Talk across the Pacific: Developments in understanding traditional and modern multilingualism

Abstract

In this overview, we comment on recent findings from the Pacific on traditional multilingualism, acquisition, the effects of changing patterns of migration, and the role of creoles. We follow the broad definitions from Gil (2024), who considers the use of multiple varieties along a lectal cline of a single language and the use of multiple different languages to be examples of multilingualism. Multilingualism can be exoteric (more likely to be large, national, official, public, powerful, prestigious, written) or esoteric (smaller, more regional, unofficial, lower power, lower prestige), symmetric or asymmetric. All forms exist in the Pacific, but small-scale, symmetric, esoteric multilingualism is an important traditional, but endangered, language ecology.