Adelaar Willem, Muysken Pieter. The languages of the Andes
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14 1 Introduction
country, where all citizens have the right to express themselves in their own language
before any authority.
9
Bolivia. The Bolivian highland region is again characterised by the dominance of
Quechua and Aymara. Only small pockets of speakers of other highland languages
remain. In the lowlands surrounding the northern edge of the Andean high plateau there
is a wide array of small, genetically isolated languages.
The number of Quechua speakers in Bolivia is estimated at 2,194,099 on the basis
of the 1992 census figures, that of Aymara speakers at 1,503,754 (Alb´o 1995, I: 19).
Speakers of the lowland languages are estimated at more than 96,000 (Alb´o 1995,
I: 19).
The 1967 constitution of Bolivia, with modifications dating from 1994, guarantees
in article 171 the rights of the indigenous peoples, including those concerning their
identity, values, languages and customs, and institutions.
10
Chile. The Mapuche people, who constitute the majority of the Chilean indigenous
population, are mainly concentrated in the region called La Araucan´ıa in the south of
that country. Originally, they inhabited most of the central and southern mainland parts
of Chile, including the island of Chilo´e, but centuries of war and colonising pressure
have reduced their territorial space. Although there may be a million people of Mapuche
descent, only an estimated 40 per cent continue to speak the language. There are no
reliable figures as to the actual number of speakers, however. In addition to Mapuche
only a few other native languages are found in the northern and southern extremities of
the country.
The current Chilean constitution makes no reference, as far as we could establish, to
language and culture, indigenous or not. This may reflect the fact that Chileans tend not
to perceive themselves as a partly Amerindian nation.
Argentina. The northwestern part of Argentina is inhabited by Indians and mestizos
belonging to the Andean cultural sphere. Many of them speak Quechua or did so in the
past. The Gran Chaco, to the east of the northern Argentinian Andes, is inhabited by
the Tupi–Guaran´ı Chiriguano and several other important indigenous groups speaking
Guaicuruan and Matacoan languages. Araucanian (Mapuche) is the dominant Indian
language in the south and southwest of Argentinia. Other groups in Patagonia and Tierra
del Fuego are extinct or nearly so. In the central and western part of the country all
9
La primera visi´on que tiene el Proyecto concibe al Per´u como pa´ıs pluri´etnico y pluricultural; en
consideraci´on a ello el Proyecto comienza estableciendo por ejemplo, que todos los peruanos
tienen el derecho a expresarse en su propio idioma, no solamente en castellano, sino tambi´en en
quechua o en aymara, ante cualquier autoridad.
10
Se reconocen, respetan y protegen en el marco de la ley, los derechos sociales, econ´omicos
y culturales de los pueblos ind´ıgenas que habitan en el territorio nacional, especialmente los
relativos a sus tierras comunitarias de origen garantizando del uso y aprovechamiento sostenible
de los recursos naturales, a su identidad, valores, lenguas y costumbres e instituciones.
1.5 History of the study of the Andean languages 15
aboriginal Indian languages have disappeared. Indians or people of local indigenous
descent number several hundred thousand in Argentina.
Article 75 of the 1994 constitution of Argentina states that Congress must recognise
the ethnic and cultural pre-existence of the Argentinian indigenous peoples, and
guarantee the respect for their identity and right to bilingual and intercultural education.
11
The term ‘pre-existence’ presumably refers to the Argentinian self-perception as a non-
Indian immigrant nation.
1.5 History of the study of the Andean languages
Little if anything is known about linguistics in the preconquest era, although there
may have been awareness of linguistic differences in the Inca empire. The colonial
era, in which missionary priests started recording the richness of the Indian linguistic
heritage, is well worth describing in some detail. The nineteenth century is dominated
by laymen: primarily European scholars, often with an archaeological and historical
interest. In the twentieth century we find a stronger American presence, in addition to
the emergence of groups of researchers in the different Andean countries themselves.
The recent period shows several new developments: the participation of speakers of
native languages in the research, the widening concern for language use, the concern
about language endangerment and the role of multilingualism in Andean society.
