Ahúnik’ənk’. Un vocabulario de la lengua tehuelche documentado por Roberto Lehmann-Nitsche

Abstract

In 1903 and 1905 the German anthropologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche documented two vocabularies of aonek’o ʔaʔjen language, also called Tehuelche language, as he met with indigenous people from Patagonia who temporarily stayed in Buenos Aires and La Plata. One of the lexical lists was partially published in 1913, while the other one remained unpublished. This article provides access to this source, and we link it with the published register as well as with other lexical lists that were recorded in those years by other governmental, academic and missionary agents interested in the subject. We also describe some contextual aspects of the situation where the annotation was made, and among them, the biographical trajectories of the persons who participated in that event. Additionally, we analyze the vocabulary structure and content that based in the elicitation instrument proposed by Georg von der Gabelentz is to be used in colonial contexts.