Macro-Mayan

Infobox Language family
name=Macro-Mayan
altname=(obsolete)
region=Mesoamerica
familycolor=American
family=Macro-Mayan
child1=Mayan
child2=Totonacan
child3=Mixe-Zoque
child4="Huave"

Macro-Mayan is a proposal linking the clearly established Mayan family with neighboring families that show similarities to Mayan.

The first proposals of this hypothesis were made by Norman McQuown in 1942 who linked Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean. The hypothesis was not elaborated until 1979 when Brown & Witkowski put forth a proposal with 62 cognate sets and supposed sound correspondences between the two families. They also published two articles proposing a "Mesoamerican Phylum" composed of Maco-Mayan and other language families of Mesoamerica These proposals was examined closely by Lyle Campbell and Terrence Kaufman who rejected the proposal completely because of serious flaws in the methodology that had been applied. They rejected almost all of the 62 cognates. First and foremost they found it important to identify all cases of linguistic diffusion before collecting possible cognates, due to the fact that diffusion has been widespread within the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. The exchanges between Brown & Witkowski and Campbell & Kaufman took place in the journal American Anthropologist between 1978-1983.

However Lyle Campbell who is among the most outspoken "splitters" of modern linguistics has written that he believes that Mayan will indeed some day prove to be related to Mixe-Zoquean and Totonacan (Campbell: 1997), but that the studies up to now have done nothing to support such an assumption. He asserts that in the future, thorough and well conducted studies will have to be carried out. He also mentions that in his opinion Huave should be left out of future investigations since it is more likely connected to Oto-Manguean as suggested by Morris Swadesh.

*cite book |author=aut|Campbell, Lyle |authorlink=Lyle Campbell |year=1997 |title=American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America |format=OUP paperback edition, 2000|series=Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 4 |others=William Bright (series general ed.)|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York |isbn=0-19-509427-1 |oclc=32923907