A Comparative Study of the Andean Languages

Fieldwork Locations

 

Contents

 

Which Andean Languages Do We Cover?  Why These?

Map of Fieldwork Locations

Information on Fieldwork Locations and Informants

and links to photo-pages on selected locations

 

A Working Classification of the Varieties Covered

The Traditional Quechua ‘Family Tree’

Further Varieties to be Included

Data Sources:  Fieldwork and Dictionaries

Colour Coding Key

Language Names and Spellings

 

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Which Andean Languages Do We Cover?  Why These?

For Quechua we have so far covered fifteen varieties, from Ecuador (2), Peru (10), and Bolivia (3).  As far as possible within the practical limitations on travel and time available thus far in our research project, we made our particular selection of varieties has been made on the basis of three criteria, i.e. in order to offer:

   Coverage of all the main varieties within all the main branches of the ‘family tree’ of the language – or rather, family of closely related languages – that is Quechua.   For more details, see the map and ‘family tree’ structure table below, and a brief note on how different the varieties are from each other.

   Coverage of all the various degrees of difference between varieties within the Quechua family, to give us a perspective on all relative degrees of difference we find in our database:  accents, dialects, closely related languages.  At the ‘less different’ end of this scale, this involved including focusing, for on a number of highly similar varieties spoken over the just one very large area, that of Southern or Cuzco-Collao Quechua, which also allows us to test the discriminatory power of our method.

   More intensive coverage of the areas considered most significant for a better understanding of the history, origins and development of the Quechua family (and its early contact with Aymara), that is in particular the areas whose varieties of Quechua are in some senses ‘intermediate’ between the two principal branches of the family:  Northern Peruvian Quechua, Laraos, etc.  Here there remain other varieties of particular interest in order to complete our coverage, not least Pacaraos and Yaru Quechua.

 

Applying the same principles to Aymara, the study will cover:

   three forms of southern (or ‘Altiplano’) Aymara, one for each of its principal varieties;

   for central (or ‘Tupino’) Aymara:  both varieties, namely Jaqaru, and Kawki.

For more information on Jaqaru and Kawki, particularly an in-depth look at the question of their endangerment and, for Jaqaru, the chances of long-term survival (Kawki is sadly already doomed), click to read the following article, in Spanish, by Dante Oliva León:  Jacaru y Cauqui, al Borde del Silencio.

 

We have also been generously granted data, from other researchers’ fieldwork, on the Bolivian Andean language Uru‑Chipaya, unrelated to either Quechua or Aymara.

 

 

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Map of Fieldwork Locations

Showing (in the boxes) each of the varieties covered in the study.

This map was put together mostly on the basis of book Lingüística Quechua, Cerrón-Palomino (1987) – see the inset.

for more details on the sources for it see the dialect variation page

 

 

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Information on Fieldwork Locations and Informants

The table below gives a summary presentation of the Andean language varieties for which data are already collected and which are covered in this study.  For more information, and a selection of photographs of my informants, other speakers, and their home towns and villages, click on any language name link in the second column in this table to see their entry page on our Sounds of the Andean Languages website.

   The first column indicates whether the source for my data was my own fieldwork (fw, in 19 cases), and/or from dictionaries (dct, in three cases).

   The fieldwork locations are arranged geographically north to south.

   Varieties in black are from the Quechua language family, those in brown are from the Aymara family (also known as Jaqi or Aru), while Chipaya (a separate family) is in green.

 

SOURCE:  Field- work / Dictionary?

My Name for this language variety

 

Language Branch

Altitude

Latitude

Longitude

Country

Departa-
mento

Provincia

Distrito

Parroquia / Comunidad Campesina

Comunidad

FW

Chimborazo

NQ

Ecuador Andes

3189 m

01° 50.143' S

78° 43.583' W

Ecuador

‑‑

Chimborazo

(cantón) Colta

Columbe

El Troje (‘Troje Grande’)

FW

Tena

NQ

Ecuador Amazon

563 m

01° 05.576' S

77° 55.756' W

Ecuador

‑‑

Napo

Tena?