We will describe the developments in these periods in sequence, first looking at the
external history of language study in each period, and then consider the treatment of a
particular grammatical construction. Relative clauses in Quechua are used as an example
to illustrate different phases in the thinking about Andean languages: they are complex
and unfamiliar enough to have posed a challenge for different generations of outside
scholars.
1.5.1 The colonial period
The first data on any Andean language gathered by an outsider, as far as we know, consist
of vocabulary noted down by Pigafetta, as Vocables Des G´eantz Pathagoniens. Antonio
de Pigafetta accompanied Fernando de Magalh˜aes (Magellan) on his voyage around
the world between 1519 and 1522 (Pigafetta 1956: 177 ff). The list of words includes
body parts, some terms referring to social status (her ‘chief’) and the physical universe.
No grammatical items were recorded, except chen [ˇcen] ‘us’. The list reveals only a
superficial dialogue context and probably reflects some profound misunderstandings.
Contacts did not lead to immediate colonisation. This was different, of course, when
11
Reconocer la preexistencia ´etnica y cultural de los pueblos ind´ıgenas argentinos. Garantizar el
respeto a su identidad y el derecho a una educaci´on biling¨ue e intercultural...
16 1 Introduction
Table 1.2 Early grammars of Andean languages (arranged
from north to south)
Chibcha 1609 Bernardo de Lugo
Mochica 1644 Fernando de la Carrera
Quechua (Inca) 1560 Domingo de Santo Tom´as
1607 Diego Gonz´alez Holgu´ın
Aymara 1603 Ludovico Bertonio
Morocosi (Mojo) 1699 Anonymous Jesuit
Mapuche 1606 Luis de Valdivia
Allentiac 1607 Luis de Valdivia
Millcayac 1607 Luis de Valdivia
the Andes were taken from the north by Spanish bands of conquistadores in the 1530s.
With the conquistadores came the priests.
From the very beginning of the European presence in South America Indian languages
were studied and documented by Roman Catholic missionaries. Some of the early lin-
guistic descriptions written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are admirably
accurate for the time. They contain a wealth of information, which is particularly valu-
able when placed in the interpretative context of recent findings. Rowe (1974) calculates
that by 1700 grammars of 21 Amerindian languages had been published, 19 of which
dealt with languages of Mexico and South America. In addition, we find a large num-
ber of vocabularies, catechisms, etc. Some of the first grammars written for Andean
languages are listed in table 1.2.
The early grammars had an ecclesiastical use, and this meant that they were couched
in a vocabulary a priest could understand. Grammatical descriptions often ‘reduced’
grammars to the Latin mould. Most missionaries used the model developed by the
Spanish grammarian Antonio de Nebrija in his Introductiones Latinae (c.1488); see
D¨ummler (1997).
Still, we should not underestimate the achievement of early colonial grammarians.
First of all, they were writing at a time when very few languages had been described
yetinEurope. Fray Domingo de Santo Tom´as’s (1560a) grammar of Quechua antedates
the first grammars of German (1573) and of English (1586). Second, we find, next to
or subsequent to fumbling first efforts, early seventeenth-century masterpieces, still un-
surpassed, of grammatical description and lexicographic exploration. Examples include
Bertonio (1603a, b) on Aymara, Valdivia (1606) on Mapuche and Gonz´alez Holgu´ın
(1607) on Quechua. An adequate assessment of their intellectual background and insights
into the organisation of grammar is still lacking, even though a number of studies are
filling the gap (Su´arez Roca 1992; Troiani 1995; Zimmermann 1997; Dedenbach-Salazar
1.5 History of the study of the Andean languages 17
S´aenz and Crickmay 1999; Nowak 1999; Zwartjes 2000). The work of Herv´as (Herv´as y
Panduro 1784, 1800–5) reflects the detailed knowledge which Jesuits and missionaries
of other congregations had in the eighteenth century of the linguistic situation in South
America.
We will illustrate the evolution of the grammatical tradition by using the example of
the treatment of Quechua relative clauses. Quechua relative clauses are generally formed
with nominalising particles. When the subject is relativised, -q is used (examples are
given from the Cuzco variety):
(1) kay-man hamu-q runa ruwa-nqa
this-AL come-AG man do-3S.F
‘The man who comes here will do it.’
