Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages

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Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian
Geographic distribution:	Indonesia and the Pacific
Genetic classification:	Austronesian  Malayo-Polynesian (MP)   Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian
Subdivisions:	Sunda-Sulawesi Central-Eastern MP
The principal branches of the Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages: Sunda-Sulawesi is dark red (not shown: Chamorro), Central Malayo-Polynesian is green, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian is purple and pink. The vast majority of Oceanic languages (pink) are off the map.

The Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages are a branch of the Austronesian family that are thought to have dispersed from a possible homeland in Sulawesi. They are called nuclear because they are the geographic core of the family.

Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian is divided into two branches:

• The Sunda-Sulawesi languages or Inner Hesperonesian (Inner Western Malayo-Polynesian) languages, which include the languages of Sulawesi and the Greater Sunda Islands, as well as a few outliers such as Chamorro and Palauan; and
• the Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages, which include the languages to the east (the Lesser Sunda Islands, Halmahera, Moluccas, New Guinea, and the Pacific).

References

• Fay Wouk and Malcolm Ross (ed.), The history and typology of western Austronesian voice systems. Australian National University, 2002.

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