Cover not available
Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 37:3 (2020) ► pp.318–367

On the polymorphemic genesis of some Proto-Quechuan roots

Establishing and interpreting non-random form/meaning correspondences on the basis of a cross-linguistic polysemy network

ORCID logo | Leiden University Centre for Linguistics | University of Tübingen
| University of Tübingen
In the Proto-Quechuan lexicon, many two-segment phonetic substrings recur in semantically related roots, even though they are not independent morphemes. Such elements may have been morphemes before the Proto-Quechuan stage (i.e., in Pre-Proto-Quechuan). On the other hand, this may simply be due to chance, or to phonesthesia. In this paper, we introduce the Crosslinguistic Colexification Network Clustering (CCNC) algorithm, as well as an accompanying test statistic, which allow us to evaluate our claims against a neutral standard of semantic relatedness (the CLICS2 database; List et al. 2018). We obtain very strong statistical evidence that there are hitherto unexplained recurrent elements within Proto-Quechuan roots, but not within roots reconstructed for Proto-Aymaran, the proto-language of a neighboring language family whose members are otherwise structurally very similar to Proto-Quechuan, and which has therefore long been considered an obvious candidate for deep shared ancestry. Some of these elements are explainable as phonesthemes, but most appear to reflect archaic Quechuan morphology. These findings are consistent with an emerging picture of the early Quechuan-Aymaran contact relationship in which Quechuan structure was reformatted on the Aymaran template.
In the Proto-Quechuan lexicon, many two-segment phonetic substrings recur in semantically related roots, even though they are not independent morphemes. Such elements may have been morphemes before the Proto-Quechuan stage. On the other hand, this may simply be due to chance, or to phonesthesia. In this paper, we introduce a methodology which allows us to evaluate our claims against a neutral standard of semantic relatedness. We obtain very strong statistical evidence that there are hitherto unexplained recurrent elements within Proto-Quechuan roots, but not within Proto-Aymaran roots. Most appear to reflect archaic Quechuan morphology, which has implications for the early Quechuan-Aymaran relationship.
Keywords: Quechuan, Aymaran, reconstruction, historical linguistics, polysemy networks, colexification, CLICS2 , Crosslinguistic Colexification Network Clustering (CCNC), archaic morphology, phonesthemes
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Relevance to Andean linguistic prehistory
  • 3.Crosslinguistic colexification network clustering (CCNC)
  • 4.Statistical test for non-random form/meaning correspondence
  • 5.Preparing the Proto-Quechuan and Proto-Aymaran data for CCNC
  • 6.Analyzing the Proto-Quechuan lexicon using clustering significance tests
    • 6.1Test 1: Frequency of recurrent two-segment substrings within semantic clusters
    • 6.2Test 2: Position of meaningful substrings within Proto-Quechuan roots
  • 7.Linguistic analysis of root-initial elements
    • 7.1Proto-Quechuan phonotactics
    • 7.2Proto-Quechuan roots with identifiable fossilized Proto-Quechuan morphology
    • 7.3Proto-Quechuan roots without known lexicalized morphology
    • 7.4Rejected clusters
    • 7.5Limitations of the semantic framework: An example
  • 8.Conclusion and next steps
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 5 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.16041.eml
References (66)
References
Academia Mayor de La Lengua Quechua. 2005. Diccionario: Quechua-Español-Quechua, Qheswa-Español-Qheswa: Simi Taqe. Cuzco: Academia Mayor de La Lengua Quechua.Google Scholar
Adelaar, Willem F. H. 1986. La relación Quechua-Aru: Perspectivas para la separación del léxico. Revista Andina 4(2). 379–426.Google Scholar
1987. Comentarios a Martha Hardman y Bruce Mannheim. Revista Andina 5(2). 83–91.Google Scholar
2006. The vicissitudes of directional affixes in Tarma (Northern Junin) Quechua. In Grażyna J. Rowicka & Eithne B. Carlin (eds.), What’s in a verb? Studies in the verbal morphology of the languages of the Americas, 121–141. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
2009. Inverse markers in Andean languages: A comparative view. In Leo Wetzels (ed.), The linguistics of endangered languages. Contributions to morphology and morpho-syntax, 171–185. Utrecht: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT).Google Scholar
2010. Trayectoria histórica de la familia lingüística quechua y sus relaciones con la familia lingüística aimara. Boletín de Arqueología PUCP 141. 239–254.Google Scholar
2011. Reconstruyendo el paradigma verbal quechua: El caso de la transición de primera a segunda persona. In Willem F. H. Adelaar, Valenzuela Pilar & Roberto Zariquiey (eds.), Estudios sobre lenguas andinas y amazónicas. Homenaje a Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, 21–31. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.Google Scholar
