Ayacucho Quechua

Last updated
Ayacucho Quechua
Chanka runasimi
Native to Peru
Native speakers
918,200 (2000) [1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
quy  – Ayacucho
qxu  – Arequipa–La Unión
Glottolog ayac1238
ELP Ayacucho Quechua
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Ayacucho (also called Chanca or Chanka after the local Chanka ethnicity that dominated the area before the Inca conquest) is a variety of Southern Quechua spoken in the Ayacucho Region, Peru, as well as by immigrants from Ayacucho in Lima. With roughly a million speakers, it is the largest variety of Southern Quechua after Cusco Quechua. The literary standard of Southern Quechua is based on these two closely related Quechua varieties.

Contents

Phonology

Vowels

Front Back
High iu
Mid e [lower-alpha 1] o [lower-alpha 1]
Low a
  1. 1 2 Loanword letter

Ayacucho Quechua has three vowels: /a/, /i/, and /u/, which are rendered by native speakers as [æ], [ɪ], and [ʊ] respectively. When these vowels appear adjacent to the uvular fricative /χ/, they are lowered (with [æ] instead being produced further back), yielding [ɑ], [ɛ], and [ɔ] respectively. In bilingual speakers, the Spanish realizations [a], [i], and [u] may also be found.

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Ayacucho Quechua are outlined below. Orthographic symbols at odds with the IPA are given in angle brackets.

Ayacucho Quechua consonant phonemes
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Stop p / b [lower-alpha 1] t / d [lower-alpha 1] k / g [lower-alpha 1]
Affricate tʃ⟨ch⟩
Fricative f [lower-alpha 1] sχ⟨q⟩h
Nasal mnɲ⟨ñ⟩
Lateral lʎ⟨ll⟩
Trill r
Glide ɹ⟨rr⟩ [lower-alpha 1] j⟨y⟩w
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Loanword letter

Notable differences from Cusco Quechua:

Ayacucho Quechua has borrowed hundreds of words from Spanish, and some speakers (even monolinguals) approximate the Spanish pronunciation. For such speakers, /f//r//b//d//ɡ//e//o/ are phonemes in borrowed words like libru (from Spanish libro 'book') or serbey (from Spanish servir 'to serve')

Stress rules and syllable structure

Quechua primary (strong) stress regularly falls on the penultimate syllable (if a word has more than one syllable). It may also occur on the final syllable, in which case it is directly indicated by the acute diacritic. In slow speech, weak stress tends to fall on the first syllable of a word.

All phonemes appear in word initial position, though vowel clusters are not allowed, and word initial consonant clusters occur only in words borrowed from Spanish (these clusters are bl-, br-, bw-, by-, pl-, pr-, pw-, py-, dy, dr-, ty-, tr-, gr-, gl-, gw-, kr-, kl-, kw-, fr-, fl-, sp-, sk-, "st"-, "sw"- and sy-). The consonants h, l, and ñ cannot occur in word-final position (as well as borrowed Spanish consonants b, g, and f). This leads to a minimal possible syllable of V (only word initially) and a maximal native syllable of CVC ñan (with the prohibited consonants unable to appear in the final position), and a maximal possible syllable of CCVC kreyey (from Spanish creer 'to believe').

Morphology

Substantive morphology

Overview

Quechua is a largely agglutinative language and nouns can be modified by many affixes (mostly suffixes) which can mark the case of a noun or derive a new word. Some suffixes are possible in combination, such as -pa + -ta, ñuqapata, 'to my place'. Pronouns are marked with the same suffixes as regular nouns, as in -ñuqa 'I', -ñuqa-pa 'my'.

Personal pronouns

Singular Plural
1st person ñuqañuqanchikñuqayku
2nd person qamqamkuna
3rd person paypaykuna

The first person plural pronouns Ayacucho Quechua are divided into inclusive and exclusive pairs. Ñuqanchik, the inclusive pronoun, means 'we' and includes the person to whom the speaker is talking, as in 'you and I'. The exclusive pronoun, ñuqayku, also means 'we', but does not include the listener, meaning approximately 'we but not you'.

Case marking

Ayacucho Quechua substantives are marked for eleven grammatical cases, which are also conveyed through the use of suffixes. These suffixes may be placed onto nouns, numerals, pronouns, and—with an adverbial meaning—on adjectives and adverbs.

