Indigenous Languages of Lowland South America (review)

This collection of 21 articles grew out of presentations made at a symposium entitled ‘Lowland South American Languages’ (49th International Congress of Americanists in Quito, Ecuador, 7–11 July 1997). Together they touch on aspects of 62 languages of diverse genetic affiliations, including several isolates and languages as yet unclassified. Most are spoken in humid, tropical, lowland areas of Brazil, Bolivia, or Peru, but parts of Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, and French Guyana are also represented so that the book’s scope encompasses much of South America except the Southern Cone and the coastal portions of Brazil. The 62 languages analyzed are listed alphabetically and keyed to a map on pp. 6–7, with an indication of their genetic affiliations and which author in the present volume discusses them. Twelve of the articles are published in Spanish without any English abstract, something partly rectified for readers not fluent in Spanish by the concise description each title receives in the editors’ introduction (1–5). The remaining nine are in English.

Most of the articles are based on original fieldwork in native communities and represent ongoing research. Some of the languages described have never before been discussed in print to any extent so that the material presented is completely new rather than a theoretical reinterpretation of older data. Topics range from phonology, grammar, and discourse analysis to issues of genetic linguistics and general typology. The editors have arranged the contributions according to four broad categories: descriptive works (three articles), comparative studies (five articles), phonology (four articles), and morphosyntax (nine articles). Space does not permit a complete listing of each author and title, and this review instead highlights the contents of only a few of the articles.

The contributions dealing with languages spoken outside of Amazonia proper sometimes offer a particularly valuable comparative perspective. ‘Merony my or part-whole relations in indigenous languages of lowland South America’ (83–98), by Harriet E. Manelis Klein, deals with the morphology of languages spoken in the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay, an area that may have functioned in prehistory as a refuge for groups displaced by the development of food production in other regions. Peter Muysken’s ‘Drawn into the Aymara mold: Notes on Uru grammar’ (99–110) discusses contact-induced change from highland languages in an isolate spoken on the eastern slopes of the Andes. And Simon van de Kerke’s ‘Case marking in the Leko language’ (25–38) discusses another isolate, this time spoken on the eastern slopes of the Bolivian Andes, that likewise displays influence from the other side of the continental divide. Incidentally, the eleventh edition of Ethnologue (Barbara F. Grimes, Dallas: SIL, 1988) had reported Leko to be already extinct, so that K’s subsequent work with native speakers provides an important corrective to this premature report of its demise.

This book adds importantly to the rapidly growing body of literature available on indigenous South American languages. As the first volume in a brand new series dedicated specifically to this purpose, it can be hoped and expected that more such studies will soon follow.