2012a. Languages of the Middle Andes in areal-typological perspective: Emphasis on Quechuan and Aymaran. In Lyle Campbell & Grondona, Verónica (eds.), The indigenous languages of South America: A comprehensive guide, 575–624. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012b. Modeling convergence: Towards a reconstruction of the history of Quechuan-Aymaran interaction. Lingua 122(5). 461–469. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013a. Quechua I y Quechua II: En defensa de una distinción establecida. Revista Brasileira de Linguística Antropológica 5(1). 45–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013b. Searching for Undetected Genetic Links between the Languages of South America. In Ritsuko Kikusawa & Reid, Lawrence A. (eds.), Historical linguistics 2011. Selected papers from the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka, 25–30 July 2011, 115–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017. A typological overview of Aymaran and Quechuan language structure. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and Dixon, R. M. W. (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic typology, 651–682. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Adelaar, Willem F. H. & Pieter Muysken. 2004. The languages of the Andes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2012. Languages of the Amazon. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blake, Barry J. 2017. Sound symbolism in English: Weighing the evidence. Australian Journal of Linguistics 37(3). 286–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blasi, Damián E., Søren Wichmann, Harald Hammarström, Peter F. Stadler & Morten H. Christiansen. 2016. Sound–meaning association biases evidenced across thousands of languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(39). 10818–10823. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Lyle. 1995. The Quechumaran hypothesis and lessons for distant genetic comparison. Diachronica 12(2). 157–200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Lyle & William J. Poser. 2008. Language classification: History and method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo. 1987. Lingüística Quechua. Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos Bartolome de las Casas.Google Scholar
. 1989. Lengua y sociedad en el valle del Mantaro. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.Google Scholar
. 1994. Quechumara. Estructuras paralelas de las lenguas Quechua y Aymara. La Paz: CIPCA.Google Scholar
. 2000. Lingüística Aimara. Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bartolomé de Las Casas.Google Scholar
. Forthcoming. Lingüística histórica y filología en el área andina: Encuentros y desencuentros. Revista Andina 561. 101–128.
Cobo, Bernabé. 1890 [1653]. Historia del nuevo mundo. Sevilla: Imp. de E. Rasco.Google Scholar
Coler, Matt. 2014. A grammar of Muylaq’ Aymara: Aymara as spoken in Southern Peru. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coler, Matt, Nicholas Q. Emlen & Edwin Banegas-Flores. 2020. Vowel deletion in two Aymara varieties. Italian Journal of Linguistics 32(1).Google Scholar
Dunn, Michael, & Angela Terrill. 2012. Assessing the lexical evidence for a Central Solomons Papuan family using the Oswalt Monte Carlo Test. Diachronica 29(1). 1–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Emlen, Nicholas Q. 2017. Perspectives on the Quechua-Aymara contact relationship and the lexicon and phonology of Pre-Proto-Aymara. International Journal of American Linguistics 83(2). 307–340. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Emlen, Nicholas Q. & Willem F. H. Adelaar. 2017. Proto-Quechua and Proto-Aymara agropastoral terms: Reconstruction and contact patterns. In Martine Robbeets & Alexander Savelyev (eds.), Language dispersal beyond farming, 25–45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Firth, John R. 1930. Speech. London: Ernest Benn.Google Scholar
François, Alexandre. 2008. Semantic maps and the typology of colexification. In Vanhove Martine (ed.), From polysemy to semantic change: Towards a typology of lexical semantic associations, 163–215. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gentner, Dedre. 1981. Some interesting differences between nouns and verbs. Cognition and Brain Theory 4(2). 161–178.Google Scholar
González Holguín, Diego. 1607. Gramática y arte nueva de la lengua general de todo el Perú llamada lengua qquichua o lengua del Inca. Lima: Francisco del Canto (1842 edition, Genoa: Pagano).Google Scholar
Hardman, Martha J. 1983. Jaqaru: Compendio de estructura fonológica y morfológica. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.Google Scholar
Haynie, Hannah J. 2014. Deep relationships among California languages. Diachronica 31(3). 407–447. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heggarty, Paul & David Beresford-Jones. 2010. Agriculture and language dispersals: Limitations, refinements, and an Andean exception? Current Anthropology 51(2). 163–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kessler, Brett. 2001. The significance of word lists: Statistical tests for investigating historical connections between languages. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kwon, Nahyun & Erich R. Round. 2015. Phonaesthemes in morphological theory. Morphology 25(1). 1–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laime Ajacopa, Teofilo, Efraín Cazazola, Félix Layme Pairumani & Pedro Plaza Martínez. 2007. Diccionario bilingüe, Iskay Simipi Yuyayk’ancha: Quechua-Castellano, Castellano-Quechua. Unpublished manuscript. La Paz, Bolivia.Google Scholar
Landerman, Peter. 1994. Glottalization and aspiration in Quechua and Aymara reconsidered. In Peter Cole, Gabriella Hermon & Mario Daniel Martín (eds.), Language in the Andes, 332–378. Newark: Latin American Studies Program, University of Delaware.Google Scholar
