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With Quechuan and Aymaran journal of language contact 7 (2014) 345-379 brill.com/jlc Lexical Evidence for Pre-Inca Language Contact of Mapudungun (Mapuche) with Quechuan and Aymaran Matthias Pache Universiteit Leiden [email protected] Abstract Mapudungun, often also called Mapuche, is a language isolate spoken in southern Chile and parts of Argentina. It presents structural, phonological and phonotactic similarities to the central Andean Quechuan and Aymaran language families. Many lexical items of Mapudungun have obviously been borrowed from Quechuan and Aymaran during or after the Inca presence in northern Mapuche territory. However, recent language contact may not be the only source of lexical parallels. The aim of the present article is to uncover evidence for alternative scenarios that could account for these parallels. As such, four exemplary Mapudungun roots clearly related to Quechuan and/or Aymaran roots are discussed in detail. First, the possibility that the respective lexical parallels are recent borrowings should be excluded. Second, it must be decided whether there is any evidence for the proposal that the respective Quechuan/Aymaran roots have been transferred into Mapudungun vocabulary via surrounding languages. The two-step approach developed here may undergo further refinement in future investigations of language contact in the Americas and elsewhere. Keywords Mapudungun – Quechuan – Aymaran – language contact – relative chronology * The author wishes to thank Willem Adelaar, Kate Bellamy, and Katja Hannß for their valuable suggestions during the preparation of this article. He is also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/19552629-00702005Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:31:18PM via free access <UN> 346 Pache 1 Introduction The issue of historical and phylogenetic relations of South American lan- guages, especially those of western South America, is still a matter of intense scientific debate (for an overview, see, e.g., Adelaar and Muysken, 2004: 22–45). Among the indigenous languages of South America, Mapudungun, also known as Mapuche or Araucanian, is exceptional in that this probable language iso- late has typological and formal parallels in central Andean and in Amazonian languages, despite the fact that it is spoken far away from both these areas (cf., e.g., Adelaar, 2009; Adelaar and Muysken, 2004: 512, 517, 522, 538–539; Croese, 1990; Torero, 2002: 29, 538–539; cf. also Dixon and Aikhenvald, 1999: 8–9). Different publications have mentioned or explicitly dealt with formal and structural parallels between Mapudungun and Quechuan and, to a lesser extent, between Mapudungun and Aymaran (cf. Adelaar, 2009; Adelaar and Muysken, 2004: 527, 533, 529, 537–538; Croese, 1990; Díaz-Fernández, 2008; Englert, 1936: 81–82; Golluscio et al., 2009; Márquez Eyzaguirre, 1956; Smeets, 2008: 58; Torero, 2002: 29). However, evidence for the period and the circumstances at the origin of those parallels is rather inconclusive. Whereas data presented by Adelaar (2009) suggest early, pre-Inca language contact between Mapudungun and the Aymaran languages that led to typological convergence, lexical parallels pres- ented by other authors (e.g. Díaz-Fernández, 2008; Golluscio et al., 2009; Smeets, 2008: 58) suggest instead recent and superficial language contact. Nonetheless, the possibilities of lexical comparison between Mapudungun and central Andean languages are not yet exhausted. It has still to be identified whether all the lexical parallels between Mapudungun and Quechuan/ Aymaran are due to post-Inca language contact, or if room can be made for different scenarios as well. The present paper develops a specific approach to explore these parallels in more depth and presents some initial steps in its application. 2 Mapudungun Mapudungun is spoken today by approximately 250 000 people in south- central Chile and parts of Argentina (cf. Zúñiga, 2007: 41). Valdivia ([1606]1887: ‘Al lector’) mentions Coquimbo as the northernmost region where Mapudungun was spoken (for the distribution of Mapudungun in the 16th century, see Map 1). In the 19th century, Mapudungun was apparently also the language of fisher- men of the northern Chilean coast (d’Ans, 1977). Nowadays, a few dialects of journal of languageDownloaded contact from 7 Brill.com09/25/2021 (2014) 345-379 01:31:18PM via free access <UN> Lexical Evidence for Pre-Inca Language Contact 347 PERU BOLIVIA BRAZIL PARAGUAY G U CHILE A R A N İ TA ABIPÓN I N U Ó KAINGANG G G N IA I D H C E SANAVIRON M Córdoba O AL C URUGUAY LENTI CHANÁ AC CHARRÚA Santiago MILLCAYAC Buenos Aires E H QUERANDİ C N ARGENTINA E U H E P ARAUCANIAN Temuco GÜNÜNA YAJICH Valdivia TEUSHEN Chiloé C H O N O K TEUHELCHE A W E S Q A R Map 1 16th century distribution of Mapudungun (Adelaar and Muysken, 2004: 503). this language remain: Huilliche in the provinces of Osorno, Valdivia and Chiloe (Alvarez-Santullano Busch, 1992), the Mapuche dialect of the central valley (Smeets, 2008), the