Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages

Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian
Geographic; distribution	Southeast Asia and the Pacific
Linguistic classification	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian; ;
Glottolog	None
	The principal branches of the Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages: Various western branches Central Malayo-Polynesian Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (excluding Oceanic) Oceanic (vast majority off-map)

Last updated April 28, 2019

The Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages are a putative branch of the Austronesian family, proposed by Zobel (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.

The Austronesian languages are a language family that is widely dispersed throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, Madagascar and the islands of the Pacific Ocean, with a few members in continental Asia. Austronesian languages are spoken by about 386 million people (4.9%), making it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages with the highest number of speakers are Malay, Javanese, and Filipino (Tagalog). The family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.

Sulawesi, formerly known as Celebes, is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. Within Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger populations.

A nuclear family, elementary family or conjugal family is a family group consisting of two parents and their children. It is in contrast to a single-parent family, to the larger extended family, and to a family with more than two parents. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple; the nuclear family may have any number of children. There are differences in definition among observers; some definitions allow only biological children that are full-blood siblings, but others allow for a stepparent and any mix of dependent children including stepchildren and adopted children.

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–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian and part of Western Malayo-Polynesian.

Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine-type voice system, is a typologically unusual kind of morphosyntactic alignment in which "one argument can be marked as having a special relationship to the verb". This special relationship manifests itself as a voice affix on the verb that corresponds to a noun within the same clause that is either marked for a particular case or found in a privileged structural position within the clause or both.

In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order. The term syntax is also used to refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages.

The Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) languages form a proposed branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages consisting of over 700 languages.

Classification

There are a number of small clusters of languages whose interrelationship remains uncertain. Grouped by geography, they are:

Central and southern Sulawesi

Celebic languages: a proposed group.
South Sulawesi languages: includes the Buginese language; and perhaps the Tamanic languages.

The Celebic languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages spoken on the island of Sulawesi, formerly spelled Celebes. Almost all of the languages spoken in the provinces of Central Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi belong to the Celebic group. A few Celebic languages are located in South Sulawesi province. By number of languages, Celebic is the largest subgroup of Austronesian languages on Sulawesi.

The South Sulawesi languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian language family. They are spoken by the Bugis and related ethnic groups native to the Indonesian provinces South Sulawesi and West Sulawesi.

Buginese or Bugis is a language spoken by about five million people mainly in the southern part of Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Greater Sunda Islands

Moklenic languages: of the southern Burmese coast and southwestern Thai coast.
Northwest Sumatran languages: of north-central Sumatra and the Mentawai Islands. It is unclear if it includes the Enggano language.
Malayo-Sumbawan languages: of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and Vietnam. Includes the Malay language, the Sundanese language, and the Balinese language.
Lampungic languages: of southeastern Sumatra. It might include the Sundanese language.
Javanese language: of central and eastern Java.

The Moklenic or Moken–Moklen languages consist of a pair of two closely related but distinct languages, namely Moken and Moklen. Larish (1999) establishes the two languages as forming two distinct subgroups of a larger Moken–Moklen branch. Larish (2005) suggests Moklenic as an alternative name for Moken–Moklen, the latter term which was originally used by Larish (1999).

The Northwest Sumatran languages are a group of languages spoken by the Batak and related peoples in the interior of North Sumatra and by the Nias, Mentawai people, and others on the Barrier islands off the western coast of Sumatra.

The Enggano language, or Engganese, is a language of debated linguistic affiliation spoken on Enggano Island off the southwestern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. It has variously been classified as either an Austronesian language or a language isolate. Roger Blench (2014) considers Enggano to be a language isolate with Austronesian loanwords, while Owen Edwards (2015) classifies Enggano as an Austronesian language with a non-Austronesian substratum. Either way, the general scholarly consensus is that Enggano is an aberrant language that has both Austronesian and non-Austronesian origins.

Western Pacific islands

Palauan language: of Palau.
Chamorro language: of the Mariana Islands, including Guam.

Palauan is a Malayo-Polynesian language native to the Republic of Palau, where it is one of the two official languages, alongside English. It is widely used in day-to-day life in the country. Palauan is not closely related to other Malayo-Polynesian languages and its exact classification within the Austronesian languages is unclear.

