Historical linguistics, philology, and the development of Andean linguistics

Cerrón-Palomino R.; Urban M. · The oxford guide to the languages of the central andes (2025) · DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198849926.003.0003

Resumen

Historical-comparative linguistics in the Andean area was born in the 1960s. Its development is closely related to the unfolding of descriptive and dialectological studies on its Indigenous languages, in particular Quechuan and Aymaran. Only later, once reconstructions had been proposed, did attention turn toward the documentary sources in search of evidence which would help to formulate alternative solutions, deal with unresolved issues, and obtain clarification and refinements. Thus, philological studies of the Andean area were initiated and employed in a rigorous intellectual examination of the colonial grammatical and lexicographic materials. In this contribution, I attempt to give an account of the development of linguistic-philological studies as they have come to be applied in the linguistics of the Central Andes, making a distinction between two phases of their interplay that are distinguishable through the nature of their interaction and the quality of their output. © Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino (2024).

Instituciones: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú