ABSTRACT
In linguistic terms Melanesia is the most diverse region in the world. Approximately 1,400 languages are spoken there – about 22% of the world’s languages – by people inhabiting less than 1% of the earth’s landmass. This chapter will open with a survey of that diversity, describing the present-day distribution of the languages across the region and what we can tell from comparative-historical linguistics and archaeology about how they got there. In addition to the indigenous languages of Melanesia there are also a number of pidgin and creole languages, that is, ones that developed as contact languages used between people with different first languages. I will describe those languages and discuss how they developed. I will then discuss and exemplify a sample of different ways of speaking (‘speech genres’) within given languages. Finally, I will examine patterns of multilingualism and alternation among the languages (‘codeswitching’) in contemporary Melanesia and their implications for the future of linguistic diversity in the region.