Chamorro is an Austronesian language spoken by about 58,000 people. It is the native and spoken language of the Chamorro people who are the indigenous people of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, both US territories.

The Mariana Islands are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the western North Pacific Ocean, between the 12th and 21st parallels north and along the 145th meridian east. They lie south-southeast of Japan, west-southwest of Hawaii, north of New Guinea and east of the Philippines, demarcating the Philippine Sea's eastern limit. They are found in the northern part of the western Oceanic sub-region of Micronesia, and are politically divided into two jurisdictions of the United States: the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and, at the southern end of the chain, the territory of Guam. The islands were named after the influential Spanish queen Mariana of Austria.

Moluccas, New Guinea, Oceania

Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages.
- Central Malayo-Polynesian languages.
  - Sumba–Flores languages, spoken on and around the islands of Sumbawa (eastern), Sumba, and western–central Flores in the Lesser Sundas.
  - Flores–Lembata languages, spoken in the Lesser Sundas, on eastern Flores and small islands immediately east of Flores.
  - Selaru languages, spoken in the Tanimbar Islands of Indonesia.
  - Kei–Tanimbar languages, spoken in the Kei and Tanimbar Islands of the southern Malukus, and on the north side of the Bomberai Peninsula.
  - Aru languages, spoken on the Aru Islands in Indonesia.
  - Central Maluku languages, spoken principally on the Seram, Buru, Ambon, Kei, and the Sula Islands.
  - Timoric, or Timor–Babar, languages, spoken on the islands of Timor, neighboring Wetar, and (depending on the classification) the Babar Islands to the east.
  - Kowiai language, spoken on the Bomberai Peninsula in New Guinea.
  - Teor-Kur language, spoken near Kei Island, Indonesia.
- Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages.
  - Halmahera–Cenderawasih languages, found in the islands and along the shores of the Halmahera Sea in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and of Cenderawasih Bay in the provinces of Papua and West Papua.
  - Oceanic languages, spoken in Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia.

The Sumba–Flores languages, which correspond to the traditional Bima–Sumba subgroup minus Bima, are a proposed group of Austronesian languages spoken on and around the islands of Sumba and western–central Flores in the Lesser Sundas. The main languages are Manggarai, which has half a million speakers on the western third of Flores, and Kambera, with a quarter million speakers on the eastern half of Sumba Island.

Sumbawa is an Indonesian island, located in the middle of the Lesser Sunda Islands chain, with Lombok to the west, Flores to the east, and Sumba further to the southeast. It is part of the province of West Nusa Tenggara, but there are presently steps being taken by the Indonesian government to turn the island into a separate province. Traditionally the island is known as the source of sappanwood, as well as honey and sandalwood. Its savanna-like climate and vast grasslands are used to breed horses and cattle and to hunt deer.

Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. The population was 1,831,000 in the 2010 census and the largest town is Maumere. The name Flores is derived from the Portuguese for "flowers".

The position of Rejang in southwest Sumatra and newly discovered Nasal are as yet uncertain. Rejang may be a displaced Bornean Dayak language, and not Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian at all.

Related Research Articles

Malayo-Polynesian languages Language family

The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian people of the island nations of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia, going well into the Malay peninsula. Cambodia and Vietnam serve as the northwest geographic outlier. On the northernmost geographical outlier does not pass beyond the north of Pattani, which is located in southern Thailand. Malagasy is spoken in the island of Madagascar located off the eastern coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Part of the language family shows a strong influence of Sanskrit and particularly Arabic as the Western part of the region has been a stronghold of Hinduism, Buddhism and, since the 10th century, Islam.

Wallacea is a biogeographical designation for a group of mainly Indonesian islands separated by deep-water straits from the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Wallacea includes Sulawesi, the largest island in the group, as well as Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba, Timor, Halmahera, Buru, Seram, and many smaller islands.

Ngadha is an Austronesian language, one of six languages spoken in the central stretch of the Indonesian island of Flores. From west to east these languages are: Ngadha, Nage, Keo, Ende, Lio, and Palu'e. These languages form the proposed Central Flores group of the Sumba–Flores languages, according to Blust (2009).

