Measured Language: Quantitative Studies of Acquisition, Assessment, and Variation

7. Measuring Quechua to Spanish Cross-Linguistic Influence

95 7 ■Measuring Quechua to Spanish Cross-Linguistic Influence MarILyn S. ManLey Rowan University ■ While much research has been carried out to describe Andean Spanish (Cusihuaman 2001; de Granda 2001; Escobar 1978; Feke 2004; Hurley 1995; Lee 1997; Lipski 1996; Mamani and Chávez 2001; Manley 2007; Odlin 1989; Romero 1993; Sánchez and Camacho 1996; Zavala 2001; Zúñiga 1974), this work is the first to quantify the presence of a broad range of Quechua to Spanish cross-linguistic influence (CLI) features.1 Additionally, this contribution is unique in its approaches to measuring speakers’ overall degree of CLI, with a wide variety of CLI features being taken into account. The quantitative methods described here may also be applied to the measurement of CLI among other languages in contact. Specifically, this paper examines three different methods utilized to quantify the presence of thirty-one Quechua to Spanish phonetic, morphosyntactic, and calque (translations from Quechua into Spanish) CLI features in the speech of seventy members of two bilingual Quechua-Spanish communities in the city of Cuzco, Peru. These thirty-one CLI features have been described previously in the literature by the authors listed above. For each of the seventy speakers, a (1) Total Cross-Linguistic Feature Score (Total CLF Score), a (2) Calque-Weighted Total Cross-Linguistic Feature Score (Calque-Weighted Total CLF Score), and an (3) Implicational-Weighted Total Cross-Linguistic Feature Score (Implicational-Weighted Total CLF Score) were calculated in order to measure the overall degree of Quechua influence in his/her Spanish. In the sections that follow, each of these three measures is described in detail and compared for the purpose of determining which is the most representative of these speakers’ degree of Quechua to Spanish CLI. The creation of both the Calque-WeightedTotal CLF Score and the ImplicationalWeighted Total CLF Score was motivated by the desire to improve upon the Total CLF Score. While the Total CLF Score weighs each of the thirty-one features equally, the Calque-Weighted Total CLF Score weighs the presence of calques of Quechua language structures produced in Spanish more heavily than other features. Eleven of the thirty-one CLI features are calques. The only explanation for the occurrence of calque features is that they were the result of influence from Quechua. This is not so for the noncalque features, whose presence might be explained as resulting from 96 Marilyn S. Manley factors such as internal language change, which may include general processes of simplification, and the use of a universal interlanguage for those learning Spanish as a second language. With the Implicational-Weighted Total CLF Score, each of the thirty-one features was weighted differently based on the results of a Guttman procedure, also referred to as “implicational scaling” (Hatch and Lazaraton 1991, 204–16). In order to create an implicational scale for the thirty-one cross-linguistic features, both the number of features utilized by each participant as well as the number of participants who used each of the thirty-one features were taken into account. To determine which of the three measures is the most representative of the speakers’ degree of Quechua to Spanish CLI, a variety of statistical tests were carried out. Reliability analyses using Cronbach’s alpha, a measure of internal consistency, in addition to a Guttman procedure, lend support to the Total CLF Score and indicate that it is a more representative measure than both the Calque-Weighted Total CLF Score and the Implicational-Weighted Total CLF Score. Participants and Data Collection The data presented here were collected in 2003 from two communities of bilingual, Quechua-Spanish speakers living in the city of Cuzco, Peru: forty-two male participants from the Asociación Civil, ‘Gregorio Condori Mamani’ Proyecto Casa del Cargador (CdC) (Gregorio Condori Mamani Civil Association, House of the Carrier Project) and twenty-eight female participants from El Centro de Apoyo Integral a la Trabajadora del Hogar (CAITH) (Center for the Integral Support of the Female Home Worker). Both the CdC and CAITH are nonprofit, nongovernmental agencies that serve as temporary homes for their inhabitants. Primarily, adolescent males live at the CdC, the majority of whom earn a living as cargadores (carriers) by transporting agricultural goods within the large market places of Cuzco. The objective of the CdC is to improve the quality of life of the peasant migrant carriers, thereby allowing them to attain respectable levels of health, education, and familial well-being. The main goal of CAITH is to offer educational support and...