Linguist contact features observed in Quechua-speakers living in Patagonia

Abstract

This paper deals with transferences due to the linguistic contact between Quechua and Spanish as observed in the speech of vernacular speakers who live in Chubut, especially on the Gulf of San Jorge area. Cases of permanent loanwords, i.e. those adapted to Quechua linguistic system, nonce borrowings, syntactic transferency and cases of code switching are also included in this survey. Through the use of these phenomena it is possible to see speech strategies used by the native speaker. It is also taken into account the word classes that are most frequently included as loanwords as well as the cases of alternation between vernacular words and those incorporated as loans. Finally, certain features in the use of code switching are also treated. Besides, the survey of these phenomena leads to a reflexion on the speaker’s competence, i.e. the knowledge of the grammar of both systems that he puts into contact. As a conclusion, it is clear that these phenomena have increased a lot due to the linguistic contact and that the competence of vernacular speakers make possible the occurrence of these phenomena, that do not show any lack of grammaticality.