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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 37:3 (2020) ► pp.318–367

On the polymorphemic genesis of some Proto-Quechuan roots

Establishing and interpreting non-random form/meaning correspondences on the basis of a cross-linguistic polysemy network

ORCID logo | Leiden University Centre for Linguistics | University of Tübingen
 | University of Tübingen
In the Proto-Quechuan lexicon, many two-segment phonetic substrings recur in semantically related roots, even though they are not independent morphemes. Such elements may have been morphemes before the Proto-Quechuan stage (i.e., in Pre-Proto-Quechuan). On the other hand, this may simply be due to chance, or to phonesthesia. In this paper, we introduce the Crosslinguistic Colexification Network Clustering (CCNC) algorithm, as well as an accompanying test statistic, which allow us to evaluate our claims against a neutral standard of semantic relatedness (the CLICS2 database; List et al. 2018). We obtain very strong statistical evidence that there are hitherto unexplained recurrent elements within Proto-Quechuan roots, but not within roots reconstructed for Proto-Aymaran, the proto-language of a neighboring language family whose members are otherwise structurally very similar to Proto-Quechuan, and which has therefore long been considered an obvious candidate for deep shared ancestry. Some of these elements are explainable as phonesthemes, but most appear to reflect archaic Quechuan morphology. These findings are consistent with an emerging picture of the early Quechuan-Aymaran contact relationship in which Quechuan structure was reformatted on the Aymaran template.
In the Proto-Quechuan lexicon, many two-segment phonetic substrings recur in semantically related roots, even though they are not independent morphemes. Such elements may have been morphemes before the Proto-Quechuan stage. On the other hand, this may simply be due to chance, or to phonesthesia. In this paper, we introduce a methodology which allows us to evaluate our claims against a neutral standard of semantic relatedness. We obtain very strong statistical evidence that there are hitherto unexplained recurrent elements within Proto-Quechuan roots, but not within Proto-Aymaran roots. Most appear to reflect archaic Quechuan morphology, which has implications for the early Quechuan-Aymaran relationship.
Keywords: Quechuan, Aymaran, reconstruction, historical linguistics, polysemy networks, colexification, CLICS2 , Crosslinguistic Colexification Network Clustering (CCNC), archaic morphology, phonesthemes
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Relevance to Andean linguistic prehistory
  • 3.Crosslinguistic colexification network clustering (CCNC)
  • 4.Statistical test for non-random form/meaning correspondence
  • 5.Preparing the Proto-Quechuan and Proto-Aymaran data for CCNC
  • 6.Analyzing the Proto-Quechuan lexicon using clustering significance tests
    • 6.1Test 1: Frequency of recurrent two-segment substrings within semantic clusters
    • 6.2Test 2: Position of meaningful substrings within Proto-Quechuan roots
  • 7.Linguistic analysis of root-initial elements
    • 7.1Proto-Quechuan phonotactics
    • 7.2Proto-Quechuan roots with identifiable fossilized Proto-Quechuan morphology
    • 7.3Proto-Quechuan roots without known lexicalized morphology
    • 7.4Rejected clusters
    • 7.5Limitations of the semantic framework: An example
  • 8.Conclusion and next steps
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 5 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.16041.eml
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