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In this paper, I will discuss the question of the formation of the mixed and secret Kallawaya language, spoken by traditional herbalists at Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. The parental languages of Kallawaya are Southern Quechua (Quechua IIC), which provided the grammar, and now-extinct Pukina, which presumably supplied the lexicon. I argue that Kallawaya arose from lexical re-orientation, having been created by Quechua native speakers. As such it does not present an instance of selective replication (Matras 2000). To support this claim, I will discuss lexical, grammatical, and structural evidence. In contrast to what has been claimed by Stark (1972), only a small part of the Kallawaya lexicon links to Pukina. Moreover, the Kallawaya grammar is as good as identical to that of Southern Quechua but contains some grammatical markers that do not trace back to Quechua or Aymara. It is the aim of this paper to concentrate on these deviant markers, investigating possible relationships with Pukina. I will show that demonstrated links to Pukina are scarce and that the formation of Kallawaya is better explained as a case of lexical re-orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) in Peru has turned into a depoliticized endeavor, fed by a modernist national frame and a positivist/modernist linguistics (García et al., 2017). Situating my discussion amid the context of discourses of IBE, I will focus on Quechuaspeaking urban youth activists and the way they challenge three key issues that have been historically entrenched in the discourse of IBE and language diversity in general: the restriction of Quechua speakers to "mother tongue" speakers, the dichotomy between local and global identities, and the defensive stance towards neoliberalism and the market economy. In a context of tensions and challenges for multilingualism and of new circumstances for minoritized languages and their speakers (Pietikainen et al., 2016), these young people are questioning the depoliticized, limiting, and fictitious views of Quechua and Quechuaness from the IBE discourse. Put it differently: they are disinventing Quechua as IBE conceives it and reinventing it within a much more inclusive and politicized project, in a way that should interest educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the terminology for the major internal organs of the torso across the Quechuan language family. From both semasiological and onomasiological points of view, differences in the synchronic organization of the semantic field across individual Quechua varieties as well as the diachronic developments that brought them about are described. Particular attention is also paid to semantic reconstruction within the field at the proto-Quechua level, and, with recourse to recent efforts at internal reconstruction, also beyond. Another recurrent theme is the interrelation between lexical data and the conceptions of anatomy and bodily functions encountered in quechua-speaking communities. A major conclusion is that an engagement with such perspectives allows for a considerably richer understanding of lexical organization in synchrony and diachrony than linguistic data alone could provide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct object clitics in Spanish are morphological markers at the interfaces of syntax, phonology, morphology, and information structure (Zwicky, 1985; Ordóñez & Repetti, 2006; Belloro, 2007; Spencer & Luís, 2012). They play an important part in argument morphology in Spanish and are subject to variability in bilingual acquisition (McCarthy, 2008). In this paper we explore the morphology- syntax-information structure mapping of direct object clitics in clitic structures in a range of speakers that includes Quechua-dominant bilinguals and Spanish monolingual individuals along a continuum of language contact situations. Our findings indicate clear dissociation between syntactic properties and marking of morphological features. They also indicate a progression from default gender marking in clitics to a scalar system of clitic forms based on animacy and informational value along the continuum of speakers. Finally, while clitics in liberal clitic doubling varieties receive a focus interpretation (Sánchez, 2010; Sánchez & Zdrojewski, 2013), our data indicate that in some Spanish contact varieties they denote the primary object and secondary topic (Sánchez, 2003; Dalrymple & Nikolaeva, 2011; Mayer, 2008, 2013, forthcoming). The findings of this exploratory study support the view that while clitics exhibit common syntactic properties across a continuum of speakers, they may vary in morphological marking and informational value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acquisition of the Spanish 5-vowel system by speakers of the 3-vowel language Quechua (/ɪ/-/a/-/ʊ/) seldom results in accurate approximation to Spanish vowel spaces when learning takes place informally in post-adolescence. The present study offers data from a minimal immersion environment in northern Ecuador. In a context in which few cues point to the existence of mid-high vocalic oppositions in Spanish (e.g. no literacy, no corrective feedback, almost no viable minimal pairs), these speakers reliably distinguish only three Spanish vowels in production. These Quechua-dominant bilinguals have amorphous front and back vowel spaces considerably broader than those defining Quechua /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, but with no bimodal clustering. Left relatively unfettered, the hybrid system may