The relative clause precedes the antecedent, and the relativised element is generally not
expressed in the clause itself; cf. Weber (1983, 1989), Cole et al. (1982), Lefebvre and
Muysken (1982, 1988). In the Central Peruvian varieties the relative clause generally
follows the antecedent; if it precedes the antecedent, it is often interpreted generically.
When a non-subject is relativised, a different nominalising particle, such as -sqa,is
used:
(2) qaynunˇcaw riku-sqa-yki runa ruwa-nqa-n
yesterday see-SN-2S man do-3S.F-AF
‘The man you saw yesterday will do it.’
The grammars by Santo Tom´as (1560a) and Gonz´alez Holgu´ın (1607) illustrate
the early tradition. The unfamiliar features of Quechua relative clauses, such as the
subject/non-subject distinction, their position and the absence of tense marking, posed a
considerable challenge for Spanish priests. Santo Tom´as (1560a) does not discuss nom-
inalising particles in relation with relative clauses. Rather, he introduces a periphrastic
construction in his fifteenth chapter (‘Of relatives’), as in (3) (his spelling):
(3) Pedro pori-rca, pay-pas, o chay-pas, o quiquin-pas, micu-rca
Pedro walk-PA.3S he-AD or that-AD or self-AD eat-PA.3S
‘Pedro walked, the same ate.’ (Pedro anduvo, el cual comi´o.)
This coordinate construction occurs in Quechua, but it is not the most common way to
form a relative.
Gonz´alez Holgu´ın’s (1607) grammar constitutes a considerable improvement. It is
noted that the primary way of forming relative clauses is with a participle and without a
relative pronoun, as in (1), but then Gonz´alez Holguin goes on to say that a clearer and
more elegant way (oraci´on muy clara y elegante)exists to express the same meaning, as
18 1 Introduction
in (4), involving the question word pi ‘who’, which again recalls the European models
(original spelling):
(4) Dios-pa gracia-n-pac pi-ch camari-cu-n, o pi-pas camari-cu-n
chay-ca usachi-cu-nca-tac-mi
God-G grace-3P-B who-DU prepare-RF-3S or who-AD prepare-RF-3S
that-TO attain-RF-3S.F-EM-AF
‘Whoever prepares himself for God’s grace, that person will certainly
attain it.’
Gonz´alez Holgu´ın also mentions a third way of forming relatives, corresponding to
Santo Tom´as’s example (3).
An admirably detailed and generally faithful account of the language is coupled
with Jesuit certainty and missionary zeal, and with a desire to cultivate the language
(somewhat along the lines of Latin). This cultivation of Quechua was part of Spanish
colonial policy (see chapters 3 and 7). University chairs were established for Quechua
and Aymara at the University of San Marcos in Lima, for Quechua in Quito and for
Muisca in Santaf´edeBogot´a.
Half a century later we find the first grammar of Quechua in which different varieties
are explicitly treated (Torres Rubio 1619), and this coincides with the beginning of the
comparative tradition in Andean language studies, which will be the subject of the final
sections of this chapter.
1.5.2 The nineteenth century
The opening up of Latin America to other European nations after independence was
accompanied by a new type of scholar dedicated to the languages of the Andes. Wilhelm
von Humboldt had already paid attention to languages such as Quechua, basing himself
on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources (1836, 1971). He saw the Quechua
relative clauses in an evolutionary perspective, in a fashion typical of nineteenth-century
historicist thought. The nominalised participles, as in (1) and (2), reflect an early, more
primitive phase in Quechua language and culture; the relative clauses involving question
words as in (4) correspond to the higher attainments of Inca civilisation.
The same tendency to view Andean culture patterns in terms of the Great Civilisations
is found in Ernst Middendorf, a curious but highly impressive figure who arrived in Peru
as a physician in 1855, twenty-five years old. He spent a total of twenty-five years in the
country, in three extended periods, first as a physician in Lima and then as a hacendado,
a landowner, in the Cuzco region. Middendorf combined the edition of surviving texts
in a number of Andean languages with actual fieldwork. In his Quechua grammar
(1890a, 1970) the relatives formed through coordination, (3), and those formed with a
1.5 History of the study of the Andean languages 19
question word, (4), move to the second plan. The crucial subject (1)/non-subject
(2) distinction is stated clearly for the first time.