Talag?

Serena

FW

Inkawasi

NPQ

Inkawasi-Cañaris

3030 m

06° 14.144' S

79° 19.008' W

Peru

Lambayeque

Ferreñafe

Inkawasi

 

 

FW

Cañaris

NPQ

Inkawasi-Cañaris

1300 m

06° 01' S

79° 12' W

Peru

Lambayeque

Ferreñafe

Cañaris

 

(caserío) Chilasque

FW

Cajamarca

NPQ

Cajamarca

2811 m

07° 08.815' S

78° 40.364' W

Peru

Cajamarca

 

Chetilla

 

 

FW

Corongo

CQ

Corongo

2867 m

08° 37.125' S

77° 51.867' W

Peru

Ancash

Corongo

Yánac

 

 

FW

Chavín

CQ

Huari

3638 m

09° 34.597' S

77° 12.849' W

Peru

Ancash

Huari

Chavín de Huantar

Huancapampa

Chacpar

FW

Laraos

IQ

Laraos

3513 m

12° 20.830' S

75° 47.173' W

Peru

Lima

Yauyos

Laraos

 

Laraos

FW

Huancavelica

SQ

Huancavelica

4092 m

12° 45.629' S

74° 54.230' W

Peru

Huancavelica

Huancavelica

Yauli

 

Atalla, anexo  Tunsukuchu

FW

Kawki

CA

Kawki

1283 m

12° 46.797' S

75° 55.106' W

Peru

Lima

Yauyos

 

 

Cachuy  & Canchán

FW

Jaqaru

CA

Jaqaru

3150 m

12° 50' S

75° 45' W

Peru

Lima

Yauyos

Tupe

 

Tupe & Aisa

FW

Apolobamba

SQ

N.Bolivia

3753 m

15° 07.804' S

68° 59.992' W

Peru

La Paz

Bautista Saavedra

municipio: Curva

sección segunda

Tilinwaya ('Lagunillas')

FW

Taquile

SQ

Titicaca

3900 m

15° 50' S

69° 43' W

Peru

Puno

Puno

Amantaní

 

Isla Taquile

FW

Huancané

SA

Peru W.Titicaca

3820 m

15° 15' S

69° 43' W

Peru

Puno

Huancané

Vilque Chico

Kulachata

 

FW

Puno

SQ

Puno

3820 m

15° 55' S

70° 03' W

Peru

Puno

Puno

ciudad de Puno

 

barrio Ricardo Palma

FW

Tiwanaku

SA

N.La Paz

3850 m

16° 40' S

68° 40' W

Bolivia

 

Ingavi

region: Jesus de Machaca

 

Sullkatiti Titiri

FW

Cochabamba

SQ

S.Bolivia

3000 m

17° 35' S

65° 30' W

Bolivia

Cochabamba

Carrasco

municipio: Pocona

sección tercera

 

FW

Oruro

SA

S.Oruro

3850 m

19° 30' S

67° 50' W

Bolivia

 

Ladislao Cabrera

 

cerca de:
Tambo Tambillo

Puqui

FW

Sucre

SQ

S.Bolivia

2700 m

19° 05' S

65° 50' W

Bolivia

Chuquisaca

Oropesa

cantón: Maragua

sección octava

 

*DCT

Huánuco

CQ

Upper Huallaga

c1900 m

09° 55' S

71° 14' W

Peru

 

 

 

 

 

FW /
*DCT

Cuzco

SQ

Cuzco

3400 m

13° 31' S

71° 59' W

Peru

Cuzco

Cuzco

 

 

 

*DCT

Chipaya

UCh

Uru-Chipaya

3850 m

19° 05' S

68° 02' W

Bolivia

Oruro

 

 

 

Santa Ana de Chipaya

 

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A Working Classification of the Varieties Covered

The very brief descriptions of ‘language branch’ in the second column of the table above are merely my own shorthand, following essentially geographical criteria, and to some extent the existing widely used (if not necessary universally accepted) classifications.  They follow fairly closely those in Landerman (1991) for example.  They do not imply any particular judgement on the actual classification of varieties;  my position on that will be explained rather on the basis of the full results and their interpretation in my articles.

