The language dynamics of the ancient Central Andes

• Applicant: Dr. Matthias Urban
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics ; Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 356787355

The project aims to facilitate a deeper understanding of the language history of the Central Andes (coast and highlands of present-day Peru and Bolivia). An overarching concern is to contribute new insights into the dynamics of this prehistoric culture area, which is characterized by a millennia-long trajectory of societal complexity. In doing so, specific Andean modes of socioeconomic organization are taken into account as the cultural background for the language history more strongly than is usual.Concretely, the project investigates two questions:There is a general consensus that the two most widespread language families of the Central Andes, Quechua and Aymara, which have shaped the language history of the region decisively, are interwoven with one another through a profound contact relationship that projects back to the respective proto-languages. Scenarios as to the sociolinguistic context which could have conditioned such salient contact-induced convergence processes, however, have been little explored. Ethnohistoric and ethnographic evidence shows that, in at least two regions, Quechua and Aymara were embedded into socioeconomic specializations within vertically integrated Andean societies, with pastoralists living at high altitudes speaking Aymara and agriculturalists who settled at lower altitudes speaking Quechua. The project investigates whether from this evidence a plausible model for the prehistoric interaction between Quechua and Aymara can be distilled and, if so, for which geographic area it could be valid. A key role will be played by toponymic evidence, especially the question whether the distribution of placenames that go back to Quechua and Aymara respectively correlate with different altitudinal tiers. A second project investigates to what extent in the Chachapoyas region on the eastern slopes of the Andes in Northern Peru a correlation between topography, archaeological givens, and linguistic differences obtained. Also here, preliminary evidence suggests that linguistic differentiation went hand in hand with different social identities within the pre-Colombian Chachapoyas archaeological culture which have an archaeologically visible correlate.Taken together, the possibility of a significant role of Andean languages as indices of intra-societal differences in prehistory emerges, which is investigated in the context of the project.The relevance of the project is high in two regards. On the one hand, it makes a significant contribution to filling voids in the theory of Andean historical linguistics. On the other hand, it avoids common problems at the interface of archaeology and linguistics and breaks new ground in modelling the relationship between archaeological and linguistic data, which lends it relevance beyond the language history of the Central Andes.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups