Andean Spanish-Quechua contact phenomena

The Andean region of South America, particularly the northern highlands of Ecuador, is the scene of intense linguistic contact between Spanish and Quichua (as the Quechua language in Ecuador is called), beginning in the early 16^th century and continuing to the present. My research is based in Imbabura province in northern Ecuador, where in many small communities cohorts of Quichua-dominant bilingual speakers can be found. Among the many language-contact phenomena that inform my research are under-differentiation of Spanish mid and high vowels (/i/~/e/ and /u/~/o/), use of the Spanish gerund in lieu of conjugated verbs, the use of Quichua-derived grammatical elements (e.g. the topic marker –ka), and the use of Media Lengua (chaupi shimi), a hybrid language consisting of Quichua morphosyntax and Spanish-derived nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns. I have engaged Quichua-Spanish bilinguals in a variety of interactive experimental tasks, with the aim of achieving greater understanding of bilingual contact phenomena.

 My work on Quichua-Media Lengua bilingualism has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Andean Spanish examples

Media Lengua examples

NSF project summary

NSF project abstract

Students who have accompanied me to Ecuador to conduct fieldwork:

Abigaíl Carretero

Isabel Deibel

Yolanda Gordillo

Diego Sevilla

Representative publications:

• Reconstructing the life-cycle of a mixed language: an exploration of Ecuadoran Media Lengua. International Journal of Bilingualism (2019) doi.org/10.1177/1367006919842668

• Field-testing codeswitching constraints: a report on a strategic languages project. Languages (2019), 4(1) doi.org/10.3390/languages4010007

• Ecuadoran Media Lengua: more than a “half”-language? International Journal of American Linguistics 83(2) (2017), 31-60.

• La tenacidad del español andino como reciclaje intra-comunitario. Armonía y contrastes: estudios sobre variación dialectal histórica y sociolingüística del español, ed. José María Santos Rovira (Lugo: Axac, 2015, pp. 141-158.

• Language switching constraints: more than syntax? Data from Media Lengua. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

• On the tenacity of Andean Spanish: intra-community recycling. Spanish language and sociolinguistic analysis, ed. Sandro Sessarego & Fernando Tejedo Herrero. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2016, pp. 109-134.

• Colliding vowel systems in Andean Spanish: carryovers and emergent properties. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 5 (2015), 91-121.

• Syncretic discourse markers in Kichwa-influenced Spanish: transfer vs. emergence. Lingua 151 (2014), 216-239.

• ¿Qué diciendo nomás? Tracing the sources of the Andean Spanish gerund. Spanish in Context 10(2), 2013, 227-260.

• Contacto y conflicto: el vocalismo del castellano andino (Imbabura, Ecuador). To appear in Lexis,

• Geographical and social varieties of Spanish: an overview. Handbook of Spanish Linguistics, ed. José Ignacio Hualde, Antxon Olarrea, and Erin O’Rourke. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 1-26.

• Spanish and Portuguese in contact. Handbook of language contact, ed. Raymond Hickey. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, pp. 550-580.

• Aspects of Ecuadoran vowel reduction. Hispanic Linguistics 4 (1990), 1‑19.

• /s/‑voicing in Ecuadoran Spanish: patterns and principles of consonantal modification. Lingua 79 (1989), 49‑71.