. 1998. Internal reconstruction in Aymara and Quechua. In Jane H. Hill, P. J. Mistry, Lyle Campbell (eds.), The life of language: Papers in linguistics in honor of William Bright, 35–57. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
List, Johann-Mattis, Simon J. Greenhill, Cormac Anderson, Thomas Mayer, Tiago Tresoldi & Robert Forkel. 2018. CLICS2: An improved database of cross-linguistic colexifications assembling lexical data with the help of cross-linguistic data formats. Linguistic Typology 22(2). 277–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
List, Johann-Mattis, Anselm Terhalle & Matthias Urban. 2013. Using network approaches to enhance the analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computational Semantics – Short Papers, 347–353. Potsdam: Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar
Mannheim, Bruce. 1991. The Language of the Inka since the European invasion. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
. 2018. Three axes of variability in Quechua: Regional diversification, contact with other indigenous languages, and social enregisterment. In Linda J. Seligmann & Kathleen Fine-Dare (eds.), The Andean world, 507–523. Milton Park: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mason, John Alden. 1950. The languages of South American Indians. In Julian Steward (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians, volume 6, 157–317. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Mossel, Arjan, Nicholas Q. Emlen, Simon van de Kerke & Willem F. H. Adelaar. 2020. Puquina kin terms. In Astrid Alexander Bakkerus, Rebeca Fernández Rodríguez, Liesbeth Zack & Otto Zwartjes (eds.), Missionary linguistic studies from Mesoamerica to Patagonia, 277–298. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Münch, Alla & Johannes Dellert. 2015. Evaluating the potential of a large-scale polysemy network as a model of plausible semantic shifts. In Wahle, Johannes, Marisa Köllner, Harald Baayen, Gerhard Jäger & Ttineke Baayen-Oudshoorn (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics. [[URL], accessed 25 April, 2020].
Muysken, Pieter. 2012. Modelling the Quechua-Aymara relationship: Structural features, sociolinguistic scenarios, and possible archeological evidence. In Paul Heggarty & David Beresford-Jones (eds.), Archaeology and language in the Andes: A cross-disciplinary exploration of prehistory, 85–110. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oré, Luís Jerónimo de. 1607. Rituale seu Manuale Peruanum et forma brevis administrandi apud Indos sacramenta per Ludovicum Hieronymum Orerium. Napoli: Apud Io. Iacobum Carlinum & Constantinum Vitalem.Google Scholar
Orr, Carolyn & Robert E. Longacre. 1968. Proto-Quechumaran. Language 44(3). 528–555. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parker, Gary J. 1963. La clasificación genética de los dialectos Quechuas. Revista del Museo Nacional 321. 241–252.Google Scholar
1969a. Comparative Quechua phonology and grammar I: Classification. University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 1(1). 65–87.Google Scholar
1969b. Comparative Quechua phonology and grammar III: Proto-Quechua lexicon. University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 1(4). 1–61.Google Scholar
1973. Derivacion verbal en el quechua de Ancash. Lima: Universidad Nacional de San Marcos, Centro de Investigación de Lingüística Aplicada.Google Scholar
Ringe, Donald A. 1992. On calculating the factor of chance in language comparison. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 82(1). 1–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salmons, Joseph C. & Brian D. Joseph. 1998. Nostratic: Sifting the evidence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stark, Louisa R. 1975. A reconsideration of Proto-Quechua phonology. Lingüística e indigenismo moderno de América. Trabajos presentados al XXXIX CIA, 209–219. Lima: IEP.Google Scholar
Steiner, Lydia, Michael Cysouw & Peter Stadler. 2011. A pipeline for computational historical linguistics. Language Dynamics and Change 1(1). 89–127. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szabó, Lili & Çağrı Çöltekin. 2013. A linear model for exploring types of vowel harmony. Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands Journal 31. 174–192.Google Scholar
Torero, Alfredo. 1964. Los dialectos Quechuas. Anales Científicos 2(4). 446–478.Google Scholar
Uhle, Max. [1910] 1969. Estudios sobre historia incaica. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.Google Scholar
Weber, David John. 1987. Estudios quechua: Planificacion, historia y gramática. Lima: Ministerio de Educación, Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.Google Scholar
. 1996. Una gramática del quechua del Huallaga (Huánuco). Lima, Peru: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.Google Scholar
Zalizniak, Anna A., Maria Bulakh, Dmitrij Ganenkov, Ilya Gruntov, Timur Maisak & Maxim Russo. 2012. The catalogue of semantic shifts as a database for lexical semantic typology. Linguistics. 50(3). 633–669. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Emlen, Nicholas Q. & Arjan Mossel
2023. Northern Aymaran Toponymy, Revisited. International Journal of American Linguistics 89:4 ► pp. 493 ff. DOI logo
Michael, Lev
2021. The Classification of South American Languages. Annual Review of Linguistics 7:1 ► pp. 329 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.