Peruvian Amazonian Spanish: Uncovering variation and deconstructing stereotypes. Spanish in Context 11.3: 425-453. 2014. (original) (raw)
Some linguistic structures found in Amazonian Spanish tend to be associated by and large with a rural variety spoken by people frequently depicted as indigenous. However, direct observations indicate that most of these features are pervasive among speakers across the social spectrum. What, then, are the parameters of linguistic variation in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish? Is there any social and/or linguistic meaning associated with the attested variation? This paper looks at data from ten monolingual speakers, five born and raised in Iquitos, and five born and raised in Kokama indigenous villages. The linguistic variables examined are: (i) permutation j/f, (ii) possessor/noun number agreement, (iii) double possession, and (iv) genitive fronting. This study concentrates on one social variable, place, which is found to significantly impact language use. City-speakers emphasize or downplay their category membership through the quantitative manipulation of markers; village-speakers show less variability in their language use. In addition, certain possessive constructions seem to be undertaking specialized functions. Keywords: Amazonian Spanish, variation, Peruvian Spanish
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Spanish is in contact with many languages, in diverse regions, a situation that has been studied in depth from numerous perspectives (see Diaz-Campos 2011). Nonetheless, relatively little attention has been devoted to the Amazon, where Spanish is in contact with dozens of less well-known languages (Dixon & Aikhenvald 1999, Aikhenvald 2012). In a recent treatment of Peruvian Amazonian Spanish, Jara Yupanqui (2012) notes that a number of historical and ideological factors have contributed to the development of Spanish within this region, including the prehispanic existence of an indigenous lingua franca, the role of Jesuit missions and subsequent land owners in the spread of Spanish, as well the surge in migration from other highland, coastal, and Portuguese-speaking regions due to the rubber trade and later oil extraction. The current study adds to our knowledge of the Spanish spoken in this region, specifically a variety which has emerged due in part to contact between Spanish and B...
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