My abbreviations in the tables on this page mean:

NQ  Northern Quechua
NPQ   North Peruvian Quechua
CQ   Central (Peruvian) Quechua
IQ  Intermediate Quechua (classification relative to Northern and Southern Quechua disputed or unclear)
SQ Southern Quechua

 

CA   Central Aymara (i.e. Jaqaru and Kawki)
SA    Southern Aymara (i.e. the Altiplano in Bolivia and the far south of Peru)

 

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The Traditional Quechua ‘Family Tree’

The map and the ‘family tree’ below currently present only the details of the Quechua family.  The Aymara family is much smaller, at least in terms of the surviving varieties for which we have evidence, and the survivors form a much simpler two-way branching structure between Southern and Central Aymara – though within each branch more remains to be done in researching the finer dialect classification.

 

Colours of the varieties correspond to those on the map above, to help identify the regions where they are spoken.

Those varieties so far included in our lexical and phonetic comparisons are shown underlined.  Where more than one sub-variety is to be covered, this is indicated by the number in parentheses, e.g. [3].

Those varieties for which reliable descriptive grammars exist are shown in italics.  These are the ones we would propose to cover for comparisons in morphosyntax.

 

The tree below is based on the one in the book Lingüística Quechua, alias Cerrón-Palomino (2003), which was in turn based on the first two main works on the Quechua family tree, namely Torero (1964) and Parker (1963).  Both these linguists came to very similar conclusions, though apparently arrived at independently at around the same time.

This is not the only view of the relationships between Quechua dialects, however.  The Ethnologue classification, for instance, puts Pacaraos Quechua in the QII branch, not QI.  Indeed, in his doctoral thesis, Landerman (1991) fairly convincingly calls into question even the fundamental distinction between the two main branches of the family tree, QI and QII.  He suggests particularly that there is no sound basis for assigning Northern Peruvian Quechua to varieties such as Cañaris, Incahuasi and Cajamarca to either the QI or QII branch.  This is one issue in which the results from our comparative study can contribute significantly to the debate:  indeed our results suggest the tree is not accurate!

 

 

 

PROTO-QUECHUA       

 

 

 

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

 

 

\

 

 

 

 

HUAIHUASH (QI)

 

HUAMPUY (QII)

 

 

/

 

 

 

\

 

 

 

/

 

\

 

 

CENTRAL    

 

PACARAOS

 

QIIA  (‘YUNGAY’)

 

QIIB-C (‘CHINCHAY’)

/

 

|

 

\

 

|

 

/

 

\

 

/

 

\

Huailay

 

AP-AM-AH

 

Huancay

 

|

 

Central

 

Northern

 

Northern

 

Southern

|

 

|

 

|

 

|

 

|

 

|

 

|

 

|

Huailas

 

Alto Pativilca

 

Yaru

 

Pacaraos

 

Laraos

 

Cañaris & Incahuasi

 

Amazonas

 

Ayacucho

Conchucos

 

Alto Marañón

 

Jauja & Huanca

 

 

 

Lincha

 

Cajamarca

 

San Martín

 

Cuzco,
Puno  [2] &
Bolivia [3]

 

 

Alto Huallaga

 

Huangáscar & Topará

 

 

 

Apurí

 

 

 

Loreto

 

Argentina

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chocos

 

 

 

Ecuador [2]: Highland & Lowland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madeán

 

 

 

Colombia

 

 

 

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Further Varieties to be Included

