Presence of Puquina in Aimara and Quechua: Lexical and Grammatical Aspects

Abstract

It is assumed within the realm of Andean linguistics that, onomastics aside, there seems to be no ground for postulating grammatical elements in Andean languages, attributable to a former language which they displaced, namely Puquina. In fact, the state of the art in Aymara and Quechua studies in matters of synchronic and diachronic information, has yet to reveal morphosyntactic elements within their grammars which could be characterized as originating in a substrate language such as Puquina. Despite the lack of lexical and grammatical records of the language, the examination and interpretation of the scant Puquina texts, together with onomastic evidence corroborating them, allow us to capture the basics of its underlying lexico-semantic and morphosyntactic structures, therefore making the detection of influences of the language on Aymara and Quechua possible. In the following, I intend to demonstrate that Puquina exerted a significant influence on Aymara and Quechua, and that this influence goes beyond the lexical, since it managed to settle, not only at the morphological level, but also, more strikingly, in the syntactic one, a fact which has hitherto not been appreciated.