Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Professor Rosaleen Howard
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
This article examines the relationship between the Aymara, Quechua and Spanish languages in the central valleys of Bolivia, as this was observed by the author during several fieldtrips to the region in the 1990s. It is based on the premise that the socio-geographic distribution and patterns of use of these languages is best explained in terms of the unequal social, economic and political relations of power that pertained between the urban and rural sectors of society during that period. The article first gives an overview of the sociolinguistic landscape of Northern Potosi. It then proceeds to an analysis of the mutual influences between the three languages, in a series of lexical fields in particular. Using an anthropological linguistic approach, emphasis is placed on speaker perspective and cultural context, in order to explore the significance of words arising from language contact, rather than on their formal features alone.
Author(s): Howard R
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Bolivian Studies Journal
Year: 2019
Volume: 25
Pages: 147-169
Online publication date: 13/05/2020
Acceptance date: 31/12/2019
Date deposited: 15/05/2020
ISSN (print): 1074-2247
ISSN (electronic): 2156-5163
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh
URL: https://doi.org/10.5195/bsj.2019.211
DOI: 10.5195/bsj.2019.211
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
