Descriptive and comparative research on South American Indian languages: Historical overview [Las investigaciones descriptivas y comparativas sobre las lenguas indígenas sudamericanas. Revisión histórica]

Description

The extreme language diversity that was characteristic for South America musthave been a challenge to native groups throughout the subcontinent, strugglingto maintain commercial and political relations with each other. Due to the absenceof phonetically based writing systems in pre-European times there is hardly anydocumentation about the way cross-linguistic communication was achieved. However, the outlines of a conscious linguistic policy can be assumed from the Incas’success in imposing their language upon a millenary multilingual society. Secondlanguage learning, often by users of typologically widely different languages, musthave been an everyday concern to the subjects of the Inca empire. Sixteenth-century chroniclers often report in a matter-of-fact way on the ease and rapidity withwhich native Americans mastered the language of their conquerors, be it Quechua,Spanish or any other language. Apart from such cases of political necessity, thereare indications that language played an essential role in many South Americannative societies and that it could be manipulated and modified in a deliberate way.The use of stylistic speech levels among the Cuna (Sherzer 1983) and of ceremonial discourse among the Mbyá (Cadogan 1959; Clastres 1974), the Shuar (Gnerre1986) and the Trio (Carlin 2004), the appreciation of rhetorical skill as a requisitefor leadership among the Mapuche, the distinction of female and masculine speechamong the Karajá (Rodrigues 2004) and the Chiquitano (Galeote 1993), the association of language choice and family lineage among the peoples of the Vaupésregion (Sorensen 1967; Aikhenvald 2002), and the association of language choiceand professional occupation in highland Bolivia (Howard 1995) appear to indicatean awareness of linguistic functionality not limited to daily communication alone.The existence of engineered professional languages, such as Callahuaya, based onthe unification of elements from two or more languages (Stark 1972; Muysken1997), or contact languages based on the same principle, such as the EcuadorianMedia Lengua (Muysken 1979), the unusual and complex borrowing relationsthat exist between Aymaran and Quechuan (Cerrón-Palomino 2000: 298–337), orbetween Amuesha and a neighboring variety of Quechuan (Wise 1976, Adelaar2006) all suggest a tradition of conscious and deliberate choices relating to language use. Finally, the extraordinary complexity and rigidity of the grammaticalsystems of many South American languages suggest the opposite of anything suchas sloppiness or indifference towards linguistic matters.