Among the indigenous languages of the Andean region of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northern Chile and northern Argentina, Quechuan and Aymaran have traditionally occupied a dominant position. Both Quechuan and Aymaran are language families of several million speakers each. Quechuan consists of a conglomerate of geographically defined varieties, traditionally referred to as Quechua “dialects”, notwithstanding the fact that mutual intelligibility is often lacking. Present-day Aymaran consists of two distinct languages that are not normally referred to as “dialects”. The absence of a demonstrable genetic relationship between the Quechuan and Aymaran language families, accompanied by a lack of recognizable external genetic connections, suggests a long period of independent development, which may hark back to a period of incipient subsistence agriculture roughly dated between 8000 and 5000 BP (Torero 2002: 123–124), long before the Andean civilization attained its highest stages of complexity. Quechuan and Aymaran feature a great amount of detailed structural, phonological and lexical similarities and thus exemplify one of the most intriguing and intense cases of language contact to be found in the entire world. Often treated as a product of long-term convergence, the similarities between the Quechuan and Aymaran families can best be understood as the result of an intense period of social and cultural intertwinement, which must have pre-dated the stage of the proto-languages and was in turn followed by a protracted process of incidental and locally confined diffusion. It stands to reason to assume that the initial interaction between the two language groups took place within a relatively limited geographical space, which may have been situated in the mountains and sections of the coast of Central Peru. It may have extended as far north as the department of Ancash, with its influential archaeological center at Chavín (1st millennium BC), and southward into the highlands of Ayacucho and along the Pacific coast, where the Pre-Columbian cultures of Paracas (± 600 BC–200 AD) and Nazca (± 200–700 AD) flourished. In this central Peruvian area, there are few traces of indigenous languages not belonging to the Quechuan and Aymaran families, in spite of recurrent reports of multilingualism in early colonial chronicles. Possibly, the impression of multilingualism among colonial observers is to be interpreted as a reflection of linguistic variation within the Quechuan and Aymaran families themselves, although this partly remains a matter of speculation. Other languages native to the Andean region were

/pdf/languages-of-the-middle-andes-in-areal-typological-19czm3ep1s.pdf

Languages of the Middle Andes in areal-typological perspective: Emphasis on Quechuan and Aymaran

On Location: The Structure of Case and Adpositions

The extreme language diversity that was characteristic for South America must have been a challenge to native groups throughout the subcontinent, struggling to maintain commercial and political relations with each other. Due to the absence of phonetically based writing systems in pre-European times there is hardly any documentation about the way cross-linguistic communication was achieved. However, the outlines of a conscious linguistic policy can be assumed from the Incas’ success in imposing their language upon a millenary multilingual society. Secondlanguage learning, often by users of typologically widely different languages, must have been an everyday concern to the subjects of the Inca empire. Sixteenth-century chroniclers often report in a matter-of-fact way on the ease and rapidity with which native Americans mastered the language of their conquerors, be it Quechua, Spanish or any other language. Apart from such cases of political necessity, there are indications that language played an essential role in many South American native societies and that it could be manipulated and modified in a deliberate way. The use of stylistic speech levels among the Cuna (Sherzer 1983) and of ceremonial discourse among the Mbyá (Cadogan 1959; Clastres 1974), the Shuar (Gnerre 1986) and the Trio (Carlin 2004), the appreciation of rhetorical skill as a requisite for leadership among the Mapuche, the distinction of female and masculine speech among the Karajá (Rodrigues 2004) and the Chiquitano (Galeote 1993), the association of language choice and family lineage among the peoples of the Vaupés region (Sorensen 1967; Aikhenvald 2002), and the association of language choice and professional occupation in highland Bolivia (Howard 1995) appear to indicate an awareness of linguistic functionality not limited to daily communication alone. The existence of engineered professional languages, such as Callahuaya, based on the unification of elements from two or more languages (Stark 1972; Muysken 1997), or contact languages based on the same principle, such as the Ecuadorian Media Lengua (Muysken 1979), the unusual and complex borrowing relations that exist between Aymaran and Quechuan (Cerrón-Palomino 2000: 298–337), or between Amuesha and a neighboring variety of Quechuan (Wise 1976, Adelaar 2006) all suggest a tradition of conscious and deliberate choices relating to language use. Finally, the extraordinary complexity and rigidity of the grammatical systems of many South American languages suggest the opposite of anything such as sloppiness or indifference towards linguistic matters.

/pdf/chapter-historical-overview-descriptive-and-comparative-4jqul2fnlo.pdf

Chapter Historical overview : Descriptive and comparative research on South American Indian languages

The presence of a pronominal set with 'n' in the first person and 'm' in the second person in numerous Native American languages has been known for more than one century. The number (also approximate) of language families involved and the precise geographical distribution of the 'n'-and 'm'-forms, however, are still unclear. In addition, since the 'n': 'm' mini-paradigm seems to refer to a historical relatedness which lies beyond the reach of the scientific methods of historical-comparative linguistics, some Americanist linguists currently believe that it is impossible, if not useless, to try to provide a precise explanation of its wide geographical diffusion in the New World. The goals of this article are (i) to examine the presence/absence in all proven linguistic families of the Americas of n- and m- pronominal forms for first person or first person singular and second person or second person singular that do not result, as far as it is known, from secondary phonological developments occurred in individual branches; (ii) to reconstruct, as far as it is possible, the geographical distribution of the two forms in pre-European conquest times; and (iii) to attempt to offer a new interpretation of their (apparently robust) geographical diffusion. This article has two appendices published online only: Appendix A (Tables 1-8) and Appendix B (Linguistic data).

First-person n and second-person m in Native America: a fresh look

https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_3257439_2/component/file_3257446/shh2702.pdf

North and South in the ancient Central Andes: Contextualizing the archaeological record with evidence from linguistics and molecular anthropology

Hannß, Katja. 2008. Uchumataqu: The Lost Language of the Urus of Bolivia. A Grammatical Description of the Language as Documented between 1894 and 1952

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Hannß, Katja. 2008. Uchumataqu: The Lost Language of the Urus of Bolivia. A Grammatical Description of the Language as Documented between 1894 and 1952