contribute to an understanding of the relationship between vowel inventory and vowel space topology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will describe and interpret some data from Southern Quechua and Southern Aymara spoken texts recorded during traditional divinatory sessions. This analysis is aimed to show that divination can be considered as an example of how ritual speech, often described as a phenomenon based on fixed sequences, is characterized by variable elements too, being the relationship between a particular "context of situation" and the divinatory speech event very strong. In particular, the analysis focuses on a specific kind of speech acts, which seem to be built with the help of morphological devices that are normally used to indicate the source of information in the Quechua and Aymara language families. The same devices are used with a specific performative function in the context of divination: To "officialise" the message of the oracle and to oppose this to the speech acts of the diviner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines evidentiality and epistemic modality in Quechua narrative discourse from the central highlands of Peru. Huamalíes Quechua falls into the broad Quechua 'I' dialect grouping established by Alfredo Torero (1964); evidential usage here can be compared to that of southern Conchucos Quechua as studied by Diane and Daniel Hintz (2007; 2006) while it differs in interesting ways from the Quechua 'II' dialects of southern Peru as studied by Faller (2002; 2006). The analysis focuses on an orally performed traditional narrative that deals with the theme of social interaction between a human protagonist and a spirit being of the 'other world'. It describes the human protagonist's gradual realization of the nature of the spirit being with whom he has become involved; evidential and epistemic markings grammatically structure this transition from conjecture, to supposition, to direct witness. The aim is to show how the story's cultural content, and the way in which evidentials and epistemic modality are operationalized, are mutually entailing. Form and content taken together throw light both on how evidentiality and epistemic modality work in social interaction and on how Amerindian understandings of the interface between the 'natural' and 'supernatural' worlds, and between 'humans' and 'non-humans', inform grammatical usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidentials in Pastaza Quichua, an Amazonian dialect of Ecuadorian Quechua, are examined and their uses in narratives compared. The novel contribution of this paper is to show, by comparing data from personal experience narratives, that evidentials are used to convey speaker subjectivity, rather than source of information, and that switches between different speaker subjectivities, which may be encoded as 'selves' or 'others', are particularly evident in passages where momentous, life-changing statuses or interpersonal upheavals are being articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I propose that switch-reference in Quechua can best be analyzed as agreeing tense. Given the properties of the Quechuan switch-reference system and the clause structure of Quechua, I assume that a switch-reference adverbial clause does not have a valued tense feature and must agree with its superordinate clause in tense. Tense agreement is only possible if the subjects of both clauses are identical. The same subject marker is analyzed as the realization of successful tense agreement, while the different subject marker is the realization of failed agreement. I argue that this approach to switch-reference is conceptually as well as empirically compelling and raises the interesting question as to whether switch-reference is a true morphosyntactic category or not. Keywords: switch-reference; Quechua; Agree; minimalist framework; non-local dependencies [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefactive construction dar + gerund is used in the North Andean region only and is unknown elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. Based on the analysis of spontaneous data from Ecuadorian Highland Spanish, this paper provides a linguististic description of dar + gerund and of the social and pragmatic conditions of its use. Departing from this description, I explain that the construction originates through contact with Ecuadorian Quechua. It is shown that the geographical restriction of the use of dar + gerund is directly related to the specific characteristics of Ecuadorian Quechua. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Quichua of Ecuador, along with other indigenous peoples of Latin America, have been struggling to attain the right to use their ancestral language and their traditional ways of administering justice in an effort to gain greater autonomy in a variety of sociopolitical spheres of life. Based on interviews with 93 Ecuadorians — judges, magistrates, lawyers, justices of the peace, interpreters, translators, and local and national political leaders — the study finds an ideological splintering of views on this subject. Among the disparate Quichua communities and among State justice providers (largely comprising the hegemonic mestizo/blanco sector of society) there is a lack of agreement on how justice is to be carried out and what role the Quichua language should play in it. Despite the heterogeneity of views, however, there is tacit agreement on one de facto language policy, namely, the use of untrained, ad hoc interpreters in judicial settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]