  • -ta marks the object or goal of a transitive verb. This includes the direct object in sentences like wasita qawan 'he watches the house'. It also has an adverbial function with adjectives (e.g. allin 'good' → allinta 'well'), numbers in telling time, adverbs, and adverbial nouns (e.g. punchaw 'day' → punchawta 'by day').
  • -pi marks location in, on, at, or within the noun to which it is attached (e.g. wasipi 'in the house'). When attached to an adverbial noun, -pi acquires the meaning 'during', as in setembripi 'during September'. When suffixed to a nominalized verbal, it means 'while', as in suyasqampi 'while he waited'. Additionally, -pi can be affixed to adjectives to indicate an adverbial function (e.g. katulikapi kasarakunqa 'they'll get married in a Catholic church').
  • -pa marks the genitive case (e.g. wasipa 'the house's; of the house'. A number of adverbials can also be formed from nouns + -pa (e.g. waqta 'side' → waqtapa 'on its side, sideways'.
  • -man means almost the same as -ta but is related to movement (e.g. wasiman rin 'he goes to the house'). It marks the direction towards a noun for a non-human actor (e.g. kay ñanmi ayakuchuman riq 'this road goes to Ayacucho').
  • -manta (which is not composed of the individual suffixes -man and -ta) marks motion away from a noun (e.g. wasimanta 'from the house'). It is also used for a number of other relational meanings such as 'about', 'instead of', or 'made of' (e.g. firumantam 'made of iron'; wasimanta riman 'he speaks about the house').
  • -wan marks accompaniment (as in ñuqawanmi rin 'he goes with me'), or indicates the means by which an action is performed (as in lampawan llamkachkan, 'he is working with the hoe').
  • -paq indicates the beneficiary of an action, as in amikumpaqmi rimapunqa, 'he'll speak on behalf of his friend'). When attached to a verbal, it means 'about to', as in mikuypaq kachkan, 'he is about to eat'.
  • -rayku indicates causality (e.g. ñuqarayku 'because of me'; munasqayrayku, 'because I want to').
  • -kama marks motion up to but not farther than the object (or, in the case of a verbal, passage of time until the affixed verbal), as in wasikama 'up to the house'.
  • -pura indicates the location of an object among others of its kind (e.g. kikinchikpura qunakuranchik papakunta, 'we exchanged potatoes amongst ourselves').
  • -nka implies equal distribution among members in a group (e.g. iskayninka* quwanchik 'he gives us two each'). This suffix appears as -ninka following a consonant.
  • -kuna pluralizes the noun to which it is attached (e.g. wasikuna 'the houses'). It can be used in conjunction with other suffixes and precedes all other suffixes except the personal markers, as in wasikichikkunaman 'to your (pl.) houses'. This suffix is not obligatory and can be omitted if the meaning is clear without it, as in runa and runakuna which both mean 'people' (runa may also mean a single person).

Verbal morphology

Verbal conjugations

In contrast to the fairly simple morphology for nouns, Quechua verbal morphology is much more complex. Verbs are conjugated for person and number of both the subject and the object. Subject suffixes precede explicit object suffixes as in riku-y-ki-ku 'We see you', in which the first person -y appears before the second person -ki (ku, in this case pluralizes the first person). However, even the subject markers are preceded by the suffixes -wa and -su which indirectly convey the direct object of the verb, as in riku-wa-n-ki 'You see me'. Explicit personal markers are preceded by one of the tentatively titled "aspect" morphemes. The simple present tense is marked by the suffix -n-, apart from first-person subject and second-person object, where there is no suffix.

  • Verbal suffixes
    • -y refers to the speaker. It appears as -y following a vowel, -niy following a consonant, -i following the -n- marker of the simple present, and Zero following the future ending -sqa.
    • -ki refers to the addressee, the person to whom one is speaking. It appears as -yki following /a/ or /u/, -niki following a consonant, and as -ki elsewhere.
    • -n refers to a person other than the speaker or the addressee (third person). It appears as -n following a vowel, and -nin following a consonant.
    • -chik refers to a group which includes the addressee. It -nchik following a vowel, -ninchik following a consonant, and -chik elsewhere (as when it follows the -n- morpheme).
    • -ku refers to a group which excludes the addressee. It has no allomorphy.
    • -wa indicates that the speaker is the object of second or third person action
    • -su indicates that the addressee is the object of action by the third person (when followed by the second person ending).

Below is shown the verb rikuy 'to see', fully conjugated in the simple present tense. The persons are shown accompanied by their corresponding Quechua pronouns declined into the appropriate cases. Blocks which are left empty are either instances in which the object is the same as the subject, which requires the reflexive marker -ku-, as in riku-ku-y 'I saw myself', or cases where such a statement is logically impossible, as in the intersection between a second person subject and a first person plural inclusive object, which would mean, approximately 'You helped you and I'.

