Macro-Chibchan is a proposed grouping of the languages of the Lencan,

Misumalpan The Misumalpan languages (also Misumalpa or Misuluan) are a small family of languages spoken by different ethnic groups on the east coast of Nicaragua and the Eastern Half of HonduraThe name "Misumalpan" was devised by John Alden Mason and is com ...

, and

Chibchan The Chibchan languages (also known as Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa ...

families into a single large phylum (

macrofamily A macrofamily (also called a superfamily or superphylum) is a term often used in historical linguistics to refer to a hypothetical higher order grouping of languages. Metonymically, the term became associated with the practice of trying to group ...

History

The Lencan and Misumalpan languages were once included in the Chibchan family proper, but were excluded pending further evidence as that family became well established. Kaufman (1990) finds the Chibchan–Misumalpan connection convincing, if as yet unsubstantiated, though Campbell (1997) finds it doubtful. The Xincan family was once included in Macro-Chibchan, but this is now doubtful. Constenla (2005) calls this proposed phylum ''Lenmichí'' (Lencan–Misumalpan–Chibchan) and provides 85 cognate sets which exhibit regular sound correspondences among the three families. He suggests that

Chocoan The Choco languages (also Chocoan, Chocó, Chokó) are a small family of Indigenous languages spread across Colombia and Panama. Family division Choco consists of six known branches, all but two of which are extinct. *The Emberá languages (a ...

may be related as well. Greenberg proposed a broader conception of Macro-Chibchan, one dismissed by linguists working on the families in question. It included Yanomam,

Purépecha The Purépecha ( ) are a group of Indigenous people centered in the northwestern region of Michoacán, Mexico, mainly in the area of the cities of Cherán and Pátzcuaro. They are also known by the derogatory term " Tarascan", an exonym, app ...

, and Cuitlatec in addition to Chibchan–Misumalpan–Xinca–Lenca. Greenberg (1987) included

Paezan languages Paezan (also Páesan, Paezano, Interandine) may be any of several hypothetical or obsolete language-family proposals of Colombia and Ecuador named after the Paez language. Proposals Currently, Páez (Nasa Yuwe) is best considered either a lang ...

in a Chibchan-Paezan stock with Barbacoan, Chibchan,

, Jirajaran, and the isolates Betoi, Kamsá (

Sibundoy Sibundoy (Kamëntsá: Tabanok "village") is a town and municipality in the Putumayo Department of the Republic of Colombia. The town existed well before the Spanish came in 1534. The Inca, under Huayna Cápac, conquered the local Kamëntsá peo ...

), Yaruro, Esmeraldeño,

Mochica The Moche civilization (; alternatively, the Moche culture or the Early, Pre- or Proto-Chimú) flourished in northern Peru with its capital near present-day Moche, Trujillo, Peru from about 100 to 800 AD during the Regional Development Epoch. ...

, Cunza, Itonama,

Timucua The Timucua were a Native American people who lived in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia. They were the largest indigenous group in that area and consisted of about 35 chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people. The va ...

and Yurumanguí. An automated computational analysis (

ASJP The Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) is a collaborative project applying computational approaches to comparative linguistics using a database of word lists. The database is open access and consists of 40-item basic-vocabulary lists f ...

4) by Müller et al. (2013)Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013.
ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013)
'. also found lexical similarities between

and

. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.

Reconstruction

Constenla (2005) reconstructed five vowels and eleven consonants for Proto-Lenmichian, with the following reflexes:

Vowels

There are also a series of nasal vowels.

Consonants

Vocabulary

Below is a comparison of selected basic vocabulary items.Constenla Umaña, Adolfo (1987). "Elementos de Fonología Comparada de las Lenguas Misumalpas," ''Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica'' 13 (1), 129-161. :

References

* Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . * * * Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987). ''Language in the Americas''. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. * Kaufman, Terrence (1990). "Language History in South America: What we know and how to know more." In Doris L. Payne, ed. ''Amazonian Linguistics'', pp. 13–74. Austin: University of Texas Press. {{South American languages Proposed language families