The practicalities of reaching many fieldwork locations within the time constraints for this research project, and in some cases difficulty in locating surviving speakers able to be my informants (in the case of very endangered varieties like Pacaraos Quechua), have necessarily limited the number of varieties I have been able to cover thus far.  The most important and valuable remaining candidates to be added to make this study more comprehensive are, in my judgement:

   a denser coverage of Central Quechua as a whole, in particular Junín and Huancayo Quechua

   more ‘Intermediate’ Quechua varieties:  such as Lincha and others in the Yauyos area, Yaru, and Pacaraos (see below))

   more varieties intermediate between Huancavelica and Cuzco varieties that are included, such as the Quechua of the Ayacucho, Apurímac and Arequipa regions

   Lamas Quechua (in the Peruvian Amazon)

   Argentinean Quechua

   a broader and denser coverage of Southern Aymara varieties.

 

All these lacunae are ones I hope to be able to fill if I can obtain funding for a further period of research and fieldwork.

Partial data only have already been collected for the following two varieties, so these will therefore unfortunately not be included in the first set of results published.  However, I aim to return to these fieldwork sites as soon as possible to complete collection of the data and include them.

 

FW

Quivilla

CQ

Alto Huallaga

2930 m

09° 36' S

76° 44' W

Peru

Huánuco

Dos de Mayo

Quivilla

 

Quivilla

FW

Pacaraos

IQ

Pacaraos

2800 m

11° 15' S

77° 15' W

Peru

Lima

Huaral

Pacaraos

 

 

 

 

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Data Sources:  Fieldwork and Dictionaries

For two varieties, Huánuco Quechua and Chipaya, data were not collected by me in fieldwork, but taken from written sources.  For full bibliographical details and my mini-reviews of the dictionaries cited here, click on the links.  Any errors in interpretation of those sources are of course mine.

   The Chipaya data were collected in fieldwork by Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino and Enrique Ballón Aguirre, to whom many thanks for making them available to me before their forthcoming publication.

   The Huánuco Quechua data were drawn from Weber et al. (1998) Rimaycuna – Quechua de Huánuco, which is in many ways one of the most professionally produced dictionaries available for any Quechua dialect (though unhelpfully in my view, it adopts a curious and very non-standard orthography.  For full details click here).

 

In the case of Cuzco Quechua, the data were taken my own knowledge and work over a long period with local informants, as well as from a number of dictionary sources, particularly:

   Cusihuamán (2001) Diccionario Quechua: Cuzco-Collao,

   Cerrón-Palomino (1994) Quechua sureño: diccionario unificado
(this is not specifically Cuzco Quechua, but does give Cuzco variants and is valuable for comparative  and reconstruction data)

   Cuzco Quechua Academy’s (1995)  Diccionario Quechua-Español-Quechua / Qheswa-Español-Qheswa Simi Taqe

 

The reconstructions of proto-forms that I follow for Quechua and Aymara words, which will also be made available on this website with the full data, are not my own but generally taken from those provided in:

   Cerrón-Palomino (1994) Quechua sureño: diccionario unificado

   Weber et al. (1998)  Rimaycuna – Quechua de Huánuco

   Cerrón‑Palomino (2000)  Lingüística Aimara

 

 

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Colour Coding Key

The names of the language varieties follow colour coding scheme in the tables and map:

   black for varieties of the Quechua language family

   brown for the Aymara family (also known as Jaqi or Aru)

   green for Chipaya (the last surviving language of the Uru-Chipaya family, unrelated to either Quechua or Aymara.

 

 

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Language Names and Spellings

Names for the Andean Languages and Language Families

There is considerable inconsistency in how many of the languages of the Andes are referred to, among linguists, non-linguists, and in some cases the speakers themselves.  The issue is not a straightforward one, and there are arguments of various types both for and against the various terms proposed, but here we follow the most comprehensive proposal, put forward in:

Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo (1993)  Quechuística y aimarística:  una propuesta terminológica
Alma Mater, 5, 41-55  (publication of the Universidad San Marcos, Lima, Peru)

Cerrón‑Palomino argues for a particular set of terms in Spanish, and here we use the most directly corresponding English terms.  So we speak of the language families as a whole as Quechua and Aymara, and for any particular dialects or languages within them we always specify which, thus:  Cuzco Quechua, southern Quechua, southern Aymara, central Aymara (i.e. Jaqaru/Kawki), etc..