1st
(ñuqata)		2nd
(qamta)		3rd
(payta)		1st plural
(ñuqanchikta)		1st plural
(ñuqaykuta)		2nd
(qamkunata)		3rd
(paykunata)
1st
(ñuqa)		riku-y-kiriku-n-iriku-y-ki-chikriku-ni
2nd
(qam)		riku-wa-n-kiriku-n-kiriku-wa-n-ki-kuriku-n-ki
3rd
(pay)		riku-wa-nriku-su-n-kiriku-nriku-wa-n-chikriku-wa-n-kuriku-su-n-ki-chikriku-n
1st plural
(ñuqanchik)		riku-n-chikriku-n-chik
1st plural
(ñuqayku)		riku-y-ki-kuriku-y-kuriku-y-kuriku-y-ku
2nd plural
(qamkuna)		riku-wa-n-ki-chikriku-n-ki-chikriku-wa-n-ki-kuriku-n-ki-chik
3rd
(paykuna)		riku-wa-n-kuriku-su-n-ki-kuriku-n-kuriku-wa-n-chikriku-wa-n-kuriku-su-n-ki-chikriku-n-ku

Syntax

Ayacucho Quechua has a standard subject–object–verb (SOV) word order, as in (pay) wasitam ruwachkan 'he is building a house', but this can be inverted, since the syntactic relationship between nouns is made clear by the overt case markers. However, unlike in other case-marked languages (like Russian or Latin), the inversion of the standard word order in Ayacucho Quechua does not serve to topicalize the word (or phrase) in question since this too is explicitly marked by the -qa discourse topic marker. Primarily then, inversions of word order serve to emphasize words as particularly relevant or salient (particularly verbs). Compare standard wasita qawan 'he watches the house' with qawan wasita 'he watches the house' (as opposed to feeling it or hearing about it) in which the act of watching is being specifically highlighted.

With respect to smaller constituents, the order is much more fixed. Modifiers, such as adjectives, preadjectivals, adverbials and attributive nouns all occur before the head which they modify (including possessive nouns marked with -pa). Prepositions, when they occur, are also placed before their noun phrases.

Related Research Articles

The Finnish language is spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns elsewhere. Unlike the languages spoken in neighbouring countries, such as Swedish and Norwegian, which are North Germanic languages, or Russian, which is a Slavic language, Finnish is a Uralic language of the Finnic languages group. Typologically, Finnish is agglutinative. As in some other Uralic languages, Finnish has vowel harmony, and like other Finnic languages, it has consonant gradation.

Neo-Mandaic, also known as Modern Mandaic, sometimes called the "ratna", is the modern reflex of the Mandaic language, the liturgical language of the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. Although severely endangered, it survives today as the first language of a small number of Mandaeans in Iran and in the Mandaean diaspora. All Neo-Mandaic speakers are multilingual in the languages of their neighbors, Arabic and Persian, and the influence of these languages upon the grammar of Neo-Mandaic is considerable, particularly in the lexicon and the morphology of the noun. Nevertheless, Neo-Mandaic is more conservative even in these regards than most other Neo-Aramaic languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tonkawa language</span> Native American language

The Tonkawa language was spoken in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico by the Tonkawa people. A language isolate, with no known related languages, Tonkawa has not had L1 speakers since the mid 1900s. Most Tonkawa people now only speak English, but revitalization is underway.

Middle Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Bolivian Quechua</span> Dialect of Southern Quechua

South Bolivian Quechua, also known as Central Bolivian Quechua, is a dialect of Southern Quechua spoken in Bolivia and adjacent areas of Argentina, where it is also known as Colla. It is not to be confused with North Bolivian Quechua, which is spoken on the northern Andean slopes of Bolivia and is phonologically distinct from the South Bolivian variety. Estimates of the number of speakers of South Bolivian Quechua range from 2.3 to 2.8 million, making it the most spoken indigenous language in Bolivia, just slightly greater than Aymara, with roughly 2 million speakers in Bolivia. In comparison, the North Bolivian dialect has roughly 116,000 speakers.

Yakkha is a language spoken in parts of Nepal, Darjeeling district and Sikkim. The Yakkha-speaking villages are located to the East of the Arun river, in the southern part of the Sankhuwasabha district and in the northern part of the Dhankuta district of Nepal. About 14,000 people still speak the language, out of 17,003 ethnic Yakkha in Nepal. Genealogically, Yakkha belongs to the Eastern Kiranti languages and is in one subgroup with several Limbu languages, e.g. Belhare, Athpare, Chintang and Chulung. Ethnically however, the Yakkha people perceive themselves as distinct from the other Kiranti groups such as Limbu.

The Ojibwe language is an Algonquian American Indian language spoken throughout the Great Lakes region and westward onto the northern plains. It is one of the largest American Indian languages north of Mexico in terms of number of speakers, and exhibits a large number of divergent dialects. For the most part, this article describes the Minnesota variety of the Southwestern dialect. The orthography used is the Fiero Double-Vowel System.

