Aymara (review)

Aymara is the first language of about a third of Bolivia’s population, and it is also spoken in southern Peru and northern Chile. The description in this volume is based on the main variety, with occasional notes on the others, as well as on Jaqaru and Kawki, the other members of the Jaqi family to which Aymara belongs.

Ch. 1 provides facts about Aymara, its speakers, and the history of its investigation, as well as some salient semantic features of the language. Ch. 2 presents the phonological system, which includes series of plain, aspirated, and glottalized stops. Each of the three vowels /i, a, u/ may occur in geminate clusters, although they rarely do so in the lexical domain. Ch. 3 describes the individual morphophonemic properties of the 137 suffixes. Ch. 4 classifies Aymara morphemes into distributional classes and gives definitions of morphological construction levels. Ch. 5 deals with nominalization and verbalization and demonstrates the heavy cyclical applicability of these processes. Ch. 6 describes the array of verbal derivational suffixes, including directional, locational, Aktionsart (called ‘aspect’), and valency-changing suffixes, that is, the reflexive, beneficiary, maleficiary, two different causatives, and a reciprocal. Ch. 7 presents the portmanteau verbal inflectional suffixes, which express person, tense-mood, and evidentiality. Ch. 8 discusses the structure of nominals, which, according to the broad definition of the author, include temporal and other modifiers. In the decimally-based numeral system, terms for numbers up to 999,999 are available. Numeral classification is limited to a suffix for humans. Like verbal cross-referencing and nominal possession, the pronouns distinguish inclusive, exclusive, second person, and third person. Demonstratives express three degrees of distance. Ch. 9 treats the four ‘independent’ suffixes, so named because they are not bound to particular morphological classes. Difficulties in translating them are compensated for by ample illustrations. Ch. 10 treats discourse pragmatic suffixes that mark topic, declarative (‘affirmative’), different kinds of interrogative, and so on, and are said to ‘inflect’ sentences (170). Distributionally, they are the final elements of morphological strings, as well as of syntactic units. In Ch. 11, ‘Syntax’, the author argues that these suffixes are central to the description of basic sentence structure and, furthermore, that the placement of suffixes such as the affirmative depends on the underlying question, implying that syntactic organization reflects dialogic principles (187). The chapter also describes verb-complement structures, the noun phrase, word reduplication, coordination, sentence linkage, direct quotes, and subordination. The book ends with four short texts and some appendices.

This grammar represents forty years of involvement with Aymara on the part of its author. The result is a detailed description with numerous and delightfully exemplified insights on issues such as language use and the interaction between Aymara and Andean Spanish. The text is, however, marred by typographical errors, linguistic infelicities, and a lack of stylistic conventionality in matters of referencing and morpheme glossing. Some glosses, such as ‘zero’, are unsatisfactory, and not all morphemes are explained when they first occur. As argued elsewhere (Language 74.68, 1998), the series to which the book contributes would profit from better copyediting.

As for the description, one lacks, for instance, an overview of grammatical relations. Although Aymara has markers for several cases, these are not treated in a unified way. For some reason the terms ‘intransitive’ and ‘transitive’ are avoided, which sometimes leads to obscure formulations. Similarly, it is difficult to interpret the glossing of the verb ‘to go’ as involving a third person object (105, 123).

The general linguist will find answers to many questions about the structure of Aymara in this grammar, and for the student of Aymara it will represent an in dispensible guide. Any type of reader will, however, need to expend effort in retrieving the information needed.