For the first time as well we find an explicit discussion of possible Spanish influence
on the Andean languages: are relative clauses formed with a question word the result
of Spanish grammatical influence? Middendorf considers the question unanswerable,
and indeed the issue is highly complex (see, for instance, Lefebvre 1984; Appel and
Muysken 1987: 161), since already in the earliest Quechua sources we find a special
type of correlative formed with question words, but no ordinary relative clauses formed
this way.
1.5.3 Contemporary Andean linguistics
Particularly after the Second World War, the study of Andean languages underwent a
new upsurge, stimulated by linguists from the United States and Europe, both secular
and evangelist. The activities of the early missionary grammarians have received a
modern continuation in the work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL; in Spanish:
Instituto Ling¨u´ıstico de Verano, ILV), whose members study the native Indian languages
for purposes of evangelisation. SIL members have been active in most South American
countries.
Two typical examples of post-Second World War descriptive linguistics are Yokoyama
(1951) and Levinsohn (1976). In contrast with the notionally based grammars of tra-
ditional and nineteenth-century linguists, these scholars focus on formal patterns and
resemblances. Yokoyama discusses relative clauses in Quechua in terms of their con-
stituent morphemes, going through some of the different uses of a suffix such as -sqa,
before coming up with some examples of a relative clause.
Levinsohn (1976), working in the framework of tagmemics, sets up numerical for-
mulas for different verb and suffix combinations. We get examples such as (5a), which
can be glossed as (5b):
(5) a. Vb 1331.1 – H:nighua
b. ni-g-wa
say-AG-C
‘with the one who says’
While the formula in (5a) may have made it possible for the author to describe the lan-
guage economically and consistently, for outsiders it is difficult to gain much information
from it without a lot of puzzle work. Work in more contemporary grammatical frame-
works such as Lefebvre and Muysken’s (1988) analysis, couched in the Government
and Binding model, while providing more examples, similarly has proven little more
accessible.
20 1 Introduction
In work done by scholars from the Andean countries often a more tradition-based,
practical perspective is adopted.
1.6 Sources for the study of the languages of the Andes
Linguistic fieldwork is, of course, the principal source of information concerning the
languages presently spoken. Cases where this type of research is particularly urgent are
numerous. Notwithstanding its essential importance, field research cannot answer all
the questions relevant to the past and present state of the South American languages.
Manuscripts with word lists, travel accounts and recordings in public archives or libraries,
or in private possession, may provide data concerning extinct languages and earlier stages
of living languages.
As we have said before, early Spanish grammarians contributed substantially to our
knowledge of native American languages, and some of them played a role in efforts
towards the standardisation of the Quechua language to suit its use as an instrument of
evangelisation. Among these was the team that translated the Doctrina Christiana and
the Catechism into Quechua following the Third Lima Council of 1583. They designed a
unified, phonologically simple version of Quechua in which the regional differences were
to some extent attenuated (Cerr´on-Palomino 1987b: 84–90). Others, such as Bertonio and
Gonz´alez Holgu´ın, wrote grammars and dictionaries (of Aymara and Cuzco Quechua,
respectively) considered among the classics of renaissance linguistic description. How-
ever, they too focused their attention mainly upon those languages considered useful
for purposes of colonisation and evangelisation. When unimportant from a numerical
point of view, languages were mostly left unrecorded, or the grammars, dictionaries
and catechisms dedicated to them remained in single manuscript versions. Many of
these subsequently became lost. One manuscript grammar that fortunately has sur-
vived is de la Mata (1748), kept in the British Library in London. It is a grammar
of the Chol´on language spoken until recently in the Huallaga valley in the Peruvian
department of San Mart´ın. However, the previous existence of Barzana’s grammar (pub-
lished in 1590; see Brinton 1891: 170) of the Diaguita or Kak´an language, once spoken
in what is now northwestern Argentina and northern Chile, is only known to us from
an indirect source. Most unfortunately, there is no grammatical nor lexical information
on this language apart from a substantial number of place names and a few terms in
local use.
