English

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Etymology

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macro- +‎ phylum

Noun

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macrophylum (plural macrophyla)

  1. (linguistics) A group of two or more related language phylums
    • 2007, Word, volume 58, page 80:
      In Table 3, this is executed synchronically for languages from all parts of the world with the exception of the Indo-European macrophylum, the Uralic macrophylum, and Creole languages, which are considered separately, below.
    • 2008, Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, Roger Blench, Malcolm D. Ross ·, Past Human Migrations in East Asia:
      Bellwood (2005) has examined the question from an archaeologist's point of View, noting that the Austroasiatic and Miao-Yao families, either singly or together as a macrophylum, may have developed out of the first rice-farming societies of the mid=Yángzi valley.
    • 2015, Matthew Baerman, The Oxford Handbook of Inflection, page 465:
      Chamorro is an isolate within the Western Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian macrophylum.