The Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (EMP) languages form a putative subgroup of the Malayo-Polynesian languages consisting of over 500 languages. Their relationship is not supported by much linguistic data: per Malcolm Ross, there is "essentially no evidence" that the Halmahera–Cenderawasih (South Halmahera – West New Guinea) and Oceanic families form an exclusive clade within Malayo-Polynesian, while a 2008 analysis of the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database gives the proposal a confidence level of only 58%.
Famous quotes containing the words eastern and/or languages:
“All the morning we had heard the sea roar on the eastern shore, which was several miles distant.... It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea dashing against the land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for a whole Cape!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The trouble with foreign languages is, you have to think before your speak.”
—Swedish proverb, trans. by Verne Moberg.