northeastern Pehuenche dialect of the pre-Cordilleran areas, which is most similar to the dialect of the central valley (Salas, 2006: 52), and Ranquel or Ranquelche in the La Pampa province of Argentina (Fernández journal of language contact 7 (2014) 345-379 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:31:18PM via free access <UN> 348 Pache Garay, 2001). Generally, Mapudungun dialects do not differ much from one another and Mapudungun shows a great linguistic uniformity despite its wide distribution (Smeets, 2008: 9). This fact is suggestive of a relatively recent spread of the language. As for a possible origin of Mapuche culture, different scenarios have been proposed (for an overview, see Salas, 2006: 20–23), inclu- ding cultural influence from northern regions and/or from the Pampas areas in the east (Latcham, 1924; 1928; cited in Salas, 2006: 21), or links with Amazonian cultures (Menghin, 1962: 11–12; cited in Croese, 1990: 278; Steward, 1949: 711). Like Quechuan and Aymaran, Mapudungun is a language with suffixation as the main morphological device and has an elaborate post-base morphology (Adelaar, 2012a: 607). Mapudungun has received substantial attention for its direct-inverse system in bipersonal conjugation (Arnold, 1994, 1996; Grimes, 1985; Salas, 1978; Zúñiga, 2007: 236–237), which Adelaar (2009) has interpreted as the result of convergence with Aymaran. As in many Amazonian languages (cf. Dixon and Aikhenvald, 1999: 8–9), nominal morphology is only weakly developed. In terms of phonology, Mapudungun possesses a six vowel system with a vowel ɨ that can either be realized as a high central unrounded vowel or as a schwa [ǝ] (Adelaar and Muysken, 2004: 512). Mapudungun differs from both Andean and Amazonian languages in the use of interdental t͎, n͎, and l͎ in some dialects, and in a dual – the latter, however, is also found in languages of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, as in, for example, Yahgan and Gününa Yajich (cf. Adelaar and Muysken, 2004: 550–584). 3 Quechuan and Aymaran Quechuan and Aymaran are the two major language families spoken in the central Andes and are among the most investigated in South America (Adelaar and Muysken, 2004: 191–194, 259). Aymaran (also called Aru or Jaqi) at present consists of two languages, southern Aymara spoken in Bolivia, southern Peru and northern Chile, with its different dialects and more than 2,000,000 spea- kers, and central Aymara, represented by the Jaqaru and Cauqui dialects, still spoken by more or less 1000 people in the province of Yauyos, department of Lima, Peru (Adelaar, 2012a: 577). Quechuan (approximately 8,000,000 spea- kers), on the other hand, is regarded as a language family in itself or a language with two main dialect groups: central Peruvian Quechua I (Torero, 1964) or Quechua B (Parker, 1963) and Quechua A or Quechua II, including the varieties spoken to the north and south of central Peruvian Quechua I (for an overview, see Adelaar, 2012a: 578–580; Adelaar and Muysken, 2004: 183–191). This two- way classification of Quechuan is not without controversy, however, since a journal of languageDownloaded contact from 7 Brill.com09/25/2021 (2014) 345-379 01:31:18PM via free access <UN> Lexical Evidence for Pre-Inca Language Contact 349 heterogeneous subgroup of dialects displaying features of both Quechua I and Quechua II also exists (Adelaar, 2012a: 579). The relationship between Quechuan and Aymaran is unique due to many phonological, structural, formal and pragmatic parallels (Adelaar, 2012b: 462– 463; Cerrón-Palomino, 2008). As a matter of fact, it is often impossible to decide whether a form occurring in both language families is of either Quechuan or Aymaran origin (cf. Adelaar, 1986). The area of initial convergence between Proto-Quechuan and Proto-Aymaran has been localized in adjacent parts of the central Andes (Adelaar, 2012b: 465). The expansion of Quechuan in general (Beresford-Jones and Heggarty, 2011) or of Quechua II (Adelaar, 2012b) has been associated with the Huari horizon and thus must have occurred between 500 and 900 ad. The Aymara homeland has been localized, partly through rem- nant Aymaran languages, partly through toponymy, in the coastal area between the provinces of Cañete and Nazca in Peru (Cerrón-Palomino, 2000: 290). The split of Aymaran into a northern and a southern branch has been dated to a time period between 200 bc and 200 ad (Cerrón-Palomino, 2000: 291). These data can provide an informative foundation for the framing of place and time of language contact between Mapudungun and Quechuan and/or Aymaran, according to the scenarios developed later on in this paper. Quechuan and Aymaran have also been in contact with many other lan- guages in the past. The Barbacoan languages, Cholón (a language isolate) and Amuesha (Arawakan) at least must have had intense contact with Quechua- speaking groups, partly in pre-Inca times, as Adelaar (2006), Adelaar and Muysken (2004: 145) and Torero (2002: 538) suggest.
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