Not until shortly before the end of Spanish colonial presence in the Andean region, do
we find a renewed interest in local linguistic and cultural conditions. A remarkable figure
representing this current, inspired by the European Enlightenment, is Baltasar Jaime
Mart´ınez Compa˜n´on, who collected word lists of the native languages still spoken about
1780 in the northern Peruvian coastal and sierra regions (Mart´ınez Compa˜n´on 1985).
Mart´ınez Compa˜n´on stood at the beginning of a tradition of systematically collecting
1.6 Sources for study 21
data for a variety of Amerindian languages that lasted through the nineteenth and part
of the twentieth centuries.
The analysis of texts in native languages collected for different purposes, published
and unpublished, constitutes another promising field. Much work remains to be done in
this area.
Several areas in South America, especially in the Andes, exhibit an ancient agricultural
tradition rooted in the pre-Columbian and early colonial past but have lost their original
languages. In such areas, the study of toponymy can provide information about the
linguistic situation as it was in early postconquest times. Such an undertaking can help
not only to identify the languages formerly spoken in a particular area, but also to provide
an indication of their territorial extension at the time before they became extinct. This
type of research has been carried out in recent years in relation to the coast and sierra
of northern Peru (Torero 1986, 1989; Adelaar 1988, 1999).
As regards the issue of extinction, a precaution is in order. Rediscoveries of languages
thought extinct are not unusual. Elderly people may remember a language whereas the
younger generation is hardly aware that it ever existed. Chol´on, for instance, was found
to be still in use with a few individuals in the Peruvian Huallaga valley (Barbira 1979,
cited in Cerr´on-Palomino 1987a), although it is probably extinct now. Van de Kerke
(1998, 2000) found a number of speakers of Leco, a language on the slopes of the Andes
in Bolivia that had been considered extinct as well.
Several surveys dealing with the present-day situation of the native languages in the
South American countries have provided data for this book. For Colombia the principal
sources are publications of the Centro Colombiano de Estudios de Lenguas Abor´ıgenes
(CCELA) of the Universidad de Los Andes and Gonz´alez and Rodr´ıguez (2000). For
both Colombia and Ecuador a basic source are publications of the Summer Institute of
Linguistics. Torero (1974) and Cerr´on Palomino (1987a) are important reference works
for Quechua. For Aymara there is Hardman et al. (1988), and Cerr´on Palomino (2000).
For Chile the main reference for Mapuche is Salas (1992a). The Argentinian situation is
treated in Klein (1985) and Censabella (1999); as far as Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego
are concerned, a basic source is Clairis (1985a).
With respect to the Amazon area, important compilations have appeared, such as
Key (1979), Pottier (1983), Klein and Stark (1985a), Derbyshire and Pullum (1986,
1990, 1991, 1998), Doris L. Payne (1990a), Queixal´os and Renault-Lescure (2000) and
Dixon and Aikhenvald (2000). Loukotka (1968), Tovar and Larrucea de Tovar (1984),
Migliazza and Campbell (1988), Campbell (1997) and Fabre (1998) provide the most
complete recent bibliographical data. These books give a fairly complete listing of South
America’s native languages, accompanied by remarks concerning existing classificatory
proposals. Their aim is not to contribute a reasoned classification in itself. The Atlas
of the World’s Languages (Moseley and Asher 1994), with a contribution by Kaufman,
provides additional information.
22 1 Introduction
1.7 Genetic relations of South American Indian languages
South America has rightly been called ‘the least known continent’ (Lyon 1974). This
statement holds true, in particular, when applied to the genetic relationships of the
native languages of its western half. Much remains to be done before a comprehensive
classification can be established of the numerous native languages spoken, or once
spoken, in the Andes and in the pre-Andean lowlands. Genetically isolated languages
and small language families predominate in the area. Not the number of languages,
but rather the number of irreducible genetic units constitutes its most striking feature.
The resulting impression of extreme linguistic diversity is partly due to insufficient
documentation, but in cases where good data are available the situation seems to be
no less complex. The linguistic situation in the Andes is comparable in many ways
to that in other parts of the Americas, except for the circumstance that maybe more
languages became extinct here during the last five centuries than anywhere else on the
continent. In a majority of cases, such languages have remained undocumented. Their
extinction implies the loss of just as many potential genetic links between the languages
still in use. Consequently, some of the best-known languages of the Andean region, such
as Araucanian or Mochica, do not form part of any genetic grouping that could meet
with the consensus of linguistic scholarship. The same holds true for ‘shallow’ genetic
units such as Quechua, a conglomerate of closely related dialects, and Aymaran (also
known as Aru or Jaqi), the language family that includes Aymara as its most important
representative.
