The category of preposición in early missionary grammars of Aymara (Bertonio 1603 and Torres Rubio 1616): Between inflection and suffixation

In this contribution, I investigate the conceptual and terminological relation between ‘prepositions’ (preposiciones) and a set of suffixes, mainly case markers, in Bertonio’s (1603) and Torres Rubio’s (1616) Aymara grammars. These morphemes are classified as prepositions or inflectional markers, or even both at the same time. This overlap is motivated by the typological differences between the language described, Aymara, and the metalanguage, Latin, since the former does not feature a full equivalent to Latin prepositions and encodes most grammatical relations by suffixation. The analysis reveals that the distinction between prepositions and case markers is established on functional grounds and based on the comparison with Latin categories.