Aymaran languages


Aymaran is one of the two dominant language families in the central Andes alongside Quechuan. The family consists of Aymara, widely spoken in Bolivia, and the endangered Jaqaru and Kawki languages of Peru.
Hardman proposed the name Jaqi for the family of languages, Alfredo Torero Aru 'to speak', and Rodolfo Cerrón Palomino Aymaran, with two branches, Southern Aymaran and Central Aymaran. Other names for the family are Jaqui and Aimara.
Quechuan languages, especially those of the south, share a large amount of vocabulary with Aymara, and the languages have often been grouped together as Quechumaran. This proposal is controversial, however; the shared vocabulary may be better explained as intensive borrowing due to long-term contact.

Family division

The Aymaran family of languages includes:
  • Aymara. Southern and Central dialects divergent and sometimes considered separate languages.
  • Jaqaru.
  • Kawki.
Aymara has approximately 2.2 million speakers; 1.7 million in Bolivia, 350,000 in Peru, and the rest in Chile and Argentina. Jaqaru has approximately 725 speakers in central Peru, and Kawki had 9 surviving speakers as of 2005. Kawki is little documented though its relationship with Jaqaru is quite close. Initially, they were considered by Martha Hardman to be different languages, but all subsequent fieldwork and research has contradicted that and demonstrated that they are mutually intelligible but divergent dialects of a single language.

History

The Aymaran linguistic homeland may have been the southern Peruvian coast, particularly the area of the Paracas culture and the later Nazca culture. Aymaran speakers then migrated into the highlands and played a role in the Huari Empire. Sometime between the collapse of the Tiwanaku Empire and the rise of the Inca, some Aymaran speakers invaded the Altiplano, while others moved to the northwest, presumably ancestral to the Jaqaru and influencing Quechua I. Aymaran varieties were documented in the southern Peruvian highlands by the 1586 Relaciones geográficas, and they appear to have persisted up until the 19th century. The eastern and southern Bolivian highlands were still predominantly Aymara-speaking around 1600, but may have adopted Quechua as a result of development of the mining industry.

Language contact

Jolkesky notes that there are lexical similarities with the Kechua, Kunza, Leko, Uru-Chipaya, Arawak, and Pukina language families due to contact.

Phonology

Vowels

Aymaran languages have only three phonemic vowels, which in most varieties of Aymara and Jaqaru are distinguished by length. Length is commonly transcribed using diaereses in Aymara and length diacritics in Jaqaru.

Consonants

Though Aymaran languages vary in terms of consonant inventories, they have several features in common. Aymara and Jaqaru both contain phonemic stops at labial, alveolar, palatal, velar and uvular points of articulation. Stops are distinguished by ejective and aspirated features. Both also contain alveolar, palatal, and velar fricatives and several central and lateral approximants.

Morphophonology

Aymaran languages differ from Quechuan languages in that all verbal and nominal roots must end in a vowel, even in loanwords: Spanish habas became Aymara hawasa and Jaqaru háwaša. This feature is not found in other Andean languages.
Like Quechuan languages, Aymaran languages are highly agglutinative. However, they differ in that many agglutinative suffixes trigger vowel suppression in the preceding roots. An example is the loss of final vowel in the word apa, when it becomes ap-su.