The language dynamics of the ancient Central Andes
Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
Prehistory and World Archaeology
Final Report Abstract
The goal of the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group “The language dynamics of the Central Andes” has been to develop a deeper understanding of the language history of the Central Andes (coast and highlands of present-day Peru and Bolivia). In doing so, a general concern has also been to generate new insights into the dynamics of this prehistoric culture area, which is characterized by a long tradition of complex societies. Accordingly, the project structure and the research questions the group has pursued have been strongly informed by the interdisciplinary, in particular the archaeological context. Past approaches to the interface between linguistics and archaeology in the Central Andes have predominantly applied extant models concerning the non-linguistic triggers for the expansion of language families in a “top-down” manner to the Central Andes. In this project, in contrast, the genuine and unique ways of societal and economic organization that have developed in the Central Andes have been taken into account more thoroughly as the cultural background for the region’s language dynamics, with the goal to reach a more complete, fine-grained, and nuanced language and culture history “bottom up”. Within this general framework, the group has pursued several complementary subprojects that are situated at different time depths. These concern processes of language shift in recent prehistory, the former extension of language families in deeper prehistory, and the sociocultural contexts of intensive prehistoric language contact under language maintenance that must have taken place in the prehistoric Central Andes still earlier in prehistory. In addition, the group has paid special attention to linguistic relationships between Andes and the adjacent Amazonian lowlands and to widespread loanwords in the Central Andes, which bespeak cultural and economic ties between particular regions within them. Furthermore, researchers associated with the team have been successful in gathering new data concerning the ethnobiology of the Central Andes, the vocabulary of minority languages that are currently still spoken, and the cultural heritage of language communities that have already been considered nonexistent. The general relevance of the group’s work results from the notably richer perspectives which it could establish on one of the so-called “cradles of civilizations” from the point of view of language history. In those parts of the world, complex societies have developed independently and without outside influences; they are therefore of special interest for human prehistory. The Andean “cradle of civilization” is the perhaps least-well understood because it is the only one which has not produced written testimonies that are understandable to us today. The project has shown that historical and contact linguistics can help to fill this gap, and thus to make a contribution to the investigation of human prehistory in general.
