Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages
| Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
South East Asia and the Pacific |
| Linguistic classification: |
Austronesian
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| Subdivisions: |
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| Glottolog: | None |
The principal branches of the Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages:
Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (excluding Oceanic)
Oceanic (vast majority off-map)
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The Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages are a branch of the Austronesian family, proposed by Wouk & Ross (2002), that are thought to have dispersed from a possible homeland in Sulawesi. They are called nuclear because they are the conceptual core of the Malayo-Polynesian family, including both Malay and Polynesian. Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian is found throughout Indonesia (apart from central Borneo, Sabah, and the north of Sulawesi), and into Melanesia and the Pacific.
Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages are Malayo-Polynesian languages that have abandoned the Austronesian alignment inherited from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian syntax. Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian includes the traditional geographic groupings of Central Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, and part of Western Malayo-Polynesian, a part Wouk and Ross call Inner Western Malayo-Polynesian or Sunda–Sulawesi. Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian excludes the Outer Western Malayo-Polynesian (Borneo–Philippine) languages.
Inner Western Malayo-Polynesian (Sunda–Sulawesi) is therefore defined negatively, as those languages of Sunda and Sulawesi not included in Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. Central–Eastern is an areal group, divergent from the rest of Malayo-Polynesian due to non-Austronesian (Papuan) substrata rather than due to any genealogical relationship.
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