That is, we do not use the terms some writers in English have used, adding an –n to give an adjective form also to be used for referring to the whole family:  Quechuan, Aymaran, and the putative Quechumaran.  So some writers have sought to use this –n to distinguish between the Aymaran family, of which the Aymara language is just one of the surviving languages (albeit by far the most biggest), alongside the little known and endangered Jaqaru/Kawki language(s).  In practice we have found this distinction solely by means of one letter –n at the end of a word potentially confusing and unhelpful, indeed even writers who use it do so rather inconsistently.  Moreover, there is certainly no need for a new term such as Quechuan, for the word Quechua itself has always referred to the language family and not to any one language within it.

We agree with Cerrón‑Palomino that it is much clearer always to specify geographically which language variety is meant:  indeed there are enough differences within even the southern Aymara language for specifications like Puno Aymara and Oruro Aymara to be frequently necessary.  Above all, this technique of always specifying the variety concerned has always been followed for the Quechua language family, with no problems whatever.  There is no single language called Quechua, it is only the term for the language family, and it seems simplest to take the term Aymara in the same sense.

 

Names for the Aymara Family (also known as the Aru or Jaqi family)

Terminology is notoriously inconsistent for the Aymara language family particularly.

Our use of Aymara to refer to the whole family is broader than that followed by other linguists who have used Aymara specifically only for the main surviving language, spoken in the far south of Peru and northern Bolivia.  This family includes not only the language most well known by the name of Aymara or Aymará, which we always specify as southern or Altiplano Aymara, but also central or Tupino Aymara:  the language varieties Jaqaru and Kawki, spoken in a few mountain villages in the district of Tupe, in the arid coastal mountains of central Peru (Yauyos province, Lima department).

Alongside Aymaran in English, other forms coined by linguists for to refer specifically to the family as a whole are Aru proposed by Alfredo Torero, and Jaqi proposed by Martha Hardman.  We have no particular problem with these terms as such, though we do not agree with Hardman’s ‘anthropological’ justifications for her Jaqi is most suitable, for there are plenty of arguments in the other direction in favour of making explicit the ‘pedigree’ of Jaqaru/Kawki as relatives of the better-known southern Aymara.

 

What do the Andean Languages’ Names Mean?  Where do They Come From?

Please refer to the full explanations and histories of the all the names given to the Andean languages provided by Cerrón‑Palomino in the introductions to his main books on each language family:

   For the origins of the term Quechua, and its many variants such as Quichua, and other spellings like Kichwa, and other terms with other roots such as runasimi (literally people’s language, or specifically Indians’ language), see Cerrón‑Palomino (2003).

   For the origins of the term Aymara, the alternatives Aru and Jaqi, and the names Jaqaru and Kawki, see Cerrón‑Palomino (2000).

 

Spellings for Language Names

As for spellings, the principle is followed that each language is written in the form most appropriate to the orthography of the language of the text in which they are being talked about.  That is, on the Spanish version of this page the spellings used are quechua, aimara, jacaru and cauqui, even though in those respective languages the spelling proper to that language gives:  qhichwa, aymara, jaqaru, kawki.

The somewhat anarchic orthography of English, of course, generally accepts spellings as in the original language, unless an accepted form already exists, hence the spellings we used are indeed the same as in each language itself:  Quechua, Aymara, Jaqaru, Kawki.

 

Spellings for Fieldwork Placenames

Certainly, there are some arguments in favour of adopting native spellings for placenames in Andean languages, and indeed these have been applied in occasional cases in the Andean countries themselves, such as the spelling Inkawasi alongside Incahuasi.  While we might hope that eventually this would become generalised, for now for practical reasons we have generally kept to the most usual spelling in Spanish, to facilitate identifying our fieldwork locations on maps, which so far always use the Spanish spellings.

 

 


 

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