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Investigating Language Isolates: Typological and diachronic perspectives
Edited by Iker Salaberri, Dorota Krajewska, Ekaitz Santazilia and Eneko Zuloaga
[Typological Studies in Language 135] 2025
► pp. 248–269

Baroque accretions and isolation

A case study of grammatical complexity in complex social situations in Solomon Islands

| Australian National University
This paper presents a case study comparing two Papuan languages of Island Melanesia, Lavukaleve and Touo, with their Oceanic neighbours, exploring differing outcomes of language contact in micro-contact situations. Social/geographic isolation has been thought to preserve or enable structural complexity, measured using a complexity index. It is shown that each of the Papuan members of the contact situations to be described is structurally more complex than its Oceanic neighbours, but of these, the structurally more complex language is the socially/geographically more isolated. Among these languages, while there is a relationship between isolation and complexity, there is a less strong relationship between being isolates and being complex. Thus, in this case at least, isolates are not necessarily more complex through being isolates.
Keywords: language isolates, Papuan languages, Oceanic languages, Solomon Islands, structural complexity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The Isolation Hypothesis and sociolinguistic factors leading to linguistic complexity
    • 1.2The languages of this study
  • 2.Operationalising structural complexity
    • 2.1Mature phemonena or baroque accretions in Lavukaleve
      • 2.1.1Exuberant allomorphy
      • 2.1.2Superfluous category marking
      • 2.1.3Multiple exponence
    • 2.2Structural complexity in Lavukaleve, Touo and four Oceanic languages
    • 2.3Morphological opacity
  • 3.Shared material and non-material culture as other evidence for contact
  • 4.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Appendix
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