Linguistic Research on
Jaqaru and Kawki
(the two
varieties of ‘Central Aymara’)
By Members of the Jaqmashi
Association
Many pages of full details on each of these research projects are available on our dedicated webpages for each, links to which are given below in each section. This index page therefore keeps only to this overview information on each project.
First you may wish to read
our separate webpage with an
Introduction to
the Jaqaru and Kawki Languages
The State of Jaqaru and Kawki: A Socio-Linguistic Survey
A Comprehensive Analysis of the Kawki Sound System
A Comparative Study of the Place of Kawki and Jaqaru
within the Aymara Language Family
A CD-Rom of the ‘Sounds of the Andean Languages’
A Comparative Survey of Kawki and Jaqaru Vocabulary
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The State of
This research was the outcome of visits by the Peruvian linguist
Dante Oliva León to the Jaqaru- and Kawki-speaking villages of the Yauyos
region in
A Comprehensive Analysis of the Kawki Sound System
Dante Oliva León, a graduate in linguistics from the Pontificia
Universidad Católica del Perú in
The
Phonology of Kawki and Aspects of its Morphophonemics: The Place of Kawki Within Central
Aymara.
(Fonología
y aspectos de la morfofonémica del cauqui: su incidencia dialectal en el aimara
central).
This research project has been supported in large part by a grant from the Foundation for Endangered Languages. Full details are available on our webpage showing the thesis plan for this research (in Spanish; an English translation is pending).
A Comparative Study of the Place of Jaqaru and Kawki within the Aymara Language Family
This research was conducted by the British linguist Paul Heggarty,
who specialises in Andean languages of the Quechua family, and to a lesser
extent also the Aymara family (see his Quechua website at: www.quechua.org.uk). It represents a major new comparative study
of twenty varieties of Andean languages, carried out on a number of fieldwork
trips to
A major article on the outcomes from this research was published, in Spanish, in May 2005. It includes a specific section on Jaqaru and Kawki, covering the following questions:
• How closely related are Jaqaru and Kawki? Should they be considered different languages (in the view of Martha Hardman, for example), or merely closely related varieties of the same single ‘Central Aymara’ language (in the view of Rodolfo Cerrón‑Palomino, for example)?
• How long ago did the Central Aymara branch (Jaqaru and Kawki) split off from the main southern (‘Altiplano’) branch of the Aymara family? Did this split earlier than the first splits began in the Quechua language family?
• How much of the difference between the Central and Southern Aymara branches is due to contact influence with local varieties of Quechua (in both cases)?
• What more can we tell from these new data and analyses about the likely origins and early expansions of the Aymara and Quechua families?
For full details and abstracts of the article, see this research project’s webpage.
A CD-Rom of the ‘Sounds of the Andean Languages’
Including Jaqaru, Kawki, and Three Varieties of
Southern (Altiplano) Aymara
as well as Seventeen Regional Varieties of Quechua from
As a further outcome from the above comparative research project, and a tangible output of value to the speakers of these languages far beyond the linguistic research community, we shall in the second half of 2005 be converting our fieldwork phonetics recordings into a cd‑rom of the ‘Sounds of Andean Languages’. This cd‑rom will be distributed free to all the communities concerned (our twenty fieldwork locations where our sound recordings were made), and any other interested relevant institutions in the Andean countries. An online version of the whole cd‑rom will also be available on our Quechua website.
Both the cd‑rom and web versions will be based principally around tables of side-by-side links that speakers need simply click on to hear how the same word is pronounced in all twenty regional language varieties in our database. The structure will guide users through the regional differences in pronunciation, with the specific intention of supporting literacy programmes in native Andean languages. Particularly we aim to support the adoption of the neutral, harmonised spelling system now being promoted throughout the Andean countries, by helping explain those aspects of it that speakers in one region or another can at first sight find difficult and perplexing. (Optionally it will be possible to view our corresponding phonemic and phonetic transcriptions too, which will make the resource more valuable to trained linguists.)
Engaging with our audience puts a premium on our dissemination material being as user-friendly as possible. It is cd‑roms and the internet that will allow us to include maps, photo pages of our informants and their home regions (click for a sample of such pages already available on our research project website), and – crucially for non-specialists and for as yet essentially unwritten languages – media that can integrate easy-to-use (clickable) sound recordings. Equally vital is that our cd‑rom and website are available in a Spanish language version (as well as an English language one). It will also include material in a number of varieties of Quechua and Aymara themselves.
This work will be carried out by Paul Heggarty and Dante Oliva
León. The production and dissemination
of both the website and cd‑roms
is being funded entirely through a research dissemination grant from the
For full details, click to see our CD-Rom Project webpage.
A Comparative Survey of Kawki and Jaqaru Vocabulary
This research by Timothy Feist, a graduate in linguistics from the
A Lexical Comparison Between Jaqaru and
Kawki – the Two Varieties of Central Aymara
This fieldwork for this research project is supported by a
supplementary research grant from the