The existence in South America of a number of large genetic groupings including
many widely scattered individual languages has been known for a long time. They in-
clude the Arawakan, Cariban, Chibchan and Tupi linguistic stocks. All four of them
are represented in the Andes, in the pre-Andean lowlands or in both. However, with
the exception of Chibchan in the northern Andes, they all occupy a predominant place
elsewhere in South America. There have been several attempts to link linguistic isolates
of the eastern Andean slopes to one of the larger stocks just mentioned, but in most cases
without lasting success. The genetic status of several languages that were once tenta-
tively classified as Arawakan or Chibchan will have to be reconsidered. The Amuesha
language of the central Peruvian forest slopes constitutes a remarkable exception to this.
Its supposed membership of the Arawakan family was long considered controversial,
but its close genetic relationship with other Arawakan languages of the Pre-Andine
subgroup has now become established beyond reasonable doubt (Wise 1976).
Like in North America, the diversity of languages seems to have been the greatest
along the mountainous spine on the Pacific side of the continent, which may also have
constituted the scene of the earliest wave of migrations. Early colonial observers, such
as Bibar (1558), Cieza de Le´on (1553), Cobo (1653) and Sim´on ([1626] 1882–1892,
II: 116, 284; cited in P´erez de Barradas 1955: 17–19) speak of an amazing variety
1.7 Genetic relations of South American Indian languages 23
of languages in what is now Colombia, Peru and northern Chile. It is often not clear,
however, whether the languages referred to were actually different languages or merely
local varieties of more widespread languages. When Sim´on, for instance, speaks of the
numerous languages used in the highlands surrounding Santaf´edeBogot´a and Tunja
in New Granada (present-day Colombia), he may have been referring to dialects of the
prevailing Muisca and Duit languages with the possible inclusion of some unrelated
neighbouring idiomatic groups. On the other hand, the linguistic variety in the northern
Peruvian bishopric of Trujillo observed by Garcilaso de la Vega (Royal Commentaries
of the Incas, 1609, Book VII, chapter 3) turned out to be quite real. Except for Mochica,
these languages remained virtually without record throughout the colonial period and
hardly received any attention until their extinction at a relatively recent date.
The cultural and political developments that took place in the Andes have favoured the
spread of a few languages, i.e. Quechua, Aymara and Araucanian, at the cost of scores
of local languages originally present in the area. Their expansion was initiated before
the establishment of the Inca empire and the European invasion. In quite a few cases, the
local languages did not disappear before the end of the colonial period. A few of them
remained vital well into the twentieth century. In addition to the expansion of the major
native languages, the rapid spread of Spanish also contributed to further reducing the
complexity of the linguistic situation in the Andes. Spanish, for instance, has directly
replaced Mochica and several other languages on the northern Peruvian coast as well as
in its mountainous hinterland.
The disappearance without record of so many potential relatives has doubtlessly con-
tributed to the apparent genetic isolation of the languages still spoken. Tenacious efforts
to relate some of the surviving languages of the area to each other, rather than con-
sider them within the framework of more comprehensive genetic constructs, may have
contributed to further obscuring the situation. This holds true, in particular, for the two
Indian languages most widely spoken in the Andes, Quechua and Aymara.
After centuries of increasing uniformisation, considerable language diversity, as may
once have existed everywhere in the Andes, is still found nowadays on the eastern slopes
along the upper reaches of the Amazonian rivers. Lowland Bolivia and eastern Ecuador,
as well as the Colombian and Peruvian Amazonian regions adjacent to Ecuador, are
typical areas in this respect.
1.7.1 History of classificatory efforts
Opinions about the origin of the South American Indians and their languages date back
to the early years of European presence on the continent. If we leave aside the initial
postdiscovery belief that America was part of Asia, Acosta in his Historia natural y moral
de las Indias (Natural and Moral History of the Indies; 1590, Book I, chapters 20–4) was
probably the first to intuitively sense the way in which the ancestors of America’s Indian