The Reef Islands – Santa Cruz languages (usually shortened to Reefs – Santa Cruz, abbreviated RSC) are a branch of the Oceanic languages comprising the languages of the Santa Cruz Islands and Reef Islands: The debate in Oceanic linguistics dated from the Second International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics in 1978, where two opposing papers were presented.
Peter Lincoln argued that the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages were Oceanic,[1] while Stephen Wurm argued that they were Papuan languages.
[2] These languages were only definitively classified as part of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian family after a series of papers that refuted the three major arguments for classifying them as either primarily Papuan languages or at least heavily influenced by a Papuan substrate.
Ross and Næss (2007) offer a retrospective conclusion: