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 those that have abandoned the Austronesian alignment inherited from proto-Malayo-Polynesian syntax. These include 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.
Inner Western Malayo-Polynesian (Sunda–Sulawesi) is therefore defined negatively, 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.
Read more about Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian Languages: Languages
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