The South Halmahera–West New Guinea (SHWNG) languages are a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, found in the islands and along the shores of the Halmahera Sea in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and of Cenderawasih Bay in the provinces of Papua and West Papua.

The Sunda–Sulawesi languages are a putative branch of the Austronesian family posited in Wouk and Ross (2002). They include most of the languages of Sulawesi and the Greater Sunda Islands, as well as a few outliers such as Chamorro and Palauan.

Borneo–Philippine languages language family

The Borneo–Philippines languages are a paraphyletic group of the Austronesian languages which includes the languages of the Philippines, much of Borneo, the northern peninsula of Sulawesi, and Madagascar. They can be divided into the Bornean languages and the Philippine languages.

More than 700 living languages are spoken in Indonesia. A major part of them belong to the Austronesian language family, while over 270 Papuan (non-Austronesian) languages are spoken in eastern Indonesia.. The official language is Indonesian, a standardized form of Malay, which serves as the lingua franca of the archipelago. The vocabulary of Indonesian borrows heavily from regional languages of Indonesia, such as Javanese, Sundanese and Minangkabau, as well as from Dutch, Sanskrit and Arabic.

The South Halmahera languages are the branch of Austronesian languages found along the southeast coast of the island of Halmahera in the Indonesian province of North Maluku. Irarutu is spoken in the east of the Bomberai Peninsula in West Papua province.

The Malayo-Sumbawan languages are a proposed subgroup of the Austronesian languages that unites the Malayic and Chamic languages with the languages of Java and the western Lesser Sunda Islands, except for Javanese. If valid, it would be the largest demonstrated family of Malayo-Polynesian outside Oceanic. The Malayo-Sumbawan subgroup is however not universally accepted, and is rejected e.g. by Blust (2010) and Smith (2017).

The Sumba languages are a group of closely related Austronesian languages which belong to the larger linkage of the Central Malayo-Polynesian languages.

The Central Maluku languages are a putative group of fifty Austronesian languages spoken principally on the Seram, Buru, Ambon, Kei, and the Sula Islands. None of the languages have as many as fifty thousand speakers, and several are extinct.

The Kei–Tanimbar languages are a small group of Austronesian languages spoken on the Kei and Tanimbar islands in the southern Maluku Islands, and on the north side of the Bomberai Peninsula. The languages are:

Keiese is an Austronesian language spoken in a small region of the Moluccas, a province of Indonesia.

The Savu languages, Hawu and Dhao, are spoken on Savu and Ndao Islands in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia.

The Selaru languages are a pair of Austronesian languages spoken in the Tanimbar Islands of Indonesia. They are not closely related, being 56% lexically similar (Ethnologue).

Kodi is a Sumba language of Indonesia. The population figure may include Gaura, which Ethnologue counts as a dialect of both the Lamboya and Kodi languages. Kodi is an Austronesian language that is mainly spoken in Nusa Tenggara Timur province, the western part of the island of Sumba in eastern Indonesia. An alternate name for Kodi is Kudi and dialects of the language include Kodi Bokol, Kodi Bangedo, Nggaro (Nggaura) and is most alike to Wejewa. With only approximately 20,000 speakers, the Kodi language is an endangered language.

The Flores–Lembata languages are a group of related Austronesian languages spoken in the Lesser Sundas, on eastern Flores and small islands immediately east of Flores. They are suspected of having a non-Austronesian substratum, for example in Sika, but not to any greater extent than the Central Malayo-Polynesian languages in general.

References

Zobel, Erik (2002), "The position of Chamorro and Palauan in the Austronesian family tree: Evidence from verb morphosyntax", in Fay Wouk; Malcolm Ross, The history and typology of Western Austronesian voice systems, Canberra: Pacific Linguistics #518, pp. 405–434.
K. Alexander Adelaar and Nikolaus Himmelmann, 2005, The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar. Routledge.
Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database

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Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian
Geographic distribution	Southeast Asia and the Pacific
Linguistic classification	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian
Glottolog	None
The principal branches of the Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages: Various western branches Central Malayo-Polynesian Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (excluding Oceanic) Oceanic (vast majority off-map)