The Yimas language is spoken by the Yimas people, who populate the Sepik River Basin region of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken primarily in Yimas village, Karawari Rural LLG, East Sepik Province. It is a member of the Lower-Sepik language family. All 250-300 speakers of Yimas live in two villages along the lower reaches of the Arafundi River, which stems from a tributary of the Sepik River known as the Karawari River.

Tsez, also known as Dido, is a Northeast Caucasian language with about 15,000 speakers spoken by the Tsez, a Muslim people in the mountainous Tsunta District of southwestern Dagestan in Russia. The name is said to derive from the Tsez word for "eagle", but this is most likely a folk etymology. The name Dido is derived from the Georgian word დიდი, meaning "big".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern Quechua</span> Indigenous language of the central Andes of South America

Southern Quechua, or simply Quechua, is the most widely spoken of the major regional groupings of mutually intelligible dialects within the Quechua language family, with about 6.9 million speakers. It is also the most widely spoken indigenous language in the Americas. The term Southern Quechua refers to the Quechuan varieties spoken in regions of the Andes south of a line roughly east–west between the cities of Huancayo and Huancavelica in central Peru. It includes the Quechua varieties spoken in the regions of Ayacucho, Cusco and Puno in Peru, in much of Bolivia and parts of north-west Argentina. The most widely spoken varieties are Cusco, Ayacucho, Puno (Collao), and South Bolivian.

Athpare, also known as Athapre, Athpariya, Athpre, Arthare, Arthare-Khesang, or Jamindar, spelled Athpariya I to be distinguished from Belhariya, is an eastern Kiranti language.

Lau, also known as Mala, is an Oceanic language spoken on northeast Malaita, in the Solomon Islands. In 1999, Lau had about 16,937 first-language speakers, with many second-language speakers through Malaitan communities in the Solomon Islands, especially in Honiara.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nukak language</span> Endangered indigenous language of Colombia

The Nukak language is a language of uncertain classification, perhaps part of the macrofamily Puinave-Maku. It is very closely related to Kakwa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maliseet-Passamaquoddy language</span> Algonquian language

Maliseet-Passamaquoddy is an endangered Algonquian language spoken by the Maliseet and Passamaquoddy peoples along both sides of the border between Maine in the United States and New Brunswick, Canada. The language consists of two major dialects: Maliseet, which is mainly spoken in the Saint John River Valley in New Brunswick; and Passamaquoddy, spoken mostly in the St. Croix River Valley of eastern Maine. However, the two dialects differ only slightly, mainly in their phonology. The indigenous people widely spoke Maliseet-Passamaquoddy in these areas until around the post-World War II era when changes in the education system and increased marriage outside of the speech community caused a large decrease in the number of children who learned or regularly used the language. As a result, in both Canada and the U.S. today, there are only 600 speakers of both dialects, and most speakers are older adults. Although the majority of younger people cannot speak the language, there is growing interest in teaching the language in community classes and in some schools.

This article deals with the grammar of the Udmurt language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paya language</span> Chibchan language of Honduras

Pech or Pesh is a Chibchan language spoken in Honduras. It was formerly known as Paya, and continues to be referred to in this manner by several sources, though there are negative connotations associated with this term. Alternatively, it has rarely also been referred to as Seco, Bayano, Taia, Towka, and Poyuai. According to Ethnologue there were a thousand speakers in 1993. It is spoken near the north-central coast of Honduras, in the Dulce Nombre de Culmí municipality of Olancho Department.

Warndarrang (waɳʈaraŋ), also spelt Warndarang, Wanderang, Wandaran, and other variants is an extinct Aboriginal Australian language in the Arnhem family, formerly spoken by the Warndarrang people in southern Arnhem Land, along the Gulf of Carpentaria. The last speaker was Isaac Joshua, who died in 1974, while working with the linguist Jeffrey Heath.

The Kwaio language, or Koio, is spoken in the centre of Malaita Island in the Solomon Islands. It is spoken by about 13,000 people.

Grass Koiari (Koiali) is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea spoken in the inland Port Moresby area. It is not very close to the other language which shares its name, Mountain Koiali. It is considered a threatened language.

This article describes the grammar of the Old Irish language. The grammar of the language has been described with exhaustive detail by various authors, including Thurneysen, Binchy and Bergin, McCone, O'Connell, Stifter, among many others.

References

  1. ↑ Ayacucho at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016) Closed Access logo transparent.svg
    Arequipa–La Unión at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016) Closed Access logo transparent.svg
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.