Editing Polynesian languages (section)

===History of classification===
The contemporary classification of the Polynesian languages began with certain observations by [[Andrew Pawley]] in 1966 based on shared innovations in phonology, vocabulary and grammar showing that the East Polynesian languages were more closely related to Samoan than they were to Tongan, calling Tongan and its nearby relative Niuean "Tongic" and Samoan and all other Polynesian languages of the study "Nuclear Polynesian".<ref name="pawley66">Pawley, Andrew, 1966, Polynesian languages: a subgrouping based upon shared innovations in morphology. ''Journal of the Polynesian Society'' 75(1):39–64. {{JSTOR|20704348}}.</ref>

Previously, there had been lexicostatistical studies<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Elbert |first=Samuel H. |date=July 1953 |title=Internal Relationships of Polynesian Languages and Dialects |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/soutjanth.9.2.3628573 |journal=Southwestern Journal of Anthropology |language=en |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=147–173 |doi=10.1086/soutjanth.9.2.3628573 |issn=0038-4801|jstor=3628573|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Emory|first=Kenneth P. |date=1963 |title=East Polynesian relationships: settlement pattern and time involved as indicated by vocabulary agreements |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20704084 |journal=The Journal of the Polynesian Society |volume=72 |issue=2 |pages=78–100 |issn=0032-4000|jstor=20704084}}</ref> that squarely suggested a "West Polynesian" group composed of at least Tongan and Samoan and that an "East Polynesian" group was equally distant from both Tongan and Samoan.

Pawley published another study in 1967.<ref name="pawley67">Pawley, Andrew, 1967, The relationships of Polynesian Outlier languages. ''Journal of the Polynesian Society'' 76(3):259–296. {{JSTOR|20704480}}.</ref> It began the process of extracting relationships from Polynesian languages on small islands in Melanesia, the "[[Polynesian Outliers]]", whose languages Pawley was able to trace to East Futuna in the case of those farther south and perhaps to Samoa itself in the case of those more to the north.

Except for some minor differentiation of the East Polynesian tree, further study paused for almost twenty years until Wilson<ref name="Wilson85">Wilson, William H., 1985, Evidence for an Outlier source for the Proto-Eastern-Polynesian pronominal system. ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 24(1/2):85-133. {{doi|10.2307/3623064}}. {{JSTOR|3623064}}.</ref> published a study of Polynesian pronominal systems in 1985 suggesting that there was a special relationship between the East Polynesian languages and all other Nuclear Polynesian but for Futunic, and calling that extra-Futunic group the "[[Ellicean languages]]". Furthermore, East Polynesian was found to more likely have emerged from extra-Samoan Ellicean than out of Samoa itself, in contradiction to the long assumption of a Samoan homeland for the origins of East Polynesian. Wilson named this new group "Ellicean" after the pre-independence name of Tuvalu and presented evidence for subgroups within that overarching category.

Marck,<ref name="Marck">Marck, Jeff (2000), ''Topics in Polynesian languages and culture history''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.</ref> in 2000, was able to offer some support for some aspects of Wilson's suggestion through comparisons of shared sporadic (irregular, unexpected) sound changes, e.&nbsp;g., Proto-Polynesian and Proto-Nuclear-Polynesian *mafu 'to heal' becoming Proto-Ellicean *mafo. This was made possible by the massive Polynesian language comparative lexicon ("Pollex" – with reconstructions) of Biggs and Clark.<ref name="Biggs, Bruce 1990">Biggs, Bruce (1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994) and Bruce Biggs and Ross Clark (1996), [https://pollex.eva.mpg.de/ Pollex: Comparative Polynesian Lexicon (computer data base)]. Auckland: Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland.</ref>