Ebook: Descriptive and comparative research on South American Indian languages: Historical overview [Las investigaciones descriptivas y comparativas sobre las lenguas indígenas sudamericanas. Revisión histórica]

The extreme language diversity that was characteristic for South America must
have been a challenge to native groups throughout the subcontinent, struggling
to maintain commercial and political relations with each other. Due to the absence
of phonetically based writing systems in pre-European times there is hardly any
documentation about the way cross-linguistic communication was achieved. However, the outlines of a conscious linguistic policy can be assumed from the Incas’
success in imposing their language upon a millenary multilingual society. Secondlanguage learning, often by users of typologically widely different languages, must
have been an everyday concern to the subjects of the Inca empire. Sixteenth-century chroniclers often report in a matter-of-fact way on the ease and rapidity with
which native Americans mastered the language of their conquerors, be it Quechua,
Spanish or any other language. Apart from such cases of political necessity, there
are indications that language played an essential role in many South American
native societies and that it could be manipulated and modified in a deliberate way.
The use of stylistic speech levels among the Cuna (Sherzer 1983) and of ceremonial discourse among the Mbyá (Cadogan 1959; Clastres 1974), the Shuar (Gnerre
1986) and the Trio (Carlin 2004), the appreciation of rhetorical skill as a requisite
for leadership among the Mapuche, the distinction of female and masculine speech
among the Karajá (Rodrigues 2004) and the Chiquitano (Galeote 1993), the association of language choice and family lineage among the peoples of the Vaupés
region (Sorensen 1967; Aikhenvald 2002), and the association of language choice
and professional occupation in highland Bolivia (Howard 1995) appear to indicate
an awareness of linguistic functionality not limited to daily communication alone.
The existence of engineered professional languages, such as Callahuaya, based on
the unification of elements from two or more languages (Stark 1972; Muysken
1997), or contact languages based on the same principle, such as the Ecuadorian
Media Lengua (Muysken 1979), the unusual and complex borrowing relations
that exist between Aymaran and Quechuan (Cerrón-Palomino 2000: 298–337), or
between Amuesha and a neighboring variety of Quechuan (Wise 1976, Adelaar
2006) all suggest a tradition of conscious and deliberate choices relating to language use. Finally, the extraordinary complexity and rigidity of the grammatical
systems of many South American languages suggest the opposite of anything such
as sloppiness or indifference towards linguistic matters.