until the 1960s. ( also dialect geography)
References
Holmer, N.M. 1966. Oceanic semantics: a study in the framing of concepts in the native languages of Australia and Oceania. Uppsala.
